You could also use the select tool to draw a single circle, then go to the Select menu and click Border which will create the outer and inner selections with the width you specified between them. Much easier than selecting a circle and de-selecting the centre hole.

Do you understand how bitmaps and raster drawing works? Everything is represented as a 2d array of pixels. The circle selection before you paint can be moved/scaled/etc and then when you actually want to draw the circle trace the path with the appropriate thickness and use antialiasing if you need to smooth it.

If you want to make vector drawings, take a look at InkScape. GIMP is the wrong tool for that, so use the right tool for the job if that’s what you want to do.

What’s the problem with making a circle with the select tool and then tracing it or filling it? It’s not hard to make a circle in GIMP…

9am Atlantic Time! That’s not so bad!

Just peeled, rinsed, tossed in olive oil with an oodle of salt and some paprika, and cooked in the oven.

That still doesn’t make it undemocratic. If anything, whipped votes are the undemocratic part. Crossing the floor is a feature of our democracy, not a bug.

That’s valid. I suppose I would tend to use the terminology that left and right relate only to capitalism, etc, and would use progressive or conservative to refer to non-economic and things that shouldn’t be political, like gender or genocide. Lately I’d just use ‘shit-person’ instead of conservative given… the obvious I assume. But it’s good to know that terminology is changing. We can certainly agree that tankies, nazis, rowling, hateful people, and genocide all suck.

The US has spent a lot of time and effort trying to stamp out left-wing governments around the world. Here’s a decent summary of their involvement in South and Central America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America

Fair enough about USSR and China vs Communism, that was a poor example. The point, though, is that social decency doesn’t inherently pick sides. Left leaning ideology tends to favour socially progressive viewpoints, because if the goal is to create an equitable society in one form or another, human rights and other social progress tend to also be be values that are important to people with a left-leaning ideology. Some aspects may be more intertwined than others, but the statement that being opposed to genocide is somehow a left wing only viewpoint is absurd. Most people with a left-of-centre viewpoint likely view genocide as bad, but is in no way a viewpoint exclusive held by people left-of-centre. People can be right-of-centre and compassionate, and view genocide as bad, and not be racist. People can hold a variety of different viewpoints, even conflicting viewpoints, at the same time. But being opposed to genocide or harming people is, or at least should be, just be basics of being a decent human and has nothing really to do with political ideology. Perhaps it’s ‘left’ in the context of neoliberalism being the only option and US politics and their severe polarisation as the reference. But in general, it’s not really an inherently ‘left’ viewpoint.

In Canada, many people would consider the Liberals to be right-of-centre, even more so with Carney as PM, and the NDP to be left-of-centre, but yet both can be opposed to genocide. Many Conservatives voters are, also, opposed to genocide despite leaning right in many ways. Being anti-genocide is not, however, a viewpoint commonly held by fascists through history and the present time. But that’s generally viewed as extreme right, and in no way centrist or just right-of-centre.

Viewing genocide as bad is not a ‘left wing’ political view… You could be firmly into capitalism and still believe that genocide is bad. You could be fully into communism and think genocide is a stellar way to advance your goals. Socialism is left, in it’s many forms, including things like universal healthcare, education, etc. Communism is extreme left. As long as someone believes that more privatisation or a more open market is the way to solve social issues, they are right of centre regardless of whether they think that slaughtering a group of people bad or not, or think that the environment needs to be protected. ‘Left’ is the economic way in which one goes solving social issues, not just believing genocide is bad or that climate change is an issue to be addressed.

Use healthcare as an easy example: People of many different political viewpoints can agree that healthcare is important to society as a whole. A left wing approach to this would be to create a universal centrally run healthcare system that treats everyone equitably, accepts that some people will use more benefit than they pay, and others will pay more than they use, but overall society will be healthy and everyone pays less in general as a result and lives in a place where people suffer less and are happier. A right wing approach would be to allow private companies to provide healthcare incentivised by the ability to earn a profit, and let them figure out how to deliver that service, maybe the government steps in to try and regulate different industries, provide tax breaks or investments, or otherwise try and coax them to provide a better service or prevent them from being too greedy.

Just simply believing in a social cause does not make one ‘left’. It’s all about the implementation of the solution that counts. The Democrats in the US are quite right of centre, and the US has spent generations trying to violently overthrow and prevent social governments from forming and spread their propaganda far and wide that anything left of centre is full blown authoritarian communism.

Lenin and Stalin were very very left. But they were filthy butchers who went on a slaughtering spree and did much more harm than just their ideology. Viewing genocide as bad as just a ‘left’ wing issue completely dilutes what ‘left’ is. That’s how our political parties keep moving right.

Do they mean getting a taxi to/from the party? So you can get ham-diddly-hammered and get home? That’s what one of my companies did

People seem to think that supporting a social justice cause somehow makes them left of centre. It doesn’t. The US has spent a lot of time and money trying to stamp out governments with left of centre economic policies for many decades and has framed anything even remotely socialist as full-blown authoritarian communist butcher-dictator, and therefore anything short of full capitalism and privatisation of everything is bad. They over-thew social democracies in Latin America and installed brutal military dictatorships to privatise and sell of the resources. They napalmed Vietnam because something-something commies. The US has no concept of what left-of-centre is because they have bombed, raped, and pillaged pretty much everything that resembles left-of-centre in this world. I even hear people in the US calling themselves ‘left of centre’ and then finish their sentence hating on socialism - which is a pretty broad spectrum of ideology.

It took ~16 years for Chile to get rid of their US installed military dictatorship when the US decided to ruin their popular social democracy and slaughter people and fuck up countless lives. And much longer to rebuild after Pinochet fell. I wouldn’t be suprised if it takes at least 16 years for parts of the US to start crawling out of their current dictatorship (with or without donny). And it sure looks like it’s going to be just as brutal if not more. It’s just getting started and there is a very long way for them to fall. 2025 is going to look like a very tame year compared to what is coming, I suspect.

Well, that’s awfully fucked up and terrifying.

I think stays longer than 90 days already require a different visa, in which case you would have already registered and been screened before that visa was issued.

The US wines at my local liquor store have been replaced with a substantial increase to the Chilean wine section and a bunch of new Portuguese wines, among other expansions. Plus a decent expansion of the craft beer selection with more local offerings it’s not all just IPAs anymore. For a small town liquor store it’s been a refreshing change to see some new and more diverse offerings. Some more BC wine would be nice too, but now I’m just getting greedy. Overall, I’d say ditching US alcohol has resulted in better selection at the store and I wouldn’t want to bring their booze back even if the US magically gave up on fascism tonight, cleaned up the country, and apologized to every country they’ve ever disrespected, threatened, invaded, bombed, meddled in, or otherwise fucked with any capacity, and all got together hand in hand like the Who’s down in Whoville and sang O Canada.

Sure, you can put centre wherever you are comfortable. You’re missing the point I’m trying to make though (deliberately, I assume), and that is that the NDP used to be a bit more to the left, and now they have moved a bit more towards the centre-line moving in the rightward direction on that spectrum. Some might say “shifting a bit to the right”. Maybe not a lot, but enough to water down their platform and push them at least firmly into just centrist territory and not centre-left, but I still consider them just to the right of centre.

I think so much of Western societies have shifted quite a bit to the right along with increased globalisation and free trade, and a bunch of US influence and missions trying to eradicate socialist governments, that it has blurred where ‘centre’ is on the spectrum, and ‘centre’ to many people has moved rightward along with the general sentiment of society today. Which is why I think a centre-left party a little bit further left of the NDP would be nice. That or if the NDP shuffled left a couple times and decided to be bold and go all-in on a proper all-encompassing left of centre policy.

Not at all. I’m saying there’s a spectrum between a full centrally planned left wing wing government, and a full free market right wing government, and the Canadian political parties generally fall somewhere towards the centre of that spectrum, and that over the past 30 years the NDP along with the Liberals and Conservatives have shifted towards the right. In the case of the NDP, I think that while they have been a centre-left party, some of the concessions they have made with Singh have pushed NDP economic policy to the centre of that spectrum, and possibly crossing over the centre-line. Maybe they aren’t quite at that point, but if they continue on that trend, I think it would be good to have another party further to the left. NOT communism. NOT authoritarian. Democratic, but willing to use more government intervention rather than keep looking at only free market solutions, tax cuts, and bailouts. The NDP just isn’t quite left enough, in my opinion.

That’s hardly a comparable to alt-right shit. Oh, the horror of Canada profiting off of it’s resources in order to run BC Ferries and Canada Post (and all the other services that never make the news) like services instead of companies and have well funded health and education systems. The NDP needs to stop selling out (and admitting defeat before the election has happened) or we need an actual centre-left option. Seems like a pretty valid opinion! Not everything has to be black and white, fully right or left with no in-between, or ability for political parties to shift over time.

I didn’t say they are a right wing party… I said that they are drifting right of centre and not really a left-of-centre party any more. They have a socially conscious platform, and in my opinion are the best of the bunch. But economically, they aren’t really a left-of-centre party. They still subscribe to a generally free market and even in their 2025 platform, while they commit money to a national housing strategy, they still aren’t trying to centralise housing and omit the private developers entirely. They still want to try and legislate private industry in a free market rather than centralise. What I would like to see is an ACTUAL left leaning party, where the government controls the means of supply for our basic needs and critical industries. The government should be directly employing crews to build a variety of housing options. Not just banning REITs and hedgefunds from purchasing affordable housing, but also eliminating the private landlords and having strict standards for property management. The government should be in control of our oil and minerals. The government should control our ferries,mail service, and other services and operate them like the services they are and not corporations, or crown corporations. While I think the NDP is the best we have, I also feel like they have drifted more to the centre and even passing over it during the past 30 years, and I think there is room for a proper left-of-centre party that is more than just words and bandaids and actually has a desire to overhaul our economy to be able to support the social programs that don’t really work when everything is trying to operate as a business, crown corp or not. Nationalise our resources and actually get some income for the government that isn’t just taxes, and invest it into our country, services, and infrastructure.

I think we need an actual left-of-centre party. The NDP is just a right-of-centre party who support some minor social programs as long as they don’t interfere too much with extracting money via capitalism. I’m not looking for a socially progressive right-of-centre party. I want to see an actual left-of-centre party. A party that would nationalise our resources and use the proceeds to fund centralised housing, healthcare, education, parks and recreation spaces, infrastructure, and other things that people need and enjoy. A party that wants to improve labour standards and invest in ourselves, and move away from US style capitalism. It can be done.