Boycott is just as much (or more) because of the "jokes" about annexation. Tariffs despite the renegotiated NAFTA from just a few years ago is certainly concerning, but that will just add bite.
I've got a copypasta for recommending Mastodon to Canadians looking to get more reliable news. I include some suggested starting follows for Canadian news sources and information. I'd love to add some official government Mastodon accounts to that list.
In fact, any other suggestions, I can try and improve it. I want to keep it pretty streamlined, Federated services are already kind of complicated and impose a bit of a learning curve. I focused on just Canadian hosted general interest Mastodon instances, with a good list of Canadian news sources. I leave the discover of Lemmy.ca and Pixelfed.ca for later exploration.
I think the association came from emulation. IIRC, you can sometimes play Colecovision ROMS with the MSX emulator in RetroArch, although it's been a while since I dealt with this.
I'll add that once you are on the island, there are a lot of medium sized communities, plus lots of more rural areas. Housing prices are still kind of high from a historical perspective but can be pretty cheap by Vancouver standards.
Likewise, the Okanagan, Kamloops and Shuswap regions have lots of more affordable communities up in the hills around fairly decently large population centres by BC standards.
Finally, if you start heading north it gets positively affordable. Prince George, Vanderhoof, Terrace, William's Lake. Long drives are needed to get places though. Still, where else would you get something like the Sandblast?
I think an actual official government instance would be a good idea. Probably Mastodon would make the most sense, since it would mostly be one-way announcements. With federation, easy enough to get that viewable wherever it's needed.
I don't think it's intentional on Xitter's part, necessarily. It's a bit of an arms race, and Xitter under new management had cut back on all sorts of staffing.
I also don't think many people stick on Xitter even notice. The algorithm seems to create a bunch of parallel silos, with outside intrusions provoking a swarm response almost.
In the case of Trudeau posts, most engagement seems to be from MAGAts and Qonvoyers, with probably some choice comments from "Joe McDonaldski" from the Canadian Oblast of Ontario or something.
From Xitter's perspective, a bunch of MAGAts and Qonvoyers reply, upvote, and engage with "Governor" Trudeau, viewing ads while a bunch of the flock pay for the Xitter check mark.
I think clearing the bots would be difficult, require continuing investment, and possibly reduce revenue in the short term.
I'm just on Xitter for legacy purposes, I rarely see anything meaningful. Granted the algorithm mostly has me figured out, and will show me stuff I already agree with, but just a bit further towards the edges of discourse. I'm under no illusion, I'm certain bad actors are influencing discourse all along the political spectrum.
I still have my Xitter account and pop in now and then. It's declining steadily. It's just weird if you step back and look at the difference in discussions on different topics, combined with what gets boosted. They've locked down their API Access, so it's harder for researchers to measure, but it's my impression that it's got to be over 50% bots.
I'm sure most of that is going to be old school, using basic swarms to upvote content you want to boost, but with LLM AI getting more sophisticated by the day, and more cost effective, there's going to AI driven bots actually writing plausible posts soon.
I think the crypto and scam space shows the leading edge, since scammers tolerance for lower quality means they can be early adopters.
But what do I know? I'm no expert. The Dead Internet Theory might stay be true, or we might have a few more years.
Also, good to get into the Fediverse. It may soon be the last refuge if humans.
Also, Twitter has a lot of bots. More than ever before. This shapes discussion in many ways. Most basically, posts meeting certain narratives get more upvotes, quote tweets, etc. resulting in an algorithmic boost. Add in Xitter's desire to "boost engagement" by bidding controversial content. Finally, so many people are leaving Xitter, or at least using it less at it's quality declines.
Modern power is based on more than having a bunch of people carrying swords. It's based on having the economic capacity to build more advanced fighters,, tanks, ships and having some soldiers to work it all, while maintaining the infrastructure to advance the technology that all those toys use.
The US didn't crush USSR in the jungles of Vietnam. It crushed it in the kitchens and living rooms of Europe and much of the rest of the world.
Now Trump is attacking the very source of the US' strength. The US never needed to occupy any of their allies capitals, to put tanks on the streets of Toronto, Manchester or Munich. NATO countries (despite Kremlin talking points) willingly joined NATO. Now, Trump wants to destroy all that because he doesn't understand it. A real estate developer of the worst kind.
The real nail in the coffin is that about 1/3 of the people of the US are cheering him on right now. Another third don't bother to vote. And Presidential authority is now akin to that of a monarch.
I'm less offended by the overall designs than the pointless gimmicks. Pet peeve is those flat door handles. What's wrong with boring old regular handles?
So many EV's are designed as luxury vehicles mostly. We need more Chevy Bolt and less Tesla.
I'm assuming interactive fiction means more along the lines of Choose Your Own Adventure books or Fighting Fantasy game books.
Article mentions text adventures as well, but old school like Zork and such wouldn't work well without a keyboard. Maybe more the nineties era Gabriel Knight and Beneath a Steel Sky,but that would suffer from a black and white screen.
Boycott is just as much (or more) because of the "jokes" about annexation. Tariffs despite the renegotiated NAFTA from just a few years ago is certainly concerning, but that will just add bite.