I sure hope this is the end of Discord. Maybe only 10% of people will rage quit rather than show their ID, but if every group has one in 10 people they invite say “nah, that’s not happening” and everyone has to admit they’re probably in the right, it might make some difference.

Okay fine, guess I really do need to learn (the rest of) Rust now.

Utopia would be nice, but I’d settle for a world where the Star Trek franchise gets better screenwriters. (I’m liking Lower Decks though; thanks to whoever recommended that.)

How in the hell is this the same federation of TNG, Voyager and DS9?

Clearly it isn’t. Why should it be? It’s the far future. Giant prison colony, shock collars, cruelty, punishment with no semblance of a fair trial on screen; clearly the Federation are the bad guys now, or at least adjacent to them. I was prepared to accept that premise. Could be interesting… but no, they immediately shove that concept under the carpet and pretend it doesn’t matter because this one person involved feels really bad about it. It was all just another convenient plot device with no meaning, and they moved right on without stopping to think about it. It’s utterly lazy writing, the kind where they go with whatever half-baked idea they come up with first whether or not it makes any sense for the characters and story. I say that with confidence because I’ve seen so much of it before. In this case the character they betrayed was literally Star Trek itself, but they’re doing it all the time in smaller ways.

Anyway I’m off to rewatch DS9 instead.

Yep, we’re stuck with it. It’s just depressing.

Your logic is even worse than mine! It’s quite an achievement.

Once the clean energy transition gets going, people come to their senses, and not everyone continues to drive cars every single time they want to go anywhere, what will all the newly unemployed auto workers do? Build parts for Korean attack submarines, of course! Every hundred billion dollars spent will be repaid many times over in enemy ships sunk when Canada becomes the naval military power it was meant to be and the next great war can finally begin. Submarines: the way of the future.

Not here. It’s probably more suited to mastodon or whatever.

Seems like dinosaur, isn’t: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/TGwAAOSw9mFWHRS~/s-l400.jpg

Knowing absolutely nothing about you or your taste in movies other than that you’re on drugs, my recommendation is Lifeforce (1985).

There’s no need to resort to bluesky, @avilewis@mstdn.ca has a mastodon account.

I’m not a fan of having the government subsidizing new car purchases. It’s the last thing we need. The sale of cars that run on fossil fuels should be banned ten years ago or as soon as possible. If the government wants to spend more money it should go towards alternatives to cars, not to bribing the relatively wealthy people who shop for brand new cars to put even more of them on the roads.

Goodbye EV sales mandate. Hello purchase rebates.

Of all the politicians, only Mr. Carney has the expertise, foresight, and economic sophistication to do exactly the wrong thing with such precision.

Oh, so that’s what they’re talking about when they say AI will enslave all humanity. I hope the fractured remains of non-assimilated human societies living on the streets among the security drones and human transport vessels will have enough to eat.

If Epic is a megacorp, then what is Valve?

It’s a marginally less problematic megacorp. Being stuck with three or four of them instead of the current one or two would not solve any problems and would make things substantially more annoying for their customers — both publishers and gamers. There’s currently no way for enough of them to exist in that market to provide meaningful competition. It’s the type of service where consolidation and market concentration is inevitable when they’re run the way they are now. You can’t reasonably be expected have 50 different equivalents to the Steam client on your PC; having both Steam and GOG is already a bit of a stretch.

Speaking of the fediverse though, if all the PC game stores were somehow federated such that listing your game on one automatically made it available on the others as well, and they could thus be constrained to compete fairly in a well-regulated market based on the fully interoperable services they provide, that would be a better world.

Tankies (for any reasonable definition of the word) and fascists should always shunned and opposed, by communists and anarchists alike.

The whole idea sucks. You know what would be worse than Steam having a monopoly on PC game stores? Five different megacorps each as untrustworthy as Epic dividing the market between them, each with their own exclusive deals so that people who want access to most things need to sign up for all of them. Like with the streaming services it would only drive people back to piracy.

Evan Solomon, minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation, is very keen for Canada to become an “AI powerhouse,” calling this our “Gutenberg moment.”

Maybe it’s actually our Guttenberg moment, as in Steve Guttenberg in Police Academy (1984). AI plays the role of “Ax Murderer” of course. I’m keeping an eye out for the Michael Winslow character.

Growing by 3.6% less is not the same thing as shrinking by 3.6%, economists. Personally I’m for open borders and zero GDP growth, ideally.

One time there was an empty grassy field which was not a city park, and to make that clear — without engendering the local hostility that “no trespassing” would — it’s owners put up a sign reading: NO ACTIVITIES OF ANY KIND ALLOWED.

Most ominous sign I ever saw.