The liberals are the friendly-face nanny-state fascists, the conservatives are the scary-face anti-everything fascists, they’re two sides of the same coin. They’re both starting to swing fascist authoritarian, don’t be deceived because they wear different costumes.
The same direction? … and which direction is that?
…please tell me it’s not AI… please tell me it’s not AI… please tell me it’s not AI…
<reads article> OF COURSE it’s AI
Well… I guess MAYBE some of it might not be AI…
The upside of content creators and influencers like Mr. Beast is that they have built massive audiences based on manipulative brainrot. The downside is that brainrot audiences are already brainrotted in a way that makes them almost immune to further marketing, which is itself manipulative brainrot, the proto-brainrot if you will. All the brainrot value has been squeezed out of them already. There’s nothing left to squeeze, and they cannot be manipulated any further. Imagine trying to market beer or something, to a vegetable of a person who’s already just sitting in their chair drooling at the screen. Like sure, of course they want the beer, but how are you going to convince them to get up out of their chair to get it?
I mean, I guess it was my mistake for assuming literally everything that Trump says is a lie, but we obviously should’ve listened when he said he really likes Carney. Every day it’s becoming even clearer why.
The advantage of reducing us to a two-party system like the US is that once that’s done, the corruption can simply take over both options and now the corruption is in full control. People still feel like they have a choice, that maybe one is more or less corrupt than the other, but it’s Kang and Kodos. Their differences are cosmetic. Their actions are the same. Neither option is the right choice. Meanwhile, the NDP stomp their hat like Ross Perot, and people fear throwing their vote away, while actually throwing their vote away to either of the two most corrupt parties in “strategic voting”. Yeah, it’s a “strategy” alright. Just not yours.
I lived in Regina for a few years and it’s everything a public service should be. We should probably have more public services, and we shouldn’t let the government sabotage them on behalf of private interests so that the private sector can pretend they’re saving the day. Don’t let the private interests and their government lackies scam you. A government is perfectly capable of running an extraordinarily effective public service. The governments we vote for aren’t interested in doing that, though.
Was this article written by AI? It’s full of what seem to be overly specific references and is just really fucking weirdly paced and disorganized.
Probably, we’ve been functionally the 51st state for a long time, it’s only Trump’s clumsy attempts to close the deal that is finally making people aware of the fact. And our politicians lie straight to our faces about it, they do it while saying they aren’t, while saying they won’t, and they’ve done so for decades. Because they know we really don’t want to be so attached to the US, but they do it anyway and if challenged just say it is necessary. Necessary for the US, maybe. Necessary for the politicians, maybe. Nice to see Canadians fight back and prove it is not necessary.
4 hours seems a bit much, I’ll agree that seems out of line. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable that some questions were asked and he was ultimately approved to enter Canada so it seems like the system, in this case, worked mostly as intended aside from the amount of time it took to reach that conclusion. Canada has had several recent high profile incidents of not adequately vetting extremists entering this country to speak at conferences, and I am not surprised they are carefully screening people in this situation now. While it is tempting to jump to the conclusion that this guy was singled out for supporting Palestine, one isolated incident is not evidence of bias or profiling on any particular issue, there would need to be a consistent pattern established. Maybe there is one and I just haven’t seen it yet, but as far as I know this is an isolated incident so far.
it is a shame that Israel/Palestine has become such a sharply polarizing and divisive issue that we can almost automatically assume that anyone questioning anyone else on the topic is not doing so in good faith and is pushing their own agenda on it, but that’s actually not necessarily the case. Someone can say they’re a Princeton professor and have worked for the UN, but might take some time to actually verify if you’re not traveling with UN and Princeton travel documents, and even that doesn’t prove good intentions anyway. People can have solid credentials in their past, but have changed into something more extreme since then. Unless the person is well-known and already on a list somewhere, you don’t know where the person stands now unless you ask questions and verify answers. Should that have taken 4 hours? Again, probably not, but I don’t think it’s the asking of some of those questions that is the problem here.
That said, if there is going to be a pattern of this, I plan to be watching out for it now. I expect the same process to happen for people coming here to speak in support of the genocide, and I expect them to be refused entry. Will this happen? I don’t know. We’ll see.
AA batteries is an interesting choice. Wish we had a ubiquitous lithium-rechargable-based battery standard for products like this that would be smaller than an 18650 but bigger than a coin cell. Design it with some safe chemistry like LiFePo if you have to, but the old 1.2-1.5V AA standard is starting to feel very anachronistic these days.
We were so close with Trudeau. He was elected entirely on the back of that promise and everyone knew it. All we had to do was hold his feet to the fire when he tried to weasel out of it after getting the majority that left him no reasonable excuse for not following through. But we all know what happened. He later even said his biggest regret was not following through on electoral reform. Well, yeah. I’m not sure I believe him, but if he’s telling the truth I hope it fucking haunts him. It should. I’ll certainly never forgive him.
Almost all Canadian Universities (and the ones we are really talking about here) are all non-profit. They reinvest any profits back into the institution to improve their capacity for research. This is why Canada has some of the world’s leading research universities. They are not profiting to make individual people richer, they are profiting to make society and our future richer.
This is starting to change though. There are unfortunately a growing number of for-profit “universities” in the country but most of them are transparently low quality diploma-mills (which is a whole different problem that needs dealing with) and aside from misleading naive domestic and mostly international students and separating them from their money, they remain of very marginal educational or research significance. That may not continue though unless we do something to support our large majority of non-profit universities.
StatsCan is a national treasure and more important than most people give it credit for. Informed decisionmaking requires trustworthy information.
The OG cyberpunk Johnny of course is included in that. while he is technically found among “any of the Johns”, I actually meant for it to be both implied and explicitly included, but my words kind of got ahead of my muddled brain.
So… throwing trillions at it is bad, but I’m not following the part where you implied I’m potentially ignorant. Do you, or don’t you, want to fall behind one of the main countries that is throwing trillions at it, which you admit is bad? Is letting ourselves fall behind and proceeding very cautiously not reasonable? Did we not weather the 2008 financial crisis with much the same attitude?
Instructions unclear, got afraid of falling behind and accidentally tied my much smaller economy with a very sturdy rope to a country that is soon to be falling off a cliff.
Wanting to fall behind the rest of the world is a good thing when the rest of the world is charging mindlessly towards a cliff.
I’d absolutely buy and play more cyberpunk games with Johnny Silverhand/Keanu in them. I’d also play games where I can be Johnny Silverhand/Keanu. Could certainly see another attempt to make some cyberpunk-style matrix-like story or open world that would go over well with me. I’m pretty open to any sort of Johnny Silverhand/Keanu related themes. I’d also readily accept a John Wick or John Constantine or Johnny Utah game too, basically any of the Johns. Honestly, I’d even play a game where I have to drive a bus that can’t slow down or it explodes (which really isn’t any different from most arcade racers when you think about it). Basically, shut up, take my money, do whatever you want with it as long as there’s eventually more Keanu- or Keanu-adjacent-content in the video gaming space once you’re done, this is a good thing. Or just inject some Keanu right into my veins, whatever, I don’t know.
I’d be fine with that if we were simply spending that money entirely within Canada. Invest in some infrastructure. Give me a new job building military death robots, at this point I don’t care as long as I get paid. I’ll work 16 hours a day building military death robots or winding rotors for drone motors for the national defense as long as it pays me enough to put a roof over my head and food on my table. This should not be a large ask. If we’re going to build affordable housing like we did in wartime and invest in defense like we’re already at war we may as well have a wartime economy to go with it. Break out the fucking food rations and government workhouses already.
But instead we let costs of living spiral wildly out of control and pretend inflation isn’t exploding because the only thing in the consumer price index which isn’t skyrocketing is the over-represented falling price of gas, which people aren’t using as much of anymore due to WFH and EVs. Then we blow our entire budget of countless billions of dollars on other countries’ designs and intellectual property and partnerships where they do all the skilled and value-added work and then we end up employing 1,000 people here if we’re lucky, while we have to ask permission to fix it and pay them to train us how to use it.
Yeah, it’s our own damn fault for cancelling, selling, giving away, or letting other countries sabotage any of our designs or intellectual property of value and letting our infrastructure for building any of it rot to dust for at least half a century, and there’s no easy way back from that. I get it. But knowing that doesn’t make it any less infuriating.
There is no other authority I would trust on the matter.
The Internet never forgets, but it is easily distracted.
Banker Daddy serves corporate elites? You don’t say? If anyone thinks this feels a little bit “Conservative” from our “Liberal” premier: the overton window sends its regards. Doesn’t matter if you refuse to elect a right-wing conservative when you’ve only got two parties and they’re both right-wing conservatives.
Get ready to ride the orange wave into the future, or next time it will get even worse.