Bear Pit: now the sole domicile of politics at LuLa

[Robert Roaldi]

Not exactly on topic, but today I went to change my existing (very old) contract with the electricity company.

There were about five different types available, the brief descriptions made each look ideal, but it was impossible to suss out which would have been the most suitable. I believe that even an educated, native Spanish speaker would have been left as devoid of actual information as was I.

So yeah, this truly is the post-truth age. It took me a while to realise just how all-pervasive this has become: I had fondly imagined it to be confined to the world of politicians, but I was mistaken.

It's all explained here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification.

It's why I used to alert local bicycle racers of photos that I had taken at races in the Ottawa area by posting short messages in club forums, direct, targeted, free (more or less). But all those club forums disappeared when Facebook arrived. I was forced to join FB to announce new galleries and hope that enough local riders would find out about my photos there, then spread the word among other riders by word of mouth or hope that FB would itself push the announcements onto interested members, as determined by algorithm. So we are all captured and less well served. Many people I know are planning to leave the platform, they're sick of all the unwanted posts they receive. Instead of hearing from friends and acquaintances, the original purpose, they're now flooded with political bots and posts from downright crazy people, the algorithm again. See the link above.

Last month Amazon withdrew from the province of Quebec and announced the shuttering of the six warehouses there. The reason was that one of the warehouses was in the process of being unionized; Amazon gave another reason. I thought to myself, is that all it takes to scare this cancer away, threaten unionization! It's both effective and scalable. With a bit of encouragement we could get unions to scare Amazon away from other provinces too, doesn't seem to take much effort. As a bonus, we'd get a lot of arable land back too. You want to know the punchline? After encouraging Amazon expansion, probably using tax breaks, which of course is how it's done in a free market economy, we found out that 1600 jobs would be lost. One of the largest retail companies in the world that everyone is happy to coax into coming to their town, managed to "create" ONLY 1600 measly jobs. Good riddance, who needs them.

[Robert Roaldi]

Is it my imagination or have there been a lot of plane crashes lately?

[degrub]

1 a week for the last month.

https://www.pprune.org/accidents-close-calls-139/

Good site for professional discussions of flying business and issues.

[digitaldog]

Is it my imagination or have there been a lot of plane crashes lately?

Still way safer than driving. In 2023, there were an estimated 40,990 motor vehicle fatalities in the United States😱
The number of civil aviation deaths decreased from 358 in 2022 to 327 in 2023.

[digitaldog]

Still, just amazing:

USDA says it accidentally fired officials working on bird flu and is trying to rehire them
In a statement, an Agriculture Department spokesperson told NBC News that officials are "working to swiftly rectify the situation."

[Robert Roaldi]

Thousands were fired from the Forest and National Parks services. I guess that's understandable, Trump probably doesn't see the point of having National Parks. Maybe he'll privatize them, hand them over to Musk or somebody. If you think that photo permits were expensive now, just wait!  Maybe people will have to buy a subscription to visit the Parks, download an app, agree to terms and services.

[Robert Roaldi]

Trump is now accusing Ukraine of having started the war. See, Ukraine refused his generous offer to hand over 50% of their minerals to him so now he’s angry. Of course, it’s all bullshit. Ukraine was never going to agree to that, and that’s why he made the offer in the first place. The next step is for the US to give Russia military aid to save them from the bad Ukraine. Some fools will even believe that.

Trump and Putin are trying to pick the bones of Ukraine, like they own the place. It’s going to be time soon for countries to break off diplomatic relations with the US, close the border to Americans, impose sanctions. If things don't change, the USA will be the bad guy we have to protect ourselves from. It’s coming and it seems to be what Trump wants. Is it what Americans want?  Trump claimed to not want wars, that he was an isolationist, but now he’s sticking his nose everywhere he can. It's like watching a 14 year old playing a game of Risk.

Given the current internal dysfunction of the USA, it's kind of hard to imagine that the USA can orchestrate any of these things on the world stage. I mean, as per usual, Trump only hires incompetent morons and they're not really doing a terrific job draining the swamp, are they, hard to see how they could pull off world-changing events. But they could cause a lot of harm trying, and Trump does not give a damn about the suffering of others.

I'm sure there are a lot of countries around the world that are regretting their decision to NOT have nuclear weapons.

Canada is right in the middle of Russia and the USA.

All this stress and misery, and for what.

[Rob C]

All this stress and misery, and for what.

Ostensibly, in order to MAGA. That’s the what bit.

The why bit: because it’s what the majority of Americans thought was a great idea. You know, like stocking up on snake oil for the winter. Nothing beats a great salesman, even in politics. Yes, in the post-truth era, greatness can here be claimed. God help us all, and deliver us from the hands of fools.

[Robert Roaldi]

Now I hear that individual states are appealing to Trump to carve out exceptions for themselves from mass firings. As if they're not all in the same country. As if it's ok for a Kentuckian to say, 'No not us, go after the guys from Iowa!' 

Imagine the odds of simultaneously electing such a large cohort of snivelling gutless politicians. (Probably happens often, Rob C would say.)

[Frans Waterlander]

Thousands were fired from the Forest and National Parks services. I guess that's understandable, Trump probably doesn't see the point of having National Parks. Maybe he'll privatize them, hand them over to Musk or somebody. If you think that photo permits were expensive now, just wait!  Maybe people will have to buy a subscription to visit the Parks, download an app, agree to terms and services.

Yes, Trump is cleaning house, getting rid of excesses, like Social Security making payments to many people older than 200 years.

[digitaldog]

Yes, Trump is cleaning house, getting rid of excesses, like Social Security making payments to many people older than 200 years.

So you don't collect SSI old timer? 
You can't even report the lie from Trump accurately.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is falsely claiming that tens of millions of dead people over 100 years old are receiving Social Security payments. A July 2024 report from Social Security’s inspector general states that from fiscal years 2015 through 2022, the agency paid out almost $8.6 trillion in benefits, including $71.8 billion — or less than 1% — in improper payments. Most of the erroneous payments were overpayments to living people.So are tens of millions of people over 100 years old receiving benefits?
No.

[Robert Roaldi]

Yes, Trump is cleaning house, getting rid of excesses, like Social Security making payments to many people older than 200 years.

I'm sure you hope that is true.

[Frans Waterlander]

Yes, Trump is cleaning house and the useful idiots are all up in arms. How predictable.

[Rob C]

In tonight’s 9 o’clock Spanish news, we had the spectacle of Trump claiming that Ukraine started the current war with Russia - as any tiny state would, of course. Am I alone in thinking Mr T has had a stroke? His eyes appear to have narrowed and gone onto different levels, his colour hightening, too, presenting a somewhat vivid - if disconcerting - impression of instability.

It has been written that those that the gods would destroy they first make crazy. Time will tell. I am convinced that a palace revolution will inevitably occur in Washington. I can’t believe that any Western state, today, can have become so weak and without moral fibre as to permit its reputation, both within its own country as internationally, to be dragged into the mud in this way.

I don’t see anything similar happening in Russia, for the population does not come with the same kind of recent (inevitable, when you think about it) idea of being numero uno in the known universe. The Russian mass has long suffered at the hands of every form of power that has ruled it; I guess that hope has long died. As in parts of the Middle East, people just vanish. The USA has yet to experience that, so yes, perhaps they will still be able to wake up and say nope, this doesn’t compute; we need to open our collective eyes and end this embarrassing stage of our brief - so far - history.

[Rob C]

Yes, Trump is cleaning house and the useful idiots are all up in arms. How predictable.

I’m afraid you have overlooked the fact that Trump has hired all the useful idiots.

[Robert Roaldi]

Yes, Trump is cleaning house and the useful idiots are all up in arms. How predictable.

So, have those foreigners stopped eating people's pet dogs or not, I can't get an answer.

[digitaldog]

Yes, Trump is cleaning house and the useful idiots are all up in arms. How predictable.

“Idiot wind, blowing every time you open your mouth”. - Bob Dylan

[digitaldog]

President Donald Trump is branding himself a monarch.

The president of the United States made an unprecedented declaration on Wednesday while applauding his administration’s decision to terminate federal approval of New York’s congestion pricing program.

“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED,” Trump wrote on his social platform Truth Social. “LONG LIVE THE KING!”

King of cap-locks, OK.

[Robert Roaldi]

Here's some news on the fight to ban Covid vaccines, with Montana defeating the proposed law that tried to ban them. Idaho wants to criminalize their use. Florida advises against them for older people. Here are the statuses of a few of these proposals.

Idaho: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2802699#google_vignette

Montana: https://flatheadbeacon.com/2025/02/19/house-kills-bill-to-ban-mrna-vaccines-in-montana/

Florida: https://www.floridahealth.gov/newsroom/2024/01/20240103-halt-use-covid19-mrna-vaccines.pr.html

But not to be outdone, there's movement at the federal level: https://dailyinterlake.com/news/2025/feb/14/bill-to-ban-mrna-vaccines-passes-out-of-house-committee/

I didn't read every word of those articles, but I didn't see why they only want to only ban mRNA vaccines. Why not ban all vaccines?

[Robert Roaldi]

The show never ends, Trump signs order declaring only the President and AG can interpret US law for executive branch.

 https://www.jurist.org/news/2025/02/trump-signs-order-declaring-only-president-and-ag-can-interpret-us-law-for-executive-branch/.

Obviously Trump isn't dreaming up all these things himself.