Welcome readers,

March 31 was International Transgender Day of Visibility and, to celebrate, we're discussing our favorite books with transgender characters!

If you'd like to read our previous weekly discussions of fiction and nonfiction please visit the suggested reading section of our wiki.

Thank you and enjoy!

When I was really young, like I was about 5 or maybe 4, I remember these glimpse of my dad, short memories of him, he was so happy and kind to me, and he will always comfort me, He was always similar to me such as look, personality’s, and hobbies. What we both liked very much was guns, he had a whole collections of guns in his closet, i remember something, this time it was bad, i remember my dad calling to the hallway, I went to him then he handed me something at the time. I had no clue what it was, I held it in my hand and then he says “ima turn around and I want you to pull this” and as stupid as I was, I listened to him and I did as what he told me to do, but I couldn’t pull it hard enough. I tried all my strength to do it but, after 10 seconds of waiting, he turned back around and he grabbed it and it turned out it was broken. And then he told me to leave. A couple of years later I realized what I was holding, I was holding a Beretta handgun, he told me to shoot him in the back and i remember it very clearly, I know what I saw and I know what I did. I don’t know what he was thinking, I want to know what he was feeling. Later on while I was 6, he got shot and killed behind our house.

"Linoleic acid, an omega-6 fatty acid found in seed oils such as soybean and safflower oil, and animal products including pork and eggs, specifically enhances the growth of the hard-to-treat “triple negative” breast cancer subtype, according to a preclinical study led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The discovery could lead to new dietary and pharmaceutical strategies against breast and other cancers."

Interesting new study linking seed oils to specific cancer growth. Particularly breast cancer.

Will this impact the way we approach highly processed oils in regards to human health outcomes?

Avoid seed oils and highly processed foods is the best way to bio hack your health. Low processed single ingredient foods will change your life. This shouldn't be a controversial statement.

The thing to understand is, men decide whether they want to sleep with you based of your looks and whether to date you based of your personality. So given that they can only judge you based on one of these traits, sex will most likely be the thing they’re going to pursue.

HOWEVER(!!!) in order to get it, most wouldn’t mind taking you on a actual date, at least one, which is a great opportunity for you to present your best personality traits showing how much better our life would be having you in it.

The truth is, if you find a guy attractive so do other women, meaning they have options and it can be a lot fun. It doesn’t mean we would never give up dating around, but it would only happen in favor of something that’s makes us feel BETTER than the way our current dating life does.

Beauty is common and we see hundreds of gorgeous girls every time we open apps, of course we’re not gonna be actively looking to ruin our chances with all of them by choosing just one to commit to purely based of her profile. But if upon meeting she turns out to also be kind, caring, genuine, understanding and just a delight to be around over all, why wouldn’t we want to pursue that?

Being that way would be a far better strategy to find love and will instantly make you stand out from all the rude, mean, entitled and jaded women we have to constantly deal with in modern dating.

Hope this helps.

My husband and I are in our early 30s, we've been dreaming of buying our first home, a modest one in the suburbs, and starting a family, but we’re feeling a bit overwhelmed with everything. We both have stable jobs, but we’re dealing with around $30k in student loans, a car loan, and credit card debt that we’re slowly chipping away at. Our combined networth at the moment is around 600k.

We’ve also got some small inheritance we’re putting toward a down payment, but we’re wondering if it’s enough. Our goal is to buy a house that can comfortably fit a couple of kids, and we don’t want to stretch ourselves too thin with all the bills already stacking up. We’ve looked at homes in the $450k range, but it’s tough to figure out if we can really afford everything while balancing debts and everyday expenses. We’d really appreciate any advice or tips!

IBs will surely be activated to cry racism and discrimination to shut down the discussion. Watch this space.

I was coming home, and my landlord was outside cleaning some stuff. We started talking, and he brought up the upcoming elections. He laughed and said we should vote for the Liberals. Then he went on about how if I want to "get ahead," I need to "work hard" and buy real estate.

He owns a house with a basement suite in Vancouver and an apartment, and he proudly told me that Canada will always need immigrants, so rents will always go up. But then, in the same breath, he complained that he has a vacant apartment in Richmond, that's been empty for two months, and he had to lower the rent. He said if the Conservatives win and lower the amount of people coming in, it'll get even worse.

I asked, "Don't you think it's a good idea to slow things down for a bit and build better infrastructure first?" He immediately dismissed it, saying Canada needs at least 500K people a year to keep the economy going.

Not once did he ask about me. if I have a job, how I’m making ends meet. Just casually telling me to vote Liberal because he has done great for the last 10 years. The audacity is unreal.

I don’t want to generalize, but boomers really might be the most selfish generation ever.

What do yo think?

Taking any drug is a victimless crime (currently) and thus all drugs should be legal to purchase, possess, and use. Prohibition has not worked and we need to get drugs out in the open, regulated, and taxed (but not too heavily as it will drive them back underground).

TL;DR he is trying to answer the question of whether it is better to have cheap stuff to buy or have higher salaries.

About 50 years ago, globalism started becoming a thing. The idea was, lower barriers to trade and make the world a better place. Countries with cheaper labor would make good cheaply, and export those goods to developed countries like the USA. The USA in turn would shift from making things to providing services, making the country richer overall.

Everyone benefits - the people in the USA benefit from cheaper goods because they are imported from cheaper countries while enjoying higher salaries because everyone now has a cushy service job. The third world countries get to develop because they are selling goods for American dollars.

At least, that is the dream we were sold. But that's not the reality. Yes we can buy cheap stuff from Temu, but real wages have stagnated for decades - around the time that globalism was introduced. Globalism, as it turns out, was less beneficial to American consumers than it was to the corporations who reaped massive profits due to these changes.

And so for the last 50 years, globalism, and the things that it depends upon, namely elimination of trade barriers, have become accepted as normal and desirable. Nobody questioned them - nobody dared to question them. "Everybody knows" that tariffs are bad and being protectionist is bad and globalism is good, and just don't question it okay?

Except, as it turns out, globalism has its problems too, and one of that, if you aren't protectionist, you allow your own industry to become decimated, and this leads to depressed wages for the people in your country. This is exactly what has happened and exactly why Canada charges such high tariffs on dairy imports from the USA - it is trying to protect its own dairy industry.

This is what Trump means when he says that those trade deals are unfair. They were created when the countries in question had smaller economies, and so it "made sense" to protect them from American imports. But now it doesn't anymore.

Trump's whole plan is to shift manufacturing back to the USA, so that the USA becomes a net exporter again. He knows that he only has a limited time in order to accomplish this, because anything he does could be undone by the next administration, especially because he is using EOs to accomplish them. That's why there is such a rush. It gives everyone 3 years to see if the new normal is better than how it was before. I wager that it will be, but we're in for 3 years of pain. Then expect to see wage growth takeoff like it hasn't in a long time.

If the mainstream media is telling you that tariffs are a Bad Thing, that should make you very skeptical.

Hello! My wife and I are changing up our travel plans last minute and visiting Canada in late-April/early-May, but are not sure which area to visit. We're coming from the Minneapolis-St.Paul area and would like an easy 5-6 day getaway to support Canada, rather than traveling within the U.S. The other motive is scouting areas in case the U.S. continues to descend into a place we don't want to be part of. We've considered the Vancouver, Calgary, and Ottawa areas. This is a highly-subjective question, but what areas would you recommend? I don't believe it's the best time of year to visit, but we are interested in relaxing and enjoying the outdoors, yet also getting a sense of the community. We come from a nice, clean, safe, mid- to mid-upper class touristy town of 20k population that is 20-30 minutes from the cities, which all works nicely for us. Any thoughts on any aspect of this question are much appreciated!

I don't want free stuff, what I, and most left leaning people want, are the things that I PAID FOR with my TAXES because that's how government programs fucking work. I can't believe I am still seeing this argument to this day.

I want my money to stop getting funneled to big corporate interests and tax cuts, and to stop lining the pockets of companies like Lockheed Martin that simply farm money from our massively inflated military budget. The right never complains about that, they don't complain when we strip the miniscule helpful programs included under that gigantic budget, but God forbid you clothe or feed a person in need and the right just absolutely has a little boy hissy fit.

So much for your empty Christian values and calling anyone else snowflakes.

Trump said we're going to "Stop the economic abuse of the US" or some other empty BS at his speech today, and if you heard him say that and didn't go "But we are objectively the richest country in the world" then your nose would probably honk if you walk into a wall.

Please join us at City Hall from 12:00 - 2:00 . STAND UP AMERICA

First off I want to say that if you are just disappointed that some Nintendo games are going to be $80 I think that’s valid and I am kind of with you. It’s going to make deciding whether or not to buy a game you aren’t sure about more difficult and it’s going to end up with us having a smaller game library.

With that being said the way Reddit and Twitter are talking about this you’d think they doubled the prices and are forcing them to buy these games and like it. I’ve seen dozens of people talking about how this makes games “unaffordable” and I think that’s just ridiculous.

It’s a $10 dollar increase to a game you will only purchase once, play for dozens if not hundreds of hours and (hopefully) doesn’t have micro transactions. If this $10 is going to break your bank than I don’t know how you were purchasing games for $60.

I think everyone is also ignoring the fact that:

A. triple A games now require more developers and time than ever before B. Nintendo and its subsidiaries are developing dozens of games at any given time C. Nintendo has to account for future inflation and tariffs D. The Switch 2 is probably being sold at a loss like most consoles E. Love em or hate em, in house developed Nintendo games are polished and are virtually bug free

Anyways I’m not trying to white knight a billion dollar company. If this ends up blowing in their faces resulting in people becoming more stiff with buying their games I think that’s fine.

TLDR: I think it’s fine to be annoyed or disappointed with the increase, but saying it’s completely unaffordable for most people who were already buying new games is ridiculous.

And there are plenty of logical reasons other than greed for why they decided to do this.

I think that there are definitely reasons to be pessimistic about certain aspects of our future, but this is not one of them in my opinion. The replacement of jobs is going to be happening from top to bottom no matter where you are in society. And will result in pressure on the government unlike anything we have seen before if they do not ramp up wealth redistribution. I also think that some of you vastly underestimate the amount of abundance that is going to result from these systems maturing and getting fully embedded into society.

What I feel like he is kinda obnoxious. L. et’s talk about how Jordan Peterson—the totally not-right-wing intellectual maverick—just coincidentally spends all his time pandering to every reactionary fear in the book while clutching his pearls and insisting he’s just asking questions, sweetie! Because what’s more neutral and scholarly than retweeting Great Replacement-adjacent garbage, platforming ethnonationalists, and doing that classic centrist move of ranting about "postmodern neo-Marxists" (a term so vague it could mean anything from college students to the ghost of Karl Marx haunting your dreams)? And let’s not forget his deeply scientific fascination with "IQ differences" between races—you know, that totally innocent topic that definitely doesn’t have a long, ugly history of being used to justify white supremacy! But no, no, he’s just a classical liberal, you see—the kind who accidentally ends up on every far-right podcast, accidentally fuels every culture-war panic, and accidentally sounds exactly like a guy who’d be very upset if his daughter dated outside her race. Let also talk about his fanbase is a masterclass in irony:

• They rant about "snowflakes" while forming cult-like online hug-boxes where any criticism of Peterson is met with 10-paragraph essays about postmodernism (a term they absolutely cannot define).
  

- They fetishize logic and reason but will uncritically swallow every word he says because he used the word "archetype" once and now they think they’re Jung scholars.

• They unironically believe universities are Marxist hellscapes—despite the fact that Peterson himself lived comfortably in academia for decades before he realized grifting reactionary dudes on YouTube pays better.
  

Source: 31/3/25 USTR NTE - Foreign Trade Barriers 2025 pg 257-261

https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/files/Press/Reports/2025NTE.pdf

our clan bio has 2 or 3 words about being inclusive because i’m queer and don’t want homophobes in my clan. i’ve been running this clan for years and it’s never been this bad. this has gone from something that happens like once a year at most to a monthly occurrence.