sailingbythelee @ sailingbythelee @lemmy.world

Posts

9

Comments

684

Joined

2 yr. ago

This is so true. I get the sense that a lot of human rights complaints nowadays are vexatious or inappropriate (many by COVIDiots), which only makes it harder for the legitimate complaints to be taken seriously and heard in a timely manner. Another reason for so many human rights complaints is that it doesn't cost anything to make a human rights complaint in my province, whereas it does cost money to start a lawsuit and the plaintiff can be on the hook for costs if the lawsuit is without merit. It is unfortunate when people take advantage of a valuable mechanism like the human rights tribunal for the wrong reasons.

Interesting, thanks. Forty-five minutes down a dirt road sounds like a dream. Ours is 1.5 hours down the highway, then 1 hour on logging roads, and the final leg is a good half-hour by boat through a labyrinth of narrow channels. No road access and no services. The log cabin is a Wendall Beckwith design so it looks cool, but my wife's father didn't take good care of it so it leaked quite a bit before I put a metal roof on it. (That was fun with boat access and a small generator only capable of running a jigsaw, let me tell you.) We have an open invitation for any of our friends that want to use it and no one ever takes us up on it, so I suspect it will still be quite affordable for someone, if we ever decide to sell it.

You're right, I don't. There weren't any long term protests or encampments at my university when I was there. How long does McGill usually let it go on, or do the students just run out of steam on their own? Is the timing of the encampment related to having just finished exams?

You are making a lot of assumptions there. I'm not saying the two protest groups are equivalent. I'm saying that uninvolved people only have so much patience for disruption. Protester's don't have the right to occupy someone else's property or engage in the prolonged disruption of other people's rights. The University is private property and no one has a right to occupy it. The protesters are trespassing. Legal protest is about making your voice heard. It is not about using your presence to force the issue your way. That's illegal and rightly so.

I read somewhere that there was some drama about identity politics.

It really depends where you live. In northern Ontario, many working class people have a small cabin on a lake. It may be a plywood shack or log cabin, may lack plumbing and electricity, and may be a two or three hour drive into the bush on logging roads, but it's affordable. If you want a second suburban-style home with all the amenities on an easily accessible lake, well yeah, no shit that's going to be really expensive.

You can have a "vacation home" or a "yacht" and have it be middle-class affordable if you keep it small and away from the most expensive parts of the country.

What did we learn when the trucker convoy occupied downtown Ottawa? We learned that a protest and an occupation are not the same thing. I don't know what the acceptable length of a protest should be, but the trucker convoy showed that 3 weeks was way too long.

The tiktok algorithm is good in the same sense that cocaine is good.

I've been paying attention to the Middle East for almost 40 years, punk. What? Iran, like, literally just sent drones into Israel? Oh no, literally what will we do? Like, oh my god, this is so terrible.

You can't take and hold territory with drones, especially not Iranian drones. Iran is not invading Israel. Grow up and go learn something.

Perhaps I misspoke. I mean to say that the periodic flare-ups with the Palestinians are not that important anymore. They used to be. But nowadays, Israel's neighbours aren't invading with tanks and, as I said, the overall trend is towards peace and economic integration with Israel. I agree with you that Israel is important to the US for many good strategic and political reasons.

That's ridiculous. Government doesn't move that quickly. They've been thinking about how to deal with foreign interference for years. Also, I hate to break it to you, but the Palestine thing isn't that interesting or important in the grand scheme. At best, the Palestinians, like the Houthis and Hezbollah, are pawns used by Iran to stir up trouble from time to time. This conflict has been going on for 80 years already and the overall trend in the Middle East is toward peace and economic integration with Israel. No one is going to push the Jews into the sea and liberate Palestine for the Palestinians.

I agree with you. The CCP classifies recommendation algorithms in a category similar to defense secrets. It isn't just Tiktok that can't be sold to non-Chinese, it is all recommendation algorithms. They know damn well what effect these algorithms have on a population.

The whole lasgun-shield interaction concept is one of the hand-wavy parts of Dune, kind of like the eagles in LOTR, or the ridiculously inaccurate laser blasters in Star Wars.

Shields in Dune are common defensive technology, which means that lasguns would almost certainly have to be outlawed altogether to prevent some random encounter from turning into nuclear apocalypse.

In the first movie, I think Villeneuve deals with it somewhat haphazardly. The use of a lasgun at the agricultural research station perhaps makes some sense because shields can't be used in the open desert without attracting worms. On the other hand, they show lasers being used at the first Battle of Arrakeen in close proximity to other ships that are shown to have active shields.

I agree with you. The parties should work together. I just don't think Trudeau will be specifically remembered for the dental program. Kind of like how Tommy Douglas is considered the father of universal health care rather than whoever was PM at the time federal Medicare was legislated.

Check out your own comment count. You aren't moderating the conversation, you are dominating it. You are everywhere and you are relentless, and you apparently lack the self-awareness necessary to recognize it and moderate your activity.

I unsubscribed from a couple of communities because of you.

Case in point. Wake up man. You are making the place worse, not better.

That dude is a mod now. He roams around news communities endlessly antagonizing any user who doesn't toe his anti-Israel stance. That's why he has a ridiculously high comment count.

That's a good one. I once gave an assignment for students to write an original poem. One student submitted The Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson and claimed it was his own. These were middle school kids so he didn't realize how famous the poem is. This shit has been happening forever. LLMs are another phase in the never-ending arms race between teachers and students who want to cheat.

For those that don't know, FlyingSquid is a mod who roams around various news communities antogonizing anyone who doesn't toe his anti-Israel line, and then flaunts his mod status when someone gets upset. He's like one of those Reddit power mods that everyone complains about.

Oh yeah, and I noticed the other day that people are getting their comments removed for "genocide denial" if they don't line up to pre-judge the outcome of the genocide case South Africa brought against Israel. Apparently, a few mods think they are qualified to judge the outcome of the case without being, you know, actual judges qualified in the laws of war. This kind of antagonistic mod behavior is making some communities into Reddit 2.0.

FlyingSquid, wake up man. You are abusing the tiny amount of power you have to make Lemmy into an echo chamber. You oppose what's happening in Gaza. We get it already. You don't have to constantly roam around antagonizing people who disagree with you.

Yes, dental is a big deal, but everyone knows it's an NDP initiative. :)