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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: July 19th, 2023

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  • Not to mention foreign slave labour that’s subsidized by a government intent on taking as much of the western world with them when they crash and burn.

    Not only that, but Chinese industry is declining so hard right now that even the EV industry is on the verge of failing with record number of companies in the middle of shutting down, so relying on Chinese EVs is not just asking for destroying our local industries, but also have our supply vanish the moment the Chinese are unable to deliver once they can’t even get half the parts to build them due to all the tarrifs that are being put on them.

    Then there’s there’s all the stories of Chinese EVs spontaneously combusting that keep popping up before being covered up. I think there’s been at least two cargo ships that went up after the EVs they were carrying suddenly caught fire, then all the thousands of EVs that caught fire after minor bumps due to a lack of safety features. Even the Russians are saying no to Chinese EVs lately due to how bad they are.


  • Interesting they’re blaming the Liberals when this decline’s been going on for at last two decades now, at least relative to global wealth. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that relative standard of living compared to the rest of the world, we’ve been declining the entire 40 years on average.

    And looking at the trends, we’re headed right towards another recession on top of a housing bubble burst, so no matter what anybody tries, we’re looking at another decade of decline before there’s even a chance of things getting better. The moment the housing bubble crashes, we’re looking at a similar situation to Japan’s lost decades, and we can only hope to ride it out half as well as they have.


  • I have a strong suspicion that this won’t be a guaranteed income in the near future. There’s already human testing for life extension treatments, so it won’t be a surprise that in twenty years, we’ll see a serious decline of profits both for funeral homes and in elderly care facilities making them both rarities.

    That said, I do think that cremation or something similar should be a subsidized if not a free government service. Being charged an arm for dealing with a tragedy is just plain exploitation and there should be alternatives for those who aren’t in the best positions. There’s already so much paperwork and other things people have to deal with, it’s a wonder that this hasn’t been a major public issue for decades now.


  • To be honest, it doesn’t have to be HSR at that point. Just reliable normal rail would do that, something we’re still lacking for most of the country. Imagine being able to get to any province in a day under $30 (and even cheaper group deals) with zero chances of any delays.

    Vacations across Canada, or even just visiting family in another province for a weekend would be easy and regular. Not to mention how much it would bring the nation together. As things stand, the provinces are more separated from each other than the states in the US. We’re closer to the EU than the US in terms of unity. Arguably even worse than the EU. Promoting cross provincial movement for even little things would seriously bring us together, not to mention all the economic benefits.


  • Agree on all points. Frankly speaking, part of the reason housing prices are as high as they are is because it’s so cheap to continue owning one. And by not selling as often, the market prices soar and it becomes more difficult to have more efficient housing options replace single detached homes.

    Not only that, but by increasing housing density, it further increases the city’s revenue and reduces cost of the infrastructure since a similar amount of infrastructure can service several times as many people.

    Frankly, I hope that this not only passes, but keeps going for a few years. Homes should never be treated as investments, but necessities of life. Unlike investing in businesses, investing in homes puts greater burden on the economy rather than expanding it, and it’s only a matter of time before the bubble bursts, causing millions to love everything.


  • Do you have mature filters on? I see at least one adult game on the front page all the time, if not a dozen despite having bought only two or three on my account (compared to the better part of 1k games on my list).

    Lots of games with advertised screenshots blocked due to being mature, and lots more that don’t despite being obviously pornographic.



  • While I agree it was a greedy and ignorant move, the difference is that your website is being advertised for free every time it shows up on Google searches, while news articles are stolen wholesale without anything more than a link to the original that nobody is going to bother checking because they got the entire value of product that people care about.

    It’s the difference between a movie trailer being shared on streaming services vs the movie itself being uploaded everywhere. One’s advertising, the other’s piracy.




  • To be honest, I’m guessing that they’re trained to push their body weight into the person’s back, but only trained in a controlled environment with compliant trainers, rather than someone out in the open with others yelling, screaming, and throwing objects while the subject is trying to resist.

    Ten guys try to do it with minimal training in terrible situations, and at least one of them is going to fuck it up like this. While on camera since everybody’s got one in their pocket nowadays.



  • While I think this is an issue, I think it’s a minor one. If it was a big problem, we’d see a whole bunch of 2 storey apartments sprinkled amongst single family homes. But I’ve never seen one in all my time in Toronto. Because there’s a whole ton of regulations that make it impossible by just plain making it illegal without jumping through a whole ton of other hoops that make it far too expensive.

    I’m not saying fixing this won’t help, but it’s just one of dozens of issues, and a minor one compared to some of them.



  • The faster the charger, the more powerful of a charging station you need, and the more expensive they are. No matter how fast your car is capable of charging, it’ll be limited by the charging station so the speed itself won’t change.

    On the other hand, solid state batteries are supposed to have quite the increase in charge density so there’s the hope that they can be a lot cheaper since you don’t need as big of a battery.

    On the other other hand, isn’t the car market slowing down as a whole? Sales seems to have slowed dramatically these last few years as people are relying on other ways to get around more and more, so rather than replacing cars with EVs, it’s more like cars are just plain disappearing, even it’s only at the rate of partial replacement levels.


  • Promises mean nothing. We’ll start talking once we get some contract written up.

    That, and why 2050? It only takes 10 years to build nuclear plants, so why can’t it be 2040? Or just pump in more money into the joint effort into SMRs?

    Honestly, until I see money exchange hands, this is no better than China commiting towards climate change goals while simultaneously building up a dozen new coal power plants.


  • Specifically it’s bad for rich people who own offices, but good for rich people who own businesses that don’t need offices and now aren’t expected to waste money on them.

    The issue is that office space is leased for several years at a time, with the shortest leases being something like 5 years. It looks bad on the spread sheets when you have 3 years left on your lease, yet you’re not using those offices because people want to work from home, so a lot of companies are trying to force people to go back to offices so they can get their yearly bonuses, even if it costs the company millions doing so.


  • Probably more like 4x that, but on the other hand, this is finally a project that is starting to get a little close to the level of added housing that is needed in a single city (presuming this is concentrated around central Vancouver, not being placed around smaller towns or something stupid like that.

    Most proposals only amount to 10% those numbers, and 10 years is a realistic time scale as building homes takes time in the first place.


  • I remember reading about a particular speeding camera that is actually turned off the majority of the time due to the sheer number of speeding tickets that are produced from it alone. It’s so much that it clogs up the entire system so they just gave up and turned it off for like 2/3rd of the time so the people processing those tickets have time to work on other cameras.

    Raising the fines is good and all (rather it really should be done), but I think the entire ticketing system needs to be overhauled as well so that it’s far more streamlined to handle massive loads without hiring thousands of more people to brute force the problem.

    The number of people who brag about their fines is staggering, treating them like badges of honor. If you check out automotive forums, you’ll see it all the time, with people trading tips on how to push the limits of the demerit system to avoid having their license revoked without actually fixing their habits. There’s even tips on how to legally obscure your license plate so you can’t get caught on speed cameras.

    Also regarding those highway speeding cameras, normal speeding cameras just take two pictures and measure how far the vehicle has moved during that time. Though if you just equip the camera with a doppler radar, you can just directly measure the speed that way.


  • Rather than the most engagement, it’s starting to become the emotion that creates any engagement at all.

    Political apathy has gotten pretty ingrained in the democratic world, let alone here in Canada. And frankly, I can’t blame anybody when it feels like even going out to the polls is a lose-lose situation. Not a single viable candidate you really want to back means that why should you even bother to show up to vote? No matter who gets in the seat, they’ll screw over the majority of the population and hold back any of the real change that’s needed to actually fix any of the prevalent problems that hurt not only the regular folk, but the economy, health, safety, and any number of other things that make a good and prosperous country.

    This isn’t China, yet why does it sometimes feel like the upper echelons are growing to more and more resemble the CCP? Or the oligarchy of Russia?