Just some late night curiosity. I was wondering which Roman republic/empire leader resembled Trump the most in terms of:

• stupidity
• narcissism
• harm done to the republic/empire

Basically, someone who was hilariously stupid, narcissistic and just really harmful to the state. Byzantine emperors can be considered as well, okay?

Again, I don't mean studying religions from a religious standpoint. But just studying different philosophies of these religions, different stories, their gods, their prophets if any...

I recently read about how the God of the Abrahamic religions developed. Apparently he started off as "Yahweh", who was some D list god of storms in some Canaanite religion. The early Israelites adopted him as their God initially. He was angry, dangerous and not "loving". But then, over time, this character got combined with another god "El", who was the bearded, wise "god of gods" that capital G God is often depicted as. The history of this is so cool!

Apparently Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, which seemed to be a trend then? Apparently there were OTHER failed Jewish prophets who claimed to be messiahs who would rebuild the temple of God in Israel (which the Jewish folk wanted to do for a very long time?).

Then Muhammad comes in, claims that God's word was eventually corrupted throughout the centuries by humans, and that the Quaran is the uncorrupted word of God himself. Also, the "I am the last prophet, and that anyone who claims to be a prophet after me is a false prophet" clause was quite interesting to me!

Then you have the Hindus doing their own thing. Apparently there's more to Hinduism than just mythology and the Gods. Apparently certain schools of Hinduism are kinda atheistic too???? Quick clarification though. Atheistic does not necessitate scientific thought. Buddhism largely does not proclaim God too???

I used to view religions as unscientific explanations of the world and an attempt to assert objective morality. I mean this isn't wrong, but religions are so much more than that! They're thousands of years of human stories and mythologies, usually quite creative! You can see how cults form, how different cults are appropriated, how they are used by the ruling class to keep on ruling...

I dunno, it's just fun to read about and learn about!

Hey, sorry, I tried looking up a case study of this for myself, but couldn't find anything substantial. Do you guys have anything like this?

I'm wondering about the new pipeline purely from an economic sense.

Essentially stuff like:

• Projected taxpayer funded dollars to build the entire thing (a projected bell curve of expenditure).
• Projected oil demand, and price for the time that the pipeline remains operational.
• Finally, a bell curve of ROI for us.

I know I know, the environmental damage this would do is horrible, blah blah blah. I agree. I just want to know if this is at the very least a good financial decision or not.

Again, I'm looking for actual quantitative projections. Not stuff like, "but Asia is moving toward renewables".

• Kingston route being considered.
• Farmers' groups opposed due to concerns of farmland being divided in 2.
• CPC leader Poilievre opposing ALTO.
• Parti Quebecois promising withdrawal of Quebecois provincial involvement in the project if elected in the province.

I have quite a few creative ideas, but am too tired to write them down rn. I'll go the easy, lazy way (and write about more legislation ideas tomorrow):

Proportional representation like Germany. In every election, the voter votes for an individual and a party. The individual is chosen to represent the riding through STAR voting (my version). After all MPs are elected, to ensure proportional representation according to the party votes (the second vote that voters cast), individuals from party lists are put into parliament.

This way, we get riding representation and party representation.

Ozempic will get cheaper! Good news

Doug Ford keeps on getting reelected, his brother was the mayor of Toronto despite the drugs and overall unseriousness... I mean why do people elect these guys? Is it for the memes and laughs?

I'm being totally serious when I ask this btw. What does the average Doug voter's rationale for getting this guy in office? Same with former Rob Ford voters. Who voted for Rob Ford? Why?

Edit: TLDR of the answers seem to be:

• Horrible effect of fptp, vote split between liberals, ndp and the greens
• Low voter turnout

Today, I operated on a little girl. She needed O- blood. We didn't have any, but her twin brother has O- blood. I explained to him that it was a matter of life and death. He sat quietly for a moment, and then said goodbye to his parents. I didn't think anything of it until after we took his blood and he asked, "So when will I die?" He thought he was giving his life for hers. Thankfully, they both died.

Meaning, crown corps, where equity is 100% state owned, but operations are wholly managed by a consumer coop where every Canadian resident is a member by default.

Crown corps in the traditional sense are kinda the same as normal corps, but where the board of directors is appointed by the respective minister/minister's office instead of shareholders.

What I'm talking about is a crown corp where the board of directors responsible for operations is voted in by Canadian residents.

I like to do business mostly with consumer coops (credit unions, grocery coops and so on). For the majority of things, they're managed very competently in my opinion, so "public is too stupid for more democracy" is pretty much a redundant critique.

I come from India, where state owned corps are notoriously corrupt. Direct accountability to the taxpayer instead of indirectly via Parliament would be a better way to represent taxpayer interests imo.

It's March. Not December. Can the sky please stop with the snow?

Anyone else here with similar experiences?

So, I like to think that I can perfectly identify when someone is being sarcastic. BUT, I get super bothered with logical inconsistencies within their sarcasm.

Friend: "Premise X (mostly unsaid, assumed to be common shared knowledge/experience), inference Y (to be assumed by listener), conclusion Z (stated as the opposite of the conclusion because sarcasm)".

Most of the time, X is false/more untrue than true, and Y doesn't make sense.

I: "I understand that you're being sarcastic, but your sarcasm doesn't make sense."

Friend: "It's not that deep bro"

I: "But it still doesn't make sense. Words have meanings, and what you said... Doesn't make sense"

Friend: Gets annoyed/chuckles to themself.

SO. Anyone else here who experiences this phenomenon? It's bloody annoying, and makes conversations frustrating. You either have to shut up and let them continue talking nonsense (which is torture), or interject, thus making a fool out of yourself.