They didn’t learn their lesson, evidenced by attempting to destroy evidence after the fact, and they’re only sorry that they’re facing consequences, evidenced by their own we’ve had enough consequences-type statements.

Surely if not disbarred, they would brag about not being charged and advertise themselves as a lawyers for the anti-government types.

I tried out a bunch, including Babbel, Busuu, Language Transfer, Mango, and Memrise. I didn’t like them for one reason or another. I finally landed on Lingodeer. It’s similar to Duolingo, but it is a paid app. (You can try level 1 of any language for free.)

The regular subscription price is definitely not worth it. It’s okay (not great, but not awful) when they do their sales. But I felt okay about paying human workers.

This kind of learning is a great start, but will only get you so far. If your local library has access to Kanopy, look for the Great Courses series on Spanish. I thought that was an excellent series after a little bit of Duolingo.

Saul (Sha’ul) is a Jewish/Hebrew name. Paulos is a Greek name. Even until now, bilingual people who are of a minority culture (compared to where they’re living) often have two names, one in their their native (family) language and one in the local majority language, one official, the other unofficial.

This was not limited to Paul, even in that immediate timeline. Levi (Jewish name) was also called Levi (Greek name). There’s no reason to believe Paul “changed” his name sheet his conversion. He continued to go by Saul after he became a Christian. He went by his Jewish name among Jewish people, then his Greek name when he travelled across Rome and interacted with Greek-speakers.

I only got a nickel and quarter with King Charles on the last weekend, among a literal handful of change.

There are a lot of years of QEII coins out there, though. She’s going to still be in circulation for a many years, yet.

The person complaining thinks the proprietor is scamming people, and (apparently) ChatGPT, by falsely advertising what products are available.

Idiot: You lied about your product! MapGuy: Where did you see that (on my website)? Idiot: ChatGPT screenshot

This is basically how we ended up with the burqa. A woman’s body is evil because it makes men unable to control their sexual urges, therefore women must be banned. Now, in Afghanistan, a woman’s voice must not even be heard.

How long until the USA reaches that point?

Heck, people are being arrested just for being in the US, even those who were there by legal means. Even citizens aren’t safe if they’re not even checking who they’re arresting before, during, and after the arrest.

We barely rejected the right wing nuts, and they could easily take the next election. While relief is warranted, we should not be smug or complacent about it, either. Lies more faster than the truth, it’s still an uphill battle for morality and decency.

Yes, this has absolutely been a thought for me. I am not removing accounts, etc. from my phone pre-emptively, but I will uninstall things like Lemmy and remove specific email accounts if we have to land. (I use multiple emails for different reasons, so it won’t be terribly suspicious.)

Just booked a flight to south of the US. Even the most direct flight had a layover. I could have saved hundreds of dollars if that layover was in the US. I opted to pay hundreds of dollars more to have the layover in Mexico.

It was partways about Elbows Up, but it was also I’d rather not get arrested and/or detained and/or deported possibly to an El Salvadorian prison. Avoiding the the non-zero chance of that is worth $500.

Did you not see the part directly after that said he started blaming everyone else?

Duolingo got me enough vocabulary in Spanish to put the simplest sentences together, and then follow more robust lessons. I still think it was a good starting point, but I won’t use it anymore on principle.

*Doug Ford. Rob Ford was his younger brother who was the mayor of Toronto, and who has since died.

I’m not convinced Doug would want the job, maybe in the future. Right now he’s got a majority in Ontario and can do whatever he wants within provincial preview. He can, and I believe he will, cooperate with Carney and caucus to do what’s best for Canada and Ontario in the face of Trump, because that will also be what’s best for him, too. Fair’s fair, he did a not-bad job during Covid and had a rare moment of cooperating with federal and municipal governments, and it truly made him look like good leader for a while. (He became his normal self after emergency measures were lifted and started blaming everyone else again.)

If he became federal leader now, he couldn’t do anything but blow hot air for a while. It’s a bigger stage, but lesser power, and it doesn’t really do anything to benefit him. Doug is after dollars, but I think he does not like the maple maga and has no interest in dealing with them. Cut them out of the CPC base, they’re not likely to win again anytime soon. Or he could just stay premier and have a lot of actual power.

So credit card issuers are bad now?

There’s too much to keep track of these days.

Bloodletting is therapeutic… for some very specific conditions. For example, hemochromatosis, where the body has too much iron, and there has been some preliminary study that blood donations are a way to reduce the amount of PFAS in blood.

But everyone has PFAS in their blood; not every male has (beyond normal) phimosis.

I had one interviewer specially say she was committed to getting back to each candidate, no matter the outcome. I expressed genuine appreciation for that, saying that most places just ghost people.

She ghosted me.

To be fair, I’ve gotten texts from/for both Liberals and Conservatives.

I used Studio Tax for a few years and found it to be adequate. Last year I tried GenuTax and instead and I didn’t like it as much. Instead of presenting you with the forms and you fulling them (which StudioTax does) GenuTax asks you a million yes/no questions one at a time. If you select “yes”, then it shows you appropriate, corresponding form to fill out.

I guess the good thing about this method is you are presented all the possibilities, the bad thing is you have to yes/no everything, including a million things that probably don’t apply to you.

Also, its not always immediately clear what form a yes/no will lead to, meaning if you select something wrong, you have to back track to correct it. (The questionnaire is linear, you can’t just jump back and forth.) if you have a very basic return, that’s probably fine. But I had some small self-employed income and international tuition, and going back and forth trying to yes/no my way to the correct forms frustrated me enough to switch back to StudioTax and start again.

I feel badly for remote communities that were looking forward to these services, but Starlink is a security threat directly connected to a hostile nation that has been making overt threats to Canada. Moreover, we have already seen Musk will direct the company to turn off access to people he doesn’t like. There would have been nothing stopping Musk (his lackeys) from eavesdropping on communications and then cutting it off when he felt like it.

The only real way is to invest in other providers, preferably Canadian, preferably public, but most fundamentally anyone that’s not MAGA.

If this was 30 years ago, sure. However, just because Trump is now running the playbook full tilt doesn’t mean our issues from three months ago have disappeared. We don’t have the housing, infrastructure, and jobs for the people who are already here. If the country had not been irresponsible and careless with immigration and housing the last 20 years, we could do that now, but since we are where we are, we can only be selective now.