• 10 Posts
  • 35 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Yes, they do. People were already going to pharmacists for years in Ontario to get prescription refills for non-controlled substances. Sometimes you know that you just need a drug to treat your problem or you need a contraceptive. You know that there’s a specific acne cream that works for you, or you need a NSAID for your joint pain. There’s no point clogging up the already backlogged healthcare system for In demand healthcare professions such as physicians and nurse practitioners when you have another oversaturated health profession (pharmacy) that you can leverage.



  • That’s a fair question. The Consumer Price Index only provides data in aggregate form from a basket of retailers. The Statistics Act protects against the disclosure of specific data points. The consumer price index is important to track inflation affecting Canadians at large, but it isn’t very useful for analyzing specific pricing trends.

    I believe the organizer of this effort is specifically looking to find instances in which grocers and players within the grocery sector increase prices for non branded goods at the same time, which implies collusion. Think for example, bread price fixing and when they break the promise of not raising prices for x number of months. They wrote down a few analysis ideas to that effect.






  • I mean there is actually increasing demand so I’m not really sure if this is an example of corporate greed or if it’s just a realistic adjustment to the market. If the government is effectively subsidizing housing starts, it’s pretty reasonable to expect that without removal of tariff barriers and trade barriers for building materials, that the price of building materials would just increase in Canada overall. The only variables that Canada can really control is the price of softwood lumber due to the prevalence of stumpage fees, and the cost of importing foreign skilled trades labour (which is vehemently opposed by trade unions in Canada.) I can only hope that your plant is reinvesting its profits into increasing supply instead of paying out dividends, which would improve the ability to facilitate housing starts in the long run.


  • People who are looking for direct integration between podcast players and SponsorBlock seem to be missing that a lot of podcasts these days that do have advertising in them oftentimes have dynamic ads where the ad audio will change depending on the day, the geographical location of the download, etc. So SponsorBlock can’t actually account for what are essentially dynamic timestamps Whereas with YouTube you typically have fairly static timestamps that can be shared across a user base, only smaller podcasts are really going to be able to be captured by SponsorBlock unless someone discovers a way to mod an Android APK to essentially prevent the client-side compilation of ads and the original podcast audio assuming that there is a podcast app that does this on the client side.



  • Although this wouldn’t really have made a difference in this case, I just want to point out that services like ExpertFlyer will allow you to access the global distribution system where airlines record the actual reasons for delays in their flight status displays for travel industry employees. You can often times find that the safety issue that they’re talking about at the gate is really just a crew shortage issue. There’s been a few cases where having this comment has basically come in handy for disproving the airline’s reason for denying me compensation. And you can eventually use it in a small claims court if you really need to.



  • From what I gathered, the deep-packet inspection appliances they’re deploying in Myanmar aren’t working off terribly advanced rulesets. They only seem to be blocking obvious VPN connections since VPN protocols like WireGuard, IKEv2, OpenVPN, etc. make no effort to obfuscate themselves as being a VPN connection.

    There aren’t as many data points in Myanmar as one would like, but this Psiphon test from OONI seems to validate that even basic obfuscation is working in Myanmar.

    Random phone checks for VPNs are definitely another level though, yikes.



  • I sometimes wonder why we don’t just establish a foreign legion like France, or at least permit foreigners to join as enlisted (not officer ranks) like other countries as a pathway to Canadian citizenship. The risk in active service is a far greater display of commitment to Canada than the average study permit holder, and expanding our recruitment pool to Francophone nations in Africa, and states in the Caribbean would at least help greatly in finding non-specialized enlisted.

    I don’t see the security risk considering that the vast majority of CF recruits are never assessed for loyalty in their background checks, so long as they don’t serve in their countries of origin. I’ve completed the reference check for CF recruit background checks - I really don’t think they’re that rigorous if they’re essentially being outsourced to third party companies.

    The fact that having any kind of university degree automatically puts you into the officer cadre, in a country with an extremely high post-secondary education rate like Canada and low tuition fees/generous student funding (versus the US where the opposite is true and the Army is a pathway to post-secondary education), is only furthering a ridiculous ratio of officers to the enlisted. I see more value in starting to recruit from countries where pathways to move up on the social ladder are deeply stifled, and building a base of those who are willing to make meaningful sacrifices to become Canadians (versus yet another MBA student from University Canada West that’s only in it for themselves).


  • I remember a period of time where I was being prescribed three medications (all pretty minor) and they insisted I do a medication review. They get to bill the province $70 for those and they have a quota to hit.

    I learned later on that medication reviews aren’t just checking boxes off the list, but intended to ensure that patients are using their prescriptions safely and effectively, helping to identify any potential drug interactions/side effects, and consider alternative drug regimens. This never happened in my medication reviews, they were just 2 minute checkbox exercises.






  • My guilty pleasure is watching those YouTube videos of people vacationing at absurdly cheap caravan parks, and the general vibe I get is that these places are pretty run down but are surprisingly adequate if all you’re looking to do is get away from town. Low-cost European carriers have definitely done a number on a lot of domestic UK resorts though - they simply aren’t competitive for the reasons you’ve stated.



  • I liked getting the Sendai Area Pass and just taking the Loopie bus. It was a pretty good value and in many of the smaller attractions, I was the only tourist there that day (like the Sankyozawa 100-Year Electric History Center).

    It made it pretty easy to see Sendai in two days. The only thing that was closed in the winter that I would’ve liked to see were the University of Tohoku’s botanical gardens (not that there aren’t other botanical gardens I couldn’t have gone to).

    I really enjoyed Gyutan too (beef tongue) too. I don’t know if I got to try high-quality beef but I definitely enjoyed the food.







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