HonoredMule

Man, he's really hitting the ground running, and every step is fire. A couple weeks ago I was begging for Canada's leadership to shut down U.S. negotiations until Dumpster acknowledged our sovereignty and repudiated his threats against it. And Trudeau was handling things pretty well, but no way he'd go that far.

Carney did it in on day 2. ✊

I think we might have found the only leader in the Western world that can outpace the orange clown.

Addendum: I first broached that "demand acknowledgement" move over a month ago.

I sympathize with Newfoundlanders, but running more efficient operations at scale is how we increase our national productivity. I think the answer is to figure out how to make that work both ways and also to repurpose the labor that's made redundant.

I'd wager Newfoundland will remain the primary market for their own unique alcohol products, and won't they additionally be able to grow their interprovincial sales? That won't cover all the losses, but Canada also needs a lot of stuff that Canada does not produce and no longer wants to buy from the U.S. That represents opportunity.

Maybe, but we can't be sure until they call their rivals sodomists.

If you nip it in the bud, no one has to do any butt stuff. 😉

We're about one year into a constant deluge of off-season CPC-sponsored attack ads everywhere.

Well, apparently.

I need to go give the team behind uBlock Origin a hug, or a beer.

I took a pass on that when it released. Horror, and especially psychological horror, are really not my jam. The closest I ever got to enjoying something like that is Resident Evil. That's why The Fly isn't on my list either. But that reminds me of another Canadian movie that caught my interest after watching a video essay about it: Blood Quantum (2019).

You bring the jet fuel; I've got a ton of PLA+ in stock already. What could go wrong?

I half expected "best" to be an extraneous word, as in there only are 51 Canadian films. Lucky for me, I like to to fact check before letting my mouth leak. As it turns out, we recently produced three times that within the span of one year, and the National Film Board of Canada takes credit for over 13,000 films since 1939.

That does come with a caveat, however, in that the NFB runs on subsidy to the tune of ~$70m per year and isn't really focused on mainstream, commercially successful entertainment. The numbers likely include "films" as short as 5 minutes, along with everything between that and feature length movies.

What's my point? I, uh, didn't get that far. Hopefully I've at least managed to pivot from parading my ignorance to acknowledging it.

Anyway, a few of the featured pique my curiosity (which I'm listing here for my own future reference):

• BlackBerry (2023, was already planning on watching at some point)
• Goon (2004)
• Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992)
• Seeds (2024)
• Strange Brew (1983, hoping it's more "Dumb and Dumber" and less "Dude, Where's My Car?")
• Movies that aren't really Canadian:
  • Navalny (2022)
  • Turning Red (2022)

Well now it feels like I'm parading my lack of culture. 🤷‍♂️

Ok, now I'm hearing you loud and clear. This is also true and based, with abundant parallels. Like, teenagers think being aloof, distant, or mysterious is cool. More mature adults tend to end up deciding that being open, earnest, and genuine is sexy, even if they don't care about the things you do. Passion is what's cool, and apathy is just either insecurity or emptiness.

To me, there is an inherent satisfaction that comes from defying soulless entities trying to dictate my habits, values, and most notably dependence for their gain. There is inherent value in having greater freedom of choice and lower cost to changing my mind than accepting vendor lock-in would permit. And there is greater financial and lifestyle security from reducing the role of cash flow (and big tech) in sustaining that lifestyle. It's actually pretty comfortable relying more on other forms of self-help, including services that no one can manipulate against my will, or outright rug-pull on me.

I never really though of such things as irrational, but rather assigning different weights to the inputs we're tweaking and outputs for which we're optimizing. My values and "weights" are somewhat described by the personalized examples of benefit I presented - albeit scoped down to one particular context. The principles or values that resonate with any particular person do so for a reason. I think if we analyze those reasons deeply enough, we'll find both the internal motivation and external incentives to either change them or commit to them.

Conversely, I don't imagine nihilistic choices ever feel particularly good or right.

I think the notes of "America doesn't care about your principles or actions" are what rubbed people the wrong way in your original comment. And that's probably because it speaks to that sense of nihilism that likely isn't well represented on an open-source, Canadian-hosted, left-leaning, mainstream-alternative platform. But such people I would argue, based on global outcomes, are much more representative of the general public even in Canada. I'm upvoting your original comment now, on the basis that this underlying point is a message many need to hear, and probably articulated in the way that those people would hear.

That's a message I can get behind, but I've been making conscientious purchasing/spending choices for years, sometimes decades, in order to satisfy my own principles. In realms like privacy and intellectual freedom, it meant constantly fighting upstream while general consumer habits gave a mandate to everything I don't want and left no room for anything I do want. It means being the only person in a group not on Facebook, and also sometimes not really in the group any more either. In realms like buying local, it means being the only annoying person clogging the aisles scouring labels for origin information or paying way more for products that lack the demand which brings scaling efficiencies.

I wouldn't make different choices today. All the costs of self-hosting and maintaining personal tech infrastructure, trying to work with niche tooling and integrate narrowly-focused independent systems, and missing out on some mainstream stuff still do not outweigh the benefits - at least for me personally.

But let me tell you: it is profoundly more satisfying having a large-scale movement behind you, collaboratively sharing the burden and also having a real, economy-shaping impact benefitting the values that matter to you.

It can be for both reasons, and it won't matter how the administration spins it for their base. Starving the beast weakens it regardless of any backlash.

It's not too late for us all to do better. 😉