And then get in a car without thinking about it.

Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 5–29 years.

Then if we exclude the million of deaths and additional millions injured every year, those things contribute to air pollution, noise pollution, microplastics, heat islands, and stress.

People will gladly stop smoking ‘for their children’, but then jump in their oversized pickup truck or SUV to move them around, while complaining about gas prices.

EDIT: I guess what I’m trying to say is that eating better and exercice more is one thing, but if we continue to consume, pollute, and trash the planet at this pace, we will all live longer just to see a planet that slowly becomes uninhabitable because of droughts and floods.

I was taught about global warming in the 90ies at school and have always been concerned about the environment and pollution. I’m from the generation that saw that Manbearpig episode, and even though I know South Park “makes fun of everyone”, this one always seemed too much.

But I stopped giving a fuck during the pandemic when I realized that even a pandemic wouldn’t change society.

We saw first hand how the environment could improve and benefit from making changes in our way of life, but most people wanted to go back to their commute and waste energy in traffic.

Even today, governments and public employers are still forcing their employees to go “back to the office” even if it’s not needed for lots of jobs.

I care about the future of next generations, I have nephews and nieces, but apparently nobody gives a fuck because it would be too expensive and disruptive. We prefer cheap gas.

So I still maintain my lifestyle of not having a car and being careful when I can, but I was avoiding airplanes as they are the most polluting mode of transport, and I don’t anymore.The majority apparently doesn’t care and just wants cheap gas and cheap shit. They want to choke us while complaining everything is getting more expensive, amd won’t change anything.

Every headline year after year is how we won’t reach our climate “goals” and how we’re passing thresholds one after the other.

So I don’t give a fuck now. It’s sad but I can see what people around me chose, and it’s cheap gas and endless consumption.

Poutine is indeed comfort food that is most tasty when you are shitfaced (or hangover). However a poutine will never contain cottage cheese. The original ingredients are fries/chips, poutine gravy, and cheddar curds. I repeat, cheddar curds. They have to be fresh and make a skweek skweek sound when you bite them, and be a bit melted by the hot gravy. Pieces of mild cheddar are also acceptable if no curds are available.

I have no car and will not get one. Those things are horrible for the environment and humanity. Driver or not. Cars sucks. Fuck cars.

EDIT: If I have to choose those around me, I want them driven by humans. A human will learn (some) when you yell at them that they are in a bike lane. I trust humans much more than I trust, say, a Tesla, coming from behind while I’m cycling.

A car nearly ran onto me recently while I was stationary at a traffic light. I suspect the driver was battling against his “auto-pilot” system as the car kept trying to drive on me in the bike lane, and the driver kept trying to correct it. It seemed like the computer thought the bike path was a car lane. Fuck the cyclists in it.

Plus, we have proper winters where I live and I’d like to see them self-driving during snowfall and snow storms.

EDIT2: A car is a multi ton vehicle that can easily kill other people. I want humans to have responsibility over this. A death caused by a car can’t be easily dismissed, just because some kid or a deer didn’t follow what the programming intended them to do. There should be less individual cars and more buses, trains, trams, driven by responsible people, professionals, that are accountable. The only sort of acceptable automation/self-driving are trains if they have a dedicated right of way.

I would also stop buying olive oil if Italy was attacking the sovereignty of my nation.

Yes. Québécois here. I remember his name and know he’s a signer, but couldn’t remember what he sang. I had to look it up, and I only heard of him because of Millennium.

I don’t like cars. I consider them dangerous and addictive, and I’m willing to cycle a few hundred km just to avoid using one. Mostly because of environmental reasons, but also because I’m probably nerodivergent. Cars are constantly reminding me of the wasted energy, the pollution, and the possibility to kill someone else, or an animal. I’m often distracted and impatient, so I just consider it better for everyone if I avoid them.

And that’s usually a surprise to most people that meet me, as the vast majority of people will reply they could never live without their car. Most people love cars, but to me, seeing an endless stream of them on the horizon makes me sad.

Mainstream news publications and online newspapers.

In Canada and Québec specifically, the tabloid Journal de Montréal has always had the most ridiculously detached comments of any other platform I know.

It’s closely followed by the comments on some CBC news articles.

Ouais, un chandail à capuche!

J’ai entendu “sleeping” très souvent, mais pas juste “sleep”. J’aurais été confus moi aussi.

Le monde est bizarre. Comme ceux qui disent coton ouaté pour désigner un kangourou. /s

Je suis du sud du Québec et je l’aurais pas compris. J’ai jamais entendu sleep de ma vie pour désigner un sac de couchage.

It depends on your type of job. I have been working remotely on and off for a bit more than a decade, and video calls are a thing. Virtual meetings are a thing. I can call my coworkers, see them, talk to them. Even if I’m not in front of them. We can organize just fine without the needs to smell each others farts.

And as an introvert, I prefer it that way. We’re not all extroverts that want to waste multiple hours of our life, unpaid, stuck in traffic, just so others can “interact face to face” with us.

In fact, you kind of sound like my manager that wants me to go back to the office a few days a week for “team spirit”. My team is all remote and we’ve been working like this for years. But now, suddenly, it’s not good enough. She wants to see our faces to foster team spirit. And to be quite honest, I will quit before being forced to needlessly spend energy to go to the office.

I know a lot of other people in that situation. In my country, federal workers that could do their job remotely were given that right during the pandemic. And now, after a few years, apparently, they really really need to be in an office and supervised for their job to be done.

To me, again, depending on your type of work, the organization “problem” is made up BS just so managers can surveil and monitor “their” employees.

It’s one of the most disappointing legacy of the pandemic for me. The people.

The environment got better. Some people were not forced to commute any longer. We had an opportunity to start freeing ourselves from capitalism and move into a post-capitalist society.

But no. We doubled down on capitalism and even went into tribalism. I read so many comments of people saying they were missing their time lone from their family while stuck in traffic, and were eager to go back to the office. Now a few years later, those that could still work from home or remotely are demanded to go back to their office. Even if it’s not necessary. For team spirit!

I didn’t have high hopes about climate change and our policies before the pandemic. And now I’m entirely cynical and convinced we will not do anything. We will not reach any goals to avoid climate change. We will go head first into it. Because fuck you, I’m not letting go of my car and my lifestyle! I want cheap gas! Give me cheap gas!

Using Windows for me is a cumulation of annoying little things that becomes too big to ignore. Another thing you can add on that list is fiddling with keyboard layouts if you don’t use the default US one. And be sure to delete them all except the one you want to use, even the sub layouts, because accidentally hitting a key combo could switch it back to the default US one.

It’s a specific pet peeve that I have against Windows. I’ve had so many calls (I do tech support) from people that had their computer suddenly not making the characters they wanted, sometimes only in specific programs, just to discover that they reverted to the default layout by hitting Win + spacebar at some point.

To most Quebecers “le button” means “the mound”.

No. Maybe it’s because English is not my native language but I just don’t understand your replies at all. Are you telling me I’m being racist? If so, why?

Plaît-il?

It may just have been a bad match. What he said was very generic but I couldn’t help myself but transpose it into a religious speech. It could have worked if he was also talking about religion. And it creeped me out. Maybe a smart thing would have been to tell him, but I chose not to go back instead.

But yeah, I hope it’s working for some other people because to me, it felt like someone was trying to get me into a pyramid scheme.

I was already a geek that used internet to escape reality nearly 30 years ago. That part hasn’t changed. He wanted my to do it physically. Like, join the local Esperanto club or something like that.

And as much as he may have been right, sometimes what matters most is how it’s brought up and said. It felt like he was trying to convince me to “go join them!”, or more accurately “come join us!”. As if it was a cult and the only natural thing to do. Just like society makes me feel in general.

Yeah, I didn’t check the stats but I’m pretty sure we have much more chances of just being hit by a car while existing than getting our thighs burned by the emergency slides while evacuating a plane, so I also sometimes take that chance anyway.