From what I understand, Republicans, especially in Florida, put out political ads targeted specifically at Cuban immigrants. They play off the inherent hatred of communism in this demographic to convince them to vote against the "radical Marxist Democrats."

I don't want to get hopeful yet. I still think it'll be an uphill battle to keep Poilievre out of the PM's office. I'd want to see some consistent polling shifts across multiple sources before having any real hope.

That said, even if this as a vast overestimation of the Liberals' reversing fortunes, it could still be enough to eke out a small victory. Given how dire the polling was before Christmas, just holding the Conservatives to the slimmest of majorities could be considered a win of sorts

There are lots of reasons for women to keep their maiden name. In the case of my wife, she had two good ones:

1. She didn't want to become disassociated from her scientific publications.

2. She didn't want to complicate or redo any immigration paperwork.

Anti-bullying policies at schools aren't meant to protect victims. But they aren't meant to protect perpetrators either.

They are instead meant to protect the school administration, notably from having to actually assign fault in bullying situations. They can simply say "zero tolerance," punish all parties equally, and wash their hands of it.

So say we all.

Wasn't the "sigma" personality just invented by incels when they realized that "being alpha" didn't work the way they thought it did and therefore they needed a new paradigm to keep their worldview from collapsing? Or am I remembering that wrong?

At least last time I donated blood in my country (Canada), you could discretely indicate "do not use" by applying a different sticker to the bag. This was done in case someone got peer pressured into donating but didn't want to reveal something private that would have disqualified them otherwise.

I'd say this is part of the "zeal of the convert" phenomenon, where someone who converts to a belief tends to be more fanatical than someone raised in that belief.

There's probably bias in this observation, as a couple of very loud people can drown out dozens of others and make a trend seem more prevalent than it actually is, but I also have personal experience here.

The most profoundly puzzling thing to me is their insistence that magic words will somehow make authorities back off.

Like, they believe that there is this grand conspiracy involving the Federal Reserve and maritime law and birth names and whatever else. And yet they also believe that the forces behind this conspiracy must acquiesce if you just invoke the right language.

Do they never consider that an entity powerful enough to do all that could also just ignore their demands? Like, even if the conspiracy is true, why would its perpetrators just give up because some random person told them to?

My personal pet peeve is when they play an ad before giving you the menu options.

First, wait thirty seconds for them to tell me how great their mobile app is. Then listen to the options, pick one, find out I picked the wrong one, and have to go back up one level. Now I have to listen to the ad again before I can hear the options.

I don't care how proud you are of your app, I wouldn't be calling you if I could solve my problem with it.

I'm always a bit amused when these sites and apps say things like, "If you turn off ad personalization, the ads you see won't be as useful to you."

My dude, I don't think I've ever willingly clicked on an ad in my entire life. "Personalizing" them won't change that.

Despite other flaws, the biggest (or maybe second biggest) issue I had with Solo was Lando's backstory.

See, I grew up reading some very old, very obscure EU books about Lando. In that series Lando was an expert card player but a poor pilot, and a lot is made of how he won the Millennium Falcon in a game of Sabacc but has no idea how to fly it. The movie reversed this, making him a card cheat.

I'm probably they only person in the world who cares.

But maybe new series, if it ever comes out, will be about Lando and his adventures with Vuffi Raa?