Canadians are already familiar with private health care. Anyone with a pet who needed medical attention knows the gut wrenching pain of going to a vet, expecting a standard level of care and pricing, only to learn from friends and family that they’ve been fleeced at 2 to 5 times the price. But you needed help at the time and it was meant to happen is what we tell ourselves.

It’s the invisible hand right?

You know…the one you see making jazz hands providing below average care and attention to your pet, and the other that basically steals your wallet and uses you like a piggy bank?

I write from experience, but I’m not the only one. So now you just want to switch pets to humans?

Call the election, UCP. Alberta will see you out.

Some folks - myself included - don’t even believe that “AI” as currently described matches even the hype.

Canadians should be ready to go full into cash. We’ll wait for the explosion and buy up the fancy server racks, chips, hard drives, and other hardware at pennies on the dollar to set up our own data centres that will actually do real tasks besides AI slop.

Dr. Ken Cheung struggles for a few seconds to describe how he views himself within Alberta’s rapidly privatizing health-care system.

“I feel like I’m a conscientious objector,” said Cheung, an anesthesiologist for 25 years at Calgary’s Foothills Medical Centre.

As a supporter of public health care, Cheung said he objects to a policy that requires him to work in one of Alberta’s private, for-profit chartered surgical facilities, or CSFs.

Those CSFs are now churning out tens of thousands of surgeries, mostly in Calgary and Edmonton, every year under a United Conservative Party government.

For years, the UCP have played word salad about how they’re going to open X beds, and facilities will be built in some regional point. For years, everyone has asked the obvious question of how these places are going to be staffed. Well, now we know the answer, don’t we? They’re forcing public healthcare staff into the private sector…at higher costs to society.

This is basically Loblaws showing up raising the price of bread and telling people to suck it - then providing their pennies on the dollar gift card and calling it a day. Alberta is getting thugged and shaken down by the UCP when they’re sick and most vulnerable.

I’d like to piggyback off these remarks to add that Canada did have a secure digital communication system in Blackberry. I point out that system was criticized for being closed and “slow” to adapt to the changes brought by Apple.

But I’d simply take the view that Canada gave up on Blackberry. Blackberry’s entire reputation was based on secure communications catered towards corporate and enterprise environments - whether we liked it or not. Canada just gave way to less secure, more convenient American competitors. In so doing, we gave up a real option to American digital communications. Oh and by the way, the Americans still don’t have an answer to having all their telecommunication back doors getting hacked open.

Why do we have to listen to what this guy says his words meant back then? Is he an esteemed author? Do we have to analyze his intent? WHERE IS JA??

And you know people are getting nervous when the brother has to crawl out and “set the record straight”.

Late hours, on long stretches of road and away from intersections, walk down the centre of a street.

You have better line of sight, fewer blind corners, and you should be picked up by cameras. As long as you’re not intoxicated, you can also tell when someone or something approaches better.

Also a good pocket light with focus options. You can light the way with it, or blind anything temporarily. If built well, it can reinforce your fist, and you can hammer strike.

I don’t agree with the tariffs. Canada does have an auto industry, but as far as Electric Vehicles or batteries are concerned, there’s not much to protect. We don’t have a proper competitive product for EVs, and Canada doesn’t have the infrastructure investments needed to make EVs competitive with ICE vehicles. We’re a smaller market with a huge hinterland and hard winters, and that poses some natural challenges for EVs.

Also, we’re saddled with the Americans, and even they don’t appear to be pursuing EVs or battery technologies at the highest levels with maximum effort. What are these tariffs for, exactly?

Even if Chinese companies were allowed to sell to the Canadian markets, they’d likely be shipped in as final products, and we’d hope they’re not watered down.

Canada’s relationship with the US is not good at the moment, and the Americans are emphasizing onshoring and US manufacturing. Canada will have to balance what it wants with these real considerations. We may have the right value proposition for local manufacture, but that depends on how far out we look into the horizon.

So with all of this in mind, the Vauxhall Advance wants to ask Canola farmers to willingly offer their business as sacrifice to some tariffs that don’t even look like they’re accomplishing much? If anything, China’s negotiations amount to a gesture of please reconsider while we offset your product with other agricultural products from the Belt and Road initiative.

I think that’s a difficult message for the canola farmers to swallow. Everyone sees what happened to the American soy farmers. They’re done. Even after negotiations between the US and China led to a truce, the resulting supply glut and the rise of new competitors in South America will leave a lasting impression.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-soybean-glut-could-defeat-us-export-hopes-after-trade-thaw-2025-11-12/

Some places do put fees on the sale of the car itself, and their regular registration, that go to public transit. Plus they deliberately reduce the supply of parking spaces available, effectively forcing car drivers to pay for the space they occupy. I think this puts a proper price for people to appreciate the hidden costs of car ownership.

But such policies are harder to “sell” to places with vast country or hinterlands because space is in abundance, and cars are heavily favoured.

These are indeed good examples.

Perhaps over the last 50 years, there are parts of Asia that build whole neighbourhoods with public transit in mind, and mixed-use zoning. They don’t have nearly the same learning curve to conquer as Alberta does…and they almost certainly don’t take +10 years to figure out how a line is supposed to interact with traffic lights.

I suppose “transit oriented development” are critical baby steps…but to some these are really small baby steps.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/edmonton/article/highly-anticipated-metro-lrt-line-opens-to-public/

He noted that when he started, Indigenous people made up 15 per cent of federal prison system inmates and this has since risen to 33 per cent and a shocking 50 per cent when it comes to women in the system.

Criminal Justice System to Canadian Society, Canadian Society do you copy? There’s a real problem here and we’re not the solution, over. /s

“The classification system has been identified by the Canadian Human Rights Commission as racist, as discriminatory on the basis of race, sex and disability,” Pate told APTN News.

“People with mental health issues, racialized people and women. And so disproportionately Indigenous women and men, but particularly women, are more likely to be classified as higher security.”

Allegations of racism aside, I think it’s a very sad situation when groups are openly inviting controversy, and cry foul when an expected unfavourable response happens.

I don’t think this bodes well even for people who are honestly trying to keep up with current events, and who also wade through all the noise. I can’t imagine what people who don’t even read much would make of this. I suppose that’s the point isn’t it? All this noise isn’t for the people who read, it’s for the people who just want to feel.

Isn’t that what happened to the Asians? When people needed something to blame, the Asians were the targets of random attacks. Women and seniors were the ones who ended up hospitalized. It was wrong then, it’s still wrong now for the pro-Israel groups to invite and promote this emotion of victimization within their communities.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9168424/

I still say this is part of the larger American scam for AI. AI’s just a tool, and certainly not autonomous as the stuff of movies. US companies are just using the concept of AI to layoff workers, and they’re trying to lock in their AI services contracts before the bubble bursts.

This article falls into the scam pile for me.

Plus I’m fairly certain Zuckerberg should be charged for Crimes Against Humanity, but that seems to be an issue for another day.

Thank you for that How-To. Now I know this isn’t what you first intended, but I tried to adapt this for DigitalOcean [DO] which is where my VPS is. I was not able to set up the CNAME, and I kind of worked out what was happening without a solution. For now I don’t have the CNAME set up and the links lead directly to my S3 Bucket.

I’ve got my set up laid out at the bottom of the post here. I’ll ask there if it’s okay to just keep this arrangement or if there are concerns.

S3_BUCKET = 'your-super-unique-bucket-name'
S3_ENDPOINT = 'https://your-super-unique-bucket-name.tor1.digitaloceanspaces.com/'
S3_REGION = ''
S3_PUBLIC_URL = 'https://your-super-unique-bucket-name.tor1.digitaloceanspaces.com/folder-name'
S3_ACCESS_KEY = 'example004819c3ba9b31b0000000003'
S3_ACCESS_SECRET = 'exampleK004Uei/7Vf90FzWuN3zoGl5npK3zZc'

Thank you again, for all the work.

Old posts can be automatically archived (saved to S3) to free up database space

When I first set up the .env.docker, I saw a mention of this feature. Is there a sample for me to look at to set up S3? When I started on 1.2.5, I don’t believe I saw any settings.

I suppose my instance is quite small, but this could be interesting to check out anyway.

Actively look to “give glory” or kudos to people around you.

On a practical level, be it an opposing force opponent, or even someone on your own squad - like a family member - looking to give glory encourages me to engage with my environment on a real level when I’m drifting off or getting lost. I’m trying to connect with the intentions of others while still trying to achieve my own. These don’t have to be lose-lose situations, and they shouldn’t be either.

If I can compliment someone on a tactic or a response committed under stress, I’m trying to say I see the other person. I’m also saying honestly that the action was valid, and others can understand my position without guessing. In a world where some feel they have to live by deception or seek glory for themselves exclusively, simply validating someone else gives strength and encourages others to tough out their positions in the face of toxicity.

You’re also forcing a change of perspective, and refraining from dwelling on the faults of others or yourself.

Even if the kudos goes to the opposition, I’d rather compliment someone I believe I can work with, and build mutual respect.

I think ActivityPub, a driver of the Fediverse, already serves as the mainstream protocol to enable these “platforms” to deliver content in the different ways that people have come to enjoy: such as Friendica, Mastodon, and so on.

Regardless of the front facing platform, I think what I want to see is deeper integration. Users from Mastodon or Friendica be more able to see posts and comments here on PieFed or Lemmy, and vice versa, as if we’re a single universe delivered in different ways. I even want to see users of PieFed be able to one day transfer their data and posts seamlessly over to say Lemmy, or Friendica.

I want to see an ActivityPub where we can resist censorship by standing alone on single instances, but in the event of an attack, we can move to new ones or bigger ones for strength in numbers. If we want the right to disappear, great, no one should get in the way. But if we want to be seen or heard in the face of violence and oppression, there should be more options in place for instances to operate in blocs, and to allow servers to cache and preserve content under attack.

In recent days, Youtube was seen taking down hundreds of videos of content documenting what many legal experts conclude is genocide carried out by Israel. Regardless of where one stands on that, the idea that a single entity can erase the collective documented experience of humanity is too much power.

I want to see an ActivityPub that can let people share their cat photos, and enjoy their moments; and I also want it to allow people to resist in credible ways if they choose to document their lives. I also want a Fediverse, that can allow even the lowly single instance server to serve with a bloc to shield even a single user’s content that might be forced down by violence.

I would swap for that Fediverse.

For what it’s worth, the Mayor doesn’t have to defend anything. She’s only being criticized for sharing what experts say.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, already concluded genocide:

Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds

Almost sounds like fintech similar to what one might see in Singapore in their NETS system. I think this Konek system is designed to give Canadians an alternative payment system independent of Visa and Mastercard, while offering businesses and customers reduced transaction rates.

I’m not convinced that “AI” is even what it’s meant to be. Worse, I think scenarios of success are already drawn up in stories and science fiction - and 2025 AI suggests we’re not even close.

Now that more information is available concerning the US governments private recollections and thoughts surrounding their military activities in Afghanistan, I’m suspicious that this AI is a “campaign”. It’s simply another game of sleight of hand or pump and dump maneuver. The US remains a major currency reserve, but successive governments over the last 20 years have been incompetent, and the country has been mismanaged for far longer than anyone expected.

With the US signalling strongly that they are giving up competing with China on advanced technologies like renewables and batteries, there’s little else left besides the promise that AI will somehow swoop in and fix it all. But as netizens already point out, capitalist corporations cannot “benefit” from AI without taking advantage of its promise - taking jobs away from humans.

Sadly “AI”, or whatever you want to call it, is an interesting tool, but that still requires supervision or human oversight. AI is not the magic promised for all the countless billions spent, water burned, and energy depleted. I think the world is starting to grow suspicious, and the US faces a market correction due to fears of the AI bubble.

Perhaps AI’s promise remains, but how its pursued gives the impression of another American scam.

I get a sense that people aren’t against easy to understand ads - as in, one company produces a concept, markets, publishes the ad, and delivers it to you on behalf of their client.

But people are not going to agree to reading that article, and consenting to 500 advertising partners to track you indefinitely to sell your data points.

All this technology, energy, and money that’s behind the surveillance economy, is the cost of turning you into the product.

What we the privacy concerned public would like to say is go make real products to help the world instead.