Keep cooking

It’s because the federal Liberals are slowly becoming the Harper Cons, and the federal Cons are now the Alberta Wildrose crazies.

We’re seeing our parties shift to the right in real time. I’m really hoping Avi Lewis can revitalize the federal NDP, and I’m not sure what’s going on with the Bloc under Blanchet but I hope they can rally as well as a center-left option for Quebec at least.

Is the NDP website incredibly slow to load for anyone else? Unexpected traffic?

Dawg if Marilyn Gladu becomes some sort of kingmaker in this current parliament I’m actually gonna crash out.

this is a cheap way for Meloni to get popular support

I think it is this. Didn’t her government just recently lose a relatively simple referendum vote? Like @Damage said in their comment, anti-semetism is also popular among her base, it’ll help shore them up.

edit: Here we are. 60% voter turnout (with 54% voting against her supported position) is actually kind of crazy.

😐

This is why Sailor Mars was always my favourite

Huh??? Wtf headline did I miss here???

Learning about the Bermuda Triangle when I should have been learning about the Strait of Hormuz 😭

Oh wow, thank you for this thorough explanation, and basing it in human psychology no less. This was really interesting.

Edit: Forgot about the most useful aspect of astrology - it gives you an easy way to roughly remember upcoming birthdays.

Oh my god even better!

I guess the constellation’s juju gets amplified by passing through the sun or some shit

Is this like…spiritual photosynthesis?

I figured you weren’t in the US once you said there weren’t “public” libraries nearby, lol. The offer to send books still stands if you ever want to take me up on it in the future!

Ok, but can someone actually explain astrology charts to me? Every time I go to one of those websites they want my DOB, birth hospital, mother’s full legal name, and social insurance number before spitting on me and saying that “a dirty Fire sign deserves nothing”.

Oh wait, that might just have been Vriska.

Omg no library? That’s actually so sad! Reading back, I’m sorry if I accidentally came across as condescending in my suggestion, I’m just surrounded by people who have access to lots of public libraries, but forget that they do 💀

Maybe look into volunteering somewhere, in your case? It sounds like you live in a small town, is there any animal shelters or food banks or just someone who needs weeds pulled? The whole point of the study was to basically not use your phone for anything besides calling and texting, and that means literally doing anything else.

Other than that… you could just, be bored. Honestly, I had a span of time last year when I would stared at a wall for 15 minutes when I got the urge to scroll on my phone. NGL, it definitely helped me deal with the dopamine addiction of social media.

Also, maybe a bit invasive of a suggestion: the library I volunteer at gets rid of old books yearly (nothing wrong with the contents, usually not battered or ripped at all, but not in pristine condition or the covers get changed out), and we have a mailing drive to send them to smaller communities/schools. I can send you some, if there is a public building/town hall they can be sent to?

But two things were even more mind-blowing to Castelo and Kushlev, a co-author of the study: Even those people who cheated and broke the rules after a few days seemed to have positive effects from the break; and in follow-up reports after the two weeks, many people reported the positive effects lingered.

“So you don’t have to necessarily restrict yourself forever. Even taking a partial digital detox, even for a few days, seems to work,” Kushlev said.

It’s right there? Just do something else for a couple of days. It’s enough time to borrow Project Hail Mary from the library and read it? Or borrow a couple of DVD’s from the library? Or finish a a game… borrowed from the library? Take a nice stroll, if able, to the library? If not able, browse the digital catalogue of something, say, your library?

Have I mentioned the library? (I volunteer at a library, have you tried volunteering?)

Researchers differentiate between internet use on phones versus computers, with phones being much worse than computers. Kushlev said the phone use is more “compulsive and mindless.” With the phone, people could be on social media while taking a walk, or watching a movie, or talking with somebody and so forth. It basically interrupts these other activities. In all of those cases, the researchers found that while you’re on your phone, you are not paying as much attention to the social activity you’re doing, and you enjoy it less.

I’ve definitely noticed this. Using my computer/laptop/tablet is an intentional choice, I have to take time out of my day to actually use it, and then I start getting uncomfortable because I’m over the age of 15 so my spine hurts if I sit for too long, forcing me to take a break. Sometimes friction in technology is actually helpful.

Didn’t a government entity in Belgium try to do the same thing until a bunch of Microsoft suits swooped in and “encouraged” them to stay with them instead? Hope France doesn’t do the same.

edit: All I could find was this article about the Azure datacentres that they announced in 2021 finally opening, but I SWEAR I remember there being news reports around 2019-2020 of the Belgian government switching to Linux.

I’m not trying to say this is a conspiracy btw, I was living in Germany for school at the time and would watch the news to help with my German skills. This came up as an on-air discussion topic on whether Germany should do the same (which was shutdown pretty quickly LOL, apparently MS has a lot of influence in Munich).

If any Belgians have any insights or better search skills than me, they are welcome to correct me.

Yeah, this seems right. I had an easier time going through Brussels Zaventem during the September 2025 airport cyberattacks than I did Dallas-Fort Worth first week of this past January (before the TSA strike started). Even my straightest, cis-est, whitest, most American coworker (this is how he describes himself) got stopped and taken to a separate room for 40 minutes, and then we got rebooked to a flight two days later with no hotel accommodations, and no car. The cherry on top was having to do the whole security dance in full all over again.

Fun.

I feel that for just a few dollars more (a lot more dollars now) I could have bypassed this inconvenience.

Ain’t this the truth. “Do I buy this thing I sort of need right now when it’s a BIT overpriced, or wait until it gets REALLY overpriced” is the modern dilemma consumers are facing across the board, it seems.

I’m already in industry and it’s soul sucking 😭 You’re telling me they’re gonna feed on my soul no matter what?