I kind of wish I could un-read this article. Holy fuck.

Well that’s weird… This is literally playing on my Spotify right now, part of a random playlist. The Matrix is glitching.

Ah, TFWs. If you go by the news, neither big farms nor Tim Horton’s can survive without them. I’m glad you’re treated well. It pains me to think about how much exploitation is in the industry.

It’s a dream of mine (and a handful of friends) to start a commune / cooperative farming thing (closer to the hobby side of things) east of Toronto once we pool enough money, so insights into the industry are fascinating to me. And yeah, we know it’s going to be more work and recurring failures than we can possibly imagine (especially to start) but we’re determined and going to be diligent in research and preparation before we jump into it.

Oof! Hello, fellow Ontarian here. I had no idea this was the case for Ontario farm workers! Is it common for people to be paid less than minimum wage and not get breaks? Is it just for specific times of year (ie harvesting) or for the entire growing season?

This may sound weird, but: thanks for the work you do in agriculture and feeding us! 😛 I’m in / from Toronto, and try to buy local when I can.

Hello again Mr. Stamets! ❤️

To be fair, he is obligated to toe the line and regurgitate his talking points, otherwise the IDF might make him go to the front.

I’m still on IRC! There’s a raw simplicity to it that I appreciate. You don’t have to use a bloated Electron app to connect to a proprietary service, you can just go straight text on the protocol-level in terminal (if you’re nuts), and the protocol is open and simple enough to understand that you can easily make your own client even if you’re a lazy or mediocre dev.

So IRC, Lemmy, and I guess Instagram (if that counts)

Honestly that’s even better. Ugly dogs need extra love. But I’m sure the by-law accounts for that. I’m no dog lawyer!

Is this Toronto? This looks a lot like Toronto. If you’re from Toronto you should know that there is a city by-law that states if a cute dog is tied to your bike and you take a picture of it and submit it to Lemmy that you then legally get to keep the dog. Just FYI.

I’m not sure what that has to do with anything? I didn’t mention the emerald mine.

You get it put in and suddenly you think Musk is a sexy genius, apartheid wasn’t that bad, and that Tesla cars definitely aren’t trying to kill you.

Nah, they’re too busy running phone scams on senior citizens.

Edit: in retrospect this might come across as racist — I meant that the same people being paid to spread Indian nationalism online also probably have no problem running phone scams against other countries, and phone scam centres are de facto sanctioned by some local governments over there.

Anything that makes you think critically, ponder, analyse, or absorb knowledge is a grand thing.

I just had an idea: daily Lemmy debates. We pick a topic that is relevant to the day, and we engage in healthy, respectful debate, picking a side and exploring that stance until all points of logic are exhausted.

My dude, you and Stamets are my Lemmy heroes. I can’t imagine I’d spend that much time on Lemmy if you guys weren’t around.

Glad you’re here friend, and glad you’re doing better!

Dammit Reddit was so fucking unhealthy.

What’s really cool is seeing actual conversations taking place. I’m actually able to comment here and I’m not immediately being drowned out by being one of ten thousand comments or constant contrarian trolling.

It has also totally replaced Reddit for me. It reminds me a lot of the old internet and a bit of early Reddit. It’s a really cool experiment, and if it continues as-is I will be thrilled, and if not then I will forever have a sense of pride of what everyone here accomplished. It’s very cool.

I am also interested in alternatives as I still use Clockify. But I also need to rant about Clockify: oh my God it is so damn buggy. Whenever I use my VPN on Windows to connect to the office (split routing, so only traffic destined for the office goes over the VPN, not all traffic) Clockify goes in and out of “No internet connection…” for 5-10 seconds. It’s also constantly logging me out, and will sometimes pop up a ton of “new update available” dialogue windows at the same time.

It also doesn’t have great rounding options. And one of my clients has a tiered billing structure (X dollars up to a certain number of hours, Y dollars for anything over that in the month) which I don’t think I can track in Clockify at all, so I end up doing all of that manually every month.

I thought about looking for FOSS alternatives but haven’t gotten around to it yet. Also thought about doing my own FOSS thing with a paid hosted / support component, but I don’t have much cross-platform GUI dev experience.

Where’s my ring?!

Also, we’re all working poor. Wealth has transferred to the hands of a few. Of course some of us have slightly more than others, but from the perspective of those with all the wealth we’re all just living on pennies.

I’m sure you have SOME kind of skills that could be marketable if massaged the right way, no?

Rural ass Appalachia

haha say no more. I’m from Toronto and have never been to the Appalachians (rural or not), but uh… that area of America is well known. Infamous, even. I’m a bit surprised there’s a discernible gay community there at all. There’s a lot of “parTying” here too (I see what you did there), not my vibe at all. As someone from outside of America looking in (because we are perpetually bombarded with American culture) it seems like the vast majority of the country is anti-intellectual. Which is of course by design, it’s much easier to stage an authoritarian coup if the majority is too dumbed down to think critically and fight it. Plus starve the beast, wedge the class divide further, and you have masses of people fighting each other for crumbs. I suspect your life would be greatly improved if you were able to get the hell out of there (of course that is easier said than done). I can’t imagine it’s going to get much better there anytime soon.

Wow, imagine waiting 10 years to be with a meth dealer. That man clearly has some serious issues. And the gall to assume that someone would agree to be in a long-term relationship with an expiry date. Plus if things end up going really well, and he doesn’t want to wait for his meth-man anymore and just be fully committed to you, you then have a potentially angry ex who just got out of jail, expecting his guy to still be waiting for him. No matter which way that would go it would be absurdly messy.

They’d catfish a guy on Grindr, and then pummel the shit out of him.

What in the fuck? If something like that happened here it would be front page news. But the way you describe it, and the fact that it has a colloquial term, makes it seem like it’s a common occurrence? That’s fucked up to the point that I wouldn’t be surprised if you could apply for asylum in Canada because of it.

Okay, with all of that in mind I’d probably also be hesitant to accept and integrate friends into my life, and would have a very difficult time dating.

You mention the culture where you’re from – might I ask what part of the world you’re from?

I know this will sound very therapist-y, but why do you think it takes you so long to consider someone a friend? Do you have a very high threshold for what you consider a friend? Are you worried about trusting them?

Regarding the “they’re not the person I want to spend my life with, so what’s the point” statement: so what if you know you don’t want to spend your life with them? Are you enjoying your time with them at that moment? My friend, I worry that you’re sabotaging your present in search of your future, but what if you’re also sabotaging your future by doing that? We’re monkey-brained humans so we’re constantly pondering all “what ifs” and that can sometimes distract us from what is right in front of us at the time. We constantly spite good in search of perfection, but there usually isn’t such a thing. It’d be like refusing a modest lottery winning because you’re waiting for the big jackpot. Work with what you have, my dude!

I can appreciate being gay can greatly reduce the dating pool, too. I’m a bi man but most of my relationships have been het; scouring dating apps for gay men I find the vast majority I do not vibe with at all, and most bi men here are poly with het female partners and are looking for threesomes / group play – from my experience, anyway. So I can’t fully appreciate how difficult it is for you to find someone you connect with (culture where you’re from, someone to talk about philosophy and books, etc) but I do have some idea. However, even if they don’t check all your boxes, sometimes “good enough” can be good enough.

Ah, don’t be so hard on yourself. Most people are not “lookers” anyway. Win them over in other ways!