Dearche @ Dearche @lemmy.ca

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2 yr. ago

Gotta buy those boot straps first though.

The quality of potatoes feel like it's dropped quite a bit this year.

On top of that, corn's been pretty expensive lately too due to the US redirecting so much of it into biofuel.

On the other hand, mushrooms, vegetables, and fruits have been reasonably cheap, though a lot of the fruit haven't tasted very good.

A combination of a few million new high density housing over the next decade, a complete rewrite of zoning laws to take them outside of the hands of the cities, and the removal of any need of any neighbourhood association to sign off on any new development.

Commercial producers won't make housing cheap and affordable on their own in any reasonable time-frame. Even if they instantly become able to construct as they like, market forces will take time to let housing prices cool off.

Which goes into my second point, zoning laws as they exist prevent housing from being made in the first place. Especially single family house zones are the single biggest killer of affordable housing. People already make their houses massive, to the point that they're getting close to low-rise apartments.

Which goes to the third point: the character of a neighbourhood changes every single day, so any attempt at the preservation of such a thing is just a bald faced lie, even if they're lying to themselves saying it. The neighbourhood I grew up in were all small houses, from tiny two stories to bungalows. Every single house is easily twice if not three times bigger than the ones I remember as a child. There's no trace of the neighbourhood I grew up in, aside from the fact that they don't house any more families than before. Hell, they probably house fewer people than before as I bet almost all the families there have only one child at most.

The unfortunate result if there was actually the political will to do this is that it would cause a pretty big depression as people have been conditioned into treating housing as an investment for their retirement. A necessity of modern life being used to create profit, that in itself is a non-performing asset that adds exactly zero dollars to the economy and is worse than buying a whole bunch of gold ingots in the hopes that its value will rise faster than inflation.

Personally, I'm patient so I'm fine with house prices going down slowly, as long as rentals get cheaper. It's stupid when such a high number of young decide that they're pushing off moving out of their homes due to seeing it impossible to afford one of their own. Delaying getting a home, even an apartment, means delaying getting married, presuming you're even bothering to date. Delayed marriages means fewer children, which means a stagnating and eventually dwindling population.

If the population stagnates, then everything falls apart for the elderly as the price of everything goes up as there's fewer people to make, deliver, and serve everyday items. And that's not to mention that the entire RRSP system depends on sufficient new blood putting money into it just to maintain the status quo. Lots of retirees all over the world are going back to work only because inflation has gone up a bit. How many will do so when it becomes impossible to keep inflation in the most critical areas down due to the lack of workers?

In the end, housing is the root problem, and while I fear it causing a major recession, I still think it's preferable than for housing prices to never come down. The economy will tank in the future whether the housing bubble bursts or keeps its course. But only one of those two options gives us a hopeful future beyond that bleak one.

Seriously. The amount of foam trays and plastic containers used is insane, and entirely because it would cost more to develop a biodegradable alternative than to accept a bad look and just say it's for the consumer's bottom line.

While I admit that some things are done better in traditional plastic until we can create decent and cheap bioplastics (we're getting close for low strength, though I don't know if transparency is good or not), many things can just be swapped with waxed paper or cardboard. We've been using waxed paper for cup for decades now, just adapt that for other uses.

Outside of election season in general. No poll has any real value as they swing wildly back and forth depending on what's going on.

Most voters have such short term memory that they forget what's been said and done outside of election season unless if it gets memed on.

I just don't feel like 50% faster is enough. People are just so attached to their cars that they'll just rent one if they can't afford to own one. People in Canada compare things against planes if they talk about riding, so I think 200km/h is still a bit low unless if it's a short trip, which I doubt it would be. Most likely it'll be something like between Toronto and Ottawa, or Ottawa and Montreal.

200km/h isn't quite enough to make the trip feel short. I think you'd have to be closing in on 300km/h before people take high speed rail seriously, as then you'd be doing less than 2 hours including boarding for a trip like that, where boarding on a plane alone would take much of those 2 hours, though the flight itself would be quite a bit faster.

I agree when it comes to transporting goods, but low speed rail isn't good enough to transport people. Remember, isn't actually that insanely fast. They start at 200km/h, so aren't anything too amazing at the lower end.

That said, if we can get some more low speed rail for goods installed, the tax revenue from that alone should give the governments more than enough to set up high speed rail lines soon after. Canada has a serious internal trade problem. Every single province trades more with the US than their neighbouring province. More cargo rail would help fix that.

In addition, since cargo and passenger rail is combined right now, passenger trains need to wait hours for cargo trains to pass through sections of it because they have priority. Just building a new cargo line would significantly reduce this one problem even if cargo trains are still allowed to use the old lines.

Overall I agree. While every death is a tragedy, the reality is that if someone is denied a compatible organ, it means that there was someone who received it and was willing to go through more effort to ensure that they would survive the operation long term.

COVID still exists, and it is still running rampant through the world, and it is still a legitimate threat to those with weakened immune systems, something that all organ recipients are.

This is virtually the same as someone being denied a lung transplant because the refused to quit smoking. Someone died to give you that lung, and so if you're not going to treat it with respect, you don't deserve it as much as someone who will.

That said, the numbers for transplants I've found are a lot more positive than I had expected: Organ transplants in Canada, 2021: Donations and need. That said, most organ transplants are from the deceased, and of those, a significant percentage were from Ontario and BC (adjusted for population) interestingly enough.

Though with that said as well, in 2022 80% of donations were from the deceased, 52% were from family members, and compared to 2936 transplants, there were an additional 3777 people on the wait list. 701 Canadians were removed from the wait list that same year, 39% of whom had died while waiting. (https://www.cihi.ca/en/summary-statistics-on-organ-transplants-wait-lists-and-donors)

The numbers are pretty uplifting overall, but until we can commercially grow organs (either in a vat or a donor pig) we need to take care of donated organs and maximize their value by preferentially giving them to those who are most likely to survive receiving them in the long term.

Don't forget the cost of insurance, maintenance, fuel, etc. According to TechAltar it costs about half a million euros to own something like a VW Golf at the low end, 1.5M euros on the higher end. It's estimated that the average person spends 30-40% of their lifetime income on their car.

People only see the initial purchase price (which is often ignored because of various deferred payment offers that further increases the price), and the price of gas. Gas alone is starting to reach the price of renting an apartment, yet somehow people still can't see themselves living without a car.

Insane.

No, I know that modern AI has no real ability to fact check, but the reason is because they've never been built that way, nor do they have the resources to do it properly. They have no way to know what is a reliable source, nor how to interpret the data in a meaningful way if it needs to be used in an abstract manner.

But I do believe that modern AI technology should be able to do so if given the resources. Create an AI that only references from a list of credible sources, and is able to compare them to what is said elsewhere.

I'm no AI specialist or anything, so maybe I'm completely wrong and such a method wouldn't work. But at the very least, I haven't even heard of any real attempt at making a fact checking AI yet. All the existing ones are shit and only adapt normal language learning models to reference other internet sources regardless of their legitimacy.

Honestly, the government doesn't even need to subsidize public housing to fix the housing crisis, just create non-market housing. There's plenty of charity organizations that are able to build homes that are less than half of market prices. Hell, apparently even the YMCA does this.

We don't need to increase housing for those who are unable to work, just those who don't make 6+ figures. If charity organizations can fund these housing projects entirely off the back of bank loans that the renters are able to pay off themselves in addition to maintenance costs of their buildings, I don't see how the government can't do the same by using the subsidization funds.

We don't need a bunch of $200 apartments, we need lots of $1000-2000 apartments.

AI generated content will become prolific no matter what. It's only a matter of time, so rather than just banning such things and pretending it will never become an issue once you do so, it's better to simply legislate so that it is less likely to become an issue.

Things like limiting what sorts of ads you're allowed to make, how much money each ad would be worth for election purposes, rules and regulations on the contents of the ads (like significant penalties for being misleading or outright lies).

In fact, since AI in theory should be much better at fact checking than humans, the standards of information quality should be much higher and enforced by law, by penalty of a significant fine either against the party or individual's coffers, or against their campaign funds, depending on when it's done.

I think AI generated content is fine as long as it's not spreading misinformation. Mostly because there's no stopping it. If you ban it, people will find a way around it, so just regulate it to make it as beneficial as possible.

They are hard, but hard problems are the ones that need addressing. Easy problems tend to have little to no effect, regardless of if they're solved or not. And solving this problem will have exactly zero impact beyond stroking a few egos (which is something I consider a bad thing so thus should be avoided).

What a waste of time. Who cares about the name of a street. People focus so much time, energy, and money (not to mention public time energy and money) on things that don't matter when we have real issues that need to be dealt with, and quickly.

How about getting some of the current transit projects fixed up so that they actually finish during our lifetimes? Or fix the housing crisis? Or deal with all the empty office space? This city has countless problems, many from neglect over the decades, and people think that changing the name of a damn street is more important.

People need an ego check.

Honestly? By not taking part.

I've just plain given up on attaining the old "life goals" and just going for things within reach. I don't care about family, a career, a home, or any of that sort of stuff.

Doesn't mean I'm unhappy. I enjoy my life pretty decently. But all that stuff that was considered necessary for a good life before? Fuck that shit, I'm out. I'll make do with what I have and be happy through my own means.

I'll admit that such a large shift in mindset isn't something just anybody can do, but it worked for me.

As someone about the same age, I do understand your concerns, at least in part. And while things look bad, to be frank I think there's also a lot of good to see in the current world.

Traditional values and desires have little place nowadays and are becoming impossible to achieve (though I think a lot of that was true for the boomers as well, they just pretend it's not), but new things are appearing that's good. We're healthier overall than previous generations. We're surrounded with luxuries that previous generations would've considered impossible for the average person to have. We have opportunities abound to find careers, livelihoods, passions, and any number of other worthwhile pursuits that weren't possible even two decades ago.

If you let go of the preconceptions of previous generations, I believe there is a countless number of things that are good now that didn't exist even one generation ago. Maybe having a traditional career, getting married, having children, and owning a home are becoming more and more impossible, but that doesn't mean friendships, hobbies, and any number of other things of value are out of reach.

I don't make a lot of money. I've given up the idea of marrying and having kids. I will never own a single detached house. I don't even see a future where I will ever retire. But I don't think those are reasons to say I am unhappy. I enjoy each and every day, find value in my work, enjoy my hobbies, and have friends, even if some of us argue constantly about our conflicting political leanings. The world now, despite climate change, dictatorships, rich assholes hoarding everything they can, political apathy, insane and transparent corruption, and any number of other horrible things in the world or even in my own city, I think the world now is better than it has been in the past, and will continue to become better.

You just...need to let go of what drove your parents, and find new things to bring you joy that wasn't possible for them. Because there are countless things that are possible now that wasn't even when you were a child.

For those people who are actually wishing for the bubble to burst, remember that's exactly what happened in 2008, and what happened back then. Literally the only people who won were the rich as they just bought out all the property that got severely discounted while other rich people got a massive payday from the government (aka regular Joe's tax dollars) for fucking up. And the bubble simply got restored because those rich people could afford to sit on unproductive products for a decade at a time because they knew that without a constantly increasing supply of housing, the prices will explode again because housing is a requirement, not a luxury.

And the losers was everybody who doesn't make 7 figures or more. People's retirements were crushed, their savings crushed, their existing lives crushed. And the economy was set back for years and inflation skyrocketed for a little while, which never came back down.

And in places where such housing bubbles really burst, Japan hasn't seen any growth for 30 years. They're still in what they all the Lost Generation, because they realized that calling it the Lost Decade was premature and it didn't end in 10 years. We're watching China's housing implode on itself right now with hundreds of thousands of people losing their entire investments and retirement savings. We're watching 80 year olds going back to work so that they don't starve to death while youth unemployment reaches levels so insane that they'll take a job that only pays under the table because the company can't afford to pay minimum wage!

You want a dystopia, you'll get it if the bubble bursts. You'll also get it if the bubble continues to inflate.

So the only solution is to slowly deflate the bubble by increasing housing construction so that it outpaces demand in a controlled manner until the prices come back down to something reasonable, then to continue keeping pace. And for that, we need the political will for both government subsidized housing and a overhaul of zoning laws to allow for mixed-use residential to replace all residential zoning.

Detached single family housing don't belong in major cities, and suburbs shouldn't be subsidized by the downtown core.

You wouldn't believe how many times I've personally almost been run over while on bike because of that, but even worse, when crossing the street the after the light turns green. Most drivers don't look the way they're going, and instead solely pay attention to the colour of the pretty lights overhead like three month olds.

Pedestrians/wheelchairs should ALWAYS be separated from vehicles (and that's including bikes) with physical barriers, and bikes separated from cars with physical barriers anywhere the speed limit's greater than 20km/h. And speed limits shouldn't be enforced with simply signs, but actually physical barriers that prevent speeding, like regular turns or speed bumps.

Drivers are so entitled in this country that they complain about being ticketed by the police when they're the ones knowingly breaking the laws. Laws that exist because people kill each other due to carelessness if it wasn't for these laws! And people DO kill each other constantly despite these laws! I mean, if most statistics didn't lump in cars together with all other accidents, cars alone would be the 11th leading cause of death in the States!

Seriously? Wasn't this Ford's idea? Wasn't this all Ford's decision? Wasn't this Ford who did everything? Isn't this about Ford doing political favours for his buddies in real-estate?

Sounds seriously like scapegoating.

They should be banned as a form of illegal drug due to the harm they cause (same with a few other platforms like tik tok).

While I think that social have a lot of benificial uses, the way most of them are implemented are anti-human in nature, and are the cause of a lot of mental health issues for those under 30, and especially for teens. Just look at suicide rates for teens over the last decade or two (especially among girls) and it's hard not to see facebook as a force of ill and should not be allowed to be used in Canada, especially by the young.