That's what my parents told me when I said I was likely to kill myself without hormones. Needless to say, I got hormones and I am still here, but I will never get back the time I lost and I will never have the childhood socialization that I missed. I will never see my parents the same.

It haunts me a lot that I couldn't have started at 15 because my parents wanted me to be "normal" and for them to not have hard conversations. This is also the reason they didn't want me on anti-depressants even though I was massively depressed.

All this to say that maybe you should listen to doctors and trans people about why these things are necessary. Puberty blockers aren't even permanent.

The Shopify CEO that's hated by a ton of people due to COVID layoffs and shuttering the Waterloo office? And the Financial Post, the magazine for rich people who still suck Elon's cock? Not very representative of "most Canadian businesses," IMO.

Ooooh, do Ontario next! (Yes, I know who is in power... A man can dream.)

Unfortunately, due to the FPTP system, forming a coalition between the Liberals and the NDP is just not feasible because the Liberals don't want to cooperate unless they absolutely have to, which is rare because they are de facto in power about 50% of the time (usually a majority government, so there's no reason to cooperate).

The remaining "third party" options are either a) ideologically dissimilar to the NDP and would be unlikely to form a coalition with them, or b) have such a low chance of forming government that a coalition with them would not be politically advantageous.

For example, forming a coalition with the Greens or Bloc Quebecois would likely lead to a lot of concessions on the environment and on Francophone language rights that are simply not popular with NDP leadership, who are overwhelmingly swinging centrist (who knows why, really, it's extremely weird to see them campaign on worker protections one day while advocating for corporations the next).

The closest they've gotten to a coalition recently is a "supply and confidence agreement" with the minority Liberal government, which turned out to be pretty toothless and ended when the Liberals just... didn't really do anything the NDP wanted, lol.

While I don't disagree, the ONDP and the federal NDP are a lot closer in ideology IMO than, say, the BCNDP and the federal NDP.

Since I live in Ontario and there's an election coming up provincially as well as federally, their constant failures are at the forefront of my mind and I think the provincial strategy is relevant to mention here since it ultimately shares a lot in common with the federal one. The federal NDP has been shockingly silent on Palestine for many years, well predating the most recent stage of the conflict.

All of this is just my opinion, though. If you want to keep them separate that's your business.

We have one. Actually, we have more than one if you want to get technical. What we need is a viable third party that knows what they're doing and won't capitulate at the first sign of inconvenience while continuing to lie to constituents about their real goals and the current political situation. Also, the so-called progressive NDP needs to stop kicking people out for taking a stance against the Israeli genocide of Palestinians (yes, that happened; look up Sarah Jama's unceremonious ousting, among others).

Nothing will change without electoral reform that does away with first-past-the-post (FPTP). I personally like single transferable vote (STV) or mixed member proportional (MMPR) voting systems, but even a ranked ballot would be better than what we have now.

At least a few years. I switched to Linux a year ago and that was a huge consideration for me when choosing Debian over Ubuntu.

I used to, when I had fun neighbours my age that I made through an online Buy Nothing group. If you just start indulging in social groups related to your interests, you're bound to meet people. It's up to you if you want to socialize more with those people.

Unfortunately, no one will force you to hang out with them (except red flag weirdos), so a lot of the effort needs to come from you. If you get flaked on/deprioritized/ignored/ghosted more than once or twice, that's the cue to move on and try someone else so you don't get your hopes up.

This argument is so shitty because you're not paying for others' healthcare. You're paying for your own, and the money goes into a pool with a bunch of other people's, where it goes a lot farther because it turns out that negotiating inventory/prices on a large scale, like the whole state/country, gets you a better deal.

I know people that use Starlink because they have nothing else except Xplore (formerly Xplornet), which sucks ass. I like that they have the choice to avoid Xplore. That said, I would love to see Dougie shoot himself in the foot and go through with something like this so that he loses the rural vote.