Request for info to be added to fundraising page: which fundraising payment options are processed by American companies. If they're taking fees, I'd like those fees to go to Canadian firms.
Fuck it, sending an e-transfer. ;)
E: sent $100. The equivalent of two one-year reddit subscriptions. I cancelled my subscription to move over here. Good luck with the fundraising :)
A lobbyist with access to federal politicians in Canada with actual portfolios is like a quarter million per year as a minimum. Maybe a million if you want to fund a "think tank" and publish "studies" and do press releases trying to get the news to bite on some of them, so you can use the news as your excuse to bring issues up.
If you're doing it yourself, then $5k might get you a plate at a gala where you hope to run into the appropriate politician for a minute. Would you pay $5k to hope to have a one minute conversation where 45 seconds of it is pleasantries and you might get one sentence in? And you have to use that sentence to explain who you represent... And someone is tugging their elbow leading to another table and they're gone. Well, hopefully the people at your table were interesting conversation.
Storytime: I am small business owner. We pay a few thousand dollars a year to throw industry drinking events primarily for networking. Personal invites. Sometimes I can get the provinical Minister of Mines to attend with his handlers, but only if I promise no lobbying. I might get about five minutes of their time (as host) and try to honour my commitment to no lobbying at the event (their handlers will remove them if they feel it is a lobbying event). My payoff is a direct communication line, which I try not to abuse. Then the government changes (elections or cabinet shuffle) and I have to do it again. I've failed to get a direct line on the current minister for almost two years. But this is small potatoes Canadian provincial politics. I'd have to spend 10x that amount to attempt get face time with the federal minister.
OpenSuse comes from Suse which comes from Jurix and Slackware. There's a dotted line from Redhat, because of the use of the RPM format, but that is as far as their interbred. Many people consider it one of the OG distros.
Arch sprang from the aether later, but one could argue it owes Gentoo for its concept (also a dotted line there).
Debian is an OG. It, Redhat, and Suse are approximately the same age.
Strategy favourite: EU4, before mission trees were added (too railroaded now). Yes computer game. It's asymmetric, meaning you can choose to start in stronger or weaker positions.
Honourable mention: Go, chess, or other games with one page rules and emergent complexity.
Strategy bleh: any of the modern points based board games that take longer to read the manual than play the game. Catan is the only one I tolerate here, as it has enough people that know the rules that you don't need to reread it for everyone's benefit every time. If the game needs a GM to handle the rules, you cannot know enough about the rules to form a strategy while only playing it rarely.
Chance: Cribbage, in two player version. Well, admittedly you can still outplay the other player. But to outplay them, you need a fast and intuitive grasp of statistics. Selecting the cards for the crib is the biggest strategic advantage here, and it's more of a weighted odds thing.
Chance bleh: Blackjack. You have no way to affect the outcome. There is a right way to play (over a large enough number of hands), and that is it.
Hybrid: soft spot for Texas Hold 'em. It's a good hybrid of chance, strategy, and straight up social skills. No other game seems to rely as much on reading people, and you can do this right or wrong in dramatic fashion.
Lastly: D&D is the best of everything. The rules are long, but the DM looks after details (or you can wing it and no is grabbing the book to check). It has the reach of Catan, meaning you aren't learning new rules at every table. There are social elements, chance elements, tactical elements.
The first mistake was shopping hungry. Those groceries are: a box of ice cream sandwiches, 24 cans of root beer, and a bag of beef jerky -- teriyaki style.
The government has a monopoly on force. That force should be weilded by the fairest and most impartial people possible. Police, investigation agencies, etc., should be as free from bias as possible.
Now, you have multiple ways to get to that point, and people have different opinions on the purest way to achieve this. But, electing them doesn't seem to be the way. Tyranny of the majority is too strong. And appointment by elected officials is equally problematic. So how then does a system establish that is not subject to abuse by those with power?
I would argue that the best system for appointing law enforcement seems to be via a benevolent dictator or monarch or their representatives. And it only works for their lifetime, unless the inertia of the benevolent institution can be sustained. Well, it's a crapshoot but stable at least for the lifetime of the monarch or similar.
I'd also entertain citizen lotteries for these sorts of positions. But that's a crapshoot on shorter timeframes.
The hydrogen economy will never exist in a profitable or stable way provided most hydrogen is sourced from natural gas wells. It's a "value add" for existing producers, and a way to say they can't shut off the wells.
Hydrogen created by electrolysis of water is not energy efficient.
It was a matter of time. The insanity cannot be normalized.