StillPaisleyCat

I was absolutely dumbfounded at the time.

There was so much revealing racism and more in that statement, but also American Exceptionalism and willingness to do anything to get a gold medal.

Agricultural productivity is relevant insomuch as the economic definition of ‘labour productivity’ was developed for that context.

It’s a measure of return of labour to capital.

It is NOT measure of how productive the human capital of a population is.

You and others here are mistakenly confusing human capital which includes investments in

• education
• skills
• health and longevity

with labour productivity.

Also, you are very far off the mark if you think that Canada’s education and skills training is in any way inferior to that of the United States. On every possible measure from literacy to cognitive skills and abilities, the Canadian adult population is better than the US in international comparisons such as by the OECD.

Skilled trades programs are arguably better in Europe but not in the USA.

As a woman older than you, with a mother and aunts of Lwaxana’s age, I found it painfully misogynistic.

All the more so because Picard (and Roddenberry himself) were continually chasing after younger women and nothing was made of it.

I actually am reconciled to Lwaxana and love the much-reviled episode ‘Cost of Living’ but the amount of continuing ridicule and hate she gets from younger male fans drives home the misogyny.

Meanwhile they’re all cool with Picard with Vash.

More likely not catching the predictive spelling.

It’s edited.

But Stewart’s preferences for women generations younger that he is are well established and very public. As are his interventions to give Picard younger love interests right up to the final scene.

I give credit to Majel Barrett credit for leaning into the character and script. It’s more bearable knowing she was likely making Patrick Stewart uncomfortable too!

Every show has a writer’s ‘bible’ that describes the backstory and main characters.

In the case of Lwaxana, a character written for Majel Barret Roddenberry’s wife, some fairly misogynistic stereotypes of middle aged women were laid out for the writers.

Two thoughts.

Most Canadians view changing your administration as a collective responsibility of all US citizens. Kind thoughts are appreciated but most of us are increasingly impatient.

Second, have you considered that, like many other Americans, you may be a Canadian by descent? And if so, any children you may have also?

At present, due to a 2023 Superior Court Bjorkquist decision on Lost Canadians in Ontario (unchallenged by the federal government), there is an exceptional situation where people born outside Canada who are descendants of people born in Canada can apply to claim citizenship.

See this page - the flag at the top gives the latest extension of the interim provisions (that override the existing law that the Court stayed).

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/canadian-citizenship/become-canadian-citizen/eligibility/already-citizen.html

While I wouldn’t normally direct anyone to Reddit, the CanadianCitizenship subreddit has a lot of information on people’s experiences in navigating the process.

See the FAQ at https://www.reddit.com/r/Canadiancitizenship/s/rHN4JVQwQO

We need to let go of the rule of thumb that Canada is 1/10th the US in population.

It’s not just a nitpick to say that’s off now.

Canada has had a more rapidly growing population such that it’s been 1/9th that of the United States for most of a decade.

A quick calculation on current population estimates puts it as 347.5 / 41.5 million = ~ 8.4.

That said, Canada still has more manufacturing jobs per capita even with the correction.

I appreciate that you recognize that so-called ‘labour productivity’* is primarily a measure of the quality and technological level of the capital that the labour is working with.

Too often, comparative measures of labour productivity and discussion focuses on hours worked, vacation days etc.

These are very much second-order.

Education levels are not second-order but Canadian workers are more literate and better educated across the board than the US manufacturing workers.

So, the real question in manufacturing (as it is in housing construction), “Why is the Canadian private sector so unwilling to invest in ongoing technological upgrading let alone innovation?”

• ‘Labour productivity’ was originally a measure of how much a given number of workers could produce with a fixed piece of land. Crop improvements and technology increased that in the agricultural revolution.

This really is a great piece.

Interesting first-person perspective on Carney as a fellow graduate student at Oxford.

But it was the latter half of the piece, that reflects on how Canadians who study in the UK or US are constantly subjected to overly aggressive declarations that deny Canada as a nation, which really hit home for me.

As a Canadian who attended graduate school in the US, I experienced almost verbatim every denial and put down in this piece.

And so many more constant and dumbfoundingly bizarre nonsequitur microaggressions. (One of the American I shared office space with lashed out that Canadians didn’t have any ‘real’ Black people so we had to borrow them from Jamaica to compete as athletes in Track and Field.)

So many of these offensive remarks were self contradictory - e.g.,

• Canada doesn’t exist as a nation or culture but at the same time Canadian students are vocally criticized for being ‘so nationalistic’

• there’s no need to include Canada in a listing of macroeconomic indicators of major economies because it’s ‘just a regional economy in in North America’ but only the US indicators are included. Meanwhile, California is profiled and discussed as a separate economy because it’s ‘so large’.

• or a renowned professor who I worked for as a research assistant observing at some random point when he realized where I had done my undergraduate degree ‘Oh, you went to a real place’ - which given how difficult it was to get into that school and program, should never have been a question.

Carating the underlying sexism in the writers’ bible for Lwaxana’s character is not a way to make mothers feel appreciated.

Especially, when a lot of the joke was that she was chasing Picard - who avoided women who were mothers mainly due to his actor’s aversion to women his own age.

Picard was an age appropriate match for both Lwaxana and Beverly, both mothers.

Instead, due to Patrick Stewart’s interventions, we got Picard chasing after his much younger real life romantic interest who played Vash, and more recently Stewart’s attempts to shoe-horn in his very much younger wife into a closing scene for Picard.

I don’t think you needed [sic], just the comma that StarTrek.com omitted.

So, this is a big reveal - the scenario is a planet that has not been but now is a part of the Federation.

The viewpoint is civilian.

The resort workplace setting, like the old Loveboat or Fantasy Island, means that anyone can come by as the guest star.

Actually, most campaigns send out a collection team in the day after election day to take down the big sign as well as signs put up on public property. They also typically pick them up from lawns as requested.

Some will wait a day or two to celebrate the win but sign pickup

Most candidates keep the signs from one campaign to another. It takes a while for new signs to be printed at the beginning of a campaign. So, using old signs means getting signs up in the early days before your opponents and saving costs.