I got checks and balance, I flex dramatic
I got checks and balance, I flex dramatic
Weird to talk about much else when Red Cross field hospital tents are maybe en route to set up in the Rona parking lot near your home but, uh, let’s try it out.
People were surprised, for some reason, that Jason Kenney isn’t going to make an eventual COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for Albertans. That’s weird for a lot of reasons, but the outrage is understandable. It fixes The Problem! People should do it! Well, they weren’t going to anyway. We were always careening toward record low inoculation for that thing that keeps us indoors, at least some of us, even though the bars are still open. We could probably get those numbers up with little effort.
Vaccines are good, but for a few reasons people don’t like them anymore. So while the B.C. girlboss doctor fans got to yell their SLAY QUEENS at a witty rejoinder this week, we get to ponder why the worst part of the movie Baseketball set in motion a cultural current that will probably keep us isolated, scared, and dying a bit longer than our peers.
There is that vein - the anti-vax strain that hinges on junk autism science - but those groups are passé and, for the most part, seem to have metastasized to collect more cultural warfare, like a measles-ridden Katamari. The bodily autonomy/government tyranny set are probably our biggest local faction, though they seem to hold hands comfortably with the “COVID is fake” set. The new age faith healers/homeopathy people seem pretty quiet on this one, but are nicely supplanted by the Bill Gates sperm spreading/NWO set bolstered by QAnon et al. Their numbers are small but their projection during this pandemic is larger and louder than ever, so their numbers aren’t the problem. The halo of people around them getting contact highs because their information flows are inundated and narrow, that’s the big prize for a counter-offensive.
Quebec was staring at low vaccination numbers once upon a time. Western countries ceded a ton of trust after World War 2, with a ton of well publicized scientific frauds perpetuated by capitalist and militarist science. The same coin, for sure, but you don’t easily bounce back from your MK-Ultras, Tuskeegees, and the like. Our immersion in United States media means we know full well about everything from non-consensual hysterectomies and to the spread of Lyme disease just to see what happened next, but we have more than our fair share of domestic sterilizations and medical experimentation in residential schools. The sum total is hostility and skepticism of medical science that is, for many groups, well earned.
The result? Quebec wisely sent in a too-small army of vaccine counsellors to sit down with people and talk. Listen to their concerns, give them information, and let them be more informed than Facebook and family allowed. The study results are preliminary but it seems to be working. If you can imagine the reaction to a mass media campaign or even shaming by assholes on the internet, a one-on-one approach has obvious appeal. If the province does nothing to boost vaccination numbers, we’re in for an extremely bad time. Quebec offers a model that provides dignity and information for relatively low cost.
It’s sensible and might work. For those reasons, it probably won’t happen. Bless our home.
👀Determined to turn Alberta into a conceptual ebola cosplay, JayKen orders up some tent hospitals instead of paying people decent wages, hiring enough people, or using his powers to control a pandemic properly.
🤬Organized truckers in Alberta could bring this place to its knees and probably get any demand they wanted met with a smile.
🤏Gary Bettman extracted some obvious graft for the NHL straight out of your tax dollars.
🏃♂️I figure we are only about ten days away from a 4chan raid on CSSD classes with /b/ posters shoving groypers in the face of some local teens. I hate that sentence so much.
😚Jason is doing a bad job keeping people alive, so he went out found a group without white skin to blame, as is tradition.
🧛♀️The reasons they tell you are always lies. The real reason is “we want money now and our friends want that land.”
😻Good thing we don’t have a major respiratory illness going around or an oxygen shortage might be a problem.
🙇♂️The median income of a single person in Canada is around $33,000. Grimes, who has a kid with a dumb billionaire and is a successful recording artist (her best song was written for and rejected by Rihanna) received almost $100,000 from the Canadian government to make her music.
🦷Bloomberg recognizes that COVID comes at an opportune time to transfer wealth away from boomers and Gen X. This might explain middle age politicians choosing to sit on their hands, silently cursing first-world life expectancy.
🦾We import immigrants to do jobs we don’t want to pay well for and then do nothing as they die.
👩🚒The North is already thawing and when it does, it will take the planet with it.
🤠The weed gold rush is collapsing as the industry condenses around majors, and it will take rank and file employees with it.
👔We demand freedom to this genius who turned mansions into room rentals.
😈The gentrification of Austin, Texas.
👨🏻🎤We need a national bus service, pronto.
📉Tyler from Team Advantage went on Kino Lefter to talk more Bond.
🎧If you support Harbinger, you get to hear an interview with a Briarpatch Magazine alumnus, which is perhaps the only good magazine.
🔇Adolph Reed Jr. was on Oats for Breakfast, which is just a delight.
🎚️On Alberta Advantage we talked about bad cops and bad Nazis. No it’s two episodes, actually.
🩰The Migrant Rights Film Festival begins on December 10th. You can check it out here for online screenings.
👸Lost Time Media is being sued for having the audacity to record a cop saying things. It probably has nothing to do with the fact that they made a documentary about Calgary Police beating the shit out of people and killing them. You can contribute to their legal defense fund here.
A Quick Note: if you want us to include an article, petition, link to an event, or just want to drop us a quick line, reply to this newsletter or reach us at albertaadvantagenewsletter [at] gmail [dot] com. We’d love to hear from you! If you want to send some old timey mail, grab those stamps and send tributes/cake/not anthrax to Alberta Advantage Podcast, PO Box 52167 Edmonton Trail, Calgary, AB, T2E 8K9.
Our editor is Clinton Hallahan. Newsletter subject lines are stolen from these songs.
