gramie @ gramie @lemmy.ca

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2 yr. ago

I've heard persuasive arguments that Chamberlain did the only thing possible for Britain at the time. Their defense industry was just spinning up and they needed more time to have any chance at facing Germany. The Spitfire had only just started production, for example.

When I was in grade 9, in 1977, my science teacher told us about his solar panels. He was projecting that they would pay off the investment in about 20 years. How much better must that be now (and we are talking about Ontario, Canada, hardly the best place for solar power)?

The only real question is whether he is doing this to enrich himself, or because Putin told him to do it.

I've probably played through it 5 times, using different skill trees.

But hundreds of thousands, or millions of other Nazis were never tried or punished for their crimes. Indeed, it was usually the ones who gave the orders who were tried.

• We Have Ways of Making You Talk
• Battleground
• The Rest is Classified
• The History of English
• Ehrman Podcast (Christianity from an atheist expert in the New Testament)

Definitely a thing for days like Valentine's.

One of our three dogs does the head tilt. It is also the one that is not as dumb as dirt.

Not to mention that both brothers were widely known to be distributors in the drug trade.

If you want some numbers, in 2023 Ontario provided slightly over $8,000/student/year for post-secondary institutions. That was the lowest for any province in Canada.

The next lowest province, Nova Scotia, paid over $13,000/student/year, more than 50% higher.

One thing I don't understand is that people don't take advantage of the summer bursary program. The federal government will pay all expenses (room & board, tuition , books, extracurriculars) for Canadian students over the age of 16 to participate in a language immersion course in Quebec. All you have to do is get yourself there.

I did it 40 years ago, and it made an insane difference to my French skills, which up to that point were learned in school. One of my sons did it about 5 years ago, and had the same experience.

Ridiculously, they have to keep extending the application deadline, because they don't have enough people!

Most of the courses are for people over 18, but there are some for 16 and 17-year-olds. Courses may be held in Montreal, Quebec City, or in smaller centers like Chicoutimi or Trois-Rivières. Accommodation may be in a college or university dorm, or home stays with Quebecois families.

There is a spring session for university students, starting in May and a summer session for high school students, starting in July.

One of the giveaways for me was the complete ignorance of the Canadian post-secondary system.

She said that she's taking pre-health sciences at George Brown College. College in Canada means community college (which George Brown is). You take a course, typically 1-3 years, with a specific goal in mind.

Also, Canadian universities do not offer pre-med or pre-health sciences tracks. You get a degree in chemistry, biology, or whatever, and apply for med school irrespective of the program you are in. One of my classmates was accepted into medical school straight out of chemical engineering. Someone else I know was finishing a degree in Spanish literature when he was accepted into medical school.

Cuba is doing fine? It wasn't long ago that I read in the news about the entire Island going dark because of a lack of fuel for generators.

They may have some positive areas, but they are suffering in many ways.

I remember a theory that the US government asked Microsoft to purchase Skype and change it from p2p to server-based, so that they could intercept decrypted communications.

Skype was originally made by a European company (Latvian?).

I hate when a website allows me to deselect corporate partners who have access to my data, but rather than deselecting all of them it offers me the chance to manually select 600 or 800 one at a time.

Every person Quebec either has access to fiber internet, or (if it is not practical to lay fiber) subsidized Starlink. So there must be sizable contract there.

Do you mean Iraq?

As I understand it, the tolls are levied on land connected to the bridges and tunnels entering New York, which are managed by the federal government, not the city.

Being Ukrainian puts a completely different spin on it. My comment still holds true for Americans, but I would rather not see Ukrainians ground under the heel of another dictator, especially one enabled by the stupidification of the United States.

I'm sorry, but I don't see it. The century of American supremacy is coming to a close. You may not want to admit it, because everyone in the US has been thought about American exceptionalism since they started school. China will rise, as will Europe possibly. I think Russia is failing as well. Its current lashing out is the end of their term as a great power.

The US is a big country, and the fall will be slow, but I don't think there is a way to stop it now. I suspect that future historians will trace it back to the Nixon era. Come to think of it, every Republican president since then has also been really, really shitty when it came to preserving the health of the democracy.