Here in Canada we've had BLM protests, "defund the police" and "ACAB". I don't really understand. As far as I'm concerned Canada is about as close to a utopia as you can get on this planet. We have one of the lowest crime rates in the world. I'm pretty sure if we "defunded the police", things would only get worse.
AFAIK, the "defund the police" chant was supposed to be in response to American police forces buying army vehicles and gear. That is not a thing in Canada. I also get the general impression that whoever came up with "defund the police" has anarchist inclinations. It's basically doublespeak. They keep saying that "defund the police" only means "reform the police", but what they actually want is to dismantle the police, which is exactly what "defund the police" sounds like.
Yeah, some Americans organized BLM protests in Japan too.
They think the whole world is an extension of America, while also denouncing American imperialism and the American idea of looking down on the world, while also screaming at anyone who questioned the idea of dragging American problems into a country that didn’t exist.
People here, more than anything, were pissed that they had a gathering in the middle of a pandemic and called them irresponsible. Which they were.
AFAIK, the "defund the police" chant was supposed to be in response to American police forces buying army vehicles and gear. That is not a thing in Canada
In the UK they scream “don’t shoot” at unarmed police, whom they call “Feds”. It’s surreal, like they don’t even know what country they’re in.
Nice baiting there Jcowell, well played. No country in the world is perfect. Canada is still near the top of the list when it comes to safety and quality of life.
It's true that many first nations people struggle. Canada is taking steps to help them (see accelerated vaccination of native communities) and I sincerely wish them all the best. However, dismantling the police probably isn't going to undo things that happened several centuries ago.
In fact, I am no sociologist, but I would surmise that telling cops that all of them are bastards and exposing them to budget cuts will probably make them behave with less kindness, not more. ACAB is the opposite of constructive. In my opinion, it's a toxic message with the potential to make things worse for everyone, first nations included.
All of that being said, I'm 100% in favor of body cameras that are always enabled, and stricter limits on weapons use by police.
No, they're right. And it's not just first nations people. Being a person-of-color in Canada is definitely no picnic as soon as you get out of the larger towns. I've seen quite a bit of this first hand and up close while living there.
Consider that your viewport is small enough that the rougher parts of Canadian life for minorities are invisible to you.
I believe you, and I would rather live in a larger town myself. However, I think that on this front, Canada compares very well to the US, France, the UK, Brazil, China, and Japan (known for its xenophobic culture), to name a few places. No place is perfect, but we have it better here than a lot of other places, on many fronts.
I just want to remind you that a family of four muslims was run over by a bigot in London, Ontario in the last week. And that in 2015, Harper and the CPC traded in a dog whistle for a bullhorn when he talked about “old-stock Canadians” and proposed a “barbaric cultural practices hotline” - and that party has just spent 10+ years leading the country!
Canada has some major problems with racism, and a lot of news media (particularly in the PostMedia family) is fanning those flames.
>I also get the general impression that whoever came up with "defund the police" has anarchist inclinations. It's basically doublespeak. They keep saying that "defund the police" only means "reform the police", but what they actually want is to dismantle the police, which is exactly what "defund the police" sounds like.
In America, we get subjected to a bunch of these people saying loud and clear, "Yes, we really do mean abolish the police." And yes, a large number of them have anarchist inclinations.
It seems a lot of the marketing for PC cases and hardware is targeted at young teenage boys 10-16. I wanted to buy a computer case for my mom, and I couldn't find an affordable one without a window on the side.
IMO it can look nice if it's done subtly. I definitely don't want fast animated LEDs on my computer, I think that would just make it harder to concentrate.
> I wanted to buy a computer case for my mom, and I couldn't find an affordable one without a window on the side.
I had the same problem when I went to upgrade my server chassis. Fortunately the side panels on the chassis I settled for were interchangeable so I could swap the glass around to the rear facing side and hide it.
I think that my PC case is pretty tasteful and not targeted towards pizza-faced adolescents. It's not completely enclosed though, the sides are dark mesh. I luckily have very little RGB that shows through it.
You joke, but LG makes a <3lb (1.36kg) 17” laptop. That’s impressive. (I can’t vouch for its quality, I don’t have one).
Samsung makes a 15.6” laptop that weighs 2.6lbs, which is extremely practical. I’m planning on getting one. I wouldn’t be if it had the bulk and weight of a removable battery.
I literally just don't believe that this is a real problem. Old school laptop batteries were large, but how much of that is really needed? In theory you could add a connector and be 90% of the way there. Put a panel on attached with a simple screw and you're golden.
Maybe we could build laptop cases out of carbon fiber and get the best of both worlds? Or at least make laptop cases easier to open for servicing, with standard screws and no plastic clamps.
Why would a removable battery be more heavy? More bulky, probably and with more plastic also a bit more heavy. But not much, as the heavy part is not the plastic.
The original promise of bitcoin was that it would actually be useful as a currency, for buying stuff. Now that this hasn't panned out, and the problems preventing BTC from being used as a currency fail to be addressed, advocates have shifted the narrative to "bitcoin is digital gold".
IMO, if the Netherlands bans bitcoin, they will also ban other similar cryptos that could actually be used as currencies. That negatively impacts the crypto markets for sure. It's not just about bitcoin.
Would such a ban be hard to enforce? Sure, but not everyone feels comfortable doing things that could land them huge fines or even jail time. I certainly don't.
Gold is used as a store of value because it's been universally recognized as valuable for thousands of years, in almost every culture. Would you really trust your life savings to bitcoin if we're in a climate where more and more countries are banning it? That would make redeeming your digital gold increasingly more illegal and difficult. Crypto bans definitely erode the "digital gold" proposition as well IMO.
> It's like taking a random byte sequence from some binary, shoving it randomly into another, and the new binary gets useful new features.
If you think about it for a moment, our genetic code is kind of designed to work that way.
You get half of your genetic code from your mom, the other half from your dad, and somehow, all of these genes "just work" together. It's kind of miraculous when you think that there are very many genes that encode how your brain works, and how your liver works, your muscles, etc. Somehow, provided the baby can be born, a mishmash of genes from two different individuals almost always works out.
Probably because they do not really encode how anything works and because, probably by necessity, the growth of organisms is a swarm intelligence that is quite self-healing.
In particular with coinjoined twins, it's quite remarkable how much the systems for body development still produce something that connects the inner workings, which was obviously not it's “purpose”,but the self-healing growth mechanisms that corrects for errors simply leads to that.
Consider the Hensel Twins who have two mouths but their digestive system at some point merges in a way that is capable of digesting. The “tubes” of their digestive tract actually merge at one point, but they have two stomachs.
"a mishmash of genes from two different individuals almost always works out" => different individuals of the _same_ species (which btw is how a "species" is defined).
The evolution of organisms that gene mishmash (aka sexual reproduction) is thought to be the result of an ongoing arms race between gene sequences that "try" to stay unchanged (in higher level species) and gene sequences that "try" to "free ride" (from viruses etc.) Being able to build members of your species from "mishmash of genes from two different individuals" has the effect of scrambling the DNA of each species member which makes attack harder.
Organisms that do not do this and reproduce via cloning (aka Parthenogenesis) are often entirely wiped out once a pathogen figures out how to target their DNA -- hence the bananas types we eat change over time.
> The evolution of organisms that gene mishmash (aka sexual reproduction) is thought to be the result of an ongoing arms race between gene sequences that "try" to stay unchanged (in higher level species) and gene sequences that "try" to "free ride" (from viruses etc.)
Sexual reproduction means your species has a very large gene pool, and individuals with new combinations of genes can be produced very quickly. That's not just an advantage against viruses. It's also very useful for adapting rapidly and competing against other species when your environment changes. New threats (and new opportunities) show up all the time, be it dwindling or changing availability of food, climate change (e.g. new ice age), new predators or new preys, and also a group of individuals migrating to a new region of the world with a different climate.
That seems to be the point the parent is making. Tautology is the the only way we can explain the way life happens to be -- it's because it's advantageous for it to be that way.
It should also be pointe out that about two thirds of human conceptions result into early embryonic death, so evidently it is not as smooth a ride as suggested.
Do very much agree it's miraculous. Biological organisms are robust to error and chance in ways no designed system comes close to matching. It's awe-inspiring
We all need to transition to renewable energy. It's not good for Canada to become more invested in the oil economy, just as electric cars, trucks and renewables are starting to boom. It's neither good for you environmentally or economically if you have a 10+ year horizon.
I agree that we need to stop treating houses as investments, because they're a basic fundamental need everyone has.
IMO, the problem could be fixed by having stricter laws prohibiting people who aren't residents from owning homes in another country. The requirement to become a resident is only to live in a country for over 6 months out of the year. Before that, you can just rent. We could also do things like limit the number of houses a person can own, and tax every house sale based on capital gains (even primary residences).
However, another problem we have is that interest rates are too low, and there isn't enough construction. Those are harder problems to solve. I really think we should build more, but we'd need denser construction as well. What do you do if you need land to build and there's already a house there, or someone already owns the land? Maybe it's kind of silly to have this idea that a person can "own" a piece of this planet we all live on, but we probably don't want to live in a communist country where the government owns every home and everyone is renting either.
As for interest rates, this is driven by our current economic policy and money printing. Maybe there's a way to somehow detach the interest rate used for mortgages from that in other areas. Surely, the government could print stimulus money and direct it where it's needed without interest rates being artificially controlled? The main problem with these near-zero interest rates is that they completely kill the free market. We keep zombie companies alive and we allow people to speculate on home prices endlessly. That's not natural. In a "true" free market, there's a natural equilibrium between offer and demand, both home prices and rents will fluctuate but they will balance out. My ex's parents bought a home in the 1970s, they only had high school education and were both making minimum wage. Said home is now worth over a million and out of reach of anyone not making 200K+ household income.
Something like this would effectively bar any person born in India who tried to immigrate to the U.S. in the last ~5 years from ever buying a house, unless they got married to a citizen. Broad strokes, I agree that residency requirements might help with reducing speculative investment, but maybe phrased in terms of how long you're in the country, not literally permanent residency as a legal threshold.
Yes I agree, I meant residency requirement, requiring that people live in a country for at least 6 months before buying a house, which could be done on a work or student visa.
Not necessarily - for example in China foreigners are limited to owning one house. That limits speculation but does not provide hindrance for someone honestly trying to live.
In general, of course not, but GP originally proposed specifically forbidding non-permanent residents from buying houses. How is that not hurting immigrants?
Agreed that the policy doesn't have to be binary, but GP's original phrasing was literally "ban non-permanent residents from buying property," which is what I was responding to.
Not everyone wants to own the place they live in. Lots of people plan on only being in a location for a year or two or four, and would rather just rent.
Some people would just rather rent indefinitely.
The problem is free handouts for homeowners in general.
The handouts entice the landlords, because for the last 30 years with the exception of 3 years (2005-2008) - housing on leverage has absolutely destroyed equities as an investment.
If you got rid of the handouts, this wouldn't be the case. Then you wouldn't have people like Blackrock gobbling up houses. They'd just be buying equities (the things that are supposed to be investments?) instead.
Maybe? They are a luxury for the upper middle class, and you could easily rent one the same way you rent an airbnb. Those holiday homes do need to belong to someone though, so I suppose it makes no sense to outright ban own multiple homes, but we could structure it so that resale is more highly taxed, particularly resale after a short time (i.e. people "flipping" properties).
Ok...we need more houses so tax the hell out of developers?!
You need people to be able to build and flip properties without being taxed at all. The current taxes are carving a modest profit down to "not worth it" for a lot of people who could otherwise build and revitalize affordable housing.
More taxes on home sales results in less homes for sale.
IMO we should probably reduce taxes on house builders. Maybe even give them tax exemptions. Do what we can to increase supply.
Speculators wanting to buy a house, redo the kitchen, and mark up the price 20% 6 months later though? We could just let older, unrenovated houses be cheap. That opens up deals to new home buyers. You can redo the kitchen after buying the house if you really care. You don't need some middle man to do it and mark up the house.
Lots of people want to buy a move-in-ready house. Many don’t know much about construction, don’t know which end of a hammer to hold, can’t afford to have a house sit idle for 3 months while a renovation happens, and want to have the “Apple” experience for one or two hundred a month more in their mortgage payment.
That’s the service flippers provide, IMO. (I’m not one but I think they’re more helpful than not in terms of providing housing that owner-occupants want.)
There's flippers who truly restore a dilapidated house and help resuscitate a neighborhood, and there are flippers who put a thin veneer of newness on a rotting frame, bury the waste in the backyard, and then still try to charge the same as the first kind. We don't need more of the second kind.
Is that how it works in Singapore? I know in China you lease land from the government for 50 or 100 years. I do think it's important to be open to ideas, and I think there probably ought to be redistribution of wealth, particularly when it comes to land ownership. That has to be balanced with some minimum set of rights so that people can't be randomly evicted because people in power want that land, and that when people are evicted, they receive fair compensation.
It's not so different than how the US operates, except the lease is called a deed and it's term is indefinite. The government can still take "your" land away if you stop paying taxes or they need it for something else.
I would say you can make your text easier to understand by a large audience by avoiding very rare words that many people don't understand, and sticking to common phrasings. That will make text compress better for sure. I'm sure you get literary brownie points for using 10 different words that mean pretty much the same thing in different contexts, but you should never do that in an engineering textbook, for instance.
That's how I organized my work in grad school. I basically worked when I felt like it. Some weeks that was 80 hours, others just 20, following the natural flow of my motivation. I went for errands in the middle of the day, took time to cook, parties, but also worked late nights and weekends when it felt right. I slept on a shitty futon and ate a lot of ramen noodles, but it sure felt nice to be able to work at my own pace and sleep as much as I needed, yet still manage to publish more than anyone else in my lab.
It's not necessarily the "have nots" who jump on the bandwagon. Many of these mob inciters are clearly middle class or upper middle class. I've even seen news anchors participate, people who earn several hundreds of thousands a year. In some cases, it may have to do with crab mentality. Wanting to pull someone down who has more than them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality
However, if you look at the way James Damore was taken down, or that woman who made a stupid joke at the airport, these people weren't particularly rich compared to their peers. I think that had more to do with wanting to silence dissenting voices and kick someone while they're down, never giving them an opportunity to defend themselves or to have an open discussion.
I agree, it's not necessarily the "have nots" in the typical sense of the term, crab mentality is more accurate. It's just about someone who has more of anything than you - money, power, privilege (loaded term these days), status, etc.
AFAIK, the "defund the police" chant was supposed to be in response to American police forces buying army vehicles and gear. That is not a thing in Canada. I also get the general impression that whoever came up with "defund the police" has anarchist inclinations. It's basically doublespeak. They keep saying that "defund the police" only means "reform the police", but what they actually want is to dismantle the police, which is exactly what "defund the police" sounds like.