I wish I had this level of eloquence in my youth, I wish it at an old age too.
Still, I was never a fan of “yo mama” jokes. Where I grew up, bring up someone’s mother in such manner as a sure way to start a melee. Except maybe for “your mom is hot” if it sounds more like a compliment.

Cool! Thanks for sharing your methods. I like your stick figures and your lines.

If I try to do that with a mouse, it looks like an ECG.

Thanks for the recommendation, it was eye-opening.

I watched the first episode last night. I knew it would be bad when they start with Thatcher fumbling words in a speech (the only kind of Thatcher speech, really), but it was heartbreaking. All the damages caused by that decision, public agencies that were supposed to protect the people acting like a lobby group for international banks. It was hard to hold in the tears during the town meeting, I was not expecting the real survivors at those scenes.

Yeah, I feel for his words many times now. He does something bad, then a press conference with all his charms, here comes another bad thing, another press… rinse and repeat.

The digital services tax was expected to bring $2B USD. He dropped it, alleging help in the negotiations without any fallback plan. At that moment, I realized he was using those excuses as an opportunity to pass his agendas, as in, dropping those taxes were his plans all along. It is easy to pass unpopular decisions when he has a scapegoat like Trump.

I am old enough to remember IMF “forcing” countries to privatize their services and industries (well, they still do).

It is beyond me Canada doing the same without being under duress, just for the sake of ideology.

I understand that in some places, for some services, it brought some prosperity, but they had guardrails in place. Like enforceable regulations and strong unions that covers the whole industry rather than a single company. But there are also places in which just creating those guardrails made public industry efficient without the need of privatization.

Mail/logistics is something that scares me to be fully privatized. From the difference in employees quality of life, to the quality of services, to the formation of monopoly or cartels.

https://www.fairvote.ca/ontario/ for more info but in short:

Ford got 65% of seats with only 43% of votes, but only a small group voted in the last election. That means he was elected by ~20% of eligible voters. More than half of eligible voters did not vote last election.

We have here an electorate system that discards people’s vote, discourage people to vote, or straight up disenfranchise them. For all the reasons you might be familiar with, gerrymandering, massive different in number of people in each district, propaganda from local and foreign agents. Also, I don’t think the representative from my district lives here, I only hear about them during election time.

Without naming the opposition Conservatives, Carney seemed to allude to them when he said there are “some who say there’s no need for a comprehensive plan” –- that Canadians should “wait it out” in the hope that U.S. relations will go back to how they were in the “good old days.”

He pointed out that young Canadians have experienced no such good days – their entire lives having been impacted by the shocks and crises of global wars, financial strife and COVID-19.

People should be worried about politicians with no plans for a better future, and politicians that do not react to crisis.
Sitting on their thumbs and intervening only so their cronies can profit should be a huge red flag. Sadly, they keep getting elected with a minority of votes.

That should be their slogan, Conservatives: we do nothing and pray better times come.

Some people might say the last panel was not necessary, but it was what made me spit my coffee.

The past couple of weeks, I have been seeing a bunch of news about USA smugglers bringing weapons and drugs to other countries.

When people say that USA politicians speech are mostly projection, it is very ironic to see that it is to this extent

… sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists… - Doland J Trump

It depends on your threat model (how much you want to share).

Any device would leak a bit of information, either when it pings the satellite or cellular network, and some devices even ping nearby devices.

go back to a “dumb” computer (maybe not such a bad thing!)

It is difficult to find anything “dumb” nowadays. If you go to the vintage route, make sure they have a common cable, and that you can export/import the files using some easy to read format like GPX. To avoid getting stuck in proprietary bullshit.

That is even more important if you like to plan your route on your PC and send to the device.

keep my Garmin devices but take them offline

This will leak less information than your mobile device. Depending on the device, you can find open-source software that can make your life a lot easier for transferring files and reading them.

use a phone-based app like CoMaps

Can be an easy route. If you have your phone on you all the time, you are already leaking some information anyway.

or possibly a wearable fitness tracker.

Some of them require a proprietary app that definitely will phone-home with your info.

You can try GadgetBridge to avoid that https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/ but the supported devices list is small.

Maybe even an all-in-one platform like Garmin, but where the company really puts privacy front-and-center

No, sadly. The best you can find are community made open-source apps alternatives trying to bridge the gap.

Garmin used to show their source code back in the day. https://developer.garmin.com/open-source/linux/

It seems that even countries with their own domestic aeroplane manufacturing are betting on Saab., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen#Operators

On that note, didn’t Canada used to have local industry a long time ago?

Thanks for recommending another banger.

What a great album! It is hard to pick a favourite from there. I like Cruel lyrics, that 12 Wings is an earworm, the riff and the chorus are stuck in my mind. And that bass line and drums on Pulling Leeches, well, the whole song is chef’s kiss.

I will leave this here as Bandcamp Friday is coming (May 1st) https://brknlove.bandcamp.com/album/the-program

Solid music, great song, thanks for recommending!

Not a big fan of the art on their most recent discs, https://headstones.bandcamp.com/album/burn-all-the-ships

Every time this is brought up people cry Europe, but there are countries out there that already got rid of visa and mastercard, and almost killed paper in the process. Like India’s UPI and Brazil’s Pix, this last, in a time spam shorter than 5 years from it becoming fully operational.

In the case of the Brazilian Pix, it appears that they are considering agreements to connect it with platforms across the world, like with Italy, as reported here https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-27/brazil-takes-its-central-bank-digital-payments-app-pix-across-borders (https://archive.is/8SnmL)

The cherry on the cake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pix_(payment_system)#United_States_government_investigation

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has accused US president Donald Trump of being “bothered by Pix” because it “will put an end to credit cards”

They have a demo available. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3404260/Dead_as_Disco/

From what I played, the attack matches the music automatically, and you do not need to worry about pressing buttons on the beat.

You can attack with no concern about timing (mashing, for example), and the animation will always hit to complement the music. Like, if the music has a quick ta-ta-ta, pressing the attack will show your character quickly punching 3 times matching it.

I don’t know whether it is nostalgia or my memory failing, but Batman: Arkham combat is in a sweet spot that is hard to match. I remember enjoying Sleeping Dogs and Shadow of Mordor, but Mad Max was a bit repetitive. People also suggests Sifu and Ghost of Tsushima, but I haven’t tried those yet.

I am learning a lot from this thread, thanks for sharing. It seems that 1 in 3 buses in NA are from New Flyer.

Also, I like their proposition of having a centre median boarding platform. https://youtu.be/Xhw66RpevsM Some few decades ago, I heard about some cities solving bus traffic by using the centre of the street for public transport.

I am not able to read the article. It only shows the headline for me.

I found an article with similar title that lists the reasons as:

• Significant delays in obtaining replacement parts, taking up to 73 days for a single rear axle.
• Poor quality of repair manuals and a lack of diagnostic tools in English.
• Insufficient engineering support from BYD during operations.

Does that match the article you shared? Is there more to it?

[English] The Free Label - Dancing on Your Own https://thefreelabel.bandcamp.com/track/dancing-on-your-own

Learned about them on Musora, they made a cover of Alice in Chains - Them Bones

Thank you for the recommendation, first time I hear of Boy Golden (btw don’t search the other way around, some sort of anime smut). Suffer is solid, and the whole CD is great. Saving the link for bandcamp friday https://yaboygolden.bandcamp.com/album/best-of-our-possible-lives