Tagged: rants
Today in "Things That Surprised Nobody"
- by Alyson Shane
Everything is horrible including the weather, my mood, the world, and politics.
Donald Trump signed an executive order that could obliterate free speech on the internet.
I wish this wasn't surprising but I've actually been worrying about something like this for a long time. Twitter refused to censor him for so long, and now it's too little too late and I'm scared of where this is going. Stay tuned I guess.
Premier Brian Pallister, who recently lashed out at universities and said their staff have an "ivory tower" attitude, is the least popular premier in Canada.
Can we just vote this guy out of office already? Manitoba deserves a million times better than this goon.
I could probably say something critical about Justin Trudeau now but for the most part I haven't been annoyed with him so maybe I'll just picture him dong that hair flip and
DAMN IT
I just remembered that the 10 day sick leave policy the Liberals are getting credit for pushing for was actually an issue the NDP were fighting for and negotiated for.
Don't get me wrong: I'm happy to see the policy being put forward, but it'd be nice if the media gave Singh and the party more credit for all they've been doing to help Canadians during the pandemic. John called the NDP "the Unofficial Opposition" the other day and that's basically what;s going on, because I keep waiting for Andrew Sheer to say something of value and
big surprise
he never does.
But what should I expect from someone who lied about being an insurance broker
(I guess it sounds sexier than "worked as an insurance clerk, waiter, and in the office of an MP")
and spends most of his time criticizing what other people are doing instead of coming up with innovative solutions himself.
Politicians like that are the worst.
Are all politicians the worst?
Maybe not. I don't think so.
I don't think people like Bernie or Obama or AOC or Jugmeet Singh or Jack Layton or the (late, great) Winnipeg City Council Member Harvey Smith got into this racket
I think they got into it to do some good, and I wish we'd see more of that.
Winnipeg vs Wildlife?
- by admin
It's no secret that I love this city. I go on at length about our potential, our charm, and the quality of the people who call Winnipeg "home." I truly believe that we are becoming a forward-thinking city filled with thoughtful, considerate, wonderful people.However, there are instances which make me seriously doubt my optimistic view of my hometown.
I'm referring to an organization called the "Urban Goose Working Group" (mentioned on CJOB yesterday) who have been seeking out and destroying the eggs of Canada Geese in the Kenaston area for at least the past couple of years. Their actions are apparently spurred by the "safety issue" caused by the geese and their goslings in the area.
I'd like to take a moment to lay out what is actually happening here, in case you missed it:
People are actively going out of their way to find and destroy Canada Goose eggs.
What's even worse is that this is an effort coordinated and supported by not only the City of Winnipeg, but the Province of Manitoba as well as the Government of Canada. So all levels of government not only condone, but actually encourage this utterly barbaric practice.
It is shameful and disgusting, and I am appalled that my local government feels that this is an appropriate step to take.
There are multiple options which could serve as much more humane alternatives: we could install caution signs to notify motorists that this is a high traffic area for geese, put up snow fencing to deter the geese, we could slow the fuck down as we barrel along in our SUVs to go to the outlet mall, we could do as many countries in Europe have done and build wildlife bridges over highways to facilitate exactly the sort of issues that we're running into, or we could stop the insanity that is urban sprawl and stop building on the nesting grounds that these birds have been using for countless generations.
Because that's the thing: citizens are complaining about the inconvenience that the geese are causing them, though they chose to move to a newly-developed (and in many cases, totally unnecessary) suburban wasteland and now they have to interact and deal with (gasp! Horror!) wildlife that has been there long before our shovels broke the soil.
Here in Winnipeg we're trying to paint ourselves as a forward-thinking city, and while I know for a fact that there are many people in Winnipeg who truly are, we can't make a statement like that while continuing to completely disregard our wildlife simply for the sake of our own creature comforts.
It speaks volumes about the rampant levels of self-entitlement in our society, and it's time that the City of Winnipeg and our Provincial and Federal governments started acting a like the "responsible governments" that they claim to be.
With this in mind, I urge you to write to your City Councillor, your MLA, and your MP and ask them to stop supporting this awful practice.
On Winnipeg, and negativity
- by admin
One of my most popular posts is a post I wrote praising Winnipeg a few years ago. I still stand by it.
But I didn't always.
I used to be one of those winter-hating, downtown-bashing, sad excuses for citizens who felt that the only positive aspect about living in Winnipeg was that I was able to bitch about it.
I used to think that moving to Toronto would solve all my problems. That it would make me happy.
Who the fuck knows why.
A bigger city doesn't make you a better person.
A different climate doesn't change your personality.
A subway system or some skyscrapers or more clubs to visit on the weekends doesn't improve who you are.
Only you are in charge of that.
This seems to be something that people from Winnipeg forget about. People I see on Facebook and on forums and in newspaper comments.
They become so obsessed with associating their identity (read: personal misery) with where they live that they blame their city for causing them to be bored, broke, stuck in a rut or otherwise unhappy with their lives.
As though a city is to blame for their own personal choices and mistakes.
When someone posts something negative about Winnipeg, I wonder if they realize that it's a reflection of themselves? When they say "eugh what a shit-hole! This city sucks!" do they realize that they live here. They're a part of whatever problems they feel the city has because they're a citizen here.
Any by rejecting their own personal responsibility they put down those of us who are trying to stay and make things better.
By saying "I'm better than Winnipeg!" what they're saying is "I'm better than everyone who chooses to live here. I'm better than you."
Because instead of trying to figure out why they're unhappy here they blame Winnipeg. And they run away.
(Or say they're going to, anyway)
Most people who claim to "hate" Winnipeg never seem to actually go anywhere. They stay here and gripe because it's far easier to bitch about it than to actually take all the steps necessary to move away.
This is because people's perceptions of their problems are so deeply-tied to Winnipeg that most people don't ever actually leave. It provides people with a reason to be upset, with an easy scapegoat.
"My life would be so much better if I left this place"
"My career would be farther along if I lived somewhere else"
"I'd be a happier person if I didn't live here"
I hear people make these statements and it makes me sad for them. That their happiness is contingent on a population size, on street names, on landscape.
What a horrible way to go through life.
Don't get me wrong -I'm not saying nobody should ever leave. There are a multitude of good reasons for anyone to move anywhere.
But a shitty attitude shouldn't be one of them.
Winnipeg Transit strikes again
- by admin
which isn't unusual but every time I use the bus to go somewhere I don't normally go and it doesn't work out I'm still surprised a little bit.
Shouldn't I be a pro at this by now?
NOPE.
No matter how prepared and neurotic and careful I am I almost always wind up getting totally screwed over by the terrible bus service here.
I even checked stupid Navigo service for the bus stop I needed to wait at and took a photo on my iPhone to be sure.
Stop 61119. 10:38am. Westbound Innovation at Research.
(Who names these idiotic streets, anyway?)
Got on the bus and it goes in the opposite direction and I wind up at St. Vital mall, where yr girl figures "maybe the bus will turn around and go the way that I need it to?" but figure since I've played this game with transit before I'd better ask the driver to be sure.
When I do, he laughs at me and says "oh no, after this stop my bus turns into a 91 and goes off into Southdale for an hour".
WHAT.
I tell him where I need to go (Waverley West, for you Winnipeggers still following along) and he says
"oh, there aren't any buses that go there when it's not peak traffic hours"
I don't know why I didn't expect that.
we're in an abusive relationship with facebook
- by admin
let's just admit it already.
what was once a great user experience that connected us with everyone we had ever known and every single new person we met that (I'll admit) revolutionized the way we interact online, this relationship is going downhill and we need to face facts: it's just not good for us any more.
it changes our privacy and sharing options constantly (and resets them at random). it suggests weird and sometimes offensive ads based on what people in our feed say. it crashes (often). it's slow. it's become less about networking and sharing and more about ad revenue based on flash-based games and ads inserted into our news feeds. the only thing it is good at (event management) has fallen by the wayside so much that it's barely even worthwhile to use when there are third-party sites like MeetUp.com out there.
and now facebook is going to be bringing videos to our already overly-cluttered networking experience.
auto-playing, probably audio-enabled, full-window, at least 15-second-long videos.
and it does all of this so blatantly, flying in the face of a positive user experience. nobody wants to deal with ads or videos or intrusive weird privacy policies that we constantly have to police and re-correct to the way we want them, but the people behind facebook do it anyway because profit is more important than respecting the people who made your site what it is in the first place.
as a user of multiple social networking sites, this hits me like a drunken smack to the jaw. none of my other beloved sites would treat me this way! why am I letting facebook get away with it? why are we?!
because we're stuck in an abusive relationship with it. it's safe, it's easy, we can go back whenever we want and even though sometimes we get frustrated and upset with it, and it does things that hurt us (like completely disregard our user experience), at the end of the day we feel like we can't do any better.
which is the very definition of being in an abusive relationship.
we can do better, Internet.
why we're not Friends on The Internet
- by admin
don't get too upset if I unfriended you or unfollowed you or didn't respond to your request on linkedin or we were never friends in the first place and you wannabe. it's just not gonna happen.
maybe you tweeted a bunch of stoopid shit and I got sick of seeing it. maybe you kept inviting me to events in a city I don't live in or even events in the city that I do live in but your events suck and I don't wanna go. mebbe you're just bad at the internet and I got sick of looking at your 9gag posts (reddit rules). maybe I just don't like yr face.
the problem with cutting people off on the internet is they get all offended about it like somehow the Internet matters like OMG HOW DARE U BLOCK ME U BITCH or whatevever. some people get all passive-aggressive like "omg you unfriended me but I don't care SEE" which means you do and then that's why I don't want to be Internet Friends with you, silly.
pick which one you think applies and go with it.
nobody actually cares who you're friends with in real life and this goes double for The Internet but it's stupid because if you unfriend someone or unfollow them it's a public attack on their person like how dare you not acknowledge them in a networking platform, already?!
facebook doesn't want you to do this, either. I just spent a bunch of time unfriending people that for one reason or another I just don't really care about anymore and it took way longer than it should have: you have to go to your page and then to your 'friends' page and then click on their page and then click 'friends' and then click 'unfriend' and then click again to acknowledge that the past few steps were what you actually wanted to do (yes omg) and I'm half-convinced that facebook does this so everyone has 5,000 friends because it's too much of a hassle to manage them.
I'm not even finished going through the list, either, this blog post is just a break from the incessant clicking required to clean up the mess that is your pretend online social circle.
so if I nix ya in the next little bit, you know why. not sorry about your feels.
been so tired lately it feels like I have lead bones
- by admin
not cool adamantium ones like wolverine but heavy, old, useless bones that get mad at me for riding my bike every day and climbing stairs and walking to the corner store.
I can't get enough sleep and even when I do I feel worn-out hours later. maybe I've got a vitamin deficiency. someone from the internet cure me.
I'm supposed to hang with Kbabs tonight but I'm gonna bail because she wants me to bike to her house so she can make me a sammich and then we'll ride bikes to my house so I can get changed so we can go for a walk. all before 8pm. and I don't wanna.
I wanna go home and lie in the dark under a blanket with the cat and take a nap watching some junky movie on netflix by myself because tyrone has vj stuff to do and I never, ever get any alone time.
I wanna get gross subway for dinner because I'm lazy and maybe a cookie, too, because I've been eating salads all week and I want chocolate, damnit. I deserve the sub and the cookie and probably the diet coke I'll toss on there for good measure.
this is the part where you tell me eating that way won't help how tired I am.
and then comes the part where I say eff you and eat it anyway.
because that's the best part about being a grown-up lady: not always acting like a grown-up lady.
