The Proud Boys are single and ready to mingle on their new dating site

The perfect opportunity for those [white] women with a fetish for playing STD Pokémon. Because you will definitely “catch them ALL.”

“I’m having the same issues with that sentence. I can’t figure out how to fix it, but it just sounds clunky and like there is something wrong with it.”

Two words: stoner English.

Boring has linked up with Dull, Scotland and Bland, NSW to form the League of Extraordinary Communities, also known as the Trinity od Tedium.

@Alan Robertshaw:

I know in the grand scheme of things there are bigger things to criticise about all this; but there’s just something about:

HOW MUCH ALCOHOL AND DRUGS CAN YOU CONSUME?

that’s making me twitchy.

Is it grammatically correct? It just doesn’t seem to scan right.

I expect that’s probably because “alcohol” is a mass noun and “drugs” is a counted noun, so “much” is wrong for one but “many” would be wrong for the other. As a writer, I would normally rephrase something like this to either split it up or use only one type of noun.

Further, “how many drugs” still seems a bit wrong, for semantic reasons, as it’s probably the quantity of stuff rather than the number of different types that they’d be interested in. And “alcohol” seems a little too formal in this context.

Ultimately, I’d suggest something like “How much booze and dope can you do” instead.

@moregeekthan:

“X contains many singles far more appealing than the Proud Boys,” is true for an awfully large range of X.

Even a wallet.

Except in Canada.

The drugs and alcohol question could be their clever way of weeding out users from the pure, alabaster madonnas they will save for their repopulation plans. With the former and any leftist women they somehow fantasize they’ll reel in, condoms are O.K.!

Nah, they’re just not worried about grammar.

@ surplus, prith et al

So basically they’re not-grammar nazis?

@Alan, you might have captured the only legit instance ever of not-grammar nazis. Nice one! 🙂

On the subject of Canadian racism, anti-racist activists in my city protested the local news organizations for poorly representing the local George Floyd/BLM protests, overemphasizing solidarity with the States and underemphasizing racist police brutality here.

Porter said the conversation we’re all having about racism now was sparked by the death of George Floyd, a black man in Minnesota who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes. But she said the conversation here should be focused on racism in Canada that is often swept under the rug because people claim it’s not as bad here as it is in America.

Edit: I should say that I did not attend those protests and my only source of information about them is that article I linked, which is rather vague, so I’m reading between the lines a bit when I’m saying what their motivations were.

Desmond Cole, journalist, (best selling!!) author and activist from Toronto:

‘Canada insists on being surprised by its own racism’
https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/desmond-cole-canada-insists-on-being-surprised-by-its-own-racism/

Yeah, the ‘we’re so much better!’ thing is being called out all over, thank goodness.

So they want methed up mommas for their babies? Perhaps the trailer parks need repopulating, then. Or, maybe they’re using it as a way to weed out unfit breeders?

So they want methed up mommas for their babies? Perhaps the trailer parks need repopulating, then. Or, maybe they’re using it as a way to weed out unfit breeders?

No, it’s definitely the first option.

@Joe

Kat, no one is going to have sex with them sober! What choice do they have?

In fairness to the Proud Boys, I must concede the point.

@Katherine the Adequate:

Perhaps the trailer parks need repopulating, then.

Hey, can we please try not to stigmatise people for having less money?

As someone who spent several of their formative years in a trailer park I would like to second the request of not lumping those dicks in with the poor. I’d say ninety percent of those who lived there were wonderful people.

@Viscaria, Fishy Goat:
I know I’ve brought up Royson James before, who used to have a regular column on the front of the GTA section in the Toronto Star, and is now operating more freelance.

The last time I mentioned him, it was for his article on the Peel District School Board back in March, specifically for the damning 42-page report from the commission investigating them, which specified how black students had been deliberately sidelined and discriminated against for decades and the people instigating the problems mostly driving out anybody who complained. Well, unsurprisingly, there’s another article on that subject from this weekend:
Parents have pleaded, protested and marched for changes to be made to the Peel school board. It’s long past time to root out the racists

How is it possible that elected trustees on the Peel District School Board (PDSB) still have a job when they are responsible for the most vile, racist, perverse and utterly despicable school board in recent Canadian memory?

How is the unelected education director in Peel still holding down his job?

Have they, in Peel, with the second largest school board in the province, not presided over schools where Black students are called the N-word, Muslim students are characterized as mad bombers, and one trustee branded Brampton’s McCrimmon Middle School with a large African Canadian student population as “McCriminal?”
[…]
This is not a secret. We identified its name many times before and called it so. Few listened, until, maybe, George Floyd. And for how long?

In this space on March 23, before everyone came face-to-face with the impact of a racist knee on a Black man’s neck, Peel parent Danielle Dowdy, absolutely distressed at the conduct of her publicly funded PDSB called the board’s practice “unfathomable.”
[…]
For crying out loud, if Quaker Oats can admit Aunt Jemima has racist roots and remove the branded image that has greeted breakfasts for 130 years, certainly we can root out the racists at one of our school boards.

Immediately.

The main issue now is that the provincial Education Minister, who commissioned the report in the first place, has been mostly sitting back and letting the School Board fix itself; and that obviously isn’t happening because the rot is way too deep for that.

Canada kills a lot less Black and Indigenous people using the police.

It also kills a lot less White people — our police is simply much less deadly than US police.

In ratios it’s pretty similar: Blacks are killed about triple the rate of Whites, and Indigenous people about 6x the rate of Whites.

@numerobis
Do police have guns in Canada? I’ve been to Canada a few times but can’t recall whether the police had guns when I was there.

@Naglfar

Yes, the police have guns in Canada. We don’t have quite as many shootings of unarmed civilians, though they did murder a man in Malton this weekend after being called in to help him when his family was concerned he was a danger to himself due to a mental health emergency. Fucking pigs.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53141449

@ catalpa

Ugh. How the fuck can a “well-being” check end up with you dead?

But I suppose this illustrates the point. For all sorts of reasons I think “defunding the police” is an unfortunate choice of terminology. But the police can’t be expected to be social workers or mental health professionals; so spend the money on people who can. That’s so much better for everybody. The police are relieved of a task they’re totally unsuited for, and a family would still have their dad.

@Catalpa

We don’t have quite as many shootings of unarmed civilians

That is probably somewhat due to training differences. American police departments hire programs specifically to teach cops how to kill with less restraint.

@Alan
It means what it says. There’s nothing redeemable in policing as it exists in the States, the only option is to abolish the current setup entirely and start from scratch.

@Alan

What Dalillama said. White progressives who have been fearing death squads… aren’t wrong, but tend to miss that cops have been exactly that for decades – just not for white people (usually).

Moggie, point taken. My late great aunt lives in a nice trailer court. Unfortunately in the semi-rural area where I grew up, trailers were a favorite location for meth producers/dealers/users. People like that can stigmatize anything associated with them. Still, generalizations are both lazy and unfair.

For all sorts of reasons I think “defunding the police” is an unfortunate choice of terminology.

Nothing unfortunate or unintentional about that terminology. Abolish the police.

@Katherine the Adequate

People like that can stigmatize anything associated with them.

In my experience, wealthy people also use drugs and often have publicized addictions, yet we don’t hear the same sorts of stereotypes and mocking of mansions. Even if some people in trailer parks use drugs like meth (and in pretty much every segment of society some will use drugs of varying types), it’s best not to perpetuate the stereotype.

Or, in song form (and also just generally a good song relevant to the topic of police abolition):

It’s also worth noting that trailer parks are precarious living situations, somewhat by design. The people living there may own the mobile home they live in, but they don’t own the land beneath it, which means they can be evicted; some of the usual rules about capping rent increases don’t apply; and many ‘mobile homes’ aren’t actually particularly mobile.

This is one of the beats that Slactivist has been talking about for years, so much so that he has a tag for it on his blog:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/tag/manufactured-housing/
His take is that the best way to deal with the general situation is to have the people living there own the land as a co-op.

To quote from one of his articles:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2017/04/06/and-i-dreamed-i-was-dying/

This one is in Virginia. It’s the familiar story of working-class Americans who own their homes, but not the land beneath them. The landlord who’s been collecting their rent on that land for decades neglected to maintain the community’s sewage system, which the city of Manassas now says would cost too much to repair.

Two possible expenses here: One is the cost of a loan that would allow these homeowners to purchase the land beneath their homes and to repair the now-condemned sewer system. The other is the cost of eviction borne by 49 families, all the moving and transition costs for them and their communities, the cost of all those children being forced to switch schools, the potential future costs of their increased reliance on social assistance, and the fact that even after all of that the city would still be stuck with the condemned property which would still be unfit and unsellable due to those leaking sewage pipes.

My guess is that the latter cost is higher just in absolute dollar terms. And it’s immeasurably higher if one accounts for the costs that don’t appear on a stunted dollars-only balance sheet.

@ jenora

Same story here.

Often already vulnerable people, and just get exploited even more.

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/pensioner-pay-thousands-over-dilapidated-3764060

Something else to remember about mobile homes and manufactured housing is that stick-built houses tend to appreciate in value, but manufactured houses depreciate instead. Land tends to appreciate as well. So in a trailer park, the appreciable asset (the land) is owned by the landlord, while the depreciable assets (the homes themselves) are owned by the residents. The residents bear the cost of depreciation, while the landlord does not.

They are also subject to eviction with, usually, little protection, since their leases are month-to-month and more eviction protections apply to renters, compared with technical homeowners.

It’s expensive to be poor.

@Jenora Fuer

and many ‘mobile homes’ aren’t actually particularly mobile.

They never were, nor were they ever intended to be. They aren’t ‘mobile homes’, they’re ‘Mobile homes’, originally manufactured in Mobile, Alabama.

@Alan, Policy of Madness:
Given the number of stories I’ve seen like the one above, where the landlord let the sewage system collapse, or others where the landlord just kept increasing rents to drive people off (since manufactured housing like that has different rules about rent increases) so that the land could be sold to a developer to make more money… it makes me curious as to whether or not somebody could apply the concept of ‘constructive dismissal’ to eviction.

Granted, that gets us back to the ‘It’s expensive to be poor’ issue anyway, since the people living there are unlikely to be able to afford much in the way of legal fees.

(For those unfamiliar with the term, ‘constructive dismissal’ is where an employer, rather than firing someone and then being required to pay severance, actively makes working there intolerable for the employee until they quit. Many jurisdictions have specific rules treating that as essentially firing them, but it requires documentation and legal support.)

@Jenora

Constructive eviction is a thing, where the landlord changes the locks, or turns off the power, or in some other way makes living in a place intolerable to impossible, without going through the courts to get a formal eviction. That generally does not apply to raising rent beyond someone’s means, but definitely would apply to letting maintenance decay to the point where you can’t flush your toilet.

But, again, eviction protections are usually aimed at people renting houses or apartments, not people who own houses but rent the lot. Some jurisdictions are better at extending those protections to lot-renters than others. But there’s usually nothing that prevents a lot-owner from just ending the lease at the end of the term (and since these are usually month-to-month leases, the end of the lease term can be next month) and making the resident move or forfeit their home.

Even under the best circumstances, a manufactured house can be worth next to nothing in as little as 30 years.

@Dalillama

Mobile, Alabama does seem to manufacture mobile homes, but the idea that mobile homes are named after Mobile seems to be a Snopes Lost Legend.

@An Impish Pepper
Did you actually read the text before you posted that? Try doing so in future.

I did, including the link at the bottom.

I did, including the link at the bottom.

That section … it’s my favorite part of Snopes. 😀

@ jenora & POM

it makes me curious as to whether or not somebody could apply the concept of ‘constructive dismissal’ to eviction.

That is a thing here; and it doesn’t just entitle the tenant to damages and/or re-entry, it’s actually a criminal offence.

All to do with a landlord called Rachman. To the extent the offence is often referred to as ‘rachmanism’ even by the courts.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1977/43/section/1

@Alan, Policy of Madness:
Interesting. Didn’t know that, as the only two times I’ve really been involved in a landlord/tenant situation (once on each side) both involved people I’d known from University, and each ended amicably.

Of course, as Policy of Madness pointed out above, a lot of the usual landlord/tenant protections don’t seem to apply to ‘trailer parks’ in many jurisdictions, and that is much of the problem. Attach that to the fact that, as in the example I quoted above, the ‘system’ often seems to prefer spending more money to follow all the legal complexities and screw the people involved than it would just giving the tenants some form of ‘right of first refusal’ and loaning them money so they could buy the property themselves. Combined you end up with a system that actively shoots itself in the foot because people can’t bear to see poor people given a break.

In the U.S., the ‘ahh! communism!’ reaction is probably part of that, though I wish I could say that there isn’t that reaction in Canada too.

I never knew about the Aladdin thing until now.
Isn’t it ironic that they named themselves after a song written by two Jews?

@Virgin Mary
I think they meant it to be ironic, the point was that they disliked the song.

Register a fake account as Freddie Oversteegen, see if they get the reference 🙂

Just to clear up some of the concerns expressed in these comments…

1. In no way do we want to encourage women to do drugs. We want the women who don’t need encouragement to do those things.

2. We have no problem with minority chicks. We have members of all ethnicities who have wives and girlfriends (and children) of all ethnicities. Personally I’m into Puerto Rican chicks but you have to be careful. They’ll cut you.

3. We’re not the guys who live in their mom’s basements. That’s AntiFa. We generally have jobs and families.

Just wanted to clear that up. Have a good’un. 😉