streetfestival

"Act like you've been there before" is a cliché I've heard that means to behave in a situation that is new and exciting to you as if it is something old and familiar to you instead.

As a closeted transfeminine person, I'm thinking about painting my fingernails black - wearing coloured polish in public would be a first for me. And I'm thinking of getting them done at a salon - another first.

I'm so nervous but excited. I know from experience of rocking neutral or clear polish as a cis-looking AMAB person that being super nonchalant about having painted nails in public will lead to me having a better time, which is ironic because rocking painted fingernails in public is like bucket list-level excitement for me. But to assuage my high levels of social anxiety and increase my odds of having a good time, I know I ought to be nonchalant or "act like I've been there before." It's kind of humorous to me, even though I obviously don't think there should be any stigma at all.

The more I dwell on this, the more I realize it's important to me and I should do it. Gotta gather my courage tho! 😅

https://mstdn.social/@ElleGray/113272986345873402
(photographer: @ChrisReichert3 on twitter)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanuts

I'm on a mailing list and got an email that read

We’re super excited to announce that They’re Trying To Kill Us is now on Apple TV for download or rental, and streaming for FREE on Roku, Tubi and Youtube’s official movie channel

I watched it a year or two ago. It's more about anti-Black food and environmental racism in the US than it is about veganism per se, but I found it a highly edifying vegan-ish video.

https://www.theyretryingtokillus.com/

They’re Trying to Kill Us is a new groundbreaking documentary from Executive Producers seven-time NBA All-Star, Chris Paul and 7X Grammy winner, Billie Eilish.

The film features notable influencers from the fields of Hip Hop, medicine, sports, entertainment, policy, and politics weighing in on the singular most deadly threat to American society that mainstream media doesn't want to talk about.

https://mastodon.world/@exocomics/113087039277391570

https://mstdn.social/@DemocracyMattersALot/113063952703333947

BREAKING: Following Donald Trump’s debacle at Arlington National Cemetery, Vote Vets released this devastating ad calling out Donald Trump for his BS. Retweet to make sure all Americans see this.

Click link for video (1 min, 33 secs) hosted on a Mastodon instance

The Canadian government is spending money to attack rigorous journalists who partially dissent with Canadian foreign policy (e.g., Israel and Co's genocide) and to call them Chinese state-affiliated news outlets.

I already had strong suspicions the Canadian government was employing associations with China as pretext to disparage and censor dissenting ideas, people, and platforms. This is strong evidence.

I wish our government focused more on governing based on public wants and needs and less on covering up governance that goes against or that is morally bankrupt or corrupt

The BC Conservative party’s official “climate policy” explicitly rejects the idea that climate change is a “crisis.”

In August 2022, Rustad retweeted a tweet from prominent climate science denier Patrick Moore casting doubt on climate science.: “The case for CO2 being the control knob of global temperature gets weaker every day,” said the tweet amplified by Rustad, adding that people should “celebrate C02.”

Several million spread across a handful of projects may seem like small potatoes compared to other federal financing worth hundreds of millions, but Alex Cool-Fergus, Climate Action Network Canada’s national policy manager, is frustrated to see the federal government pump any money into the hydrogen sector. In an interview with Canada’s National Observer she called hydrogen an improbable “techno-fix” that has been effectively marketed by the fossil fuel industry.

The possible end uses for hydrogen are dwindling, which is eroding its forecasted demand. To put in perspective just how significant this is, four years ago Natural Resources Canada expected the global market could be worth up to $11.7 trillion, but now says it could be worth up to $1.9 trillion — an 84 per cent drop.

“It's disappointing to see that the federal government continues to invest in this false solution, and that disappointment is amplified by the fact that some of this money is going to massive companies that don't need any more money,” she said, calling it a “slap in the face.”

“If [fossil fuel companies are] going to be investing in this at all, they should be using their own profits.” Last year, Enbridge posted $5.8 billion in profit and greenlit $10 billion worth of new projects.

Export Development Canada (EDC) and other national crown corporations have provided $7.6 to $13.5 billion a year between 2020 and 2022 to support the domestic fossil fuel industry, as compared with just $147 million for in-country renewable energy production, number-crunching by the IISD revealed in June.

Canada was criticized in the new report for a “lack of transparency in reporting” that made it hard to ascertain whether finance was going to domestic or international markets. EDC data shows it has provided $88 billion to the oil and gas sector since 2016.

Today, the NDP sits in the shadow of the Liberal government, caught between criticizing those in power while also attempting to claim agency over bills being passed. Most peculiar of all has been Singh’s retreat from online spaces. In 2023, he deactivated his TikTok account citing privacy concerns, but the shift in the tone of his content went beyond that.

His once fresh, relatable, curtain-tearing content had been replaced by generic campaign videos of Singh reading scripts word-for-word that feel like they were copied directly from the platform section of the NDP website. It became boring, uninspired and — most importantly — ineffective. Polls now project a loss of seats for the NDP in the next election.

One thing is for certain: we are closer to a Singh exit than we are from his arrival. Come October, he will have been party leader for seven years — he will certainly not be leader in seven years. So, has his choice to abandon his online roots damaged the future of his party?

Whatever the future of the NDP holds and whoever its next leader will be, it is clear that it remains a party in desperate need of reimagination — the exact same issue that Singh was brought in to solve.