Does Pete Hegseth’s army take women? Isn’t this DEI or something? Those are not very manly soldiers.

What’s even more disappointing is all the other people interviewed were entirely willing to pay more to “keep the country safe”. That woman at least have some self awareness even of it’s just about gas. The rest is all gone.

Not a federated platform but some of my friends are from the IRC era and they still come on my network. I did not have to convince them but we switched to The Lounge for the client a few years ago, so we can paste images and see url preview on the channel. Otherwise they would have insisted that I join Discord, but the small features of the “modern” IRC client was just enough to keep them coming back.

It’s also corporate culture to blame the customers for the littering. Tim Hortons produces a disposable cup, and people are simply returning it to those responsible for creating it.

Apparently Coca Cola is one of the biggest plastic polluter in the world and they lobby against deposit return systems because it’s cheaper for them to pass the responsibility to the consumers. If some countries are choking with littered plastic bottles, maybe the consumers are dropping them everywhere. But maybe the ones producing the bottles could also be seen as being responsible for not taking them back.

I’ve seen a theory that it’s one of the goals. They, and the advertisers, will know who is a human or not, while we won’t.

Mild guess. The dev(s) don’t know about navigation buttons. Gestures have been “standard” for a while now so maybe someone forgot about this as a possibility?

And let’s also require everyone using popular platforms to show us their ID and prove they are humans, and their age, to protect the children. Let’s also pour billions into this technology.

Could chem trails also be on that board?

Because I think they’re leaking to other countries. My brother in law doesn’t even speak English, is a Trump supporter saying the media blames him for everything, and says the government is poisoning us with chem trails.

I know everything uses fossil fuel. I know food prices will go even higher. I know it’s a shitty situation. But fuck the oil industry. I don’t have a car amd I’ll take this small victory. I’m so glad not to have to worry about buying this shit.

The world was warned decades ago that it should wean off fossil fuel and we just continue burning it anyway. It’s like cocaine. This shit is bad for the environment but it’s also bad for energetic independence and world peace. Oil is a geopolitical nightmare. Even within oil producing countries. This shit sucks.

And the worse part is, I don’t think something like this will change the habits of much people or businesses. We will all just demand cheap oil and gas to quench our thirst for energy. The rest is collateral damage.

The poop has won.

But think about the oil! Cheap oil! The world has been warned for decades that it should wean off fossil fuel, and every time there is a crisis they just find another supply for a bit more money and continue ignoring the geopolitical and environmental effects. If only gas prices could be cheaper, all would be well in the world!

Text is not ASCII only :)

If you want to be technical, IRC supports Unicode so it’s just not ASCII only. Convos is also supposed to support voice chats.

It’s much easier to code this way and it’s cross platform. There are some experimental programs like Srain based on GTK. I tried it and it’s promising but it’s unfortunately too experimental for me so far and it’s lacking some features like persistent chat, so one would still need a bouncer which is an additional layer to setup.

He mentioned IRC but skipped it, probably thinking it’s still text only. However there are now web clients that can display inline images, url preview, persistent chat and push notifications. To me it’s the most KISS solution, as it’s super easy to setup and self-host.

In order for this to work, one needs an IRC server and a place to host the web client’s server. That’s it. I use The Lounge but there are others like Convos or ObsidianIRC.

Beyond urban transit, I want public transit.

A new light rail transit network is being built in my region and it’s a public-private partnership; the REM in Montreal.The contract guarantees profits to the private investment firm, paid by the taxes collected for public transit, while forbidding public transit to compete with the private system. The core of the private system was built by taking the most popular and profitable line of a public commuter rail line, and giving it to the private investor.

This will slowly cannibalize the public side by having less and less money for big public projects, and by funneling a big chunk of it to the private company. The private can compete with the public, and take its money with royalties, but the public cannot compete with the private, and pays royalties.

It’s absolutely unfair and makes big transit projects only possible if there is profit in it for the private investors.

Foamers online are all fawning over the fucking REM, saying it’s a shame we didn’t build more; that one is needed in the East and another in Longueuil. But they don’t seem to realize this will only happen if the private investors can see some profit in these. It’s not about proving a needed service. No guaranteed profits, no transit.

It’s so disappointing to see YouTubers that I like say this is the best transit project of their life. Like, WTF. Now the public entity paying royalties to the REM can’t pay for commuter lines and is looking into reducing service even more, or closing some of them entirely.

What a wonderful system. A model for the world! /s

No need for bombing anybody for the US army to pollute.

The US military is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases of any institution on Earth, generating an estimated 636 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalent (a standardised measure of greenhouse gas emissions) between 2010 and 2019.

If it were a country, this would make the US military rank 47th globally in emissions, ahead of nations like Sweden and Portugal.

Just for fun, look up how much the US army pollutes.

I don’t think energy consumption matters to most people. I still can’t believe the whole planet is “on board” with using a metal box that weighs around a ton, or much more, fill it with fossil fuel, and burn it to move that heavy box and generally a single person everywhere they go. Then they complain about the price of the fuel that is slowly choking the environment they need to drink, eat and live. But we can’t say anything bad against cars. Just buy an electric car because it fixes all the problems if you ignore wasted energy, microplastic pollution, noise pollution, the impact of parking, the millions of dead humans every year, and the billion animals considered roadkill every year. There is no more gas problem!

So, I wish this would make some people realize how power hungry and destructive AI can be, but I’m pretty sure most don’t give a fuck because “it can be useful”, just like cars. So far I’ve read people defending it saying power usage and efficiency will improve with time. Or that AI will find a tech solution to the AI problem.

It will do the same as the car industry. People will begin to use it, find it some use despite its flaws, and defend it tooth and nails while it’s bringing us closer to environmental doom. You will consoom.

Unfortunately, yes. I live in a tower on a busy four lane artery. There is a traffic light just in front of the building and when the windows are open I can hear some electric cars, like Hyundai, when they are going at low speed. Here is what they sound like. I can hear others and I’m slowly beginning to recognize what brand they are just by the noise, but an electric Hyundai is loud and obvious to me.

I’m in Montreal and I hate this so much. We have no emergency corridors, cars are taking all the space. I’m sitting in my apartment and those loud as fuck emergency vehicles are honking and blasting their sirens while stuck behind a row of cars, that everyone just expects to magically disappear if they just honk a bit louder.

And worse, the fucking fire department is stopping bike lanes, pedestrianized streets and fighting against modal filters because “it slows them down and could be dangerous for the lives of the citizens”.

I can tell who is driving the ambulance by the style of siren chosen. Because somehow some ambulance drivers think that turning the siren on and off rapidly will make them move faster through gridlock.

Emergency vehicles here are seriously annoying, and apparently the solution is to make them even noisier and annoying rather than make some rules and infrastructure. It’s high on my list of things that makes me want to move back to the countryside.