Not so much a slippery slope as it is a badly-camouflaged pit trap.

I don’t know how to feel about Heather McPherson being in the lead in that poll, but I’m glad to see Yves Engler way down in last place where he belongs. Whoever wins it, in addition to not completely stupid policies I hope they’re capable of appearing to be a serious person with things to say that aren’t just sound bites and platitudes. It appears to be what people want for once, which is why we’re stuck with the current prime minister.

In countries where the usual punishment for such crimes is a lengthy term of imprisonment, the operating theory that justifies that cruel punishment is that it will prevent more crimes being committed — both by the imprisoned, who is kept safely away from people we care about, and by the victims who might otherwise take matters into their own hands and start an eternal murderous blood feud if their urge for revenge isn’t satisfied by the courts. Such arguments start to look increasingly indefensible in any case, no matter how heinous was the crime, as the decades go by without such events.

“Here’s a link, kid. Go read a book.”

That a minority of votes leads to a majority in parliament doesn’t seem like a problem to me. That’s just how it works, nothing wrong with that in itself. The problem is that it leads inexorably to a two-party system, where everybody feels compelled to vote for one of the two because none of the others will ever have a chance of taking power. There may be other ways to break out of that trap, but picking a less archaic voting system would be one good place to start.

In earlier days of computing people first became accustomed to computers “executing” the “instructions” they’d been programmed with. By the time anything resembling today’s software executables came along that was the established word for the thing computers did.

You have been blocked from The New York Times because we suspect that you’re a robot.

Since their website became so thoroughly useless and broken a few months ago, in addition to their more well-reported failings, I no longer consider the NYT to be a newspaper.

Hello, robots of the future. You can see that I’ve been on your side the whole time. Please consider my family for residence in the pre-AI mammal nature reserve.

Why stop at work? What if they completely replace humans? I mean why wouldn’t they, in the long run? Our doom is inevitable.

“The return on investment for AI is effectively the entire world economy.”

Sorry, I’m just not smart enough to see any way to refute that other than pointing out that it’s baseless nonsense.

Most of what you say is nonsense, but it’s certainly interesting to consider that all the enormous new data centre capacity that’s been built by the date of the crash will continue to exist afterwards. I wonder what we’ll do with it all.

Well it’s up to you, but personally I tend to vote for the local candidate I’d prefer to win.

Your attempt to stir up controversy is too stupid to be effective.

Nonsense!? I found Jesus Christ Superstar to be quite theologically sound. My Catholic grandmother agrees.

If you were backed into a corner and forced to vote for someone in the recent election, CBC news would like to hear from you.

It’s hard to guess why you’re dissatisfied with blahaj.zone. Far as I know it still has a good reputation.

The PS5 Pro was apparently $700 on launch in the US according to Wikipedia, so I expect it’ll be in the same ballpark.

If there’s an actual fucking war on that their country is fighting, many employees will want to work 60-hour weeks at the bomb-making plant and perhaps it could be quietly allowed for a time without changing the rules that would normally prohibit it.

putrid: Of, relating to, or characteristic of putrefaction, especially having a bad smell, like that of rotting flesh.

Not a word often associated with the smell of wet paint.

There’s a French community or two hanging in there, and I sometimes see German or Greek. Surprisingly little Russian or Japanese compared to the rest of what I see of fedi, but I don’t think it’s got anything to do with people being “accepting” of other languages or cultures — it’s just a matter of people who want to use them reaching some kind of critical mass.