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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 22nd, 2023

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  • There’s no point in not buying one day, people should permanently be switching stores to support good, or at least less bad, ones.

    Last year Canada got pissed off at a grocer (Loblaws) for price gouging and a boycott movement started. It was kind of amazing to see the desperate lengths the company went to to try to keep customers, everything other than lower prices.

    They gave (crappily made) trading cards for minimum purchases, their hired media mouthpiece insulted their customers (basically called them stupid so they may as well stop boycotting), introduced monthly loss leaders, and most recently had a scheme where if you buy enough, you can get pots and pans (for the cost, you may as well have just bought better ones, plus they didn’t have stock).

    Loblaws is nkw, IIRC, 14% down compared to last year.

    Now Canada is pissed at the US over threats of annexation and tariffs. Buy Canadian Bye American has been going on a few weeks now, and while I’m sorry for normal American people suffering economically for the President’s doings, it’s been a boost to the smaller Canadian economy and suppliers. Long term it’ll hurt both countries economically, but my point is finding permanent alternatives is how to actually send a message.






  • The movie ended up being what I expected from the trailer: a disappointment. This should have been a movie just about Georgiou, and a movie about Section 32 should have been something else a entirely.

    The Hunger Games concept was kind of dumb, but I actually liked the San story. It gives Georgiou more depth and complexity, but it could have been a lot more. Unfortunately, it was just sandwiched in between an action-whodunnit with a lot of new characters (who were not adequately developed on their own rights) instead of being a drama with some action scenes, as a story like it should have been.

    I love Michelle Yeoh, and I’ll watch her in anything, but this was a poorly written and directed movie that didn’t know what it should have been.











  • I have a question with my very limited knowledge of biology:

    Currently, pathogens “use” certain resources in a host, and then the host’s immune system creates antibodies that eventually kill the pathogens (or the pathogen kills the host).

    The arguments are: mirror pathogens would require mirror antibodies, which is not possible for natural bodies to produce. However, this is not really a problem because our physical selves as resources would be incompatible with the needs of a mirror pathogen.

    My question is: mirror or otherwise, could a pathogen “hijack” something other than usual as a resource?

    Let’s say, I don’t know, Prime Pathogen A normally uses Prime Protein A, Mirror Pathogen A would require Mirror Pathogen A. Is it possible for a host to have a Prime Protein B that meets Mirror Pathogen A’s requirement–perhaps not perfectly, but “good enough” to sustain Mirror Pathogen A?




  • School shootings are just a matter of course now, they’re not even newsworthy anymore unless there’s an Uvalde-level of utter incompetence involved. And even then, what happened? Nothing, nothing happened to the cowards who were complicit and accomplices to the murder of children by actively preventing people from around the killer. We’re told to get over it.

    So, you know, if I had to choose between school children being murdered as a matter of course and evil profiteers who revel and flourish on the pain and suffering of everyday people being murdered as a matter of course, I’d definitely chose the latter. I wouldn’t then tell people to get over it, I’d tell people the system obviously need to be dismantled and rebuilt entirely.

    My real preference would be that there are no evil profiteers who revel and flourish on the pain and suffering and that systems be functioning for the people in the first place, but unfortunately that’s not an option.