They don’t expect to win today, or tomorrow, and when (not if) they lose, they aren’t just going to walk away. These things are indications of how much they are committing to this. This is how a long-term destabilization campaign starts. They have taken over much of our country’s media already. They are going to use that to continue legitimizing these efforts, inflaming public opinion with rhetoric, emphasizing negative events, and shifting the overton window towards a future where the idea of “dependence” is itself automatically considered bad and wrong, the question will no longer be whether Alberta should be independent, but how independent should they be, what kinds of autonomy do they need. And spoiler: it will only increase. The demands will only increase. The autonomy expectations will only increase. Because they’re being intentionally fueled. They’re not organic, but they become organic because people start to absorb it through osmosis from their surroundings.

Will they ultimately succeed? I don’t know, I don’t think anyone can know, but I do know we need to take this threat seriously. Because it’s not going to stop, and they can afford to spend a lot more instigating it than we probably will to defend against it.

It is totally reasonable and sensible to not want to mix personal account and business account. I think that’s a good move.

As for the rest, you are probably wrong to assume things and there are a LOT of things you assumed in that post. Don’t make assumptions. Use data. Figure out what works and what doesn’t. Facts, not feelings. Has anyone called you a grifter? Did you get downvotes and they get upvotes? Does it happen every time? Sites like these can work like random number generators sometimes. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Even having a small business is a risk. You can’t avoid all risk. You have to accept some risk. Your reputation can get tainted, yes, but I don’t actually think that’s very likely, certainly not as likely as you seem to think it is, and even if it does it can also be repaired. Yes it might take some work, but running a business also takes work. If you are not willing to take risk or do work when those risks don’t pay off, then I don’t know what else to tell you.

I will say it again in case I wasn’t clear the first time. In my own personal opinion, and my experience on this site so far, it is perfectly fine for you to advertise your business here. I do not run this site or moderate it and I cannot speak for the admins or for everyone else, I am only one person, but you will get my upvote and maybe my support in the comments. I hope that helps.

My opinion as somebody with no real skin in the game: Post where you want. Especially in communities like “BuyCanadian” or communities for your own product or whatever, as long as the community is okay with it and your post or comment makes sense there, and you’re not posting so frequently that people are getting sick of it, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. And you don’t have to take my word for it. If there is anything wrong with what you’re doing, and even if you’re not, the delightful thing about the internet is that there’s never any shortage of people willing to tell you frequently and usually with exceptional levels of sarcasm or vitriol. If your posts are not welcome, people will have no problem making you feel very unwelcome. If that’s not happening, you probably have very little to worry about.

The “no self promotion” rule on Reddit was, in my opinion, one of the worst rules in the way that it frequently victimized genuine responsible people who I’d actually like to hear from, without actually doing much of anything to stop the people or content it was presumably or allegedly intended to stop. I understand it might have actually made sense at some points or in some communities, but it never needed to be a site-wide rule (except that they wanted to sell ads instead of letting people advertise for free). Plus I think it was often selectively enforced in ways that were not actually reasonable or genuine and I don’t think it made much of a useful impact on stopping spam or bots or dishonest people. They just found more ways to dishonest about it. It was the honest people who it punished. And to what end, aside from Reddit’s bottom line?

I believe in supporting real independent businesses, and in order to do that, I need to know who they are, where they are, and what they’re selling. That can be very difficult, especially when they are assumed to be obnoxious spammers by default and never given an opportunity to prove themselves. We have a voting system for a reason. We have moderators who can see people’s histories for a reason. If you’re abusing the site, you’ll find out quickly. If you’re a real person with genuine motivations, I doubt you are abusing the site. I doubt anything resembling abuse would even enter your mind to do. And if you do by accident, you’ll quickly pull back when you’re told you’ve gone too far (probably by too much, honestly, most people take grumpy trolls having a bad day way too seriously). Be reasonable, and don’t be unreasonable.

Also, if your posts here bring in any business, be a responsible person and support the community by making at least some small donation to the site. It doesn’t have to be pay-as-you-go. This is not a zero-sum game of profits and losses. This is a community. Be part of it, and we can support each other.

The nice thing is that all the gaming distros on Linux are cooperating and sharing efforts pretty well (and that includes Bazzite), so if for whatever reason Bazzite isn’t your jam, try one of the dozens of others. Personally I loathe immutable distros, but if they’re what pleases you and seems right to you, by all means. But 95% of what an immutable OS gives you can be accomplished only a little less easily and much more flexibly with something like btrfs snapshots, so like, don’t rule out other distros because they’re not immutable by default. Reverting your OS should not something you’re having to be doing regularly. It’s not something you should be optimizing for. Yes it’s nice to have the option. But it’s even nicer to never need it.

The entire western world is complicit in Gaza’s genocide and supporting Israel. Some are just better and more convincing at pretending they care about Palestinians than others. The actions (and lack thereof) tell the real story very clearly though.

Nice trade agreement you got there, Canada. smashes it with baseball bat …would be a shame if anything happened to you.

At least Russia had the decency to put a transparently thin veneer of subtlety and justification when they did it to all their neighbors. It was all lies, it was all paper thin, but at least they, y’know, tried. I respect the effort put into the hustle.

Trump is just like “yeah whatever they can’t stop us, we’ll take whatever we want if we want to.”

The fucking disguises have been dropped and the gloves are off, time to wake up and start paying attention before our entire planet is stolen from us by despicable, hateful monsters who want to destroy it and then fuck off to Mars and leave us all to die.

Seems like a lot of work and probably too slow. Guillotines were invented to automate the process. That means they’re basically the AI-enabled “smart” version, and everybody wants to use that for everything nowadays, right?

We should all be willing to serve Canada’s needs, and we absolutely need a much stronger military to survive the unfortunate dumpster fire that the rest of the world has chosen to make itself into. I would volunteer for service if they would have me (they won’t, because I’m old and fat now and they aren’t flexible enough to give me the support I would need to handle my other responsibilities while I would serve) but if we end up at war, you better damn believe I’m going to find a way to serve somehow, bureaucracy and other responsibilities be damned.

Remember that it’s always morally acceptable to punch nazis. Or hit them with baseball bats I suppose. Boils down to personal preference, I guess, although the latter may get you in more legal trouble as I think it’s considered assault with a weapon. I dunno, I’m not a lawyer, I’m not here to tell you what’s legal, just what’s moral, and beating up nazis is definitely always the moral thing to do.

They’d rather have control than customers. This is not about making the game “cheat free”, this is about conditioning the gaming public and normalizing this behavior. Even if they lose money doing it, it’s an investment in their future plans.

They want to turn our computers into phones, we of course will be welcome to pay enough to pretend that we own them, but really they’d rather we just rent them and treat them as disposable, because that’s more profitable and we won’t really own them anymore, the software providers do, and Microsoft plans to be chief amongst them. They will make it more convenient to use Microsoft Store until almost everyone does. Then they will make it hard NOT to use Microsoft Store. Then they will make it impossible. Meanwhile, Microsoft will monitor and decide everything that is allowed in the store. They will make the rules, they will tell you what you can and cannot do, just like Google and Apple do for phones. This is their goal, and Linux is the only way to escape it. Flee now, or be trapped inside Microsoft’s walled garden of absolute control forever.

They won’t stop until you are never allowed to own or control any technology ever again without their permission. This is not something you can avoid by just passively resisting and being smart enough to avoid their traps. They know you can find your way around it for now, and you will be able to for a long time. But first they’re going to capture the 90% who don’t. Then it will become the 99%, then the 99.9%. Your hacks will get harder and more convoluted. Eventually you’ll have to make the choice to flee or to submit. And they’re hoping you’ll be so defeated and exhausted by that point that you’ll choose the latter, because it’s so much easier.

The most important part of GUARD, Maffin said, is D, which stands for distinguishing people from a regime. In this case, it means recognizing there is a difference between American people and the government and authorities that are making decisions for the country.

Sure. I will distinguish them by their actions, and they have to put in some work to start to earn any goodwill, support or sympathy they’re going to get from me.

I know they don’t learn much about history besides their own down there, but if anyone is reading this: go invest some time in learning about the French Resistance in WW2. The further you let it go, the worse it’s going to get. It’s NOT going to be fun for you. That does not mean you don’t have to do it. It sounds like it was a long goddamn 4 years they went through, and you might end up in something like the same. I don’t envy you, but I also didn’t choose this for you. Fix your shit, and once you start, you can count on our help.

The world needs a league of nations, and we need a league of citizens. Like Carney said, if we are not at the table, we will be on the menu.

Carney is the first world leader I’ve heard actually talking like he is preparing for war, at least economic war and probably more. And he should be. I’m not sure I fully see it in his actions, yet… but I acknowledge he has to walk a careful line with Trump’s reactionary behavior, and I have some hope that what we see publicly on the surface is only a faint reflection of what is actually going on underneath, and behind the scenes.

The ties we have relied on between countries around the world are being severed at exactly the moment when we all need to hold tightly together in a united defensive front. If those ties are not being urgently and securely re-fastened fast enough publicly, I sure hope they’re being massively tightened and reinforced in secret, because we’re all going to need every ounce of mutual strength against what’s coming.

More harmonization of regulations with the EU please. Trying to keep ourselves in lockstep with the US regulatory framework has been holding us back for so long (and that’s the way the US likes it).

They don’t have time for that, all levels of government are still too busy trying to sabotage Edison Motors with regulatory roadblocks whenever possible. They don’t have enough time to also sabotage NEW EV companies, they can only do so much at one time.

Nobody has to say it. I believe some people may think that way. I’m speaking to those people who might think that, you don’t need to assume it’s directed at you if it doesn’t apply to you. I agree nobody needs to get defensive, and that applies to you too. Except billionaires, they should definitely be on the defensive. I’m gonna eat them, sooner or later.

Considered pillars of the business community and lauded by all the mainstream media and government officials they own, sure.

Don’t pretend this is the opinion of the average Canadian. Rest assured we hate Canadian billionaires at least as much as we hate American billionaires. I don’t think anyone is pretending that Canadian billionaires are less evil or more morally acceptable than billionaires anywhere else. But we don’t have that many, and most of them are not hyper, hyper-rich and well connected the way some of the most influential techbros are, so ours, while still deeply reprehensible people, represent just a few small drops in the ocean of wealth inequality, and it’s not really worth focusing on them. That doesn’t mean they’re acceptable, it just means they’re not the priority. We’ve got way bigger and more nefarious fish to fry.

Eat the rich. No exceptions. It is very, very easy to become not rich, with the stroke of a pen, and I recommend that any rich folks consider that if you don’t want to get eaten. Share the wealth, motherfuckers.

I constantly told people during the election that I was torn because he was so perfectly saying ALL the right things, it was very alluring, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe him.

At least now I know without any doubt I shouldn’t believe him. (Doesn’t matter if I had voted for him anyway, because we don’t have proportional representation and my riding flipped thoroughly Conservative *shrug*)

I’ll probably never believe a federal Liberal again. So at least I’ve got that going for me.