I was feeling like shit last month. I decided a few months ago to stop taking my anti-depressants thinking it would be best to change my thinking patterns, and while it did work for a bit, last month I felt like crap seemingly out of nowhere initially, but then that spiraled into feeling unappreciated by people.

Not gonna delve into them, but you think some really dark thoughts when you feel alone and as though you mean nothing to people. I sent an old friend from my hometown a message in the latter half of the month before, and didn’t get a response, so I simply sent a message asking if we were still friends, thinking it wouldn’t be worth bothering. I hadn’t talked to this guy in ages, why would he say yes after all this radio silence I’ve been giving?

But no, this guy responded immediately, hyped up to hear from me again, saying of course we were still friends. It’s been slow working things up again, but that just comes with schedule conflicts and not living in the same city, but that was an instant mood changer after nearly two weeks of it being in freefall.

Helped me start putting more focus on giving myself accurate self-assessment. Been writing down times I felt appreciated by others for reference for when I feel like that again so I can nip those thoughts in the bud next time.

Compliments dried lentils at Safeway and Sobeys should be Canadian if you want the dried ones. Pretty sure Bulk Barn also sources their lentils domestically.

For canned, Unico comes to mind, but I’d assume Compliments would also be Canadian. I’d check other brands since while I’d imagine them to be the same case, some might also be imported from China or India.

If you let mayonnaise or peanut butter sit on it a bit, it should remove adhesives unless it’s stupid old. It’s worked for me with everything up until it comes to removing adhesive that’s been sitting around since 1985 or whatever.

Sharing your music in a fedi community, only to get downvotes on it.

Like genuinely, if you’re the type of person to downvote other people sharing music they like, you’re just a jackass. I’ll never understand the logic people have doing that instead of just ignoring what they don’t like.

Frustrates me even when it’s just a single person doing it.

“You can seize my means of production, baby”

Looks neat, will consider it. I don’t do a crazy amount of gaming though as I don’t do anything AAA or such.

I currently have an Nvidia 1060 Ti, and was mainly using KDE save for Mint and whatever it was I had with Manjaro. Too long back to remember for the latter. Think the GPU in the previous comp was exact same model, either that or a 1080 Ti.

Not huge into Cinnamon (I think that’s Mint’s default desktop environment). No idea why people hate on Windows 10 in terms of the layout of the desktop environment because it’s just about perfect for me. KDE was like the layout of Windows 10 if it was outright perfect. Kubuntu was incredible as a starter after the mess I had with Manjaro, which was so long ago I can’t even remember what happened there.

KDE for me is an absolute necessity in a distro in terms of desktop environment. Remember having it with Debian.

Been meaning to replace my GPU with an equivalent by AMD. Only thing keeping me back is cost, and knowing if an AMD equivalent would be compatible with my motherboard.

Probably had start of last year or end of 2023. Memory is fuzzy admittedly.

Thanks for the suggestion.

This makes sense though? The consumer pays for the tariffs, not the U.S… The price increase on U.S.-imported groceries from tariffs will be removed, making prices come down to how they were before we placed tariffs on them.

Been reconnecting with things I like more as of late as part of rebuilding my personal identity.

Forgot how much I love Fox Stevenson. Found out he released a new album few months ago, and it is amazing, very easily a contender for my album of the year.

Sunk Cost Fallacy is so fucking good, please give it a listen: https://foxstevenson.bandcamp.com/album/sunk-cost-fallacy

Not to give too much leeway to these companies, but I feel like the reason for this is all a confusion of what consumers are wanting.

On the part of the consumer, they want more stuff made here in Canada, but on the part of the grocery stores, they either misread the room and think they want Canadian brands, or assume they know better and go by Canadian brands seeing how so much of what we get at the grocery store in Canada either isn’t grown at demand, or can’t be grown here at all.

This would probably be best sorted with a better product labeling system enforced by the government. I used to work on Open Food Facts a lot (stopped doing so for a variety of reasons), and learned that how we label food here is so confusing when we can make it much more simplified and easier to read.

Something like a checklist format would be nice. Something like:

Canadian brand? [checkbox]
Domestically owned? [checkbox]
Canadian Ingredients? [five bars shifting from red to green, each bar being the closest 20% increment of domestic ingredients by volume]

Just this would help a tonne. You can identify truly Canadian brands and keep your dollars in Canada, and also do so more intensely if you wish by avoiding products that fail to meet a certain threshold of domestic ingredients. It prevents companies from having to assume they know better than the consumer when it comes to assuming what they actually want, and replaces the “made with domestic and imported ingredients”, “product of Canada”, and “Made in Canada” labels with something that paints a more clear and obvious picture to the consumer.

I do think there is some level of malice, but I think this is overwhelmingly just companies throwing their shoulders up in confusion when major products we buy (coffee, chocolate, tea, sugar for most of Canada) just aren’t grown here, and don’t want the less informed types spending all day looking at labels for a chocolate bar with Canadian-grown cocoa when Canadian brands are the closest thing to what they want lol.

“Hey guys, look at this image I made showing how much I care about the environment”

It’s AI generated.

This doesn’t help your case you know.

I think the term is fine if you approach it from an “invasive species” mindset rather than an “undesirable” mindset.

I don’t know if it was intentionally done by my teachers, but that’s the impression I always got about the term since it was usually brought up in the context of introduced species of plants causing harm to native species. Stuff like dandelions and such.

…only now?

Honestly good point. Wish I could say more on that, but reality is I’m actually not sure.

Probably going to be against the grain, but I think the idea is interesting.

Thinking of like, the late late night where you probably don’t have a host and someone wants to have one since that’s what I like most about radio.

If it’s treated as an experimental placeholder until they can support a host being in that time slot, I say go for it, line for me is drawn when they use that to replace hosts.

Neither petition is likely to get enough signatures. I’d be coloured surprised if the pro-confederation one passed the threshold. However, the signatures on the pro-confederation petition are likely going to be a symbolic gesture instead of anything that amounts to anything.

I’m not saying that to be a bummer or whatnot, but at the end of the day, the purpose of the pro-confederation petition is simply to stall the efforts of those in support of the pro-separation petition to follow. It stalls Smith’s efforts to cater to the more fringe portion of the UCP base, and allows a new angle of attack by her opponents. It’s one thing to say what Smith is doing is wrong, but to say that she’s also been ineffective is something that resonates more with the electorate. People hate the status quo, but the unfortunate reality is that a decent chunk of them will give benefit of doubt to those actively making things worse simply because they’re doing something.

It also traps Smith into the bed she made for herself. She’s closer to the Wildrose portion of the party in terms of the merger, and she needs to hold together a party of those who are traditional Progressive Conservatives (think Lougheed types) that are socially progressive and fiscally conservative, Wildrose types that are social and fiscal conservatives, and this new base farther right than she is that are outright separatists.

Danielle has admitted the only reason the referendum is happening is because she fears a party split. Make it seem to the fringe that you’re doing something they like, and you stabilise support with them at what was likely seen as a temporary cost of support from the more PC wing of the party. She fears the likelihood of a party split causing an NDP win more than she does with the province separating, the former is more likely as it’s what happened in 2015.

By stalling the separation petition, the pro-confederation petition stirs up UPC party dynamics a tad. While I don’t think this will cause the party to split, there will be a lot of tension brewing amongst the more moderate base in particular, which gives the NDP an opportunity to pick up more potential swing votes.

Not sure where abouts you live, but Big Mountain is a brand I see in the stores here in Calgary often. Think they’re based in B.C…

Their products have been hit or miss for me, the veggie burgers were alright, but the “bites” were something I didn’t enjoy at all, though that’s likely personal preference more than anything.

They make plant-based sausages, though I’ve yet to give those a try.