Some of this is going to come across nasty, but it's not, it's an honest exploration of something worthy of deep analysis and discussion.

Who put you in charge? Who puts anyone in charge? Why should anyone get to decide the arc of someone else's life? Why should someone else get to dictate the terms of anyone's life and death?

Whenever I hear someone expressing sentiments like "... with some effort they could live along and fulfilling life", it puts me in mind of all those busybodies who lament or even disapprove of my choosing labour over post-secondary education because I wasn't meeting my potential. No, I was meeting my potential just fine, even excelling. I've had a very fulfilling life, I just wasn't doing what others thought I should be doing. I was not being lazy by not putting in "some effort." I was making choices based on who I wanted to be and how I wanted to live.

What is within us that leads us to demand that others live up to our standards? What is within us that makes it so difficult to see that what is a reasonable effort for one may be an insurmountable obstacle to others?

To get mundane, I find it just about as easy to swim 5k as 2k and 10k isn't much harder, yet I get the impression that most people think of even 2k as beyond their capacity. Would it not be an insult to their very personhood to just call them lazy, the way you imply that this poor soul is just lazy?

We all have different capabilities and capacities. What is within us that insists that we are the standard by which others must be judged?

Some people cannot find the internal resources to continue. What makes the beating of their hearts so important to us that we ignore their own desires? That insist they fight, even after they have no fight left?

The only real difference is men's lib burdens themselves with a feminist perspective, which does not help, and as this post shows, hurts.

At risk of getting out of context, I (cis male) did not become aware of the systems that were damaging me until I started studying feminism. Whatever a "men's liberation movement" looks like, it is so young and inexperienced that it would be well served to examine and learn from feminist ideologies and perspectives.

Many of the power structures that feminists have identified as being damaging to women in general are also damaging to men in general.

Many of the power structures that favour men in general are damaging to women in general. As we grow and develop, we should be striving to tear down those structures that are harmful to others, rather than further entrench them as if in battle or in a zero sum game.

I'm not aware of any modern feminist ideologies or initiatives that present a danger to men, but if there are any, they should be called out by both feminists and "masculinists" in the same way that both feminists and masculinists should be calling out any masculinist ideologies and initiatives that present a danger to women.

Modern intersectional feminism has grappled with the inclusion of women who have been "othered". We should be trying to learn from that and avoid making the same mistakes.

In the end, we all have to figure out our place in the world, and that cannot be done without considering our relationships to the power structures and each other. At present, that looks like it's necessary to have feminism and masculinism as separate movements, not as enemies, but as collaborators and intersectional movements. Biology, including the fact that sex and gender are spectra with bimodal distributions, may always mean that they remain at least somewhat separate even as shared goals are achieved.

Thanks. When we saw this, my wife and I just guesstimated that it would have to be close to $30 based on our experiences in the mid-late 1970s compared to now.

I was earning about 1.5 times minimum wage and managed to keep a pretty nice 2-bedroom apartment and food on the table while she stayed home with our son. We didn't think we had a lavish lifestyle, but we still managed a decent used car, her motorcycle, weekly date nights, and fairly regular camping trips.

Sadly, that might actually qualify for a fairly lavish lifestyle today.

How about maybe seeking input from people with actual, concrete expertise in the relevant fields on what can be done today, tomorrow, etc to, you know, actually meet the damned goals!

I sympathize. Circumstances mean that we actually do still need, not just a phone number, but a landline. We just hang up on those rare occasions when our call screening fails.

The trouble is that means policy is being set or supported based on the people who don't know enough about anything to even figure out how to manage their phones.

We're all doomed.

I guess I did heavily imply that the concept of limited liability companies is evil by design. That's on me. My intention was to call out the egregious misuse of them.

I'm not even so much concerned that the system is possible to abuse as that it not seen as abuse by too many.

I remember as a kid in the 1960s having a mobile vaccination clinic show up in our small village in SK. They even had a fluoroscope as part of the TB screening program.

I guess were in at least partial agreement. I do think that this story would have been better if the class warfare had been more explicitly called out. As it stands, it's about one person's bad behaviour, leave the class struggle as a secondary character.

Where did you get that? I never accused you of being anti-trans. You accused someone of having an agenda for linking to a paper that suggests acceptance of gender identity as a means of reducing harm.

I chose my words very carefully to avoid accusing you of anything.

If you actually read that paper, you'll find that it claims evidence of children 6-7 years old starting to separate gender as identity from gender as physical appearance.

I don't think your 8 year old or any 8 year old should be worried about gender identity, which is why I don't agree with making such a big deal about gender identity claims. When it comes right down to it, I don't think anyone of any age should have any concern about anyone's gender identity other than their own. Let people of all ages alone to be who they are without judgement, condemnation, or panic.

It's not me, who is fine with whatever, who is causing any children grief over gender, but those who have their hair on fire over a world that is not quite what they expected.

Oops. Not ran twice.

Penalizing airlines for delays and cancellations is like telling soldiers they're not allowed to wear metal helmets.

I suppose it depends on how you define "penalization". I don't think a straight refund should be considered a penalty.

The problem is that NDP isn't (or didn't used to be) just another way to vote for people adjacent to the centre, but for real change. "Strategic" voting for decades has done nothing but allow everything to move further right. There was a time when NDP were actually pretty radical and the Liberals weren't just yet another neoliberal clone but with fewer people stuck in the 1950s or earlier.

All the parties eventually pay attention to the most vocal voters. We need to outshout the conservatives, not just take the lesser of two evils approach. The conservatives didn't end up being such a dumpster fire by taking a lesser of two evils approach, but with a make no compromises approach. That's how they turned the ship and that's how we turn the ship. And voting our conscience is part of that.

And yes, FPTP is garbage.