frostbiker @ frostbiker @lemmy.ca

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2 yr. ago

Beanfield may not be available everywhere, but Teksavvy has similar plans.

Teksavvy is available nearly everywhere and I know they have similar plans because I was a customer.

Amazing how someone can take actual advice based on personal experience, and consider it “trolling”

This is the biggest problem, isn't it? I understand somebody not knowing how to live frugally, but at the very least they should be open to learning from people who do.

Don't worry, those of us who how to budget minimally know that you are speaking the truth.

Good luck getting an internet and phone plan for less than $200/month.

My own bills:

Internet (Beanfield): $40/mo including taxes.

Cell (Freedom): $34/mo per phone, incl taxes.

Beanfield may not be available everywhere, but Teksavvy has similar plans.

We are a family of four (renting) and we don't spend much more than her living alone. She needs to make some tough decisions if she wants to save some money every month.

This has been done in the past in other countries. Multiple times. What were the consequences? Is that what you want to happen in Canada?

Learn from history, people.

At least it aligns our fiscal policy with our current monetary policy. I wonder to what extent they are making these cuts precisely to put downward pressure on inflation, and thus encourage the central bank to reduce interest rates in the future.

Or, you know, follow the rule of law instead of lynching people we don't like.

They are indeed tightly interrelated because one of the big reasons why people want to live in the suburbs is in order to be away from traffic, which is tragic because those car-dependent suburbs are a big reason why there's so much traffic in our denser areas. With better urbanism the denser areas become much more liveable for those of us who have no choice but to live there.

This means we need to address the housing crisis in a holistic fashion: housing, transport, daily errands and recreation all come together in a well planed urban area.

It feels like solving the housing crisis is as simple as universally allowing 4-plexes in existing single-family zoning

If you simply increase population density without addressing car dependence then traffic will get much worse than it is now. It is thus imperative that we allow for everyday necessities to be doable within a walking distance of where people live, so that people have the choice to avoid using their car for every single daily activity if they don't want to. This entails at the very least having grocery shopping, schools, retail commercial spaces and pharmacies/clinics within a walkable distance.

Around the world this is typically achieved by allowing commercial activity on the street-facing ground floors of buildings.

It doesn’t matter what anyone tries to identify as … the problem starts when someone chooses to identify one way or another for monetary, social or professional gain. The problem start when the person appropriates an identity under false pretenses and then benefits from that identity and then chooses to live under that lie.

The biggest issue here is honesty

Another issue is that self-identifying in a certain way shouldn't come with monetary, social or professional benefits. Easier said than done, of course, but at least in some cases it already happens. For example, people aren't entitled to use a handicapped parking spot by merely self-identifying as having limited mobility; sports organizations have (still evolving) rules for trans athletes; etc.

Whatever we do there will always be people who try to take advantage of the system, and people who will unfortunately fall through the cracks. Part of the issue is also that many of these identities aren't binary: plenty of people have mixed heritage, or have partial disabilities. What do we do about that, and where do we draw the line? Can we have the nuance to cope with gray areas on a case by case basis? A broad consensus will be difficult to achieve in gray cases.

There will never be a consensus on what it means to “be’ Indigenous or what the qualifications are for someone to claim that they identify as Indigenous. So when we consult “members of the Indigenous community” who are we talking about?

That is the crux of the problem, isn't it? In other areas like sexual orientation or gender identity, there's a decently broad consensus that we should allow people to self-identify. The benefit of self-identification is that it discourages gatekeeping. One downside is that it doesn't change the fact that the broader community may still reject a person's self-identity. See for example the debate surrounding trans women in sports.

The issue becomes more acute when being perceived as a certain identity comes with some privileges, whether informal or sanctioned by our government. When that happens, it creates an incentive for people to self-identify in a way that they believe will benefit them in some way or another.

I don't have a solution. Just rambling.

Yeah, you are completely right, I should not jump to conclusions. At the same time, the article does show that attacks against Jewish people have increased recently.

We unfortunately have our own conflicts too.

Yes, that's what I was hinting at. We have enough domestic problems already.

We do, and across generations. But just because there is an armed conflict between two factions somewhere else, it doesn't mean we need to replicate it here. We can and should do better.

I wish people didn't bring foreign conflicts into our borders.

There’s a solution: legally mandating price ceilings

This populist idea has been done many times and it always leads to the same outcome: businesses stop stocking unprofitable items.

Learn from history, people.

I'm just a moron on the Internet, but I don't get why UN peacekeeping forces are not in the region right now. That said, it's not like a temporary pause is going to magically solve the long-term problem, either, but it seems like a necessary first step.

I’ve never heard the words “free speech” used in a context with no connection to their legal meaning. Do you have a counter example?

Yes. The very article in this post.

Way to ignore the argument

I did my best to understand your argument, but all I had to work with was a fragmented sentence. Thank you for elaborating further.

Your comparison should be calling/promoting burning gays is okay as long as they don’t actually do it

I'm not quite seeing the parallel here. Would you say that a book that describes a murder/rape is promoting murder/rape? Does that mean the book should be illegal?

The bible contains multiple calls to violence and even genocide, including calls to stone homosexuals and adulterers, yet it remains legal, because we do make a distinction between words and actions.

But you know people aren’t going to be sympathetic to that so you try to twist it to appear rational

It is difficult to maintain a friendly conversation when somebody repeatedly accuses you of being malevolent. It is possible for good people to have differing opinions about delicate subjects. I assume you have good intentions, please return the favor.

Anyway, I gotta run. Thanks for the thought provoking conversation.

It does harm children because [...] people like yourself that defend it use it to normalize it for their victims/convince kids that what they are doing is okay

I'm trying to understand.

Just to be clear, defending the right of somebody to do something doesn't mean you like it. There is a big gap between "this is not for me" and "this should be illegal". I don't think anybody in this thread is normalizing it, I think we are distinguishing between what we dislike and what should be illegal. For me personally, actual physical harm is the deciding factor.

When somebody argues that X leads some people to perform an act of violence Y, the issue for me is still with Y, not with X. For example, I've heard people argue that we should ban burning the rainbow flag because they believe it leads to violent crimes against LGBT people. I am queer and defend the right of people to burn the flag, as much as I dislike it happening. Why? Because the flag itself is an inanimate object, and the threshold is crossed only when an actual person is the victim of violence.

In other words, I can't get behind policing people's minds. Want to murder somebody? I don't approve of it, but it's not even in the same ballpark as actually murdering somebody.

I will say that if I found out that one of my kids' teachers was involved in any of that stuff, I would promptly find a new school because it's not worth the risk. So, it's not like it would be free of consequences either. Same if the teacher was burning the rainbow flag.

Okay, I'll take the bait.

I find the notion of written child pornography repulsive, but I can't see why it should be a crime, given that writing it doesn't harm any children, in the same way than writing a murder mystery doesn't involve killing somebody.

Can you elaborate on why writing a fictional account should be illegal? Something more fleshed out than "eww!". I'm not seeing it, but I have no trouble changing my mind if a good argument is presented.

And again, I would be very uncomfortable if it turned out that one of my kids' teachers were reading or writing stuff like that, but then again it's not very different from how I would feel if I found out they burned rainbow flags and that is perfectly legal as well -- as it should be in my opinion, I might add.

In summary, I defend the right of people to do things I disapprove of, as long as they are not hurting anybody.