Solid plan. I’m prolly in the same boat.

Exactly. And you see those guys doing something competent like building rail, or stockpiling oil for crises and you’re like - fuck why can’t my gov’t have this basic competence. Why the fuck am I waiting for a basic surface light rail line in Toronto, not a subway, for 18 years… (I know why, it’s a rhetorical question.)

It’s shocking that the market doesn’t factor in Israel breaking the ceasefire and Iran blocking the flow again.

We gotta call Rob’s ghost.

The world - for sure, but these are numbers for Americans.

I envy your optimism.

Separate, you think Nate’s gonna be it? I voted as hard as I could for him in the last OLP leadership election but the result was abysmal. And then in the prov election, ONDP got much more seats with much fewer votes. I’m wondering if I should do ONDP next time around. I guess we’ll see if Nate makes it and how the polls look in our ridings.

Also resource extraction. 🤭

I understand the financial argument for mitigating risk. That argument makes sense individually. I think the implications are a bit different at the collective - national level. If Canada tanks and Auatralia is fine, sure CPP’s runway remains longer and pensioners are paid, but the rest of the economy around them falling apart with high unemployment doesn’t make for sustainable retirement. The pension payouts are only as good as what they can purchase. If the local economy can’t sustain services and prices, what those pensions can actually buy here since pensioners don’t live in Australia, can change dramatically. And in bad economic conditions locally, we need local investment to keep the economy able to deliver the goods and services us Canadians need, retirees included. This is why there’s an argument made for pension funds to shift investment home. An argument Carney makes.

some of Canada’s biggest pension plans were spending more money outside the country and large investors were putting more money abroad.

🫠

Foreign investment is cool and all but it also means foreign actors get to have more say in our economy and politics. We should be getting the money we contribute to invest in us.

This graph shows something interesting. The numbers held steady for a long time. Then the opinion started rapidly shifting during Trump’s first presidency as they ramped up anti-CHAYNA! propaganda. That continied under Biden and the opinion trend followed. But look what happens after 2023. Despite the anti-China propaganda taps being fully open, the opinion trend goes positive. To me this means the propaganda is stopping to work for increasing number of people.

Anecdotally I see this with people I talk to in RL (in Canada). People who used to be on the China-bad (like myself) train have gotten off it and see their previous opinions as shaped by propaganda. Far from universal but things are shifting.

They know there’s no chance Israel’s gonna abide by that ceasefire.

People don’t understand electoral democracy well. Which might be saying something about the system itself.

He has a secret weapon - whenever he’s so wrong that his voter base thinks so, he apologizes and takes it bach. In today’s political world it’s a rare trait and it works.

Someone should tell him the city-run stores would compete with the rest.

Really? What doyou think would get him to step down?

Maybe I’d have thought different back then. After all I do believe people are largely shaped by their material conditions. Back then wars weren’t primarily proxy wars with large for-profit military industrial complexes dumping their production in them, which unnecesarily amplifies military and civilian death.

Is this a potential alternative to Open Web UI?

Overall, 47 per cent said it should be illegal for Canadians to serve in the military of any foreign government. Thirty per cent disagreed and 23 per cent said they were unsure.

Pretty close to the universal opinion. Lots of “don’t know” as well. I haven’t thought through the ins and outs of it but on the surface I tend to agree it should be illegal.

People who used AI tools for hints and clarification had a much easier time once the chatbot was removed when compared to those who used the bot to essentially prompt the answers.

Probably important for people who want to get some of the benefits of AI without paying the heavier costs. This reminds me of how I used Wolfram Alpha understand solving integrals in multivariate calculus. I paid for subscription that allowed viewing the steps it made to reach a solution. That helped me understand how the different strategies get applied in integration.

Comrade, socialism isn’t about reducing wealth inequality within the classes who get paid for their labour. Whether that’s labour done for a decent salary or minimum hourly wage. Socialism is about people getting paid what the businesd owners withold above what people get paid. Tackling intra-working class wealth equality is a misc matter for socialism or perhaps a communist matter that is counterproductive to tackle before we’ve gotten our surplus value back.

E: But I do understand your point about how algo pricing can provide more product to wider parts of society by essentially flattening their purchase power and therefore real incomes. That’s actually a very interesting perspective. If we didn’t have the other problem I mentioned this could be interesting to consider as a way to distribute produced goods and services.