You’ll be playing doom on your toothbrush in no time.

But yah maybe. There are mountains of “smart” hardware that demanded cloud, cloud went away, suddenly a brick. I’d love to wire some of that up and give Claude a shot at jail breaking and flashing that kinda thing.

According to polling, a healthy majority of Albertans and a healthy majority of Quebecois want to remain in Canada.

It’s certainly too late for separatists to turn the tide in AB before the “referendum to have a referendum” in less than 2 weeks from now.

A lot more could happen between now and 2028 in Quebec… But I still am skeptical.

Support for BQ in '95 was basically 50%. PQ today is like mid 30s (crowded field).

I’m concerned that provincial politicking is banging such a lazy drum. I’m not concerned today that the aggregate electorate of either province wants to leave Canada.

Might be a poor comparison, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a bad way to present it to thier boss. If the analogy, however flawed, communicates the underlying idea to the listener, then it was effective.

The concept here is very related to why “ceci n’est pas un pipe” is/was compelling.

I’m glad we both stayed curious. We fucking rock

Ok, I can accept what I think I just read:

“Although a drop in housing prices would provide a reprieve to those who do not own, the fundamental structure of housing as a commodity is the greater beast that must be defeated”

Now, that’s true, I’m 100% on board.

I do feel like people sometimes let perfect become the enemy of good. “The homeless guy doesn’t need a handout, he needs a job”, they mutter as they walk on by.

If you wanna think that long term, I actually don’t think you’ve gone far enough. Government supply initiatives? A start, but still a bandaid. Massive increasing tax rates on multiple ownership. Cap on residential property that can be owned by Corporations. Rent controls. Pull no punches to establish that housing is not a viable speculative investment. You build to sell to people who will live there.

What about the equity you’re about to decimate? Government needs to get back big time into the pension game. Big time. How will I live? Eat? Get medical care as I age? Needs a fix.

Until those broad changes occur, I’ll still be cheering every dip.

But then the prices go up again.

The price of anything is the balance of buyers and sellers.

The price TELLS you where the equilibrium is. It is the OUTPUT of the function.

Houses aren’t Hienz Ketchup. Head office doesn’t just decree a house price. You’re imagining the housing market works like Taylor swift tickets from ticket master.

You don’t even have to hypothesize on this because housing markets have been swinging around for decades. People on the sidelines were able to buy houses after 2008 that they’d never have been able to afford otherwise. It worked out GREAT for people who has been sidelined.

I entered the market at the brief but violent housing downturn in late 2019. I never would have been able to otherwise.

They suck for people who own a home and are depending on thier equity. It sucks for people who own a home and the banks get nervous.

Whenever I hear people saying to people without homes “be careful what you wish for” when they are wishing houses were cheaper… I just hear my old boss telling me how I shouldn’t want a raise because it’ll “bump me into a higher tax bracket”.

It’s bullshit half-truths which sound just plausible enough to convince you to not act in your own best interests.

If you own a property, its in your own financial best interests to have the value increase. If you do not own property, but want to, you want the price to go down.

That is not what that means.

I promise I understand what you’re saying. I’m saying the fault in your logic is misunderstanding the upward pressure of cash buyers.

When prices fall, it isn’t chum in the water for corporate cash buyers. What it means is that those same buyers were ALWAYS there, and are now leaving. The absence of thier buy pressure is the cause of the prices falling.

That is how supply and demand works, though. If the prices drop, and suddenly cash buyers start pouring out of the woodwork, that will drive prices back up.

When you see prices fall, it necessarily means the cash buyers are not just swooping in and grabbing everything.

Actually when things are less expensive they are easier to buy.

There was a radio station who’s whole thing was that they would never play nickleback. Then one day they accidentally played nickleback. The Playlists were coming from some head office 5000 miles away, and they missed pulling a nickleback track once it got to the local station.

China is where it is very explicitly because it spent a lot of time not trying to win any race. They’re still not trying to win it.

It’s massively more cost effective to fast follow in the wake of whomever is breaking new ground. Orders of magnitude.

China has been strategically losing races. Over and over. They understand there is no value in getting there first if you can be there 6 months later cheaper.

The race is made up. It’s an excuse to fuck YOU. YOU.

Remember when transistors were invented, and the rest of the world shrugged and said “we lost the race” and then never invented them and still plow fields by horse and candlelight?

Of course not.

Framing this as a race introduces the idea that if you don’t win you’re fucked. As if time stops. It’s a bad metaphor and it only serves to undermine rational thinking. It’s designed to convince people they need to sacrifice something. Datacenters spiked your electricity bill? That’s ok because we have to win.

The space race is pretty similar. Also worth pointing out that by every metric besides man foot+moon, the USSR won. First suborbital flight? Orbital? Satellite? Animal in space? Man in space? Moon flyby? Moon landing? USSR. Did the USA quit? Did it matter?

You can throw money at whatever you want. Framing it as a race is nonsense designed to convince people to work against thier own interests so someone else can get rich.

Yes

No idea how it works in London… but my concern is that using fees and taxes to reduce things sometimes practically turn into “This thing is now only for rich people”.

I knew a guy who was a giant piece of shit and would park his Lamborghini anywhere and just eat the parking tickets. He’d get like $400 a day and he just didn’t care because he had the money. The rules are just for poor people if the penalty is just a fine.

My concern is that with a simple taxation approach, Venice becomes where bezos jets to whenever he wants, and I literally can no longer go. He already had a leg up, this just deepens the gap.

There are ways to address it. A lottery system. Or at the very least make the tax scale with wealth (like how some Nordic countries do speeding tickets)

I imagine a large group of very wealthy people would be very in favour of a steep entry tax.

Culture is the aggregate of about 1 billion things.

I hear you when you’re saying there isn’t a “try this 1 simple trick!” Fix.

But just because something isn’t “fixed” doesn’t mean it’s not “better” or “getting better” or at least “not getting worse as fast”. Position, velocity, acceleration.

It’s a great start. Why concede defeat before the game even begins?

It’s been 26 years. I think it’s fair to say he’s an active participant to creating and managing a culture that keeps him where he is, rather than merely being the guy the wind blew in.

And, I’d argue that started very very earlier. He false flag bombed some apartments pretty early on.

Real missed opportunity to have forgone “neigbouring” and let readers decide for themselves if you were referring to putin in Ukraine or Trump in Iraq.

I don’t say it to argue, just to inform. What I want is for people to give it the gravity that it deserves… very little. To speak from a place of informed reason rather than emotional reaction.

“Lol, like 15% of the population would vote to leave why are you wasting your time, Danielle”

That’s what I want.

Because the uninformed emotional reaction is what Danielle wants. She is the most incompetent premiere in my lifetime. Rather than have any kind of real agenda or vision, her bizarre strategy is to just keep people upset.

No real legislation. Or plans. Or dealings. Like a Jr high mean girl trying to stay popular by starting drama. It only has any power if you buy into the drama. Don’t buy into the drama.

Worth noting that the ab government interceded to lower the threshold. Also that polling puts “leave” at low 20%. Also worth noting that “leave” support is actually declining as the months go by. Also worth noting that when pollsters ask a follow-up question (do you still support leaving if that means AB becomes responsible for its own defense, currency, passports, border control, etc etc etc) support drops to mid 10%. Incidentally, support from greenlanders joining the US when Trump said he needed Greenland was also mid 10%.

Polling shows that once push comes to shove, about as many albertans seriously support indepence as greenlanders want to be annexed by the USA.

Is it serious? Yes, in the sense that predatory bad-faith politics is serious. Foreign actors attempting to apply pressure on Canadian politics is very serious.

Is it serious in the sense of “is the idea of leaving Canada something that Albertans seriously support?”, no.