As an American it was always somewhat puzzling to understand the deeper drivers of cultural differences between the Canadian provinces having never been anywhere but BC and briefly, but the book “On Oil” is a great recent history of the spread of oil culture and money in Alberta, the Texas influences and ties there and helps frame why so much money and media influence is being welded against Canadian values and democracy right now.

It’s short and incredibly informative. https://www.biblioasis.com/shop/new-releases/on-oil/

You have to do 2 shots of crude oil to enter a lottery for a ticket to be able to pay for a ticket so you can checkout for groceries.

"Do better?” (spoken as Sean Connery)

“I recommend the Pinot noir.”

-Wowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged

Just use the experience you got in your unpaid internship your parents arranged for you at birth. Oh, you didn’t get that? You had to work a real job to pay rent or tuition or?

It’s not much better later in career; companies have no idea how to hire for skills and grow people so they hire for exact specs; you could be a nobel prize winning architect but they’d shoot you down for only having built buildings in NA vs. EU, or you’ve only used 5/6 popular software solutions and they use the 6th and of course there is no way they’re going to let you have a 3 month onramp to get proficient in it because “this quarter only” mindset, or maybe you say you won’t work 70 hours a week because you have a family and would like to have a life. Or, or, or.

My advice to those starting out is to find a job that pays the best compared to the time it takes, even if it’s painful, then use that extra free time to volunteer, get another side job that will grow your skills, or go through a certificate program. Degrees are mostly dead, a relevant cert is worth more than multiple degrees because it’s specific.

Fret not, still alive and well if you need anything from state or federal government. Simple unemployment claim first payment? Passport application (these are getting much better but it’s still what is claimed)? When a business owes you a refund?

Cue the vulture grey-market people who will slice any angle to not get a productive job; they’ll buy off ebay in bulk and see how much velocity providers will allow before they institute a more protective policy, e.g. refund only. Sigh.

Nice things were taken away from us, now people are desperate which also reinforces why we can’t have nice things.

Sax/sex

During Chuseok, which is Korean Thanksgiving on Fri no less. Samsung must be grateful it’s a chaebol and controls at least half the country

Top Gear - SNES:

https://youtu.be/cxAXTHBxgTw?si8nO81VKWhW6JohvY

This was better than a lot of electronic music available in the US at the time. Absolute bangers.

Sounds like BOLI was overreaching(boy does that word get overused), so glad this is clarified. Wonder if these project managers or developers reduced their own wages when they were happy to point out the prevailing wage cost? We know the answer to this is no, so not going to whole-heartedly cheer this, desperately needed though afdordable housing is. If we’re going to cut costs from projects, it shouldn’t start with hourly construction worker’s wages, maybe the state should tax them less?

People always happy to cut the wages of someone else…

If you’re in a main flight path you will be safe.

“It looks like I may have confused the available freeway lanes for a designated runway. Did you know I405 contains 523,000 times more asphalt than LAX? I will work on securing an additional freeway for future landings and I have prepared a list of new flight paths.”

…including Disney DvDs

China has been playing the long game for 30+ years. When you have actual history and strategy(and unlimited exploitable labor( you’d be amazed what you can accomplish.

This is why regulation paired with antitrust enforcement is important, which hasn’t existed in any meaningful sense in the US since before Reagan. Healthy competion would drastically lessen the likelihood of such anti-consumer practices.

Businesses with high barrier to entry naturally will have fewer competitors(airlines, cell networks, etc.) and so need healthy regulation, or preferably nationalization.

Residential power rates have gone up 60% since 2020. Meanwhile the state actually had net migration for a few of those years during the Portland COVID trough.

I wonder what could be driving this sudden rate explosion when residential use won’t have changed much? /s

https://www.opb.org/article/2026/04/14/why-portland-general-and-pacific-power-customers-are-getting-another-rate-hike-in-april/

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carney-addresses-eu-parliament-9.7346339

”Carney and his team have been downplaying the idea of using “associate member” to describe a new partnership since it was first floated in a story in the Wall Street Journal last week that cited unidentified sources.

When asked Thursday about the idea of Canada being an “associate member,” Carney said the “substance” of the agreement is more important than the label.

The prime minister said that Canada isn’t looking to be a full member of the EU and that the final agreement of the alliance would be debated and voted on in Canada’s Parliament.”

Clickbait AP headline. He specifically said he wouldn’t use those words or label but wants deep strategic partnership.