
There is French territory just off the coast of Newfoundland too (see Saint Pierre and Miquelon), also Denmark is right next door because of Greenland. So while still pretty far fetched, there is some precedent for European territory in North America.

That too

It's a code red snowflake alert

If we were living in a rational world I'd agree, but with all the ludicrous stuff we've seen in the last few months I'm not convinced we are. We really shouldn't dismiss anything as impossible with Trump at the helm of the US. It's a hope for the best, prepare for the worst kind of time.
When Doug Ford was going to tax the electricity going into the US, Trump said on Truth Social:
I will shortly be declaring a National Emergency on Electricity within the threatened area. This will allow the U.S to quickly do what has to be done to alleviate this abusive threat from Canada.
I find that extremely worrying. With enough bluster and showing of force all it takes is one mistake to kick things off.

Well put

The new front page of the internet is upon us

Saving this

I think they sold the rights to a Blackberry phone to Chinese company, TCL or Foxconn I think. They advertised a phone, but it was never made.

They'll do him up like Lenin

I appreciate you taking the time to write all that, I read the whole thing. However, I have to disagree with your take. You are making sweeping generalizations about online communities. I know for a fact that countless people have been banned from r/conservative, as a counter example to your claim that you only see leftist communities banning people they don't want to tolerate.
You're also making huge generalizations about the left in general, a famously fractured part of the political spectrum. I think these echo chambers you're describing are a natural result of people trying to find a safe harbour to congregate in the face of all the vitriol between the sides of the political spectrum.
That's a nice anecdote about the conservative tech blogger. Most reasonable people would agree that death threats are bad, I've never seen the point. I think it's disengenuous to claim that the left is equally crazy, stubborn, stupid, or whatever because some guy got a few death threats and kicked out of tech communities.
Zooming out, in my view the modern conservative ideology is one based on telling people how to live their life and depriving people of rights. If subscribing to that way of thinking gets you booted from a tech project, then boo hoo. If someone subscribes to modern conservatism and has no interest in budging on their opinion what value is there in giving them a platform? Sure, there are probably communities out there that are too heavy handed in how they moderate discourse, but that's inevitable regardless of political leaning. Humans are flawed beings and moderation is always a balancing act.
I think many leftists are happy to have discussion, but not when it's pointless. I think blindly saying 'free speech' is being infringed when comnunities moderate discussion is bad. With the internet, it's no longer someone preaching on a street corner, you have much more reach now. I think that means communities have more of a duty to chose who gets to stand at the pulpit. No one is pulling anyone's vocal chords out, they are free to share their opinions elsewhere.
Anyway, those are just some thoughts from a leftist who should be more informed on these matters. Also, please don't conflate the Democratic party with leftism.

Totally agree. If we can't at least expect certainty out of the current arrangement, then we should stop with any sweetheart deals. It's ironic that the gist of Trump's views on international relations center on other countries pulling more of their weight, and it seems he will ultimately accomplish that, albeit by burning all the bridges established with said countries.

It seems to me like these proposed tariffs were just a way to get Canada and Mexico to come grovel and kiss Trump's ring. Both countries naturally want to avoid such a destructive policy being put in place, so they'll do what Trump asks for now. I expect these sorts of actions by Trump to continue throughout his term though. This begs the question, when will America's historic allies finally have enough? I was thinking these tariffs would be the ripping off the band-aid moment that spurs Canada and potentially the rest of the west to start re-structuring its economy away from such an unreliable partner. I guess this tentative status quo will continue for now.

I was the exact same way. I could justify watching ads to support the people I watched, but then I learned how little compensation a creator actually gets from one view and decided my time was more valuable. Plus I just got too used to never seeing ads and could never go back.
This video sums up the sentiment you're describing nicely.

I just got set up on Simple X Chat. From my cursory research it seems to have the best security going in a chat app right now. I find the UI really slick too. It has all the features I use in a chat app anyway. The only thing to be aware of is that all the messages are saved locally, so backup/recovery needs to be handled by you. There's a couple videos an YouTube that go over the app.
All that being said, I still have WhatsApp on my phone. There's still the same problem of getting everyone in your life to download another app.

Couldn't have said it any better.

Reach has been glassed

I never considered this was a difference, interesting! For a lot of years in school I didn't use a bottle and relied on the fountains exclusively. Also, the bathrooms usually always had the motion activated faucets that just spray warm water with no temperature controls so using them for drinking water wouldn't work. I'm starting to think the way this works in NA might be somewhat overly complicated lol

For conveniently drinking out of them and filling water bottles in public buildings like schools and hospitals. They're really common in NA, what part of the world are you in?

Try not to cry when the door hits your bony ass on the way out

Someone will be smuggling microfiche behind the iron curtain...wait wrong century.