Moebius Stripper

I'm crap at self-promotion but I am absolutely not too modest to share this kind of praise, thank you @alexcerne

I just spoke for an hour with my 15yo niece about gender, religion, immigration, health care, education, and resource extraction. I say this without bias and without exaggeration: if we replaced a random cabinet minister with my niece, it would probably be a vast improvement

This guy's profile is in English, and he is communicating with me (over text) entirely in French. I could reply in English and it would be fine, but this is perfect practice for me. A level up from the canned Duolingo sentences but less stressful than speaking in French

Decided, screw it, booked a non-SUV with Turo, messaged the host to ask if the car had functioning air conditioning (the price was so good that I figured I should ask) and the guy replied "oui il y a un". Hashtag Ottawa Gatineau

Doing the thing again where I am trying to rent a car, and the price of renting an SUV is half the price of renting a smaller car that uses less gas and is easier to park but can still transport 1-5 people and a bunch of suitcases/groceries/string instruments

I'm willing to believe that there are more depressed and anxious people among the extreme left than among the extreme right, and this isn't just a matter of seeking treatment. Broaden "mental health problems" to include psychopathy, though, and the landscape changes.

Some mental health problems cause great distress to the person who has them, and others cause distress mostly to the people around them. The latter are generally classified as personality disorders, and people are less likely to seek treatment for them, for obvious reasons

@chadfelixg He chose his *immediate* future. There should be consequences for what he's doing. But a 19yo should be permitted to reverse course at some point, something that he is less likely to do now that he is being lovebombed by Groypers. The future he chose *is bad for Jews*.

I would agree with you, if he hadn't decided to make it his new identity, make money off it and positioned himself as a victim after exposing himself while boasting of his actions. He has surrounded himself with the worst anti-Jewish lunatics and he has chosen his future.

@gdholtby On the one hand, you make a good point that I can't argue with. But on the other hand, I'm not ready to consider the possibility that the people who use LinkedIn as a blogging site are actually on to something.

@moebius_strip Even if the pages where it happened were technically publicly visible it wasn't frictionlessly shared to the whole world like it is on a Twitter-style algorithmically boosted firehose feed. I think it was healthier in like 2005 when it could take weeks for something to "go viral"

My hot take on this week's main character is that I don't think a 19yo student should have his life ruined for saying he was "not interested in working for a Jew". But I do think that he should have his life *affected* by this, and I have no idea what that would even look like.

@HackedOffHugh @YouTube You might find this piece of mine of interest: ms.now/opinion/teache…

Why do my dumbest and most off-the-cuff tweets get the most attention? Anyway, this apparently where I'm supposed to tell everyone to buy my suspense novel. It's set in Cape Breton, and all the characters eat stuff like porridge and canned soup, and you never hear them complain

I gratefully acknowledge that I am a settler on land that was settled by people whose cousins' descendants went on to eat cheese and onion sandwiches in their ancestral territories

The cheese and onion roll is fake, right? The Brits are trolling the Americans, correct?

2:1 support for territory vs. state ought to pop a lot of bubbles for dim Canadians who think we'd be admitted to the Union as equals

Can we take a moment to reflect on the line “In each storytime session, Ms. Exposée will read aloud an age-appropriate picture book", which was crafted earnestly by a human and sent to parents of elementary school children, as opposed to written by, eg, a Babylon Bee writer

Whether that happens will depend largely on what his family is like and what kind of relationship he has with them. I would be interested to see the where-are-they-now update in 2036.

Given that this kid is unrepentant and the internet is forever, the most likely scenario is that his prospects in the "legacy" job market will be severely constrained, and he'll be left with...an extremely lucrative career as a YouTube Groyper

Flannery O'Connor on the teaching of literature in school: "And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed."

@annanimiddy "Why did Bruce Arthur completely ignore this story when it happened, while he was screaming about Bari Weiss and CBS constantly?" This is why Elbows Up was dead in the water: its defenders were laser-focused on the US and never had any positive vision for Canada.

There's a section of the liberal/progressive punditry class who are getting very worked up about Eric Lombardi and some of his fans like "far right" Adam Zivo (two gay dudes who have only voted Liberals or NDP for most or all of their lives and by the way Adam has reported from Ukraine, you fucking weasels calling him names) and my only advice for those of us excited about Eric's campaign is to treat this disingenuous and chickenshit stupidity with the disdain it deserves. There is no substance at hand. There is no effort or interest to engage in good faith. No other candidate running for leadership is even remotely close to being as on record on a range of policy issues as Eric. Where is the engagement on these issues? It's nowhere, and there's a reason for it. The truth is that Eric's positions on criminal justice and immigration, and Adam's writing about radical Islamism and homophobia, just like Jesse Brown's writing about radical Islamism and antisemitic hate crimes, INFURIATES them but they can't admit it. If this crowd was serious, they would come on here and mount a vigorous defence of slaps on wrists to serial abusers of women and bail for suspected terrorists. I want to see passionate defences of lighter sentences for Indigenous men who murder Indigenous women and non-citizens who commit crimes because judges don't want them deported. I want to see their insistence that Canada's immigration policy pre-2015 was racist. Tell us how you hate the ultra wealthy with far right political views but welcome investment from, and fawning over, the CCP and Qataris by the former Goldman Sachs and Brookfield guy who poached the most "MAGA North" member of the CPC to help get that majority. Tell Adam that he's stoking Islamophobia because he's a gay man worried about radical Islamism, whereas you know it's better, as liberals, to ignore news stories of Islamists either plotting to bomb Pride rallies or destroying Pride flags. Tell us what your liberal values are. Don't tell us that it's not the band you hate but its fans. Tell us about your liberal values. Stick your chests out and tell us why you called critics of the Trudeau government's immigration policy racists but then stayed quiet when they reversed course. Tell us why you were fine with Trudeau's legislative changes to the criminal justice system and now say nothing while Carney reverses course, like he reversed course on a bunch of other stuff you pretended to care about. Imagine getting so upset with a cheery policy nerd like Eric Lombardi. He wants to solve problems. He is more transparent about how he feels on a solid range of issues than anyone in that race, and his reward from the self-appointed liberal vanguard who refuse to engage on substance, largely because they know they're full of shit, is nothing but sneering contempt. Look at the screen grabs from Eric. Why did Bruce Arthur completely ignore this story when it happened, while he was screaming about Bari Weiss and CBS constantly? So someone like Eric calls them out on being illiberal idiots, only more politely than need be, and they hate him for it. How dare he? Conservatives also don't like bail for terrorists! GRRR! There's nothing to do here for the rest of us. The vanguard does what the vanguard does. See it for what it is and let it go. These are not serious people. They believe in nothing. And they have absolutely no shame whatsoever. In time, it will be nothing but farts in the wind.

A patient asked: "If sore throats are strictly caused by viruses or bacteria, why does drinking ice-cold water or sleeping under a direct AC instantly trigger one?" The answer surprises almost everyone.

Fred Rogers met with a child psychologist every week for 22 years to build his show. She shaped everything: every script, prop, and song. The whole point was to give a child's nervous system time to slow down. In 1984, a single regulatory decision ended all of it. The psychologist was Dr. Margaret McFarland, who co-founded the Arsenal Family and Children's Center alongside Benjamin Spock and Erik Erikson. She and Rogers understood that the prefrontal cortex in children, the part of the brain that controls impulse, emotion, and attention, takes decades to fully develop. At the start of every episode, Rogers tied his sneakers and changed his sweater while children settled in. Those pauses were intentional, designed to help a child's nervous system shift into a calmer, more focused state. What ended it had nothing to do with child development science. In 1984, Reagan's FCC chairman Mark Fowler abolished the advertising limits that had protected children's programming from commercial pressure. Toy companies moved within months. Between 1984 and 1985, cartoons tied to toy lines increased by 300%, from a handful of shows to more than 40 animated series. In almost every case, the toy was designed first. The cartoon was built to sell it. Researchers later put numbers to what parents were already noticing. A 2011 study in Pediatrics from the University of Virginia tested 60 four-year-olds across three groups: one watching SpongeBob, which cuts scene every 11 seconds; one watching a slow PBS show, which cuts scene every 34 seconds; and one drawing. Nine minutes later, all three took tests on attention, impulse control, short-term memory, and problem-solving. The SpongeBob group scored significantly worse across every measure. In the 1970s, children began watching television around age 4. Research from pediatrician Dimitri Christakis found that by 2009, the average age of first screen exposure had dropped to 4 months, as the content got faster and the audience got younger. Researchers separately found that each additional hour of daily screen time at ages 1 or 3 raised the risk of attention problems at age 7 by 9%.