Notices by AskPippa🇨🇦 (askpippa@c.im)

If Canada is taken over economically or otherwise - no other election issues will matter. We'll lose control over things like heath care, various rights, etc. Don't assume you know the results. Polls can be wrong. Please VOTE.
#CanadaVotes #election2025

This explains why the US has an #egg shortage and other countries don't. It's about bird flu, and the size of egg-laying farms. When massive US farms are hit with flu, it means huge numbers of egg-laying chickens die - resulting in far fewer eggs.
Other countries tend to have much smaller chicken farms. So when one is hit with bird flu, it doesn't really impact the overall supply.

#eggs #birdflu

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/18/nx-s1-5330454/egg-shortages-record-prices-usda-canada

#Ontario is seeing a big surge in measles mostly among unvaccinated people. 372 total cases (including 7 pregnant people) and 31 hospitalizations.
The #measles #vaccine has a long track record of being safe, and of preventing disease (breakthrough infections are rare). It's a great way to avoid getting sick in the first place. I mean, who wants to get even a little bit sick?

#health #medical #medmastodon @medmastodon
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2025/03/13/ontario-measles-cases-double-outbreak/

Anyone else starting to think that maybe the goal is global domination? And you can't really play by the rules and expect to do well against people who don't play by the rules.

Home Depot, Lowes and even Rona are all US owned companies (Rona used to be Canadian but was bought out). To buy Canadian, look at #HomeHardware, local building supply places, independent locally owned hardware stores and #CanadianTire.
While the US-owned stores employ a lot of people, bigger demand in Canadian-owned placed means they'll have a chance to expand -- and hire more people. Not overnight, but if demand shifts it would happen.
Then, look to see where products come from. A lot of stuff isn't made in Canada, but the US isn't the only place that makes these things.

#buyCanadian #shopCanadian #Canada

@libreoffice @aquarianoak1 I started using it a couple months ago and am impressed with how smoothly it works. I'm recommending it to other writer friends.
2 features I would *like* to see in the word processor: embedding links in words; a comments mode.

Who needs American alcohol when we can buy awesome strong beers in #Canada by Unibroue? What made-in-Canada stuff are you getting? #buyCanadian #tariffs

Should I take the plunge and have a Linux OS on my next 'spare' laptop? The spare laptop is basically the one I'll use when traveling, or on the tread desk -- mostly for writing, a simple spreadsheet, reading PDFs, and dumping photos onto when traveling. I have to get a new one. (The heavier work is on my desktop). So, thinking of a lower priced laptop. I'll be using LibreOffice on it, not the MS Word suite.
How much RAM should said lower priced laptop have?
is 256GB good enough?
Is i5 good enough?
Linux OS (Ubuntu?) -- is it as easy to use as Windows? I don't have the motivation to fuss a lot and troubleshoot. (Already using LibreOffice on the current dying spare laptop)
***EDIT: Oh, and will I be able to view photos from my iPhone in their HEIC format?

Walked into shop in the local Chinatown that has a lot of vases, dishes. etc. Noticed some tea thermoses that were loose-leaf friendly and spent a lot of time comparing them. Was talking to a women who said the man who kept talking in Chinese was the new owner/manager. She translated back and forth. We started talking about tea. I mentioned I prefer black tea -- he didn't know the teas I named, and I wasn't familiar the teas he named. But there were packages there of 2-3 types of teas (big, flat rings of pressed leaves) that he opened and let me smell. I bought one of the glass thermoses. I showed him a sealed tea bag (Tazo Awake -- an ok black tea blend) I happened to have in my pack -- he didn't know it (I carry a couple around in case of tea emergencies). But then he pulled out his personal container of loose leaf tea, measured out a small amount for me to take home to sample. So nice! And it turned out the woman didn't work there, she was another customer. Tea really does cross cultures and there's something special about the connections it can lead to.

Recently, I had conversations with 2 people who turned out to be vaccine skeptics. They stopped getting #COVID vaccines after their first jab or two. So, I told them about the 30+ year history behind mRNA vaccine development. That it has been (and continues to be) worked on for treating cancer as well as for other diseases. And that mRNA vaccines were part-way developed for #SARS during the 2002-2004 outbreak (but work stopped because the infection petered out for various reasons) and for Zika. And that when the pandemic came along, most of the pieces of for creating an #mRNA #vaccine for COVID were already in place -- which is why the the vaccines came out relatively quickly. And that they underwent clinical trials before they were approved for release.
Both conversations ended with "Wow, I didn't know any of that. You've given me something to think about."
I'll take it as a win.
Sometimes it's #history more than #science that can help get a message across.

Sources:
1.Timeline: https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/decades-making-mrna-covid-19-vaccines
2. One of the best summaries of the mRNA vaccine and its history. https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/

#publichealth @medmastodon #medmastodon #IDmastodon

@wigglytuffitout @gutocarvalho maybe promote tips in Portuguese on how to the platform!

@HistoPol @davidho @rahmstorf You can bet they hired PR companies and other agencies to create some of these campaigns as the oil companies wouldn't necessarily have the communications expertise and structure to do it all in-house.

@johncarlosbaez As a science journalist, I'm having a much better experience here than I did on Twitter. More followers, more interactions, more story ideas, and new experts.
But if I were reporting on politics or current events, I'd have to include Twitter (and other platforms) to follow those types of stories.
I closed my Twitter account a few months after starting on Mastodon.

Seen elsewhere.
"Hello I'm a bat...
I don't suck your blood and I won't get tangled in your hair.
If I happen to enter your house, please don't hit me with bats or squash me out; it hurts a lot and on such occasions I'm very scared. It was an accident and I didn't mean to scare you.
If I land, I may not be able to get up and I need your help. Just grab a towel and pull me out carefully. I'll fly right away, I promise.
I feed on mosquitoes and many other insects.
Our houses are being demolished to build other buildings and we still have a few places to go. So if I'm flying in your space, turn off the lights and leave the outside light on with the door open, I'll be out shortly."

#bats #wildlife

@lisamelton @renchap @Gargron I love how responsive the admins are (at least the ones in my experience), and the people doing general help, like #FediTips, etc.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-girl-in-the-kent-state-photo

@georgetakei So much for the Turing test! @danfalk

@briankrebs @th3_protoCOL Firefox doesn't have this problem, right? And Privacy Badger helps?

@coolboymew @briankrebs @th3_protoCOL @FF777 DuckDuckGo seems ok.

#Canada #goose #moose