I sure hope this doesn’t happen but if things get bad enough? We could see people do something like burn Air BNB’s to the ground. If enough of them go up in smoke, insurance companies will start putting in anti-short term rental conditions in their policies and that will largely be the end of it. Doesn’t really take much to not insure a property used for commercial use, with a residential insurance plan.

The end result of that would be making it non-profitable to run an air bnb.

And if you need a lesson: Go look at the brutality that happened between Union Busters, and Unions back in the day that lead to actual labour laws. Those people weren’t messing around - they got armed, and they dished out the pain to those they suspected were trying to do the same to the point that it basically brought local economies to a complete halt. The reality is? Properly applied violence tends to get results when nothing else is working.

Like I said: I hope this doesn’t happen, but things are getting pretty bad and heading to worse.

Divide, then Conquer. That’s the name of the game of the Left right now.

The short is: If you want to push certain agenda’s, the first thing you need to do is divide people. The best long term success strategy for this is attacking the education system to cripple critical thinking, and critical analysis. Finally - ensure the mainstream media is entrenched in it’s place for official broadcasts and in control of the main message as much as possible: And get people to parrot the message - without consideration.

If the above sounds familiar: It should. USSR did this. China does this. and… Trudeau’s Government does this. In many ways, it’s in part why I think Trudeau attacks alberta so bloody often. Alberta has high education results - despite being conservative voting. In other words, the narrative of Alberta being some backwards hick place falls apart when people actually examine the evidence. When you look at what the Premier of Alberta is stating: Let adults do whatever they want, but protect kids in their developing years when going through a HUGE WILD WACKY CHANGE we call puberty. Even the thing about sports: Lets figure out how to ensure Woman can be safe when competing, that Men can compete, and those who are Trans can compete - and have this be as fair as possible. But the Media and Trudeau would have you believe it’s all 100% anti LGBTQ+.

And I could go on.

So why would you remove things like To Kill a Mocking Bird? Because ultimately understanding that writing requries: 1. Critical thinking, 2. Critical Analysis, and 3. Mastery of language. Those three things are a huge threat to any organization attempting to push their narrative hard and fast.

If this is going to be fixed

Several things need to happen.

1. An alternative learning path. This may seem insane - but, it solves two problems in one go. The first - Those who drop out for WHATEVER REASON are granted a new path to work on in their time to achieve the requisits of a Diploma. Second - It provides a foundation for students to challenge and accel in their studies.

2. Constitutional Reform - Stop the verbatum attack on legal gun ownership which does not solve the problem, neutralize the ability to suppress rights like Freedom of Speech, Right to Protest, Etc. And in so doing stop the government from being able to make arbitrary things illegal, and require them to engage with those upset with the status quo. Seriously: Farmers and Truckers are the lifeblood of our economy - they get food where it is needed, and they grow food (respective of the relevant profession) These are people that DO NOT want to be standing around protesting, they want to be working and making money.

3. Electoral Reform

4. Stop the flood of immigration

5. Build more houses

6. Invest in infrastructure based on population, not on Political interest. It’s time we have an investment tool for this country that ignores political interests. I don’t know exactly how to make that happen - but it is needed.

7. Clamp down on administrative overhead of post secondary institutions. And if that means we change the rules on non-profits and accreditation to be a university/college so be it.

To Summarize

This problem started decades ago, and we are only now seeing the consequences of actions taken starting in the 1980’s (or there about). It is going to take a monumental amount of work to fix the issue and move forward. I hope enough people see this and push back - but it is going to take action at both the Federal, and Provincial levels to force a change. And right now - the federal government is absolutely 100% on board with this kind of BS.

Websites that are funded through ad’s are not going to want you using an ad-blocker. And frankly, if you are not a paying customer, but taking up space - the business typically has right to have you removed. In physical stores it’s obvious but, the online space is not much different.

What I would love to see is some sort of initiative where users can pay like 10-20$ a month, and say 90% of that divided between the websites they view based on engagement metrics on those websites. You could have some modifiers based on the type of website as well - obviously reading news has limited ways of verifying engagement, but we know that there is a high amount of time used per article. Overall this would result in less trackers being needed, websites could feasibly decouple from the ad-driven model entirely, and that might be the best outcome.

With the proposed model - yes, some companies are still going to hard paywall, some might have limited content available to this model and have a 1-5$ a month subscription on top for premium access, and other companies might stay exactly as they are - say like Wikipedia - but be less strained for donations.

This type of arrangement could feasibly end the need for ad’s entirely. Though you could conceivably have an Ad-supported tier as well, whereby if the user is not subscribed to the service they get ads, and if they are they don’t.

The real key to making the proposition as mentioned above work, is to require the payout method to be agreed to be a replacement to seeking ad-revenue for it’s subscribed members. Overall it’s likely (using quick napkin math) that this would provide more revenue per user anyways. It may also devalue web based advertising so hard that it absolutely kills it - and that would mean Content is king. We could end up in a realm where the likes of Youtube don’t block content because some advertiser doesn’t like certain topics. And as more news is consumed online, it may be able to kill the stranglehold the pharma industry has over the news media industry.

Sorry: This is going to be a wall of text. But short answer: Not directly.

Websites, unlike your network administrator of a school, or China, or your ISP can’t actually see the network protocols in use; So no - they don’t KNOW you are using a VPN, they just suspect it with strong evidence. What they CAN do, is blacklist known public VPN server addresses, same way they can block known TOR exit nodes. In any case - a custom landing page can be put up, with some BS like: “In an effort to stop and prevent hacking attempts, we have made the difficult decision to block regular usage of our website and service from known VPN Server addresses. We apologize for the inconvenience.”.

So: What CAN you do if you want to use a VPN? Well: Two basic options - Self host (VPN or SSH Port Forwarding), or Rent a Server and set up a VPN there.

With the first option - Self hosting - the easiest and most straight forward way is using available VPN software. However, you can also use SSH port forwarding to get the same result. In either case - you are simply taking your traffic from your Laptop/mobile device and routing it through your home network. If you are simply concerned about public WiFi and wish to ensure intercept attempts are impractical - this is the way to go. If you want to hide who you are: Well, that won’t do it.

Second Option - Using a Shared/Rented Server provider. Depending on how it is set up, and masked, it will be more difficult - not impossible - to single you out. Ideally you want to go in with a group of people to rent the server space. Just be aware, that some hosts are not going to like grey-area activities on their infrastructure, so make sure you do your research on who the host is - just as you should do if/when selecting a VPN service provider.

In either of these cases, you as the administrator of these services need to understand the risks of opening your network to vectors of attack. Because of the way a VPN is set up, you are functionally punching a whole in your network and stating “Forward Connection Attempts on [selected port] to [System hosting the VPN Service]” - and if the VPN software you are using is flawed - that does open you up to being hacked. This goes the same for hosting using a rented server - shared or dedicated, just the exposure is NOT in your own network.

User generated content has a presumption of consent: It is PRESUMED that the user who is uploading the work work likely created it - and it is reasonable to presume those involved in said work gave consent or otherwise the user had rights to use the content in this way. When you DO NOT have rights to the work, that is when DMCA take downs come into play, and other legal actions - and in that case, you can expect financial penalties, account suspensions/bans, and so on.

There are some serious problems in Canadian law. This situation doesn’t come even close to one of them.

It’s not. The fee was added to encourage people to join in with the Cineclub thing. The back end for seat selection existed before the online reservation fee did as far as I can recall.

1. Why is Justin Trudeau Bad - he will often point out SOMETHING JUSTIN TRUDEAU HAS ACTUALLY DONE THAT IS BAD.
2. He actually has talked about how to get more housing being built. He has actually talked about things to cut - and why to cut them (like the Carbon tax that has had pretty much zero benefit, but has inflated the cost of heating, transportation, and food in this countries at a time we have an affordability crisis).
3. Block Chain being out of control of the Government, means the Government can’t devalue the currency (As in cause inflation) By printing more of it on a whim. There is some (unfortunate) sense to it. I would prefer a constitutional reform that would tie the Canadian Dollar back to Gold as it would again, prevent willy nilly printing of money which… drives inflation. And that would generally mean less bailouts, and more cautious action taking that needs to focus on prevention of crisis instead of printing your way out of a financial crisis.
4. Slowing down immigration is really important. We are adding more people than jobs being added to the economy, and more people than houses can be built. We also have an issue with Doctors. If a person already owns a house here - whatever. But we need to slow down on immigration.
5. No. But you have to make sure your Outfit provides a sense of you being competent.
6. I don’t think he has ever said “fellow poor people” But he has certainly pointed out the policies and situations that have driven more people into poverty.

Instead of Parroting the Media, maybe actually go and listen to his uncut, unclipped answering of the media. Unlike what Trudeau seems to do, Pierre is seemingly actually able to speak a whole sentence without stuttering - almost like he is actually confident in his remark: And that is bloody refreshing.

Oh. PS - I think Pierre has some bad takes, he is a human being after all. But after these years of Trudeau: This country is in Shambles. Car thefts are up, Government Spending is up, Poverty Rates are Climbing. We have had more Scandals in the last 8 years than in the rest of my lifetime - and they all fall on Trudeau’s Shoulders.

Love him or Hate him: Pierre is by current appearances more competent of a Leader than Trudeau, and Competent is what this country needs.

Step 1. Get a record of how few votes can swing a riding.

Step 2. Get people into the awarness that their vote can really make the difference, especially if they convince a few of their friends to vote at the same time.

Step 3. Campaign on “Want better politicians? Get out and vote for them - or at least vote against the worst ones”.

Very important: Do not associate with any party while doing this. Just get out and encourage people to vote. Talk about early voting times, talk about optional mail in ballots for special cases, and above all else: JUST ENCOURAGE EVERYONE TO VOTE. Maybe we can get a non-profit going that is literally “Helping Canadians Get out and Vote” who’s entire job is to ensure Canadians are Informed, and able to get to the polling stations.

Of course IBM does - who runs them: Engineers? Or Bean Counters?

People have been growing up with a government that lies ever more to them. People have grown up with a government that has purposefully done things that end up being harmful, lied about it, and then the truth comes out - only those same people have been austrasized by being labelled conspiracy nuts - and no one stopped to apologize.

And then the entire situation with Covid and the Covid Vaccine, where yes - depending on health conditions, that damn thing had a serious risk to some people’s health and we were lied to. Some of the issues are related to accidental poor injection which we have had techniques that would have wasted like a tiny % of vaccine doses but avoid all kinds of complications. Then we had people stuck on ventilators for far too long which leads to long term health complication concerns but we were all being told no it’s fine - but then the information comes out.

Flat Earthers, Anti-Vaccers, and so on don’t come out of no where - it comes from a place of strong distrust in authorities that are pushing such information. And especially the Trudeau Government over the last decade has smashed trust in the federal government. And some actions taken by provincial governments have strained trust - with very few Politicians Publicly apologizing for missteps taken during the Pandemic.

TL;DR: Our current Federal Government smashed trust with a lot of people, and that is going to bring into question anything and everything they push - no matter how good or bad. And with the Lack of family doctors in many area’s, few people have trusted sources of good information to turn to, leading to a rise in Anti-vaccination, and other movements.

You know what is amazing: They can index taxes to inflation, but they can’t be damned to index minimum wage to the cost of living increase.

It absolutely does.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3712680/return-to-office-or-quit-ibm-tells-managers.html

IBM has a history of this kind of stuff - when they need to expand: Remote work schemes, and flexible work hours become more common. When they need to tighten the belt, the first step is a RTO. So long as you are willing some flexibility in the time line, and support employees in the move - it will lead to plenty of people quiting, a few people moving, then you do a small round of layoffs avoiding people who willingly moved closer to the office etc as these are people unlikely to have quick new opertunities and are more stuck with the company/loyal to it.

The Pandemic is not the first time IBM has done something like this, and it won’t be the last.

Now, if we really get into the weeds - a lot of Companies that know this can be pulled off REALLY DO NOT want Remote work/hybrid work schedules to become industry norms, as once they do - these practices for ridding your company of say 1-2% of it’s staff periodically stop being viable and you need to go for a more traditional layoff scheme.

Don’t forget HR.

If people aren’t in an office, around other people, their aren’t really a lot of opportunities for random nonsense complaints to come out. And if they do, there are email messages, recorded video calls, and so on that can clarify reality far easier - meaning HR’s job is made clearly irrelevant, and clearly demonstrates it is a mop job for a handful of busy bodies that cost the company more in efficiency, than they earn the company after accounting for their wage.

Which is all well and fine, until you realize the way you learn about new innovations tends to be through advertisement of some sort - word of mouth is a form of advertisement, and, if you can make it work for you: It is by far the most effective.

Thing is: Companies are out to make money, people want to provide affordable access to their product, and when you combine these two desires together - you get advertisements.

The key to making sure it is fine is, regulate and enforce - stop false advertising in it’s tracks. When an advertisement makes a claim: Make them back it up, or face severe economic sanctions such as fines, requirement to spend the same money and time on putting out a recall of the message in the advertisement, and so on. Do that a few times and allow for automatic re-voting on issues where false advertisement was used to oppose a bill and you will quickly see all of that scummy behavior go away.

The problem right now, is companies aren’t really penalized sufficiently for false information spread and other behavior: So, the fine is just a cost of doing business. Just look at cities with “Catch and Release” policies regarding crime - and it is starting to go through the roof. And it’s not the criminals being impacted negatively: It’s the law abiding citizens who are finding their amenities locked up, their grociery stores barring entrance, box stores closing down. This is the same issue so many people have with gun control laws: Law abiding citizens are NOT the ones causing headaches - it’s the people willing to go to a sketchy alley at 2 in the morning willing to pay extra to skip the background check who are absolutely causing problems. It’s the organized crime syndicates that can get their hands on a CNC mill and a machinist who will make the firearms for them - and they will pay.

Unless Law Breakers face real consequences: Nothing changes, and the problem perpetuates or even worse: Gets worse.

Sort of. The thing is - they are factors, just the small low hanging fruit; more specifically it’s the easiest to attack from a political stand point: Foreign owners don’t vote in Canada.

The reality is - we need to pull out the stops at this point. Go after Foreign ownership, corporate ownership. Go after Vacant properties through taxes, and go after the short term rental market.

Foreign ownership might be say a few percent, short term rentals might be a few percent. But you couple 3-4 small sources and suddenly you are freeing up some 5-10% of housing and putting it back on the long term rental market or they are being sold on the open market… to people who want a home.

The NDP became Liberal Light in the last couple of elections. And that basically pushes them down in terms of relevancy - after all, with first past the post if you don’t want Conservatives the better vote is liberal, and if you don’t want liberals the better vote is conservative.

What the NDP really does need to do, is shift towards being the party of the working class. Leave the social issues alone and basically state “government should stay out of your bedroom, while providing the regulations necessary to ensure you have the financial stability to pursue your wants.”. In effect: People should be shown respect and dignity as people. Push for health care reforms, push for universal dental/eyecare. Push for reforming the welfare and low income support models. Reform the tax codes to help the most hard hitting.

The reality is, we don’t have an economically conservative party right now. What we have is NeoLiberal and NeoLiberal extreme and both are bad. We have governments that are creating policies that result in dependency, instead of providing the foundation for personal agency. And if the NDP wants to win the election, they need to take that reality and go all in on it. And what that means is more or less leaving social issues alone.

Does solving the problem have an immediate political benefit? I actually don’t think it does.

Does letting the community argue about the issue have immediate political benefit? Well - it certainly will sweep other issues (read: scandals) under the rug.

So I’m going to say, the community 100% will be brought into it, the location will end up being unselected, and the issue will be kicked down the curb for the next time the government needs an issue to debate about and to distract people with.

When you have a firm, that is ran by accountants - odds are, you have a firm that is great at squeezing on line items, but lacks the long term vision to see how that squeeze will lead to deficits and higher cost in the long term.

The fastest way to plummet a successful company, is to take the Industry experts out of the position (I mean people who worked their way up through the industry, and learned management along the way by experts btw), and replace them with an MBA/ Accountant who got hired into their upper management position without really working in the industry prior to.

And I pretty much guarantee you, this is what happened.

Not all old designs were bad. And one has to understand that the USSR, UK, France, and the US all had a shared objective (by the way, these are the primary nations designing and creating nuclear reactors back in the 50’s and 60’s). And the goal? Plutonium for Nuclear Bombs. You can imagine how this changes design Parameters.

So now lets talk about the CANDU Reactor, designed in 1955 (or there abouts).

It’s an oddity of the day - Designed for energy generation for civilian use, without the desire to actively produce Plutonium. Functionally speaking, complete fission of the material with the least degree of enrichment possible for efficient opperation was the design goal. And what you get is well, this.

Beyond this, because it is a Heavy Water Reactor (CANDU standing for Canada Deuterium Uranium), it’s moderator is well, heavy water - which is interesting as two things: If it boils off, the neutron regulator (which is slowing down neutrons to encourage fission in the core) boils off. And Boiling water takes away a LOT of heat. Beyond this, heated water will naturally circulate so even if active pumps pushing the water through the system fail, natural circulation can occur until corrective action is taken.

Yes, there are newer designs that are probably safer. But don’t just say “old designs bad” without understanding the design constraints created by the circumstances to which they were created. Look at also, all of the designs of the era. There is a reason pretty much everyone can name Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukushima. And anyone with half a length of common sense would avoid putting a nuclear reactor on Japan - a place that has an active Valcano, is prone to tsunami’s, and sits at the intersecting point of three tectonic plates… It’s kind of a bad place for it. Not impossible to do safely, but when you use a reactor design that is basically set up for the production of plutonium by the very design constraints and such of the day: It’s not surprising.

And then we can talk about SMR’s.

Do you have any idea how much energy is used in the form of combustibles to heat homes, and power vehicles? It’s absolutely massive. Beyond this - the energy density of Petrol is something like 25-45x that of batteries - meaning for the same weight of fuel as a battery, you can go MUCH further, even factoring in the lower efficiency of an ICE engine (20-30%) vs. Electric (something like 90%). However, Electric Vehicles also have higher ware and tare on roads, tires, breaks, bridges, etc. And that means a higher TCO (Total cost of Operation) outside of the vehicle itself.

You might say “Improve Public Transport” And I’m all for it - but that requires doubling the average population density in urban centres to START to be practical. And achieving that is a decades long (like closer to half a century, if not longer) undertaking that has a huge environmental cost do to the tare down of existing buildings.

What all this means: To replace combustibles, we don’t just need a tripling of Nuclear - we need to increase it by an order of magnitude (10x it for clarity), 2 orders of magnitude increase of wind (100x), and we should aim for three orders of magnitude for solar (1000x). If you do that, AND improve average home insulation value, then we can start to get somewhere reasonable.

To be clear: We can do it.

1. Solar Roof Incentives for generally sunny cities (ex. Calgary)
2. Off Shore Wind
3. Dual Use Installations - So Parking Lots with Solar Covers for instance. Bonus points for onsight energy storage to buffer generation for charging cars.
4. SMR’s for remote area’s (think far northern area’s where diesel generators are the norm, as it reduces the need to ship fuel)

You will note that Hydro isn’t listed here - and for good reason: The environmental destruction, and long term upkeep is extremely impactful on the environment.

All of this, by the way, is something like a trillion dollar investment. And what is the Canadian Governments investment plan? 4-5 billion by 2035? If the Canadian Government wants to get serious - they need to start making the entire government beaurocracy far more lean, far more mean, and take the savings and throw it into everything that reduces power use, as well as renewable generation.

And finally: Start jacking up the minimum wage, start increasing labor protections, and the entire why? So that people can afford to invest into these things for themselves on a wide scale.