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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: April 29th, 2024

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  • The library is appealing to me because:

    Precedence: pre internet I could connect to the library over a landlines and access the library and community news.

    Expertise: not necessarily deep tech expertise, but with information retrieval, curation, education.

    Community access: libraries are a municipal service with brick and mortar locations, and are heavily involved with community/public engagement.

    For clarity, on the fediverse instance aspect. I was thinking more read only, with users being more official organizations with a barrier of entry vs. The general public. I personally wouldn’t want libraries to be moderating public discourse - this should be arms reach. And wouldn’t want them worrying about liability.

    Public information (like safety bulletins for example) shouldn’t exclusively be sitting on a for profit ad platform, it’s bizarre.



  • Some liberals did vote in favour of electoral reform, and supported the motion, and had it as part of their platform. But I get your point that they are ultimately responsible for not passing reform. Maybe time to try again.

    Ideally it would be put to Canadians on whether we want to move forward with PR or STV/ranked ballot. Status quo not being an option. Arguably democracy is eroding, this a meaningful pro democracy reform.

    My biggest concern with PR is that it would give a platform to extremists, but I’m less concerned about that these days as they seem to have a platform anyway. The next thing I think we need to consider is whether PR makes sense in the context of Canada, we aren’t a small country geographically and we aren’t homogenous. Local representation matters.




  • Yes, confiscation of illegal and dangerous substances and drunk tank for public intoxication. Why is this outlandish?

    If I go through an airport I’m frisked and water can be confiscated. Open liquor at a beach can be confiscated.

    If I get drunk to the point I’m out of control I can be placed a drunk tank.

    Crystal Meth, fentenyl etc… are very dangerous drugs. And people on these drugs are very antisocial.

    You may just be saying that those policies won’t help an addict. Addicts have different profiles and so would behave differently. Having consequences on actions would be helpful for some.

    Conversely, a complete laissez faire attitude is propelling addiction for some. We are implicitly condoning their behavior.

    It’s OK for there to be consequences to an addicts behavior, while also providing more support.

    Their behavior disproportionately impacts the poor. Consider addicts tend to poorer neighborhoods, but only a very small portion of the neighbourhood are addicts. And it’s the poorer families who can’t use their parks, or have their kids run to the corner store or maybe even play outside. Their public amenities are trashed, and local funding doesn’t go as far. The normalization and access to drugs is certainly not helpful either.






  • Very little of the demand is demand to drive a car. It’s mostly demand to travel as effectively as possible.

    When you build out road networks you make traveling by car more effective, increasing demand on that specific mode.

    When you build out transit networks you make traveling by transit more effective, increasing demand on that specific mode.

    When you have well designed cities, you reduce the demand for travel, period.

    Higher population centers have favorable economics for transit vs. Personal vehicles. And are more impacted by pollutants.

    Low population centers have favorable economics for personal vehicles vs. Transit. And are less impacted by pollutants.

    That’s a description of the dynamics anyway.

    I imagine vast majority of people would agree that folks that live in the densist cities need transit, and those living in a forest need a personal vehicle. The debate occurs somewhere in between of the extremes.

    Personally I’m of the opinion that we skew too far towards cars, because the true costs/externalities are harder to see, so what seems like favorable economics is actually just socializing the costs.




  • Alternatively, if there was no Google or Google like company, we would likely be much further along in tech, and have better functioning democracies. They have limited innovation in maps and search products. They rely on being big to be competitive. Their products are pretty poor given their engineering team size. Digital advertising: they bought their way into a quasi monopoly, siphoning dollars from people that actually create things.