I have no idea, but I'd like the powers that be to recognize that there are two economies and to prioritize the lived economy.

I first became aware of the difference when "the economy" was starting to boom in the 1980s even as we were busy returning to breadlines under the name of food banks.

I'm not sure we even need the finance economy. A pure stock market is one thing, but by the time you get to rents over profit on actual production, the financialization of housing, derivatives of derivatives and all the other distancing from actual production, it's just shell games with no benefit to society.

Sears is the one that really gets me. In addition to full stores in big enough centres, they had depots everywhere and their own trucking network. And I mean everywhere. Suburbs, towns, villages: if there wasn't enough business to support a standalone depot, anyone could apply to set up a depot as part of another business. I even saw one once that was basically run out of someone's house. They moved into the top floors of an old boarding house and set up the main floor with a small museum, craft and thrift store, a bit of a cafe, and a Sears depot. I think they were also the bus depot. Any gaps in the trucking network were filled by sending stuff out on the train or bus, in the post, or with a small trucking company.

The logistics were handled and a very large fraction of their business was already mail order. All they needed was the online presence, and it's not like they didn't have customers practically begging them to do it.

And Scott Moe.

Here's an idea. Get the two of them a little love nest. Maybe it'll keep them away from the rest of us.

Credit bureaus are just data brokers in disguise, so they're shady, both in concept and by design.

Porn is part of the sex trade, so shady mostly by perception.

I don't really think it's possible to do anything more than try to safeguard my personal information. But if forced to choose between those two, I'll pick a major porn site over a credit bureau every time.

They also had a pretty big turnout for that march against trans thing. Twice.

One thing that the automatic summary missed is this important paragraph:

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party also echoed “river to the sea” phrasing in its founding charter as a way to say his government doesn’t recognize Gaza or the West Bank, according to Dr. Dagher, who was a Canadian government analyst overseeing Ottawa’s international aid to those occupied territories from 2007 to 2011. Still, she acknowledged that the phrase can be terrifying to Jewish people especially since Hamas has also placed the phrase in its charter as a call to erase Israel.

So both sides of the conflict have used the phrase as a way to dismiss the claims of the other, although it's origin is as a Palestinian slogan. According to this Wikipedia page, there have historically been multiple interpretations of exactly what is meant when using that phrase and those variations continue. In fact, as of this writing, neutrality of this article is disputed with the relevant talk page raising what could be conflicting concerns, most notably the issue of whether we take the meaning from the users' claims or from those holding opposing views.

No, it should happen at the national level for buying power. It should include the full supply chain as exploited by current national and multinational grocers.

So I guess what I'm saying, is pick one and nationalize the whole damn thing. Weston/Loblaws would be my pick.

Everyone in a position to complain about loss of wealth or income as a result of nationalization has enough of either or both to just ignore.

The difference is that those in the public interest always argue this debate from the perspective of actually taking care of people

Those that argue for private health care argue for it as a money making business.

This is what pisses me off most about attacks on public services. Saskatchewan killed STC, the provincial highway public transit/freight system. It was costing 17 million more to run than what they were bringing in. If we assume only 250,000 taxpayers (individual and business), that's a lousy $68 apiece. I'm one of the proverbial fixed income seniors and I can come up with that much.

It's stupid, short-sighted, and heartless.

Is there anyone organizing counter protests? Or even with a non-Facebook schedule?

The only way this can come to a meaningful conclusion is for two things to happen.

First, steps should be taken now to lock in who is going to have to pay if found guilty. No passing the buck. No transfer of assets. No "bankruptcies".

Second, anyone found guilty must be held financially liable for any necessary remediation. Then anyone left standing must forfeit any land they own in the greenbelt. Ideally, not just the specifically contested properties, but everything.

Any ideas why sans serif seems to be taking over the world? I generally find serif fonts easier to read, at least when the medium has the necessary resolution to properly render them.

Anyway, I'll continue make sure that all my stylesheets are based on Garamond. :)

That's true, it is, but you need to check your definitions. A pandemic is an emergency when something dangerous and new spreads rapidly, threatening to overwhelm health care systems. Now that we have vaccines, treatments, and are working on health care capacity, the emergency is over.

That doesn't mean the danger has passed or that our "death from disease" rate has fallen to pre-COVID levels. In fact, it looks like the new normal will be to have about twice as many COVID deaths each year as flu deaths. All of those COVID deaths are new deaths that would not have occurred in the absence of COVID.

That death rate will continue until the vulnerable populations have been nearly wiped out, forever changing our demographics and life expectancy. By that time, we'll start seeing whether long COVID is as disastrous as it looks like it might be. If it goes the way many reasonable people think, we'll still need all the long term care programs that aren't being used by the elderly and infirm who got wiped out by the immediate effects of COVID infection, because we'll have a new class of infirmity requiring care.

On the plus side, all those 50- and 60-year old people forced out of the workforce will open up a lot of good jobs and promotions for the youth. On the downside, it'll still be demographically difficult, with too many in care, not enough working.

So, yeah, pandemic is over, but the endemic isn't going to be all that much fun for millions of people.