The real problem with "it's not about sex it's about power" in the context of sexual violence is that in our culture, sex is also about power

Every time friends and family and colleagues ask how my in-laws in Lebanon are, the only answer we can give is "Still alive, at least for now."

And I can't make it make sense in my mind that these things happened at almost the same time.

How can these both happen in the same world?

The moon gives me incredible hope for humanity. The bombs, though. I can't stop thinking about the bombs.

I cried my eyes out twice this week. Once was watching the crew name the crater Carroll to honour Reid Wiseman's late wife. The other was a video of a Lebanese woman recounting the terror of trying to find her child after a bomb landed near his creche.

And while the mission in space filled us with awe, missions in the sky over Iran and Lebanon killed and maimed hundreds. Homes turned to rubble. Irreplaceable historic sites were damaged or destroyed. A president threatened to wipe out a whole civilization — that is, to commit a genocide.

But then it is also almost certainly an opportunity for nationalist propaganda by a fascist president who wants to distract from his many failures. He will certainly want to take credit for a success right now to distract from the horrors that continue in West Asia.

I have had such complicated feelings watching the lunar mission — it is an incredible moment for humanity and the words of the crew and the people on the ground at NASA show a deep love for our shared world and care for our collective future. It fills me with joy to have seen it all unfold.

Watching the Artemis astronauts being recovered with such care and thinking about how on the other side of the world, the same country murders thousands without a thought.

This is not to say the crew should not have care, but there is deep dissonance in seeing the same country doing both today.

A world leader saying "I will destroy a civilization" is just saying you're going to do a genocide if people don't do what you say, and we're all out here still pretending international law means anything anymore.

We talk a lot about public healthcare in Canada, and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but without things like meaningful and comprehensive pharmacare that prioritizes medical needs, not austerity, it's not truly public.

The treatment that would manage this condition is expensive and therefore is, in theory, covered by the province. But in Alberta, we have a government that does everything in its power to block access. My doctor's decisions about my care take a back seat to their slash and burn approach.

And in the meantime my quality of life suffers. I can't sleep sometimes. I've had to go to emergency. It's affecting my work. And it's a vicious cycle because it's a condition exacerbated by stress and trying to finish a PhD when your body regularly freaks out is stressful.

It doesn't matter that the first line treatment doesn't work — unless a specific specialist prescribes it, the chance of being approved is almost zero, even if the other specialist studied with them and knows that's what is needed. So I wait for access.

Love living in a province where I have been waiting several months to see the specialist I was referred to by the specialist who diagnosed my health condition so that I have some sort of shot at having coverage for the treatment I need.

lol how could some ides ruin my march

genuinely fascinated by how every country that's ever had any vague dealings with Iran the last 60 years envisaged exactly this outcome whereas the country that has made planning war with Iran literally a whole industry that has employed thousands of people for decades never considered any of it

It’s not even that I think “Epstein class” is a particularly dangerous bit of antisemitism, intended or inadvertent (there are plenty on Right who use it knowing what they’re doing). But it functions as antisemitism did 1890s France, a means of moving people left to right.

If you’re using “Epstein class” as a synonym for billionaires, ask yourself why you can’t say “billionaires.” Maybe you don’t know what an bait-&-switch it is. When, learning of that history, ask yourself why you feel you must persist. If you say, “but this Jew or that also says it,” well, friend…

Fascinating to read of how this proto-fascist saw antisemitism as antidote to socialism, a means of persuading “low-info” workers that their enemy wasn’t really international capitalism so much as international Jewry. Hence my disgust for the term “Epstein class,” an evasion of capital.

So much usefully precise language here: on the role of Jew-hate in French proto-fascism: “antisemitism worked as a useful binding agent for the numerous unstable syncretic ideologies that were circulating.”

All while we continue to allow military arms and equipment sales to the US to be used in perpetuating their genocidal wars (and maybe against us soon too).

But hey, elbows up! Don't let a little complicity get in the way of your patriotism.

The U.S. should not be bombing Iran. The U.S. should not have bombed Iran in the first place. The U.S. certainly should not continue bombing Iran.

If your idea of a "big tent" means slaughtering school girls... no, thanks. Anyone who votes to give a single cent to continue it should be primaried.

And yes, it sounds far fetched, but also a few years ago, people thought I was crazy for talking about the rise of fascism.

I spend too much time studying these things to dismiss the possibility. It may not happen, but there's enough there to worry me.

I keep hearing US news talking about fuel prices and remembering that I live in a place with the world's fourth-largest oil reserves (after Venezuela!) and that we have a separatist movement fed in part by US money and far too entangled with our provincial government.

No, they served me (barely) but I'd almost rather they hadn't because it was not worth a 90-minute round trip by tube/bus and an evening of being ignored.

There are places that won't accept solo women diners, though.

The food was excellent.

Anyhow, I know this isn't huge in the scale of the world, but it's one of the ways in which that world shows solo women that we are (still, in 2025!) seen as sad and broken, if we are even seen at all, as if women can never be happy unless they're attached to someone else.

Women alone in good restaurants aren't sad spinsters. We're just trying to have a nice evening like anyone else. If that bothers you, I guess stop allowing solo bookings? But you'll be missing out. Solos are actually good guests who will tell their friends why they loved (or hated) their experience.

Good restaurants know that solo foodie travellers exist and often want to enjoy something special. Often, they treat me incredibly well and make an effort to make my evening special.

Why should I have to miss out on one of the best parts of travel because I sometimes like to go alone?