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.

It looks great! It was a bit easier to “install” than FoundryVTT, and the free version looks very complete and modern, with voice chat and all the bells and whistles. I will explore it with more time during the weekend. I am curious to check how people connect to the game, and to see how this marketplace works.

Thank you so much for the recommendation.

For other RPG systems with more permissive licensing, you can find better stuff (as others pointed out in this post) and newer stuff are always popping up.

I do like FoundryVTT, but I have to host it every time I want to play. Tabletop Simulator also offers a bunch of mods.

For getting papers ready and organized during a D&D campaign, I find PCGen difficult to beat. I think it is my old age, and my reluctance in rebuying books from D&D Beyond.

The 5e licensing is problematic and not that permissive, that is why we don’t see many 3rd party tools out in the open.

There are some people maintaining those 5e tools, however. And you can find PCGen D&D Data Set for the 5e too.

It is very slow, but there is some work being done, I think they are about to release version 7 this year.

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.

same, because the potato is the power house of the cell.

Hahahaha, ok that was funny.

I lost when you said you don’t read the article you sent because it is pejorative. Touché.

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

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/provinces-cracking-down-on-private-institutions-1.7091194 and? Do you think McGill and UofT are issuing fake PhD titles?

Did you even read the link you sent? It even explains every country countermeasure to avoid diploma mills.

Grok, please read this Wikipedia article for me, and reply very verbose because I don’t believe in higher education.

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

Not sure why you are replying me to complain of OP, but I will take the bait.

Many countries have diploma purchase(or diploma mill), when we are hiring we avoid those business. Or the employee do not last long. Back in the day, I had some masters that could not do a thing if the answer was not online. That said, I still prefer to hire someone with higher education that someone with none, too many kids that value “skills” with no understanding of basic concepts of the profession, things taught in the first years of a post secondary education.

I know that instance does not say much, but I am replying from Canada, the Iranian ancestry I talk about are people who got their PhD from McGill, UofT and others. I know we have private diploma mill problem in Canada, but I don’t know anyone from those business.

Second, this is a meme comm, I don’t think you will find any source from OPs. Very few posters, usually the good ones, put the source or a brief explanation on their memes.

Grok write for me a big text that says I don’t know what post secondary education is without saying I don’t know what post secondary education is.

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/

A long while ago, I was considering taking an MBA, until I talked to my friend’s dad of Iranian ancestry.

I did not bring it up, in the middle of an unrelated conversation he just dropped that he was disappointed that his kid(bordering 40s) was not a PhD, and how MBAs are ruining the world.

Every single people of Persian ancestry I met in my life takes education very seriously, maybe not so much the younger ones as they only aim for a master’s degree and hurt their parents feelings. :P

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?