This is a joke my Irish friend told me:

An American visiting the island enters the first pub he sees. Feeling cheeky he asks the bartender for an Irish Car Bomb. The bar tender replies, “Never heard of it, but I’ve got something you might like.”

The bar tender takes out two tall shot glasses, fills them with liquor, and lights them both on fire.

“What’s this,” asks the American.

“I call it a Nine Eleven.”

In a similar vein, most all of the trades graduates aren’t able to find viable apprenticeships. I know several electrician graduates who can’t find any apprenticeships even within their own province, let alone their city.

Nobody will hire and train a “newbie”. And the older generations are well aware and critical of this as well.

While I was in a blue collar job, on my really bad days (the worsened poverty was destroying my mental health) I would literally think to myself, “I’m better than this/smarter than this.”

Which was insane. I was surrounded by competent, hard workers with pretty vast sums of knowledge on the science of our work. Whereas I knew nothing. They also easily understood Marxist fundamentals in repackaged language.

When I moved to a computer man position, I realised I had stepped into liberalism central. While everyone will smile and agree about everything, it’s ice cold. The strangle hold lay-offs have on everyone is brutal.

I liked chess as a child, my dad has a really big chess board we’d play on. I’d play with people who barely know the game though.

I got banned from a subreddit for telling someone to investigate their beliefs even if they are sure they are true. Not to disprove them, but to strengthen their beliefs. To be fair, DPRK was mentioned. I was really pushing it telling someone to investigate history.

I’m reading The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Fairly short but I’m reading to on work breaks only. It primarily discusses gift economy. As an Indigenous person I’m deeply invested in Indigenous lessons on economics, politics, and liberation.

The book is easy to comprehend and critical of the current economic systems of Canada and the USA. I wonder if it will become more international focused.

I guess I’m always scared for the ball to drop with Indigenous essays on politics and economics. Like I’ll see some kind of red scare statement like I did with reading The Takiniway essay Reconciliation is A Dead Strategic Proposal. I found it thoughtful at first and slowly growing kind of infantile as it went on. It was anarchist so I guess not surprised but still.

Making political theory bite sized can be a great challenge and easily digested. It can also reduce things down and cause a lot of misinformation from well meaning people. There’s also a financial incentive for people to sell you their intelligence which means the lessons could be twisted to be more interesting than meaningful.

In the end maybe it’s more like protests. They don’t cause change but create relationships and get people in the swing of things.

My personal feelings is social media can be a net good, and have allowed underserved and isolated communities (remote indigenous nations, disabled people without accessible community spaces, children and elders without much freedom) to expand their worlds and learn. But it comes with several catches, and is always under the influence of capitalism. So revenue for monopolies runs the structure of these platforms and make them tainted.

Yes, I am doing better. I have much more stability, and many things to look forward to these days. Thank you for your worry!

I was working full time, three dollars above minimum wage, all day manual labour in like 25-30° celsius, and still not affording food. I ate what I could, and was deeply miserable. And always painful and tired. I did what I had to in the hardest times to eat. My rent was about $700 below market for similar units. My phone bill was cheap. BUT GOD FORBID I care for two senior cats. Neither need medicine, I just pay for food and litter and ever year or so a new set of toys. I never missed a beat for them. Vet visits and all.

And still, I was being told to leave behind my cats. My $80 a month cats. I nearly screamed, “That’s like saying stop drinking coffee at Starbucks”.

Meanwhile I was walking through the financial district to go to my grueling job looking at the wasted half eaten take out. If even one person had just given me their uneaten half from the garbage I’d never go hungry.

I thought every day of killing myself. But my cats needed me. And I was being told I could afford to eat if I just gave them up. My whole world. Why eat with no reason to go on?

I left that job suddenly and used every favour and the pathetic social security to get by before beginning my new grueling job which pays ever so slightly more. I nearly lost my apartment. I’d stay up all night waiting for the sheriff to knock on my door. I became paranoid, I had delusions, I barely slept many days.

And this kind of thing happens everyday to thousands and thousands of people in my capitalist country. Children. Elders. I work with kids now and they tell me harrowing things. Their teachers equally so. Programs cut now weekly by our feds.

Redditors see stories like these and think, “too bad, budget harder”.

My job has been hard on my body lately and I’m so tired from the long commute. But I use the time to read and scroll Lemmy. It’s very encouraging. makes me want to keep reading even when I’m getting confused and have to go back several times.