Pansexual guy (he/him) from Calgary. Work in IT, a gaymer, and general all around nerd. I've been on this hellsite for eleven years and I don't know how to feel about that. I am far enough past legal age that I try not to think about it please stop making me 😅
I ran into this post years ago and to be honest, it has completely reoriented the way I engage with food.
Like. I’ve always sorta understood that things grow moldy or stale or sour or such if left out, but I never really internalized it in a meaningful way.
But now I’m just like.
Yeah. The hungering dust. There exists omnivorous dust in the air that will eat my food if I don’t.
Those bagels have been sitting there for a week. Are we going to eat them soon or are we leaving them for the hungering dust?
Pizza’s been sitting out on the counter for an hour. Everyone’s enjoying the pizza, but if we don’t want “everyone” to include the hungering dust then we should probably put it away soon.
That’s just. That’s how food works to me now. There exists an invisible predator in the air that hungers for your yummies, and it will not hesitate to eat your food if you don’t make the effort to protect and preserve it. And eat what can’t be preserved before the dust can.
the worst part about grief is that it feels like the world should be horrendously earth shatteringly changed, and to an extent it IS but its also the same. to everyone else it's just another tuesday. the world moves on. you have to go grocery shopping.
before we found out, I told my husband to pick the theme of the nursery, because 1) I feel like dads get steamrolled in a lot of the decision making where they could otherwise be included, and 2) I trust his judgement entirely
he picked space. it's neutral, it's cool, and he wants to take our baby to science museums and have a shared interest. I love it!!!!
so we started loading our registry with space books and space onesies, and they all say "boy". like are you fucking kidding me it's just got stars on it, calm down oh my god, it's for a baby and a parent who loves stars. I found one (1) book that suggested that girls could be an astronaut. so everyone who saw the list thought that we were having a boy, and we had to keep telling them that we didn't know yet. and like I don't mind that it says "boy" on all the listings, it's literally a piece of fabric, but the comments from other adults are exhausting.
and then last night we found out we're having a girl
we're both thrilled (as we keep saying - no wrong answers there, we're just excited that the rest of the test results came in healthy), but as soon as I called my mom and told her that the registry is misleading because it says boy everywhere she went "don't worry, this happened when I had you, I wanted to keep you out of pink because I hate it and it's not your color, and I wanted you to be into science too, and everything is for boys, it's so dumb, but I'll find you good stuff for her"
so now my mom finally has a mission that isn't hovering over me, and it's to get our daughter into STEM 🫡
A big reason why I think I became a marxist is bc I read A LOT of Calvin & Hobbes and Bill Watterson really went out of his way to lay the groundwork for teaching people critical analysis.
Like take this panel for example:
EVERYTHING one knows about American/Western culture, especially in the late 80's/early 90's, would lead to the logical next line being some form of "Kids These Days Are Succumbing To The Evils Of Satan" or some likewise cheap Reaction™
But then Bill pulls the rug out
He criticizes the "satanic" bands not for some lack of christian morals but because theyre a byproduct of hyperconsumptionist culture. Bill takes no issue with the subject matter bc his issue is knowing its only being done to sell rebellion as a consumer product rather than to say anything truly provocative or inspired.
sad part about sex being a taboo topic is that sometimes really funny things happen during sex or related to sex or at weird sex clubs and you cant tell the story to like 90% of people in your life because of the sex context. the contsext. do you ever wonder how many people have funny sex stories theyre just sitting on. its tragic.
Same for kink regardless of if there was sex involved tbh. Basically the only times I get to talk about things like “harmonica impact play” or “falling down a mountain during a sub hunt”, etc. is on the internet, in kink clubs, or with other trans girls regardless of how objectively hilarious any individual event was.
was literally having this conversation yesterday about how socially acceptable topics are always just the most inane and boring shit, like one of the guys in the group is in the process of building a padded cell for asylum play and management have decreed that he's not allowed to talk about this thing that brings him joy because it's taboo; it's tragic, and it minimises us as people
Years ago a frequent attendee of a local kink club made flogger attachments for two Makita drills. Because regular flogging was “too tedious and boring”. I invite you to imagine the facial expressions of everyone else.
Y’ever read something and have understanding that has eluded you interminably suddenly stop, curl up, and snuggle neatly into a fold in your brain because a new way way opened to it?
Trump's warmongering is so aggressive that he has the pro-NATO Liberal government in Canada talking like they're about to join the Non-Aligned Movement
Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, 20 January 2026:
For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the "rules-based international order." We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.
We knew the story of the "international rules-based order" was partially false—that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.
This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination.
The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied – the WTO, the UN, the COP – the architecture, the very architecture of collective problem solving are under threat. And as a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions that they must develop greater strategic autonomy, in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains.
And this impulse is understandable. A country that can't feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself, has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.
But let's be clear eyed about where this leads.
A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable. And there is another truth. If great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from transactionalism will become harder to replicate.
Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships. Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty...
Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortresses. Shared standards reduce fragmentations. Complementarities are positive sum. And the question for middle powers like Canada is not whether to adapt to the new reality – we must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls, or whether we can do something more ambitious.
