Back when the Queen was still alive, Stephen Fry described her role as being “as if Uncle Sam was a real person.” Meaning, being a sort of personification of the country without actually holding any real power over it. I’m not a huge fan of the British monarchy, but if we have to have one I’m at least glad it’s limited to being essentially a powerless tourist attraction.
My first thought was to set up a bunch of long-term investments, since you can reasonably assume that you’ll live a long life. But then also, being rich might increase the odds of you being kidnapped or killed, so it might just tank whatever you choose to invest in.
Maybe you could somehow get a job testing roller coasters. Once you’re in there you have no power to decide anything, so perhaps the universe will make the builders construct the safest possible roller coaster. OR, you could be a food taster for someone rich and powerful. The universe wouldn’t let you eat anything that’s poisoned, or it would just ensure that no food gets poisoned in the first place!
Here in Canada, the general sentiment among people I’ve talked to is definitely that the US has fucked up it’s relationship with us in a very long-term way, if not permanently. Even if the tariffs went away tomorrow, there’s still the issue that Trump threatened Canada’s sovereignty, which people here are not taking lightly at all.
I’ve heard people say that even if Trump went away, there’s no guarantee some other dickhead won’t take over and start the same nonsense, or we’ll just be back here again in 4 years. Even the new Prime Minister said that the relationship we used to have with the US is over now.
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Yeah I mean, water and oxygen can both kill you in high enough amounts.
Thinking about it, whoever Elon’s dealer is probably has a pretty sweet gig as far as drug dealing goes. They’ve got someone on the hook who is the magical combination of being an addict, has infinite wealth, doesn’t know the value of anything, and is a huge asshole so they probably don’t even feel bad about exploiting them lol.
As someone who lives in Canada, I’m hoping we’ll be hard to invade the same way Russia is hard to invade. As in, all these US troops who train in Texas and Florida probably won’t be conditioned to handle doing stuff when it’s -40C outside, so we can all just head north and hope they get stuck and give up lol.
Also, and Americans don’t seem to like it when I say this so apologies in advance, but the US is historically not great at winning wars IMO. They’re great at starting them, but it almost always seems to end up in a quagmire that just drags on for ages and then gets abandoned. So that’s pretty much how I imagine this would go too.
The full moon does something to people’s brains and makes them act weirder than usual.
There’s been more than one time when I’ve been out and thought people were driving crazier than usual or people on the bus were being more psycho than they normally are, and I’ve looked it up and it’s been within like 2 days of the full moon on either side.
People are ~70% water and the moon does move the entire ocean around, so maybe it’s something to do with that?
I really feel for Zelenskyy, it’s such a terrible position to be in.
On the one hand, it must be galling to have to play nice with Trump. You know his word is worthless and he’s going to betray Ukraine the first chance he gets, which will probably cost a lot of Ukrainian lives.
On the other hand, if you hard-ball Trump and tell him to fuck off, the war continues and Ukraine probably loses, which also costs a lot of Ukrainian lives.
I really don’t see any way this doesn’t end badly, unless Europe can somehow step up and get Russia to back down. I don’t really see that happening though. I think Ukraine’s fate was sealed when Trump won the election TBH.
Imagine if the future of your country and the lives of millions of people who live there all hinged on you having to fly half way around the world and be filmed trying to be polite to two gibbering morons, and not even in your first language.
Mad respect to Zelenskyy for keeping it together as well as he did TBH.
As a person from Europe living in Canada, I’d say it’s not that we hate Americans, we know there are lots of nice people there and a good chunk of you hate Trump as much as we do. But unfortunately we just kind of have to treat America the country as a hostile nation right now. Given that the US government is directly threatening Canada and actively betraying Europe, there’s not much choice. It just is what it is.
Disclaimer: I don’t speak for all Canadians and Europeans obviously, there are some Trumpy people in Canada and Europe too for some fucking reason. But amongst the people I’ve spoken to about it, that seems to be the general vibe.
Maybe not… nutrition and general health care are a lot better these days, as is education and general access to information so if you took say, a 40-year old from 1875 and introduced them to a 40-year old from 2025, they might see someone who’s bigger than them, has perfect teeth, looks half their age, and has a pretty broad general knowledge about all sorts of things they’d know nothing about.
A bit like if a 40-year old from today met someone from the year 2175 who looked about 20, was insanely fit and a foot taller than them and could casually describe how the cure for cancer, AGI, quantum computers and fusion power worked. Could be pretty intimidating!
Presumably his companies must just run themselves, because we seem to be expected to believe that he’s running a rocket ship company, an electric car company, one of the biggest social media sites in the world, moon-lighting as the de facto President of the United States, while also dicking around on Twitter all day long and being one of the world’s #1 gamers and parenting like 15 children or whatever it’s supposed to be now. (Or at least, the ones that are still talking to him I guess.)
It just seemed less pleasant lol.
Also I guess you could interpret it two ways - one bare foot and one wet sock, or one dry sock and wet one. Neither is ideal IMO
I had a teacher who claimed that dinosaurs weren’t real. She said that people just naturally love patterns so when we find random bones we arrange them into shapes we like. Someone in the class said what about skulls that are just one bone and she ignored it lol.
That was many years ago and it’s still stuck in my memory as one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.
Yeah even if they did actually repeal it, which they won’t, it’s really closing the stable door after the horse has bolted at this point IMO.
Because with the current administration, you can say it’s illegal to accept money from so-and-so, and they’ll just go “fuck you” and do it anyway and nobody will will stop them or bring consequences, so … yeah. This is kind of doing time, not talking time.
As someone currently living in Canada, the US is badly fucking up a lot of it’s international relations too. I’ve heard several people here say that even if if the US unfucks itself right away (which it won’t), it’s still going to be a long time before things will be right again.
You don’t go around threatening neighbours and allies like this and then expect to be able to just walk it back overnight.
I would say:
The Force Awakens: Not bad, basically a knock-off of A New Hope story-wise but it feels like Star Wars and is pretty harmless fun.
Rogue One: Probably the best of the Disney Star Wars movies IMO, although it does have a couple of dodgy “bringing back an old actor as CGI” scenes.
The Last Jedi: Lots of people hate this one, I’m slightly more forgiving. I think it tried to do something a bit weird and different, and it didn’t really work. But I do appreciate the effort of not just playing it safe.
Solo: A Star Wars Story: Another one that seems to get a lot of heat, but I thought it was pretty inoffensive. Although my brain did kind of delete most of it as soon as it was over lol.
The Rise of Skywalker: Legitimately one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I can’t even call it a bad movie, because it’s essentially just a random series of Star Wars-themed sounds and images that batter you for what feels to be about a year and a half before it mercifully ends, taking with it any good will towards the franchise you might have had left.