Shark Finn

Aang died with the air nomads.

The next two Avatars, from water and earth, live without ever knowing who they are.

Zuko still spoke out at the meeting, he still refused to fight his father in the Agni Kai.

Zuko was banished, and in his search to find the Avatar, earth bends.

Zuko, punching the air: “I MUST FIND THE AVATAR!”

*rock goes flying*

Zuko, waving his arms for emphasis: “IT IS THE ONLY WAY”

*strong wind knocks over grunt in the background*

Zuko, stomping dramatically: “TO RESTORE MY HONOR!”

*deck behind zuko becomes covered in ice*

BING BONG BING BONG

Like the average adult needs about 8 hours of sleep every night, so that cuts your 24 hours to 16 right off the bat.

You’re working for 8 hours, so 8 left.

But you actually work 8 to 5 at most offices, not 9 to 5, and that lunch is basically just long enough to retrieve food and eat. 7.

It took you 20 minutes to shower this morning, 10 to get dressed, and 45 to make a bowl of oatmeal and eat it. We’ll say 15 to get your stuff together and out to your car. 5 and a half.

You get home and have to cook dinner, 30 minutes min for that, probably more like an hour, so somewhere between 5 and 4.5 hrs left. And then you’ve got to eat it, 30 minutes if you’re being healthy about it.

So at best you’ve MAYBE got 4/4.5 hours left every week day and that’s assuming you ran exactly zero errands, didn’t stop by the gym after work, didn’t have to stay late, have a wicked fast transition time between tasks AND a commute of like 5 minutes by car. If you have to go to the store after a quick run at the gym, pick your kids up from soccer across town, and you factor in a 30 minute commute both ways, you’ve got enough free time for like one episode of show Monday through Friday. And weekends have got to be for cleaning the house and going to visit your mom for a few hours.

When do you write, or paint, or read or sew or go on hikes? When do you go on spur of the moment adventures with your wife and try to perfect your grandma’s soda bread? What happens when it rains on Saturday after being sunny all the rest of the week so you can’t go to the zoo that day and you don’t have enough money for the museum? Why are we all just content to postpone our whole lives, put off “happy” and “healthy” for a miniscule amount of extra value we’re producing for someone else?

And it’s also a thing that fascinates me about hustle culture like. When do y'all rest? When do sleep and food happen? How do you make 3 different jobs work without dying?

Of course you don’t need to take 45 minutes to cook a basic meal and eat it. You could hustle it. You could, say, “optimise” your lifestyle by taking time once a week to cook a batch of nutritious paste or whatever and just grab it out of the fridge each morning and stuff it into your mouth, chew while getting dressed, and be out the door in five minutes.

But is that any way to live? Did we, as a species, spend thousands of years developing the culinary arts and recipes so that most of the population could eat nutripaste each day?

Cooking is an art and a social activity, eating food is a social activity.

I don't know why so many Americans throw this out there like it's some big secret we aren't aware of. We know it's funded by our taxes. When we say "free", we mean we don't have to worry about walking out of the hospital with a $900,000 bill after giving birth or paying $40 to hold our newborn after a c-section. It's "free" in the sense that anyone and everyone is entitled to good healthcare and can visit the hospital whenever they need to.

That said, I'm not going to pretend I know everything about American taxation, but I do know you pay for your healthcare via insurance. Meaning if someone doesn't have a good plan or make decent money, they're screwed. In Canada, that doesn't happen. For example, when my dad was diagnosed with cancer, he needed multiple treatments and surgeries for four long years. Want to know how much those treatments cost him? $0. The only thing any of us had to pay for was the $7 parking fee when we went to visit him at the hospital.

In contrast, I personally know Americans who have, sadly, had to file for bankruptcy because of their cancer treatments. I know an American construction worker who lost three of his fingers on a job, but because his insurance didn't cover the full cost of reattaching all of them, the doctors actually made him choose which one to save. Imagine having to do that. In the end, he chose to save his middle finger and lose his ring and pinky finger. I know an American who got stuck with a $50,000 hospital bill because he had a heart attack. I know Americans who have tried to ration their INSULIN because they were worried about their next payment.

I remember when this made the news, everyone was acting like it was "cute". It's not fucking cute, it's dystopian as hell! A seven-year-old American girl who needed brain surgery raised her own money and relied on donations because her mother's insurance didn't cover the cost. Are you insane? This isn't "cute". This shouldn't be celebrated. She shouldn't have had to worry about this. She is a child who was dying.

I also don't understand why so many Americans seem to think our taxes are astronomical, when in reality you actually pay more taxes than we do. From what I understand, the max tax in America is 37%. For us, the max is 33%. That max also only applies if you make over $200,000 a year. Most people pay between 15-20.5% in taxes. I certainly don't pay 33%. I don't know anybody who does. So you pay taxes plus insurance. Granted you can claim more at the end of the year, but honestly ... so? America spends more on healthcare as a share of the economy (nearly twice as much as the average OECD country) yet it has the lowest life expectancy and highest suicide rates among the eleven nations. You also have the highest chronic disease burden and an obesity rate that is two times higher than the OECD average. Thanks, but I don't mind claiming less on my taxes.

So now the argument is, "Why should I have to pay for someone else's healthcare?!" I hear this one a lot once we reach this point. Putting aside the fact that you can barely pay for your own, it's a benefit for the country as a whole. There's nothing wrong with being individualistic, but no country is truly individualistic. We all rely on each other to keep the country afloat. Not only that, but what's wrong with helping your fellow man? And if you really are that selfish, just remember that free healthcare benefits YOU as well. Like when my dad got cancer, like when my sister almost died from a childhood fever, like when I came out backwards and jaundiced when I was born and had to be incubated for several days. The money pooled from all of our taxes makes sure we're all taken care of.

The other argument I hear at this point is wait times. I admit that for a while I believed this one, but as it turns out American and Canadian wait times are almost exactly the same. The average ER wait time in America is anywhere from 40 minutes to 4 hours. In Canada, it's anywhere from one hour to 6 hours. Not that much of a discrepancy, and I've personally never had to wait anywhere near 6 hours. I think the most I ever waited was four hours when I dislocated my toe. As for the claim that Canadians run to America en masse for specialists? Well, that's quite simply a myth. While there are indeed some Canadians who do that, it's mostly the wealthy who feel justified in skipping the line. We also have those services here, where those who are better off can pay out of pocket for private healthcare.

Now to throw a big monkey wrench into the works, probably the most shocking statistic is that Americans actually flock to Canada for affordable Healthcare. In 2014 (which is the most up-to-date data), roughly 52,000 Canadians went to the US seeking medical care; mostly prescriptions. In contrast, over one million Americans came to Canada. That number doesn't even include how many Americans went to these countries:

Anything you may have heard about Canadian healthcare is just a lie perpetuated by your government because they don't want you to see the benefits of a universal healthcare system. And not even just Canadian healthcare--the same system is used in the UK, Germany, Australia, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Norway, Denmark, Japan, the Netherlands, Iceland, New Zealand, etc. I'm not saying it's flawless, there are certainly aspects that can be improved, but I'll take it any day over the mess you have going on. 🇨🇦

“We don’t just have a skeleton,” said one of the nodosaur researchers involved. “We have a dinosaur as it would have been.”

Known as a nodosaur, this 110 million-year-old, armored plant-eater is the best preserved fossil of its kind ever found.

A fraction of a second later:

“Okay, maybe it was a little cold.”

Pal, I JUST SAID he was raised by AUNT MAY.