The glib answer is that Torontonians think their city is the centre of the world, and people from other cities find that attitude insufferable.

The serious answer is that the current premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, personally hates the Toronto city council for some stuff that happened when he was a councillor and his late brother Rob was mayor. Doug Ford has used his powers as premier to wage a vendetta against Toronto, and it’s all apparently legal because of the way the laws governing the relationship between the province and its cities work.

It’s not manufactured goods, but Canada imports a lot of produce from the US.

During the last Trump administration, I avoided buying American-grown fruit and vegetables whenever I could.

I fully appreciate that, and it’s the same in Canada for many people. I’ve witnessed it personally. I’m very fortunate to be in a position to handle that sort of thing.

The hospital just wrote it off instead, so the cost was passed to the Canadian taxpayer. Lucky for me, but frustrating all the same. I would have rather the insurance pay like the were supposed to.

Hell, I’m from Canada where we have (mostly) socialized medicine, and the one time I made a claim on private insurance it was denied. That was after I had called them to confirm that yes, my policy (should have) covered that expense.

And it was only a few hundred bucks too, so my frustration was more about the principle of the thing rather than the cost.

The article says “Canadian leaders” but only mentions the Deputy PM by name. That troubles me.

Canada is on track to a Conservative government in our next election. The current Liberal regime is long in the tooth and Trudeau is unpopular. One of my biggest worries is that the new Conservative government will put appeasing Trump over the interests of Canadians.

I looked at a few Canadian news outlets, and it seems that this announcement by the Deputy PM is coming on the heels of a First Ministers’ meeting, which is the council of the PM and all ten provincial premiers. Nothing about this indicates that the federal opposition is on board, though the most conservative premier (Danielle Smith of Alberta) seemed to think it was a productive meeting.

With Doug Ford, that’s kind of the point. He’s in deep with the companies that will be awarded the contracts.

They might, but I can’t say for certain. I didn’t mention it because, again, I’m not a Canadian lawyer, and the basic info on provinces vs territories was far more accessible.

I am only a Canadian, and not a Canadian lawyer, but I don’t think it will be as simple for Yukon. The biggest reason I can think of is that Yukon is a territory, and not a province, and so has different constitutional standing. From the government webpage:

There is a clear constitutional distinction between provinces and territories. While provinces exercise constitutional powers in their own right, the territories exercise delegated powers under the authority of the Parliament of Canada.

I’m not saying it isn’t possible, just that the same legal maneuvers Quebec used may not be applicable.

This was one of the first games I followed the development for. I was super pumped because I loved Star Wars in general and Knights of the Old Republic in particular. I even got the deluxe pre-order.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get into it at the time, probably because at that point I was pretty sick MMO quest structure after several years of playing WoW.

I’ve always thought of returning, mostly to experience the stories, but I’ve just never found the space in my life for the time commitment.

Connections Puzzle #524
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟩🟦🟪
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟦
🟩🟦🟩🟩

I almost had the green category figured out, but I couldn’t find the fourth word because the blue category was a complete mystery to me. I had no idea what blue could have been, and I’m still baffled even after being shown the answer.

…it hasn’t yet gotten absurdly over-commercialized…

As someone who grew up watching hockey, I’m sad to report that it seems to be trending that way.

In the early 2000s, most of the commercial sponsors were limited to ads between periods, at least on Hockey Night in Canada. Those ads were for things like pickup trucks and beer. I do know that American broadcasts would have things like “the KFC power play,” which was cringy.

I watched my first games in over a decade during the playoffs last year and was appalled by how betting odds and the associated apps had taken over both the ad space and the analyst desk.

My son will probably start getting into sports in the next few years, and I’m not looking forward to trying to convince him that no, we can’t win $10k from FanBet or SportsOdds or GambleKing or whatever.

Any ____son is a last name. FYI the etymology is son of Jack, son of ____.

There’s something similar in Slavic languages with suffixes like -ovic, -ic, -icz, -ich, etc. So “Djokovic” means “little son of Djoko.”

There are lots of reasons for women to keep their maiden name. In the case of my wife, she had two good ones:

1. She didn’t want to become disassociated from her scientific publications.

2. She didn’t want to complicate or redo any immigration paperwork.

That I will never enjoy the taste of wine.

I figured out I would never like coffee in my teens, and had the same realization about beer in my 20s.

But it wasn’t until this year, in my mid-thirties, that I finally accepted that I don’t like the taste of wine and probably never will. After years of trying the full spectrum of wines, I had to admit that it wasn’t the “notes” that were turning me off, nor was it a problem with the quality of the wine. It was the fundamental “wine-ness” that I disliked, the same as I don’t like the “beer-ness” of beer or the “coffee-ness” of coffee.

More generally, it’s a Black Mage from the Final Fantasy series, of which Vivi is one.

I actually don’t believe the one in OP’s picture is Vivi, who normal has more adornments on his clothing . It looks more like an older version of the class, like this one from FFIV artwork.

Fun, but there should also be a few lines about Austria trying to punch Serbia and failing, Romania trying to punch Austria and failing, and Britain super promising the Arabs their freedom if they would just punch Turkey.

I dunno, I didn’t have much of a problem with them unless my hands were wet. Occasionally couldn’t make the triple-tap work, and maybe some issues with accidentally adjusting the volume. I found the “push and hold to play notifications” function to be super reliable, though.

Meanwhile, Google’s like, “We’re removing the ability to silently check your notifications using your Pixel Buds. You have to use the voice command now. No, we don’t care that you primarily use them in public spaces. And we really don’t care that our voice recognition has a 15% success rate.”