JK Rowling vs the pronoun police

Ah, pronouns – those once-innocent little words have become the Molotov cocktails of the 21st century. We used to learn them in primary school, blissfully unaware that ‘he’ and ‘she’ would one day destroy friendships, careers and dinner parties. Once just humble substitutes for names, they’re now a litmus test for moral worth, a gateway to Twitter pile-ons and a fast track to declaring your side in a culture war. Say the wrong one and you’re a bigot. Say the right one, wrongly, and you sound like a hostage reading a script with a gun to your head.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Peak Woke"

The state of Canada’s economy halfway through 2025

That was an intense six months for Canadian businesses, consumers, and policymakers alike.

Not quite the shock and urgency of the pandemic, or the existential peril of the Global Financial Crisis. But it was right up there.

The first half of the year exposed Canada’s economic vulnerabilities. It gave Prime Minister Mark Carney not only an election victory but a wide berth to pursue his promised economic transformation. And we may have even seen the Canada-U.S. relationship fundamentally altered.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

The statistics of systemic racism

Educators, media personalities, students, and others frequently claim that blacks are subject to “systemic racism.” It’s a broad claim and sounds scary, but what does it actually mean? One might infer from the term “systemic” that it refers to racism within organizations, whether in government agencies, private industry, or society in general. “Racism,” in this context, refers to obstacles to education, employment, and career advancement. I asked X’s AI (Grok) to dig into some employment data to test this broad claim. In this research, Grok cited a number of public sources including the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) data, the Center for American Progress, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), private companies’ diversity reports, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filings, and data aggregated by third parties such as DiversIQ, Statista, and McKinsey. The employment data is presented below along with a brief discussion on the impact of education.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in#BlackLivesMatter

Scrapping the Royal Train is a symbol of the monarchy’s demise

Until quite recently I was very confident that the monarchy would survive for the foreseeable future. Polling suggested that support for a republic was becalmed at around 20%, although always higher among younger age groups, and that this figure had barely shifted in decades. Big occasions like royal weddings and the old Queen’s Jubilees brought forth an enormous groundswell of goodwill. Protests by anti-monarchists felt mean-spirited and joyless.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Woke Royals"

With his immigration bill, Canada’s prime minister is bowing to Trump

There are many stereotypes about Canada – that we are a nation of extremely polite people, a welcoming melting pot, and that we’re the US’s laid-back cousin who lives next door.

But right now, Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, is bucking all of that lore after pressure from the US in the form of Donald Trump’s “concerns” about undocumented migrants and fentanyl moving across the US-Canada border. In response, the recently elected Liberal PM put forward a 127-page bill that includes, among other worrying provisions, sweeping changes to immigration policy that would make the process much more precarious for refugees and could pave the way for mass deportations.

Oh please. Just another Guardianista lamenting Trump’s success.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCamp Of The Saints, Canada, USA

Chaos on French shores as ‘people trafficker’ is seen WHIPPING terrified migrants as they scramble to board boat bound for the UK

Migrants were whipped by apparent people smugglers and a desperate mother with a baby hauled onto a dinghy amid extraordinary out-of-control scenes in France this morning.

The Mail beat French police to the shore at small-boat hotspot Gravelines beach at 5.30am, where large groups of migrants were running the mile down to the beach to reach the waves.

The group, all young men, were up to their knees in the water as a dinghy emerged from a canal into the sea, and turned back to the shoreline towards them.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCamp Of The Saints

Those Anti-Gun Tech CEOs? They’re Allegedly Stockpiling Guns

Throughout the tech industry, there’s a certain amount of anti-gun bias just about everywhere. Facebook used to be pretty good about the buying and selling of firearms, but now even gun stores run into advertising problems. YouTube used to be a great place to learn about firearms, and now they’re making it more and more difficult for anyone to learn anything.

And that’s just the social media companies.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inGun Control, Gun Rights

Canada’s population standstill rattling Vancouver’s housing industry

For the first time in 74 years, the population of both B.C. and Ontario dropped by a few thousand people in the first months of 2025.

Sounds dramatic. And in some ways it is.

That’s even though the dip in the total number of people doesn’t make a statistical difference for either province. In the first quarter of this year, B.C. had 2,357 fewer residents than at the end of 2024; Ontario lost 5,644.

Don’t trust developers to act in anyone’s but their own best interests.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", "Societally Destructive Immigration Policy", Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

Canada set up a $50M vaccine injury program. Those harmed say it’s failing them

Kimberly MacDougall lay in a hospital bed beside her injured husband, Stephen, as his final moments came. She and their two kids held him as he took his last breath.

Stephen, 45, a service manager for a luxury automobile dealership, had been fighting to live for weeks in May 2021, but stopped struggling. She informed friends on social media that the man she loved, incredibly fit and with no prior health issues, wouldn’t make it.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"China eats weird animals disease", Canada

Mark Carney may have a winking problem: Why PM’s not-so subtle habit is risky on the world stage

The prime minister is a habitual winker. Once is once, two is a coincidence, three is a trend, and National Post counts at least four prominent public winks by Mark Carney since winning the top office — in Rideau Hall at his swearing in, in the Oval Office, and twice at the G7 in Kananaskis, Alta. — plus many more going back to his governorship of the Bank of England.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWTF?