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2 yr. ago

  • You'll still be a shit person, likely with no meaningful friendships. That's gotta factor into the equation somehow.

  • Proud victim of the Powertoys to Linux pipeline reporting in

  • Giant stadium style human writing that can be seen from a helicopter perhaps?

  • I'm not advocating for a system with infinite growth. I don't disagree with your first point, there's nothing inherently wrong with a country having a stagnant or declining population, but that's an over simplification. You need to look at the demographics. When more people are retired and drawing on services than there are people to work and pay for those services, that isn't sustainable. If you need more care homes for the elderly, than you need more people that work at care homes, for example.

    If the housing prices are what they are now, with the current supply and demand, how would stopping new immigration cause a crash in housing prices? The aricle we're commenting under says that 1/5 of construction workers are immigrants. Would you want to stop bringing in more construction workers to build housing given the current crisis? Like I said before, immigration policy is complicated and needs to be nuanced and strategic, it isn't an all or nothing situation.

  • I'd say that's a fair assessment of things. No worries, I'm happy to get more context on matters I should be better informed on.

  • As I understand it, immigration is always a balancing act. We have a demographic problem in Canada. As more boomers retire there needs to be workers to take their place and pay taxes to fund services. Many critical industries are experiencing a labour shortage and those jobs need to be filled. Their isn't enough young Canadian citizens to accomplish this. Immigration can't just be stopped.

    More immigrants will put pressure on the housing market, but the lack of housing is the result of decades of government complacency, as well as support for Canadian housing as an investment vehicle. The amount of houses/housing we need right now is huge. So huge that the current amount of construction workers in Canada cannot build it quickly enough. Immigrant workers will be needed. Undoing the decades of damage done to housing in Canada will take a sustained, long term, and bold effort. Does the current government have the will for that? I'm not super hopeful. Politicians have vested interests in keeping the housing market 'strong'. I hate to be fatalist, but even if the government does everything right, I don't expect the cost of housing to decrease any in the medium term.

    Unfortunately, I don't have answers, besides the obvious that immigration policy needs to be nuanced and strategic.

    That's my view of things anyway. I invite anyone to criticise and share knowledge on the subject.

  • I get what you're saying 100%, but it's really not a struggle to decide which one is worse.

  • There is French territory just off the coast of Newfoundland too (see Saint Pierre and Miquelon), also Denmark is right next door because of Greenland. So while still pretty far fetched, there is some precedent for European territory in North America.

  • If we were living in a rational world I'd agree, but with all the ludicrous stuff we've seen in the last few months I'm not convinced we are. We really shouldn't dismiss anything as impossible with Trump at the helm of the US. It's a hope for the best, prepare for the worst kind of time.

    When Doug Ford was going to tax the electricity going into the US, Trump said on Truth Social:

    I will shortly be declaring a National Emergency on Electricity within the threatened area. This will allow the U.S to quickly do what has to be done to alleviate this abusive threat from Canada.

    I find that extremely worrying. With enough bluster and showing of force all it takes is one mistake to kick things off.

  • I think they sold the rights to a Blackberry phone to Chinese company, TCL or Foxconn I think. They advertised a phone, but it was never made.

  • They'll do him up like Lenin

  • Totally agree. If we can't at least expect certainty out of the current arrangement, then we should stop with any sweetheart deals. It's ironic that the gist of Trump's views on international relations center on other countries pulling more of their weight, and it seems he will ultimately accomplish that, albeit by burning all the bridges established with said countries.

  • It seems to me like these proposed tariffs were just a way to get Canada and Mexico to come grovel and kiss Trump's ring. Both countries naturally want to avoid such a destructive policy being put in place, so they'll do what Trump asks for now. I expect these sorts of actions by Trump to continue throughout his term though. This begs the question, when will America's historic allies finally have enough? I was thinking these tariffs would be the ripping off the band-aid moment that spurs Canada and potentially the rest of the west to start re-structuring its economy away from such an unreliable partner. I guess this tentative status quo will continue for now.

  • I was the exact same way. I could justify watching ads to support the people I watched, but then I learned how little compensation a creator actually gets from one view and decided my time was more valuable. Plus I just got too used to never seeing ads and could never go back.

    This video sums up the sentiment you're describing nicely.

  • I just got set up on Simple X Chat. From my cursory research it seems to have the best security going in a chat app right now. I find the UI really slick too. It has all the features I use in a chat app anyway. The only thing to be aware of is that all the messages are saved locally, so backup/recovery needs to be handled by you. There's a couple videos an YouTube that go over the app.

    All that being said, I still have WhatsApp on my phone. There's still the same problem of getting everyone in your life to download another app.