Grizzlybur

The German and Austrian ones are much better from what I heard internally and I believe they are also unionized? Or just have more labour protections. But yeah the products are cheap and the quality was oftentimes acceptable or even better than name brand stuff. The cheap prices were the only reason I could eat well in the US. I love and hate them.

Pretty much yep lol. To Aldi’s credit, I got USD$18/hr while everywhere else paid at most $11-13/hr. The working conditions sure as hell made you earn it though, I still have back pain from my manager pushing me to unload the food deliveries faster and faster. One whole food pallet of mixed foods, 7ft tall or more, needed to be done in 30 minutes on average, within 3 hours before opening. We would regularly get 6-7 pallets, and during peak sales I’d have to solo 10-13 pallets by myself.

Grocery workers need to unionize YESTERDAY. I wonder if a grocery store union could be an element in solving the overly greedy food profiteering. Call me a communist but food should only be sold exactly at how much it cost to grow and transport it to the store and a living wage for the farmers and employees. Go make profit somewhere else capitalist boy. Deeply interested in how those New York City owned grocery stores will play out. I hope they are successful.

NGL this was mostly just me ranting rather than making any worthwhile discussion lol

I’d personally be worried about a mass influx of skilled labour coming to Canada and oversaturating our job market further. It’s already difficult out here, but maybe it’d equal out with people from Canada finding more opportunity in Europe? I think the people who would rather stay in Canada might find the competition stifling though. It’s a compliment in a way, Europeans are incredibly talented and skilled people.

It’d be great for the country, but I worry it might not be necessarily great for Canadian worker rights and employment.

Fuck Aldi. I worked for them for several years, the cheap prices are at the expense of overworking their employees and keeping an absolute skeleton crew. In the one I worked at in the US, it was in the supervisor handbook that any employee that even joked about forming a union was to be fired on the spot. Legal protections vary state to state on that ofc, but I’m not interested in doxing myself further as to what state I worked in.

I’d only be interested in them being in Canada if the workers could unionize. They would still make a killing even if unionizing increased the costs of operation, their stuff would still be cheap compared to most grocers.

The closest comparison price and quality wise I’ve seen is FreshCo, but even then uhhh not really. The store brand items from Aldi were actually good or passable quality. The store brand items in Canada from any grocery franchise is shit imo.

They’re gonna look at this shit in a few centuries in the same way that we look at old chinese foot binding . I agree with others that having this expensive and very visually apparent procedures done must be some sort of way for them to flaunt status and wealth or something. It’s hard to imagine someone thinking this looks good, it’s nearly uncanny valley.

I run a few small communities on the fediverse, and its tough trying to start one up. Granted I try to keep mine canadian focused, but its an uphill battle either way. I was never one to volunteer or be an admin of a community, but I wanted to get the ball rolling somehow. Very disheartening to realize I’m the only one posting in the community, esp because I’m just a lurker at heart.

It can be quite difficult, but not impossible to stay away from US goods in Canada. Given our geopolitical closeness, truly buying nothing from the US is likely functionally impossible. Somewhere down/up the chain there will be someone using imported things to make the goods you buy.

Me personally, I don’t sweat it too much. I buy Canadian when I can, but I don’t kill myself over it. The one big thing I draw the line at is foods, I’m not really in a position to be buying more expensive food over morals. If the US bag of carrots are cheaper, I’m buying them. I do however choose the Canadian option if given the chance, and have been having great fun exploring what Canadian alternatives/products are available.

The real hit in all this is the business owners of Canada. I’ve spoken to quite a few people who do little side businesses and it’s largely impossible to sell to the US with the tariffs. Vice versa too, I sometime go on ebay to buy vintage enamel pins, and its just not realistic to drop like $30 on one pin, with most of it being tariffs. It’s somehow cheaper to get pins from Britain and France on ebay than from the US now. This is just a small anecdote of the situation of course, but you can imagine how it effects everything else in the economy small and large. I worry that if we return to the status quo, we will be simply economically domesticated by the US.

Big respect on not buying games on steam. Personally if its not on steam, I’m not buying the game. The only exceptions I’ve ever made was for technically Minecraft, Star Sector, and Vintage Story.

Glad to see Angine De Poitrine on there. I mean they are already having their songs played during Habs games.

They have a playlist on their Spotify of other quebecois artists that presumably inspired them, I’d recommend giving it a listen. I believe it’s called “Du Quebec”, which roughly translates to “some Quebec” or “of Wuebec”. There are some iconic French Canadian on there as well as some real underground shit.

Crucial, but depending on the design technically not required! There are designs of planes where the entire plane is just one big wing. Buuuuuuut having the traditional rudder, aileron, and elevator is tried trued and reliable.

My nominations for French language:

Fabienk by Angine de Poitrine.

It is quite the upcoming and popular band, and they are something entirely unique and Quebecois. Although, arguably there is no French being spoken in the music persay, but they are from Saguenay Quebec. If they don’t count as an international hit already, this is absolutely my top choice.

Stable by oui merci.

This song is rather unlike their other music, and for the better in my opinion. This is really catchy and distinct from other music and is pleasant to listen to.

Dogue by Ariane Roy

Very slow but methodic, and sung with a rather beautiful voice.

Anarcolique by Jérôme 50

Jérôme is an absolutely wonderful artist and I would struggle to imagine someone more fit to represent Quebec in music than the artist who made the iconic Tokébakicitte. He is clearly proud of being from Quebec and keeps his music rooted in that. This would be my second top nomination.

I really want to nominate P’tit Belliveau, but he has not released any songs in 2025 or sooner :(

I’ll post some more nominations for the English language category, as well as some for the first nations languages. I found and know of a couple of artists who might fit that description – I feel like im awfully uncertified to judge their music though since its so culturally different to what I know and I do not understand the language even a bit. Feels wrong to just rank it purely based on how it sounds without knowing the content and cultural context, y’know?

I feel like if it is decided its not an international hit, Angine de poitrine must be the representative. They have just been absolutely blowing up lately.