I guess attendance over-estimation isn't restricted to politicians these days.
The GVRD has a population of about 2.5-3 million. There's no way 20% of the region trekked out to Surrey to attend this parade. Like 600,000 people is the entire population of Surrey.
It's strange, I still have real difficulty getting 'in' to Baldurs gate 3, even with all the media hyping it for a long time. And one reason for that is I don't find it all that 'deep', and its linear progression makes me lose interest partway through the starting areas (never gotten to the goblin camp or w/e).
Like take the romances. Even in the little bit that I played, the way affection is handled is just boring / tired / done. All the male chars are sorta femmy, all the female chars are sorta butch, and none of them seem to care that, like, I'm some tiny scrawny gnome bard. They all want to screw me, just cause I'm nice to them -- all the men turned gay almost immediately after meeting me, something I guess they had to tweak in a patch. And it all seems to happen based on pre-determined/defined relationship algorithms - be nice, gain a point towards boning NPC X, if you cross a threshold trigger an event. That's been done literally for decades and decades in the CRPG genre.
The encounters/combats are all really rigid and essentially scripted in nature, at least the parts I've seen. Go to point X, encounter monster group A, which is tooled to certain party level ranges. If you can't win, you've gone to an encounter out of the general 'order' you're meant to do them. Go back, find the encounter you missed to level up, then return and progress further. Again, very generic and something that's been done for decades.
Rigid party size, camp with toons you can swap in and out, complete with a skill retrainer guy. Immersion breaking, but again, a trope / mechanic that's been around for literally decades.
The part the Journalist and government glossed over, is that it can take like 3 weeks to get to see your GP (personal experience as a Vancouverite).
Banning the requirement is pageantry. Any business that was still requiring that was oblivious to the reality of BC's healthcare system. With a 3 week wait, getting a note for a sickness that takes you out for 1-2 days is ludicrous - GPs may even decline to write one, as at that point you seem healthy again. My guess would be that this is to prevent inter-provincial/international companies from having that policy in place, as it would expose the pathetic wait times that have arisen in BC ever since COVID and the immigration influx.
What tone do you think the Bloc has when dealing with the rest of Canada, exactly? Which is more significant, some guy online having a bit of a tone -- or a political party that's getting a ton of votes in Quebec who is condescending / not willing to work with the rest of the country? I think on this one, me voicing frustrations online is the lesser of the two faults.
And I'm not saying take the money and shut up. I'm saying give us back the money because the system is unfairly penalizing western Canada and benefiting Quebec/Eastern Canada, and has been doing so for literally decades. I'm also saying, essentially, "Don't bite the hand that feeds you". The Bloc happily bites that hand and attempts to disrupt / destabilize the nation. They are a separatist movement at their core. All the negativity people have for Danielle Smith's antics are warranted in my view -- and that goes 10x for the Bloc and Quebec. Smith may be 'threatening' referendums on unity, the Bloc's actually gone further in the past, and it still overtly prioritizes "Quebec" over the country/national unity. A vote for the Bloc is as shameful as a vote for any other group looking to destroy Canada.
And it's an online post. Not an attempt to build a nation. I see nothing wrong with expressing frustrations with the Blocs/Quebec's entitled BS, especially when it's thrown in our faces as part of an election campaign. Hell, there were already people in this thread who had no idea equalization payments were a thing, had no idea why Western Canadians are often pissed off at Ottawa/Quebec. Hundreds of billions of dollars over the years, unnoticed. At the very least, it helps to educate other people about the 'reasons' for Western Alienation, even if it simultaneously proves/justifies it a bit by highlighting how little the rest of Canada thinks about the Western half.
Yep. "Oh it's so shameful to take all this money, we need to tell the West to get fucked some more! It's their fault that we need to take all this money!! We'll just keep taking it for a few more decades, while also making more demands and getting preferential treatment. Oh, no, how insulting for us, we just keep taking more and more of that money! We don't need this money for all the social programs that Quebec boasts about to others, even though without the money we'd run deficits!"
I get that the regular folks in Quebec are generally 'normal'. That's one reason the lopsided crap on the political level is so infuriating for us westerners. I mean, I gotta wait 3 f'ing weeks to see my family GP out here in Vancouver. I sure hope you all took my tax money to get equally stellar treatment back east.
Not knowledgeable enough? Look up equalization payments then. Quebec gets the majority of equalization payments, and has gotten such for literally decades, because they're considered a "have not" province. Like last year (2024) they got around $13 billion (52% of the total amount handed out) -- from Western Canada, as the region that is historically termed "have" provinces (every province except BC, Alberta and Sask got money, those western provinces just 'lost' billions to support the rest of Canada). That money is no strings attached, which allows Quebec to do stuff like offer additional social supports, and then the people of Quebec get to look down their noses at the West, and say crap like "Why aren't your education options cheaper? Peasants!". Maybe they would be, if we could keep our tax revenue, rather than being forced to support Quebec.
Even more insulting, those payments are a result of the Constitution. If Quebec doesn't want to sign, fine, don't give them the Western province's money. Or how bout those Bloc folks take a principled stance and just hand the money back to the West. They don't agree with the constitution, but seem perfectly content to reap the benefits from it. They're good with Canada so long as they can sponge.
This isn't a new issue from the Western provinces. It's been ongoing for decades. Even as recently as 2018, with Kenney and Moe in Alberta and Sask, when the formula was last renewed at the fed level, there were releases about how pissed the west was with it -- the feds renewed it without consulting the provinces, and without any changes to address the issues the west has with it. I'm guessing you're from back east, which makes it entirely fitting that you're completely ignorant of the issues on this side of the country.
As for the resentment long term, imagine a bunch of kids at a party. One kid loses a game and throws a tantrum and refuses to play with the others any more. The other kids bend over backward to try and get that kid to calm the fuck down. The kid refuses, even after everyone's tried bribing him / treating him better than every other kid there. He keeps disrupting things and being a pain in the arse. He takes other kids toys and plays with them, while mocking those kids. Who would want that kid back at the next party. Continuing to spoil them, just re-enforces their negative behaviour. Sure, there may be "reasons" to be a spoiled little shit, but at some point Quebec ought to grow up and look outside their own border. Resentment cuts both ways, and based on the realities of 'today', Quebec's got a lot less to complain about than western provinces.
Like I listened to some of that debate yesterday. The gall of that Bloc guy being all "Carney hasn't called me to consult on what's best for Quebec, he can't be trusted" is just lunacy. And that's the sort of narcissitic self-centered dipshit that Quebec supports. Like if the fed was to consult anyone about Quebec's provincial interests, it would be a meeting with the premiers, which is what happened. If some minority leader in the house, who refuses to treat national issues as national issues, wants to throw a hissy fit about how the people dealing with a crisis aren't directly consulting with them in their self-aggrandized role.... that leader should be tossed the hell out. Asking a national party, during a national crisis, with national support, to come bend the knee for some minority party with (quite literally) an anti-national agenda, is beyond 'not helping'. And saying that stuff, and broadcasting it to the whole country, should be embarrassing for the people he represents. But people in Quebec are likely to be all "he stands up for us!", similar to how dumbass Ford was able to get back in just by draping himself in a f'ing flag to distract people from the damage his govt does on the whole.
Sure, though that's part of the problem that the States is whining about. US taxes paid for the service, which lots of other nations/foreign companies used.
Things like Libraries require taxes to operate. You'd likely be annoyed if you were struggling, and then found out your gov was using your taxes to pay for a bunch of foreign countries to have libraries. And then you find out that those foreigners are able to use those libraries to make good money, which they don't use to support their libraries, cause the States is already covering it. So you're paying taxes, and struggling to do so, so that EU companies can reap profits and live comfy.
And yes, charge a fee. That's basically what I've said, no? That there's a value add, and that there are 'professionals'/companies using it who aren't paying for that value add. So something like a fee for frequent pulls against the vuln feeds, to replace whatever funding the US gov was giving, would make sense to me. though I suppose this has now been kicked down the road till next year.
Canada's a young enough country that there were still a bunch of bitter Quebecois who remembered losing against the British, and they had such giant rods up their arses that they decided to take it out on the rest of Canada by not signing a piece of paper, and having a militant separatist group go bombing English speaking people (and then whining about martial law when the govt took action to stop it). And to try and appease the pampered province, Ontario continues to compete in National "French Language" debates where each politician spends a TON of time trying to convince Quebec they'd give the best sloppy bj with tons of financial perks as lube. Financial lube that they take from Provinces in the West, who they ignore. Quebec then tells them all to get fucked and votes for the Bloc anyhow. And while telling everyone to get f'd, they still get more benefits than any other province. They're a spoiled child in this sense.
I wonder why there's often talk of Western alienation, hand in hand, with Quebec separatist movements. Like the last time the Bloc had a 'real' referendum, there were movements in BC/Alberta half-jokingly asking if we could vote them out.
Like here's an Idea, we're having a french language debate -- that's totally fine and Canadian. But that shouldn't require it to be a whole debate focused almost entirely on Quebec and Quebecs local issues. The Bloc guy, despite his attestations, is not some king representing "Quebec": they deserve to have a broader conversation, and Canada ought to treat the language's reach as "National", not "Just this one niche pocket". Ask questions about how the politicians will help British Columbia during that French language debate. Ask another about Alberta. How will Canadians voting for the Bloc, benefit people back West? Make that Bloc guy stand there for 10-15 minutes explaining to voters that a vote for him, is a vote to tell every other Canadian to get fucked, because he has no real plan or care for Canada as a country. And then when he's in power, treat ridings that go bloc like they treat most minority party ridings out west -- shift funding to the provinces that actually support the federation. Or at the very least, let them keep their tax revenue, instead of sending it to Quebec as "equalization payments".
The current format of those debates is divisive, and elevates the bloc more than it deserves.
Yawn. I think national parties should be highlighted on the national stage: I don't think the metrics provided by the TV consortium for who gets to participate properly captures what a national party is. I think rules/requirements that specifically carve out a 'system' that enables one niche interest from one part of the country, to masquerade as a 'national' party, is disingenuous and insulting to everyone outside of that niche -- especially as the 'rules' were clearly structured to preference/enable the blocs participation. That % threshold of the voting public is a lot easier for a separatist movement to hit in Quebec, than it is in the West due to population density -- its basically tailor made for them, and provides a 'structure' to block other regions doing the same / getting the same preferential treatment for their 'niche' interest parties. At least the PPC and GPC are interested in the country as a national body, and in governing/contributing to the national interests.
They should just change the format. Do an hour long unedited interview with each candidate, with pre defined topics / identical questions, to allow leaders to get their talking points out in a more 'user friendly' conversational way. Allow as many leaders as they want to sit for an interview, post them all on third party news sites to allow them to generate some ad revenue for providing the interview services/hosting (with requirements to host all qualifying candidates to mitigate news agency bias). Let voters watch whichever clips they want. Hell, have local news agencies do similar with the local candidates, so that you can see your person speak on topics of import, and how they would represent your region on those fronts.
They all just try to say their sound bites anyway. And few voters are realistically going to suddenly support a different party based on a one night zinger.
Yeah, but that's sort of the point I was making.... it was a data repository used by "thousands and thousands" of security professionals and organizations. So people who were generating revenue off of the service. I mean, they're professionals, not hobbyists / home users.
I'm not an American, but in terms of everything running like a company/for profit, I'd say that its best if things are sustainable / able to self-maintain. If the US cutting funding means this program can't survive, that's an issue. If it has value to a larger community, the larger community should be able to fund its operation. There's clearly a cost to maintaining the program, and there are clearly people who haven't contributed to paying that cost.
In terms of going back to whatever, the foundation involved is likely to sort out alternative funding, though potentially with decreased functionality (it sounds like they had agreements to pay for secondary vulnerability report reviews, which will likely need to get scaled back). Maybe they'll need to add in a fee for frequent feed pulls, or something similar. I wouldn't say it's completely toast or anythin just yet.
That's nice, but I don't really care. They aren't a national party, nor are they interested in being a "Canadian" national party. Giving them a platform to debate on the national level is in part why they're able to maintain their seat count -- it's the same sort of pageantry that drives dictators to covet meetings with democratic leaders, to trick people into thinking "Oh, they're basically the same", when they're very much not.
The peoples party, and the greens, even if they're super fringe in nature, have more merit for being included in the debates in my view. I'd watch (well, listen to) those debates. I won't bother watching the bloc get up and do its stupid bloc crap. There's talk in the media again about western alienation / succession, and Quebec / Canada's approach to Quebec compared to its handling of Western interests is a big part of what fuels that sort of resentment. The bloc is basically Quebec just giving the entire country a giant middle finger, which is a wonderful way to show support for the country as a whole...
Progressive feet and hand numbness.... sounds like untreated diabetes to me, based on symptoms I remember when my dad first got it. Definitely get checked / a docs input. Untreated, you can literally lose toes/limbs. I'd even consider starting to eat a diabetic diet while I waited for an appt, to see if it improved the situation.
As for the sex stuff, as an older guy, I reckon the bigger part is to find a partner you want to live with outside of the sexy-time stuff as a priority in general. Everyone ages and their bodies change, physical stuff is important but its not enough to maintain a longer term meaningful relationship, in my experience at least -- and ultimately, the time spent boning is a tiny fraction of the time you'd be spending with the other person in the long run. To add to that, I've had relationships in the past where we didn't do much of the direct penetration stuff, but I still found it really.... rewarding? titilating? gratifying? .... just making her eyes roll back / bite me as she climaxed and then collapsed exhausted. The endorphin release from intimacy isn't just about getting your rocks off, in some ways the feeling of knowing you can drive your partner nuts is better -- to me, that's what makes me feel 'virile', more so than simply fucking/orgasming myself. Biggest issues there was just making sure she understood I didnt feel a need to orgasm myself everytime we were together, so long as I rung her bell thoroughly.