I’m Canadian, and I plan to never visit the USA again.

Ever.

There is no “…until” for me. The world without the US is easily big enough for me.

Two places I always wanted to see were New Orleans and Hawaii. The latter might end up breaking away, but New Orleans is probably off my list forever.

So we’ve apparently committed to buying 88 of these things. What direction out of the contract we have, and what are the consequences?

I get your point, but what is needed is for Canada to be the adult in the room.

True enough, but we can get stopgap gen 4.5 fighters at about half the price of the F-35, and with a vastly lower operational cost.

Get a fleet of Gripen Es, and run them in parallel with our existing Hornets, replacing the Hornets as they age out over the next decade or so. By then the new GCAP fighter should be in full production.

A lot of people - including me - instinctively say “good, let’s make it the four eyes and exclude the US.”

But really, we need to do away with the x-eyes program entirely, in its current form.

Shared intelligence is great, but the biggest advantage to 5Eyes has always been that it indirectly allows countries to spy on their own citizens. It’s invasive, illegal bullshit that needs to stop.

Screw this “waiting another 10-15 years.” We need to join the GCAP program, and get seriously active.

Lead time is necessarily immense, but we could both shorten it and improve the end product.

“Waiting for someone else to develop” has been a symptom of Canada’s Aerospace industry since the Arrow was shitcanned, and has crept into our national subconscious stream. We need to attack that attitude.

He’d be OK with that.

Sell them to Cuba.

I think Canada needs to accept a stopgap measure - the Gripen, Typhoon, Rafale, or Super Hornet - and dive headfirst into GCAP. FCAS is tempting as well, but GCAP is farther along and the countries are probably closer in goals to Canada.

Gen-X guy with possibly too much interest in the subject.

Shaving it bald for women started to become normal about 15 years ago. Trimming it was more common then, and going back to end of the 1980s, shaving was a rare and weird fetish in the western world.

As for why, I’d say it’s because porn normalized it - and porn did it because as mainstream content became more explicit, shaved pubes were both easier to keep clean for the actresses, and (more importantly) showed more.

I find it funny that now that it’s become mainstream, hair is becoming a growing fetish.

As an aside, since pubic hair is a sign of sexual maturity, some of the generations that grew up with hair down there have a subconscious connection between bald and sexually immature, i.e. children.

“What’s the point?” The point is to seize power and get rich.

They will destroy whatever they want or need in order to become rich and powerful.

Sorry, but this is pathetic.

edit To be clear, celebrity boxing matches for charity are a common, fun thing. The head coaches of two rival sports teams, or the mayors of different cities do this sort of thing. Sometimes as part of a friendly rivalry when trade negotiations are getting tense, sure.

But the US is declaring war on us. The time for fun and games with the US is over. We deal with them politically, diplomatically, and economically; and as coldly as possible.

OP is a troll, shill, or Nazi.

Says the two-faced, Trump-loving, corrupt, self-serving little fascist.

I actually has psyche written down, and changed it.

It’s not exactly the normal use of zeitgeist and maybe volksgeist would be a better term (except tthat we don’t use it in English), but I feel that this is a relatively new aspect to Americanism, starting in WWII. It’s still more of a growth on their psyche than a fundamental part of it.

It also has some parsllels with British exceptionalism up to the endnof the 19th century

I’m a Canadian who has lived and worked in the US, so I’ve got some familiarity with it.

There is a pervading sense of exceptionalism buried deep in the American zeitgeist. It runs so deep that most people don’t even notice it - even on the outer edges.

Case in point: My closest friends down there were staunch leftists. In a land of gun owners and meat lovers, they were vegetarians and pacifists who marched in protests against the government. Most of the time they were quiet, charming, soft-spoken, but firm in their beliefs. Pretty much the polar opposite of the “loudmouth American tourist abroad” stereotype.

And yet if you asked them if the US was the greatest country on earth, they’d say “well yeah, which is why we have to fight for it.” An admirable sentiment, but the “well yeah” speaks volumes for how the country sees itself.

The protest singers who lived through McCarthy are the same. Woody Guthrie and his son Arlo would probably say that for all of its flaws and horror, the US is still the best nation we’ve got so far.

When you know deep in your soul that you’re the best, it’s hard not to let some subconscious arrogance show through.

And really most of the effort is going to be in the beginning, once you’ve figured out what your new preferred brands are, it starts getting easier.

This is an EXCELLENT point, and I really want to emphasize it as much as possible. We’re changing our habits at the moment, and that’s hard as hell to do. Once we’ve changed them, then maintenance and tweaks are trivial in comparison.

I know that software is a very different industry, but Mountain Equipment Co-Op went through this in Canada. The end result is that the new Mountain Equipment Company is a for-profit, US-owned reseller of overseas crap, just like everyone else.

The problem I see is that browsers are still evolving significantly, and I’m worried about what will happen if Mozilla goes T-U. Sure we have the code, but will it continue to be developed after that point?

I can’t speak for anyone else here, but personally this whole fiasco was the final kick in the ass I needed.

I’m not looking for the US to fix themselves so I can buy from them again, I’m looking to divorce them for good.

They’ll probably pull back from the brink in the next few years. I will still avoid buying American.

They’ll probably go through a period of rebuilding and political/economic outreach. I will still avoid them.

Because even if they recover from Trump, they’ll eventually do it again.

time will tell if they go further.

Having seen this FAR too often, I have a different view:

Capitalism and greed will determine when they go further.

There is no “if” about it. Mitchell Baker is in it to get rich by destroying the platform, and is sharing enough of the corpse’s leavings with others to make sure they protect her.

No, but Aunt May did.