Not meaning to add anything super meaningful to the conversation.

I think its funny that for what feels like since the beginning of humans, we've been debating centralised solutions vs distributed solutions. Its like a universal constant source of debate and will probably still be discussed long after were all gone.

I just think that's neat.

Idk maybe it's cause I don't live in as much of a two party system as the US, but essentially still a two party system.

I think there's value in strategic voting. I don't know what the equivalent would be in the US but strategic voting for the lesser of two evils at a national level and then voting more true to your convictions at a municipal and provincial level is still valid.

Again my opinions probably don't work in the US electoral system, but voter apathy is a big part of how rights get eroded where I'm from. A party or political figure stays in power because of apathy and then they just keep getting away with shit. At least if you cast a vote it can be seen as you participating in the democracy.

I will say there is something to the act of not voting as being a part of democracy, but truly I think along with abstaining any functioning democracy needs a "none" option.

I don't think we'll see this any time soon, because corpos probably won't listen to any creative that presents this, but I want something where the LLM runs locally and is just used to interpret what you are asking for but the dialogue responses are all still written by a writer. Then you can make the user interaction feel more intuitive, but the design of the story and mechanics can just respond to the implied tone, questions, prompts, keywords from the user.

Then you could have a dialogue tree that responds with a nice well constructed narrative, but a user who asked something casually vs accusatory might end up with slightly different information.

In life it's been mostly pure luck, but one of the few things I really recommend is to keep in the loop about rebates, programs and services offered by my federal and provincial government. Stuff like rebates on first time home buying, electric bikes, and energy efficient equipment is nice cause I bet I saved at least 3000$ total.

In recent time tho the biggest one has been getting a bicycle. I got an e-bike but even a regular bike helped me stop paying through the nose for gas when I was just burning it mostly sitting in traffic.

God if the Chevy Bolt was like idk even 35k I could maybe justify it but ideally I think we need the Hyundai Elantra of EVs to exist..something in and around the 20k mark for them to be a purchase normal people can make without sticker shock

I've experienced a similar decline in interest. Mostly because of one key thing, I got an e-bike.

The cost of gas was way too expensive, and I considered selling my gas powered car and buying an EV but the used and new market is well above anything I can afford, they only seem to produce SUVs or crossovers instead of anything the size of a Honda civic. I figured I'd just keep the gas car I have until it beefs it and use it for multi person trips, or far away trips.

Like it really is hard to beat when I can spend 1500-3000 on a bike that costs pocket change to charge, and doesn't cost an arm and a leg to maintain. Honestly with the lack of public transit in a lot of Canada, a bike and whatever car you already have is a great way to save on gas money.

I wonder if they are banking on, to put it into meme terms, "Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point".

And obviously I mean that in terms of a "great point" for the opposition.

I really don't know anything about the parliamentary system of this country, hell I barely know enough about my own country, but this seems like at the best an interesting play and at the worst a huge miscalculation that will bite them in the arse.

Try to indulge me, as I try to humanize the people you are talking about in a way that might resonate with you.

Imagine you work 40hrs a week, getting paid minimum wage or next to minimum wage, the housing market continues to worsen around you as rent continues to increase but wages don't. If you have a place already and are just barely scraping by living paycheck to paycheck, which a lot of people are these days. One small bad financial day from an emergency or unexpected cost and you're screwed. You miss your rent payment and you get evicted. Now, if you don't have a safety net of people, which we can't guarantee everyone does have living family or friends that will take you in for a month while you get back on your feet, you become homeless. You get fired from work because you've taken too many unpaid days off to try and get your life sorted so you don't have to sleep on the streets. Now you can't get another job because most places won't hire you without an address, and collecting unemployment becomes difficult because if you have no address and no direct deposit you can't get it mailed to you to claim.

As for the drugs that you say they have chosen to ruin their lives with, a pack of cigarettes, a small bag of weed, some opiates, or alcohol costs a whole lot less than rent for a month or even a motel room for the night.

The financial and housing situation for a lot of people out there in the world is really fragile, and if you add on other issues that I didn't list such as mental health issues, lack of education or job experience with any education you have, or existing addiction, it can really add up and make it so your going from sleeping in a small bachelor's apartment one night to sleeping on a park bench the next.

I don't fully ascribe to the concept of communism myself (it's a good label for most folks but I'm too picky about nitty gritty stuff so say I like it when I would want to adjust a few things about it), but I definitely think social housing is how you fix homelessness. Cities and states / provinces waste more money dealing with homelessness the way they do now then just building them socialized housing.

Overall I think you're right. Just like this whole shit is so sad. Both antisemitism and Islamophobia are on the rise.

Like I could give two fucks about how the governmental bodies and regimes involved are pushing any narrative, when we see the litteral human cost being reported constantly. But, I know I'm not well informed enough to have a good conversation on what should be reported and what is being reported is filled with fluff and skewed to support certain sides.

The only thing I have been able to tell concretely from the reporting is war is hell.

It would actually be quite based if the Liberals fixed our shitty First Past The Post system in a last ditch effort to keep power. I wonder if the polling would scare them enough to do so or if they're too overconfident to think that they don't need it.

I mean if you're already using a Windows machine for work you're not gonna have to switch.

I imagine unless you're self employed, you are probably given a machine to work on with a predefined operating system picked by your employer. If someone is in a place where they're forced to use windows and the employer is making them pay for this equipment and software out of pocket, then that's wicked scummy of the employer.

I'm just saying this cause I imagine the original comment your replying to has some implicit context of "when possible" or "on my own machine".

Also it's a bummer your software doesn't work on Linux, nothing worse than being locked into a platform.

I mean even if it was a public utility, there's still laws around those in regards to what you can and can't do with it. So depending on how the framework around it is set up, and if there was a proper system in place to enforce it, I don't think it would necessarily even be a threat to it becoming or continuing to be a public utility.