Profit Boyz and Spider Skeletons

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B R

— 4 min read
Profit Boyz and Spider Skeletons
I know they are dangerous and stuff but there are like a dozen guys in eastern Washington that each have a collection of guns greater in quantity than every single one of these gangs.

So Canada has a different day for Thanksgiving, or L'action de grâce. And also they kinda don't.

If this looks weird it's because it's Bluesky, not Twitter. I finally quit Twitter. It took this long because while the owner is an unrepentant fascist he is also so incompetent it's taken this long to finally totally ruin it. Bluesky sucks too but what are you going to do - definitively improve your mental health by quitting social media altogether?

You could rack it up with like President's Day or MLK Day in the sense that there isn't like a bunch of decorations or major activities. You get the day off and it's nicely placed in the middle of a month (October) with few other holidays. I literally made a roast chicken because I couldn't find a grocery store selling turkeys. Though admittedly I didn't try hard because that's the vibe.

Everyone is much more into the spooks and the spooking. I'll write more about it after Halloween.

Okay I'm here for the effort but many of these creatures do not have skeletons.

We visited Verdun and Mile End. These are both rich in history and weirdness and deserve their own post. For now, a taste:

Verdun architecture is all over the place.
Mile End is cool. It's one of the neighborhoods that everyone tells you to go see when visiting. More of this here, and far from just in Mile End.

I've gotten far enough in French to nerd out with the professor and it's cool. When we were studying passive voice (voix passive) I brought up maybe my favorite [[1]] speech by an American President in the 20th century:

You may not like it but this is what peak Presidential performance looks like.

I also asked him some questions about media and art in Quebec, specifically the francophone stuff, and some guesses I had. Next post or another I'll share them because the whole thing is a separate universe than the kind of environment I - and if you are reading this, probably you - are used to.

I have a lot more to say on this topic but while the "learning French" part of my classes takes center stage, the integration bits matter just as much. A recent example is how carefully they described how workplaces function here.

If you've worked for a larger organization you start to develop a sense of where the scar tissue is. Usually this is related to an event or events that such an organization never wants to happen again. Training sessions on what sexual harassment is and what you should do if you encounter it is one such example.

In this case, a substantial portion of our period of animation has slowly and painfully explained:

  1. There are two kinds of hierarchies in businesses - those that are strong, top down in their mannerisms and those that are more flat, consultative, and egalitarian.
  2. The vast majority of organizations in Quebec are the latter. They are more consensus driven, perhaps even moreso than in the United States
  3. You might be in for a shock if you are suddenly asked "what do you think we should do" by your boss and that's never happened before

One might assume this is targeted at immigrants from nations rather known for more authoritarian governments, but apparently it is something they've had to really hammer on with a lot of folks from France.

She won't keep these dog googles, literally marketed "Doggles", on so the cone has to stay until we figure out a better plan for the world's dumbest, blindest dog.

[[1]]: Sarcasm doesn't translate extremely well in written form so I should make myself clear - every single American President, save Lincoln and maybe Martin Van Buren - are worthy of nothing but disdain. The office virtually demands it. This speech is perhaps the best representation of said office that one could ask for

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