We use Wikipedia a lot, mostly to understand references from another country or culture, the rest to answer the question: “Who the hell is s/he…” The latter enquiries are often interesting, but rarely resolve the real issue, which is “… and why is s/he famous?” At any rate, we send a goodly annual donation, because without Wikipedia, we’d be even more out of touch than we already are!
Canadian English, a jumble of Parisien and South Ontario French avec un levain de québécois, Bangladeshi Bangali, and old fashioned Cadre-speak.
No need. Just invest 10% of that amount in McDonald’s gift cards that expire at the end of April and wait for nature to take its course. Send the other 90% to Luigi to share with his prison mates.
The Guardian, The Tyee, BBC, CBC, Reuters and AP, with a dash of utterly unreliable press from abroad.
Ay! Oy!
It seems to take more keywords to home in on the kind of speciality items I look for, and does not always appear to detect connections between those keywords, for example in trying to find certain kind of veterinary support devices made to national specifications. One of the other commentors says Kagi is okay for shopping, so maybe I’ll give it a whirl because I’d love to be free of Google once and for all.
I’m interested, but a bit reluctant. I find DuckDuckGo quite adequate for most things, except shopping online, something that I have to rely on for certain categories of items. How is Kagi on shopping?
True or not, one can avoid the whole issue by using your phone as a phone, maybe to send texts, with location, mike, and camera switched off permanently, and all the other apps deleted or disabled. Sure, Google will still know you called your SO daily and your Mom once a week (NOT ENOUGH!), and that you were supposed to pick up the dry cleaning last night (did you?). Meh. If that’s what floats the Surveillance Society’s boat, I am not too worried.
There were and are many more people involved in the arts who are not gay than who are, and gay people have family and friends outside their professional world. But, yeah, just go ahead and jump to the nearest convenient stereotype, mmm?
That said, average gay participation was definitely higher at that time, which, I (totally straight, btw) always thought made it more likely we as a group would have a better idea, given all the personal connections to the homophobic, the seriously closetted et alia of the underlying reality. I stand by that assessment.
Being old, I recall in the 1990s the number of Americans identifying as homosexual or bisexual was published as either 7% or 8% of the population. I was involved in the arts, where our group estimate was, with a lot of people were still closetted, the real percentage would be closer to 12% to 15%. Reading this and considering the way the US has gone since then, I think we were probably right, and I’d even go so far as to say perhaps a little low.
Because life is its own joy, and being alive the greatest gift. The loneliness will pass and return, the work grind you down as a song heard in passing will lift you up, the endless obligations are part of being an inherently social species. But, whether human or crocodilian, garden slug or spider, there is pleasure in the warm sun and a full belly, in waking from a good sleep and stretching whatever muscles your ancestors bequeathed. It’s only those who demand that, somehow, the universe give them some cosmic purpose – we, who are less than a virus floating around a sparkling grain of sand on an endless beach – who cannot find enough in life to be happy.
? Self immolation? I’m a Canadian, so we’ve been a bit distracted by other issues, but what two self immolations? Could you educate, please?
If cherries are expensive, blame capitalism, not cherries. Cherries are densely nutritious: one cup of American cherries has less than 100 calories, but 12% of the vitamin C you need in a day, vitamins A, B6 and K, potassium, copper, manganese, is very high in polyphenols – which protect against diabetes, brain disease, heart disease, certain cancers, aid in muscle recovery after strain, and ease inflammation, especially in the joints. As a bonus, cherries also contain serotonin, tryptophan and melatonin, which elevate your mood when you are awake and then help you get a good night’s sleep.
You can buy all those things separately, as supplements, for significantly more than the cost of a cup of cherries, or you can buy an entire pound of your favourite type of cherries for between $US2.20 and $US5.26 depending on type (prices as of yesterday). In Canada, the price when converted, is about the same. I would not recommend trying to get all your nutrients just from cherries, though: many years ago, a friend and I raided a neighbour’s tree and ate our fill, then spent some time in our respective bathrooms learning that cherries also have a lot of fibre!