• 2 Posts
  • 187 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: August 7th, 2023
  • pedz@lemmy.catoCanada@lemmy.ca•How To Destroy A Leadership Campaign On Day One
    2·
    1 day ago

    I didn’t vote at the last federal election. I wouldn’t have voted for a Conservative, but I was extremely disappointed by both my Liberal and NDP candidates.

    Right now my MP is the Greenpeace militant that is now a spokesperson for the oil companies, also supposedly the environment minister.

    Even if they protest and don’t want it, natives are gonna have a pipeline through their land. But no clean water.

    Also, rail worker? Get back to work. Postal worker? Get back to work! Natives protesting? Get back in your reservation!

    That’s all very inspiring to vote for the Liberals. (/s)

    I know the Conservatives would have done the same, and then some. I know it’s still preferable to have Liberals in power, even with their despicable hypocrisy. Quite frankly I would prefer NDP policies but they are pretty marginalized on the federal level.

    It’s just very difficult to find the motivation to vote for any of the candidates in my riding.

    Depending on the polls for my riding I may go vote ABC. But since I’m on the Plateau (Laurier Ste-Marie) in Montréal, if anything, Steven Guilbault is going to be replaced by a Bloc or NDP candidate. There’s never been a Conservative elected in my riding since its been created in 1988. It’s the riding of Gilles Duceppe after all. I don’t know. It’s really hard to go past my apathy and cynicism since the last couple of elections.

  • pedz@lemmy.catoCanada@lemmy.ca•Delays, Trudeau resignation threaten Toronto-Quebec City high-frequency rail project
    3·
    2 days ago

    Agreed.

    However Quebec has seen an exception to that with the REM because it’s taking from the public to finance an investment fund. So the government gave a whole public train line and is choking the rest of the public train network.

    In essence, Philippe Couillard and Denis Coderre started the slow privatization of the public transit network in Montreal by giving public assets and carte blanche to an investment entity that’s gonna charge the public transit entity fees for every passenger using its new network. And the public transit entity cannot compete against the investment one, by law.

    So obviously, being for profit and for ‘friends’, the project went ahead at record speed.

  • pedz@lemmy.catoPolitical Memes@lemmy.world•Trømp
    15·
    3 days ago

    As a Canadian, I approve the Danish takeover of the US. And don’t forget Alaska.

    Denmark is already one of our neighbours, via Greenland. Denmark would now surround Canada at the east, south and west, but it would probably be a less contentious neighbour than the US.

    We could even start a new Whiskey war for Point Roberts, or Angle Inlet.

  • pedz@lemmy.catoCanada@lemmy.ca•Delays, Trudeau resignation threaten Toronto-Quebec City high-frequency rail project
    20·
    3 days ago

    Oh, I’m so surprised that any type of rail project in Canada doesn’t go according to the political announcement of the project. /s

    I would love not to be cynical about this but whatever they announce is probably going to be delayed, new study needed, delayed, new study, cancelled, announced again… Then a new government and everything stalls, then another government that waits till before an election to announce a new project… rince, repeat.

    I just read about the other rail project, the supposedly high speed train between Toronto and Quebec City. Well, obviously this will also be delayed if not cancelled.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh69IfHPrnU

    I don’t know how people get to believe any of this will happen one day.

    EDIT: I pasted a link that was also about the high frequency project instead of the high speed one. Or is the news confused about the projects? One or another, it’s unfortunately never going to be realized.

  • pedz@lemmy.catomemes@lemmy.world•Keep going America, you're doing great!
    5·
    5 days ago

    Well, yeah. Hehe. The first image with a plow in the snow is very normal where I live. And there are millions living with this. It doesn’t convey the meaning of snow where it doesn’t normally snow, or bigger snowstorms when they happen, to people living where it snows regularly for a big chunk of the year, but I understand the spirit of the whole anyway.

  • pedz@lemmy.catoA Boring Dystopia@lemmy.world•What can we do to fix our boring dystopia?
    12·
    1 month ago

    This way we can vote for a neo-liberal dystopia instead of having a fascist one.

    They say people tend to move on the right as they get older but as a middle aged man, I’m growing more cynical.

    I’m not American but every government my country had in my lifetime has been working for corporations and big money instead of for the citizens. At every level.

    I always voted progressive for the last 23 years but never once a progressive party won or had any significant influence on social politics. Vote for the major conservative party and we have the police violently displacing native protesters on their own land, or vote for the major alternative, a neo-liberal party that will also send the police to violently squash protests of natives against a pipeline going on their own land.

    Whatever the party I vote for, oil is going to flow. The police will continue to happily apply the “necessary” violence to squash protests of people demanding better conditions or less corruption. The politicians will still collude with big corporations.

    Everyone tells me to vote but my actual MP was a Greenpeace militant and is now bought and paid for, as the Environment minister, pushing for the oil industry to continue its operations for the good of the economy.

    In the US you have the choice between a far right party and a party slightly less to the right, but still heavily on the right.

    How the hell is voting for the lesser of two evil but still clearly evil party is going to help us out of this?

    How would the Democrats fix this, if they have full control of the government? Will they give Americans free health care, or stop financing genocides? Have Obama brought the change he was supposed to? Guantanamo was closed? Was it because he/the democrats did not control enough of the government? Maybe if people vote more next time the Democrats will tackle social issues.

    Just like every other government in every country. If we just all vote hard enough, the centibillionaires and their corporations will have no chance at buying our politicians?

  • pedz@lemmy.catoMemes@lemmy.ml•Don't fall for the trap
    3·
    1 month ago

    I do that too but only because it’s much easier to help my relatives with Linux than those with Windows.

    I even “convert” some people because Llinux is easier for them if I just manage it. I had a neighbor that was using Window on a very old computer, it was slow and choking under the weight of simple updates. Plus, she was always asking me why her computer kept rebooting by itself while it was obviously Windows update. So I installed Mint and all the problems went away.

    Anyway I don’t want to have to deal with Microsoft accounts, licenses, office365, the general bloat, the ads, the new versions of Windows… I have enough at work, so if I am going to help on my free time, it has to be on the OS I find easier to deal with.

  • pedz@lemmy.catomemes@lemmy.world•Never gonna give you up!
    1·
    1 month ago

    As long as the tech or the software doesn’t become obsolete, or the company doesn’t go bankrupt.

    You know about the blind people that were able to see for a while but the company making their implants went bankrupt, leaving them blind once more, as their their implants will eventually all stop working?

    Yet in 2020, Byland had to find out secondhand that the company had abandoned the technology and was on the verge of going bankrupt. While his two-implant system is still working, he doesn’t know how long that will be the case. “As long as nothing goes wrong, I’m fine,” he says. “But if something does go wrong with it, well, I’m screwed. Because there’s no way of getting it fixed.”

    https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete

    It’s obviously understandable to want to try something, anything, to help with a disability, but relying on private for profit companies for experimental medical devices is far from ideal.

    Addendum: Also, disabled people are unfortunately often used as an excuse to push agendas. “We can’t have a bike lane there! Think about handicapped people using their car!” Or like "Tesla’s FSD will help disabled people get around No need to fund dirty dangerous public transit!! " Or again “Neuralink is going to help disabled people so they must have good intentions and obviously not plan on selling these to the general public eventuality. It’s purely for the embiggening of society!”

    FSD is soooo full self driving that blind people can’t use it as it requires constant babysitting, and more importantly, a driver’s license and thr ability to drive a car… for a car that’s supposed to drive itself.

    Anything coming from Musk is obviously a scam. He’s a con artist. He will say anything to convince people. He keeps promising his shit is always just on the verge of revolution but it’s mainly just empty words for hype.

    Helping the disabled is probably just an afterthought for Neuralink. People are so desperate, they will try anything, and Neuralink will be the creep profiting off them.

  • pedz@lemmy.catoLinux@lemmy.ml•XFCE Vs MATE
    2·
    2 months ago

    I’ve been using MATE since Gnome 3. I really liked the simplicity of Gnome 2 and was unable to adapt to their “new” way so I switched to MATE and it just clicked. I tried Gnome 3 a few times again but I just can’t.

    As for why MATE instead of XFCE or others? Because I already used and tried XFCE in the past and prefered Gnome 2’s look and feel. In fact, I have been going out of my way for years to keep every app using GTK2 and my favourite theme because I like how it looks and feel, and Gnome 3 and GTK3 broke this. So MATE it was. They switched to GTK3 too eventually but it gave my time to adjust.

    My only “complaints” about it are the file manager Caja, and the way you can list windows, which both feel very basic. I would like those two to get better.

    I try and use different DE from time to time, from Fluxbox to E17, but I just go back to MATE. My favorite DE of all time was E16 but it took waaay too long for E17 to be functional and I ended up keeping MATE.