very_poggers_gay [they/them]

it’s honestly hard for me to say, because they’ve allowed themselves to fade into the background in the last few months. They’ve lost something like 30-50% of their support compared to the last election. Part of that is definitely strategic voting in our rotten voting system (e.g., genuine NDP/Green supporters casting votes for Liberals to keep Conservatives from winning), but they’ve also made it really easy just to forget about them, likely losing them genuine support and failing to connect with potential supporters.

I think they’re more comfortable nagging liberals to do marginally better for the working class than fighting for real power to make bigger changes.

Maybe I’m missing discussion about the Canadian federal election, but the Libs have won again.

At least the conservatives were kept from winning, but support for the NDP (the party to the left of the libs) is way down.

Oh absolutely. It’s a huge issue, especially in humanities and social sciences, where the barrier of entry makes it so that almost all published research is conducted by certain populations on themselves. Some people call it “WEIRD” populations, meaning western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (though that “weird” terminology is a bit stinky… I’m looking at the “E” and “D”). Interestingly, China has now overtaken the US in publishing the most highly cited research of any country, though I think their advances are mostly in natural sciences and engineering.

There are also issues with how we qualify good quality or *academic * research. Again, this is especially the case in social sciences and humanities where the standards have been set by colonial researchers who had the means to run expensive studies on large samples. As a result, a lot of research methodologies and ways of knowing that don’t align with the western colonial standards (e.g., qualitative research, narrative analysis) get discounted or written off entirely

Yup, I’ve got a paper that’s just about ready for submission, and if the journal accepts it for publication, we pay ~3k USD, so about $4k CAD.

Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting.

Hey America (and Canada, UK, Australia, etc.), how ya doing?

✅ Rejection of political plurality (See: Range of acceptable thought among mainstream political parties; Also, consider some self-reflection)

✅ Strong central power to preserve the political status quo (See: Mainstream media apparatus, spanning news, movies, tv, etc.)

✅ Reductions in the rule of law (See: Absolute failure to hold politicians or corporations accountable)

✅ Reductions in the separation of powers (See: Politicians funded by and catering to corporate interests)

✅ Reductions in democratic Voting (See again: Politicians funded by and catering to corporate interests + absolute failure to hold politicians accountable; Also see: Rampant gerrymandering, erosion of voters’ right, zero democracy in the workplace or outside of political elections)