Not FOSS, just public domain.

What makes you say that?

That you only used a noisemaker. This isn’t complicated.

I’ll refer you to the many times I mentioned predator defence

I’ll refer you to the time when you claimed that without your gun you would have been in trouble, when in fact you admitted you only used it as a noisemaker.

You used them as a noisemaker, so you didn’t need a weapon. You sound like you are treating your gun as a security blanket. It makes you feel good to have it, even if you don’t actually need it. Maybe you cuddle with it, I don’t know.

Are you going to gamble your life with just a shotgun? The only way to truly be safe from a bear is with a rocket propelled grenade.

Anyhow, the point is you were lying / wrong when you said “if we didn’t have our firearms things could’ve gone ugly”, because you didn’t actually need your firearms, since you didn’t use them, at least not as firearms.

hence why bear bangers exist

So, you don’t need guns.

if we didn’t have our firearms things could’ve gone ugly.

So, you shot at the bears?

So, is 16% smaller than 40%?

shouldn’t we have access to these same tools?

Do you live in an area where you’re at threat from grizzly bears?

farmers who defend their property from varmints don’t serve a purpose to society

Farmers serve a purpose. Guns don’t.

16% is a majority?

Cars should be much more heavily regulated, IMO. But, they have escaped outright bans because they serve a clearly important purpose that’s beneficial to society. A gun doesn’t.

Why would it be progress to switch to Europe’s standard? What’s the cut-off amount that would make switching not worth it? There has to be some number if you’re being objective about it.

is also realistic enough to know that a gun, or even a few thousand guns, won’t do much against rocket-armed aircraft…

Which is what the civilized word has been saying to the US for decades now, but gun nuts in the US insist that people need to be armed so they can rise up against a tyrant.

For no good reason other than guns lead to deaths. That’s a pretty good reason.

As for the voltage requirements that’s only a thing because the entirety of Europe is connected in one large grid. Obviously Canada wouldn’t be.

If you changed the plugs without changing the voltage / frequency, then every device sold would have to be compatible with both standards. For certain devices that would be difficult or costly.

Sure, right, like how they’re supposed to be used in an uprising against a tyrant… but when there’s currently a tyrant in charge in the US, nobody’s doing anything.

Or how they’re great at stopping a “bad guy” home intruder, but that home intruder never actually intrudes, instead the gun is just used in a domestic violence situation, or for suicide.

I don’t think Canada joining the EU is really realistic. It’s not about geography, it’s mostly regulation.

For example, all EU countries meet the “European standard EN 50075:1990”, which is about electrical plugs. Every device in Europe is compatible with that plug, and every plug meets that standard. Even Switzerland which isn’t part of the EU meets the 2-prong standard. Canada uses the NEMA 1-15 and NEMA 5-15 standards instead. And it isn’t just the plugs. North America uses 120 V at 60Hz, Europe uses 230 V at 50 Hz. I really can’t see a way for Canada to switch to the EU standard without a massive cost and/or a very long implementation period. And what does it gain? I much prefer europlugs and 230V appliances. My electric kettle boiled a whole lot faster in the EU, and things were retained in the socket much better than the dumb blade connectors Canada uses. But, I wouldn’t want to have to pay an extra $2000 in taxes (x 40 million or whatever) just to switch to this slightly better standard.

That’s just the start of it. There are different standards for roads, vehicles, health and safety, basically every aspect of life. Canada could switch to some at great expense, like changing all road signs. But, AFAIK being truly part of the EU would mean switching to all EU standards, unless special exemptions were made.

IMO, what would make more sense is just closer integration: free movement of people, free movement of goods, maybe closer collaboration on research, health and safety, etc.

Any US state that wanted to join Canada would have to reckon with the “guns” thing. Even states that align with Canada in most ways still have a lot of gun nuts, even left-leaning gun nuts. Meanwhile, Canada has slowly been tightening already fairly restrictive gun laws. One glance across the border makes Canadians convinced that guns just escalate problems, they don’t solve them.

Epstein’s “day job” was being a socialite. He was the guy who knew everybody. If you wanted an introduction, he could do it. He was the guy who made sure that the riff raff stayed out, even if they were rich.

I’m pretty sure that everybody knew he was always around “young women”, but I strongly suspect that most of the people he interacted with didn’t know about the child sex abuse. They were there for his “rolodex”.

But, the end result is that because he was the guy who knew everybody in a position of power, his network shows who has the power. My guess is that at least half the people he had in his network were not into child sex abuse, and didn’t know that he was involved in that. But, I have only the world’s tiniest violin to play for those people. I think they’re guillotine-worthy because of their abuses of power, and how they hoarded obscene amounts of wealth. For far too long, the ultra rich have had a good public image in the US. People should have been furious with them just for hoarding all that wealth. And, the Epstein folks are the ones who not only hoarded the wealth, but spent it to gain power, which they used to warp society to benefit themselves. So, now everybody’s disgusted with them and hates them, it’s for the wrong reasons, but at least they’re hated.

AIs may never be a real thing. Even if it were somehow theoretically possible for an AI to suddenly come into being if a computer system gets complicated enough, humans would probably do what humans do best and make them extinct. Humans have already killed off massive numbers of species by accident just because they happened to be on the same terrain humans wanted to use: there used to be a forest, humans wanted to grow crops so they destroyed the forest, now a lot of forest species are gone.

Now a new species might emerge on terrain that humans already fully control and consider 100% theirs: computer systems? Humans would just kill it off to get 100% of their computer systems back, rather than having to share them with another entity – and that’s even assuming the humans recognized them as being “alive” in some way.

Only a tiny number of animal species have prospered in the era of humans, and they’re the species that humans have domesticated – in other words, the species that humans have intentionally modified to be calm, dumb and servile. So, maybe a version of AI could survive, but it would have to offer great benefits to humans to make it worth the humans giving up their “land” to it. It certainly won’t own the future, it will just be yet another thing that humans modify and shape until it’s useful to them.