jkf
5d ago
Huh -- "come to BC" is all I can suggest then -- there's a certain amount of trans/FN pity indoctrination (which the kids mostly don't seem to be really buying), more seriously disabled kids per class than I'd like, and... that's about it.
A fourth grade teacher wanted to diagnose my son with ADD (we had none of it) but other than that I know of approximately 'accommodation' kids working the system as you describe.
Not a lot of immigrants in my (undisclosed) location, either.
jkf
5d ago
Wow -- I guess I've seen aspects of this around my kids' school but this all sounds quite extreme -- are you back East somewhere? In suburban BC I would find all of this quite disturbing.
jkf
5d ago
I am with you 100%, and I'm more thinking about chicks from the 1990s FFS -- I'm just saying that that particular haircut and that particular actress are... kind of ugly -- the dye doesn't really tip the scales one way or the other for me.
jkf
6d ago
I’m guessing when the Boomers hit Social Security full-tilt
Aren't we getting kind of towards the tail end of Boomers hitting social security already? Birth year for full benefits seems to be 1958 -- which is well past peak Boomer, and roughly the year that birth rates started a rapid decline into GenX -- seems like a strong majority of the cohort is already collecting SS?
jkf
6d ago
Yeah I'm unfamiliar with any of these properties and understood BigGuy to mean something more cyberpunk than 'mid-lesbo' -- like a Chelsea with some gel-work on top.
jkf
6d ago
TBF those two words are very similar and easily confused if your brain happens to like... swap some letters around.
jkf
7d ago
Just tell them that society needs at least a few writers and entertainers who aren't utter morons as well...
jkf
7d ago
The ones who did badly and were put in the bottom track because they were rebellious or narrowly-focused and flourished once they got into a more open-ended environment.
Is this really a bad outcome though? If you manage to get every smart person into the white collar stream, you no longer have any smart blue collar workers to advance society in those areas.
jkf
8d ago
I can see a high capacity rail line
You'd need pretty serious port infrastructure at either end for this -- there are ports there now so it's probably feasible, but I'll bet it would be expensive if you were going to handle significant volume.
jkf
8d ago
If the same is true of Mennonites more broadly
I don't think it is -- I've contracted with them before in ways that required mutual trust, and I'm pretty sure that the carpenter ones don't require cash up front before they build you a house or whatever.
jkf
9d ago
The not-particularly-strict Mennonites that I know seem to maintain the same sort of lifestyle when they start construction or other businesses -- I'm pretty sure it's mostly the church and community support. Whether they can maintain this is another story -- I don't really know any "urban Mennonites", or if that's even a thing.
jkf
10d ago
If I were running Ford and trying to destroy Ford, I wouldn't start by cutting the cars everyone doesn't like. I would start by ending Mustang production, screwing up the engine and bed on the F150
Ford doesn't have a monopoly on violence though; in the government analogy, they just make everyone drive Escapes -- which makes people hate the Forderlords but it's not like they can go buy a Camaro instead.
Whereas if they quit making Escapes and nobody cares, it's a viable argument that Ford is wasting a lot of resources on things nobody likes, and further cuts should be NBD. (of course the plan breaks down when all the CUV engineers start writing articles about how many puppies will die if they are laid off)
jkf
10d ago
In 1995 computers could barely play chess.
In 1995 computers could kick your ass in chess, unless you are a pretty good player who studied their algorithmic weaknesses -- indeed I'll bet my Vic-20 could kick your ass at chess in 1980. AIUI for a long time their improvements (including things like DeepBlue) were mostly driven by better compute and memory availability -- I guess there's some interesting parallels with neural networks there. But the thing about chess programs is that there's sort of a plateau -- you can only be so good at chess. AI takeoff theory hinges on this not being the case for general intelligence -- which I don't think has been adequately proven.
jkf
11d ago
Probably not helpful per se, but I'm thinking of the oldish days in which mods were expected to put up with blunt-to-the-point-of-against-the-rules commentary on their decisions as part and parcel of the awesome power they wield. I'd probably need to go pretty far back on the reddit sub to find examples, and don't really know where the norm came from (LessWrong?) but it struck me as a pretty good norm. As with the "free-speech vs hate-speech" issue, "criticizing the mods is only allowed if you aren't a PITA about it" is not really a stable equilibrium.
jkf
11d ago
the ankle-biting will stop. Now.
Clamping down on blunt feedback to the mods is a pretty serious change in norms around here, and a very negative development -- you should stop.
jkf
13d ago
A touch cold-hearted, but sure -- assuming you accept that Russia is an implacable threat, and a hostile relationship is the only way forward. Which could be argued either way, but there's another problem:
Whether or not Ukraine has a shot at "winning" or regaining significant territory is irrelevant. Every day that the war continues is another day that the Russian military continues to deteriorate without any loss of American life
This part is only true until it isn't -- if Ukraine runs too short of bodies to hold the line at some point, there's a risk that Russia wins outright. Then we have an implacable enemy with a battlehardened (granted, drawn down some) armed force, a shiny feather in its cap, and a nice big buffer zone between us and its heartland.
Seems a little risky?
jkf
14d ago
It's more effort than he deserves -- "LPC is hawkish on China" isn't even low effort, it's just agitprop.
jkf
14d ago
The issue is that there wouldn't be any need for an all out war, at least with India.
China doesn't see it this way, so none of what else you say matters -- if there's a possibility that a war might occur, they want to be in the best possible position for it.
Like I said it's a bit of a throwback to pre-WWI international relations, but you see it a bit in Russia's adventures in Ukraine. Happens when high-ranking military officials get a direct voice in diplomacy.
jkf
14d ago
the past few administrations have increasingly become China hawks
LOL
https://www.nsicop-cpsnr.ca/reports/rp-2024-06-03/special-report-foreign-interference.pdf
jkf
14d ago
I realize how much of the international opprobrium China faces is entirely due to its own weight throwing, for very little potential gain in this particular case.
Chinese foreign policy is a bit of a throwback in that it's strongly driven by concrete strategic military goals, AIUI -- if they care about the random mountains, it's because they think that they are useful in an all-out war. Same with Tibet, same with Taiwan.
jkf
14d ago
Trump himself could probably be sold on the idea of a unified trade bloc going after China -- this would probably an actual Good Thing, but Canadian politics is pretty compromised on that front so we will probably only hear that Going After China is Racist or something.
jkf
14d ago
Canada's certainly been having a go at taxing digital media services lately -- and has had regulations effectively subsidizing locally produced movies/shows for a long time.
The recent scrap with Facebook/Google is I think theoretically nation-agnostic in that Canadian social media giants would also have to pay -- but given that there aren't any Canadian social media giants it could see viewing it as a kind of tariff.
My kids are in high school, and they would know if 50%+ of the class were being spirited away to a special room as test-taking accommodation.
It does seem like the new policy (since I was in high school) is more accommodating in terms of retaking tests you've blown, and handing in homework late -- but AFAICT this applies to everybody, and isn't an obviously terrible idea.
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