Time for a History Lesson: Because it is ABSOLUTELY Possible to supply millions of people with food aid, via exclusive air drop. No, it's not particular efficient: No one is making that claim. But, as some ground aid is making it's way through - you also don't need to FULLY supply.

So: Onto the History.

The Cold War: US Operation Vittles / UK Opperation Plainfare

The USSR during the cold war was set on taking full control of Berlin. Their decission? Because Berlin was in East Germany - split between West and East - the USSR built a wall, cut the city in two, and attempted a total blockade.

Now, during the height of the Ideological war - the Western Powers, couldn't stand to let Berlin fall and so, an absolute insane opperation was started: The entire goal was to Blockade bust the USSR Blockade so hard that they would give up. Lets be clear: It worked.

During a single year of the blockade, around 2.25 million tonnes of supplies were airdropped using around 1/4 million flights - working out to well over 600 flights a day. These were done using make shift runways, and it was the people of berlin that got insanely efficient at unloading the aid from the aircraft to make way for the next aircraft that needed to land within minutes of the previous landing.

Something like 20 aircraft ended up crashing or having issue - Which is bloody bonkers when you consider the insane schedule of maintenance, getting parts, fuel, and more for those planes, as well as the insane skill needed to keep the entire thing running. And you might ask: Why didn't the USSR just shoot the aircraft down - they were flying blatantly through East Germany, through their airspace right? Well: Do you really want to provoke the West? Especially at this time when every leader of the USSR military fully was aware of how much western - particularly sourced from the US - Material support lead to Victory of the Allies.

Berlins population during this time? About 3.25 million. West Berlin is estimated to have made up about 2 million of the population from what I can find.

So: Could You supply Palestine via Airdrop?

Absolutely. Clearly it is absolutely possible to fully supply - but the kicker? Some supplies are coming in via land. And this is before we consider better modern aircraft.

Even better - this acts basically in the same way as the Berlin Airdrop Operation had: It forces Israel to consider the practicality of blockading supplies to Palestinians. After all: Enforcing a blockade and restricting resources costs you resources. But even more so, this type of operation paints Israel in a VERY bad light, and that is ontop of a situation where investigating Israel for causing a Genocide is on the table. Israel does not have the carte blanche support it once did. And because of the incident more people are looking into the history of the affair and finding what we were told is not the entire truth - and to be clear: That does not absolve Hamas for attacking, but it puts the IDF in a much more damning light.

And then we learn the phrase "From River to the Sea" was coined not by Palestinians but by the Israeli's - though finding good source and history of that is murky at best these days but, if true we have to factor in a reality: If Israel's goal is to exclusively control well - the illegal settlements, provoking and basically allowing occasional attacks, mixed messaging about being Secular but then claiming to be a Jewish state as propaganda makes sense. Accusing anyone of questioning Israels actions as being an antisemitic also makes sense - because well, what any authoritarian group does not like is being questioned on the validity of their actions.

And so: What we get is a tool - the Airdrop of Supplies - that acts as a huge lever to force proper negotiations.

Websites that are funded through ad's are not going to want you using an ad-blocker. And frankly, if you are not a paying customer, but taking up space - the business typically has right to have you removed. In physical stores it's obvious but, the online space is not much different.

What I would love to see is some sort of initiative where users can pay like 10-20$ a month, and say 90% of that divided between the websites they view based on engagement metrics on those websites. You could have some modifiers based on the type of website as well - obviously reading news has limited ways of verifying engagement, but we know that there is a high amount of time used per article. Overall this would result in less trackers being needed, websites could feasibly decouple from the ad-driven model entirely, and that might be the best outcome.

With the proposed model - yes, some companies are still going to hard paywall, some might have limited content available to this model and have a 1-5$ a month subscription on top for premium access, and other companies might stay exactly as they are - say like Wikipedia - but be less strained for donations.

This type of arrangement could feasibly end the need for ad's entirely. Though you could conceivably have an Ad-supported tier as well, whereby if the user is not subscribed to the service they get ads, and if they are they don't.

The real key to making the proposition as mentioned above work, is to require the payout method to be agreed to be a replacement to seeking ad-revenue for it's subscribed members. Overall it's likely (using quick napkin math) that this would provide more revenue per user anyways. It may also devalue web based advertising so hard that it absolutely kills it - and that would mean Content is king. We could end up in a realm where the likes of Youtube don't block content because some advertiser doesn't like certain topics. And as more news is consumed online, it may be able to kill the stranglehold the pharma industry has over the news media industry.

It's not. The fee was added to encourage people to join in with the Cineclub thing. The back end for seat selection existed before the online reservation fee did as far as I can recall.

It absolutely does.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3712680/return-to-office-or-quit-ibm-tells-managers.html

IBM has a history of this kind of stuff - when they need to expand: Remote work schemes, and flexible work hours become more common. When they need to tighten the belt, the first step is a RTO. So long as you are willing some flexibility in the time line, and support employees in the move - it will lead to plenty of people quiting, a few people moving, then you do a small round of layoffs avoiding people who willingly moved closer to the office etc as these are people unlikely to have quick new opertunities and are more stuck with the company/loyal to it.

The Pandemic is not the first time IBM has done something like this, and it won't be the last.

Now, if we really get into the weeds - a lot of Companies that know this can be pulled off REALLY DO NOT want Remote work/hybrid work schedules to become industry norms, as once they do - these practices for ridding your company of say 1-2% of it's staff periodically stop being viable and you need to go for a more traditional layoff scheme.

Don't forget HR.

If people aren't in an office, around other people, their aren't really a lot of opportunities for random nonsense complaints to come out. And if they do, there are email messages, recorded video calls, and so on that can clarify reality far easier - meaning HR's job is made clearly irrelevant, and clearly demonstrates it is a mop job for a handful of busy bodies that cost the company more in efficiency, than they earn the company after accounting for their wage.

Capitalism isn't to blame for this. The Individuals who buy it are.

I bought DIV, I got value out of it. I won't be buying micro transactions, and unless D4 sees one hell of an overhaul to it's end game and encounter design - I won't be going back ever. Comparing it to other games I have purchased in the last couple of years, I would say DIV is the game I have gotten the LEAST value out of, which is surprising considering historically Blizzard games tended to be the top tier in terms of dollar per hour of enjoyable play time I got out of said games.

Onto Capitalism. Capitalism needs two things to function:

1. A Basic Standard of Living Provided by some entity - historically the Church served this purpose. But currently there is nothing that actually serves this purpose - Welfare is a poverty trap, minimum wages require multiple full time jobs in many places, and where housing is affordable - jobs are lacking in many cases.

2. Supply + Demand Market Considerations - if you make a product people don't buy: You will fail. If you over charge, a cometitor can move in and steal your lunch money. The reason we have IP laws (Patent, and Copyright) is duplicating hard work done, is far easier than doing your own work - so, we protect the human labour component (which is why I do think AI generated art should NOT be copyrightable, but the AI models and the work that goes into selecting assets to train the model with, fine tuning the weighting, and creating filters to attain desirable outcomes - that is reasonable to copyright).

The failure of NeoLiberalism, and the Industrial age in general is we took the responsibility the Church and the Tithe that was paid to it away from the church, replaced it with work houses with piss poor conditions, and allowed a blaming of unforutnate individuals who couldn't find work - and blamed them for being lazy, instead of treating them with respect and dignity as every human should be treated.

By the way: This is why, I support the idea of a Universal Basic Income. Scrap Welfare, Scrap old age, Scrap food stamps. Universal basic income - and give people the power to find meaningful work. Give people the foundation to take a risk in starting up a small business to improve their lot in life where work is slim pickings, or all the employers are asshole middle managers that are instructed to pay piss poor wages. Capitalism actually would be liable to work FAR BETTER. And besides - you would likely see crime rates in plenty of places basically drop off a cliff as people would not need to turn to crime to ensure they can make rent, keep a roof over their head, or just pay for food.

Capitalism is not the problem. NeoLiberal Ideology is. A Failure to put in working policies to help actual people is a problem - and the "left wing" and "socialist" parties of the last several decades have all failed to bring meaningful positive change to the working class. But that should surprise no one given the track record of left wing authoritarian regimes.

Sort of. The thing is - they are factors, just the small low hanging fruit; more specifically it's the easiest to attack from a political stand point: Foreign owners don't vote in Canada.

The reality is - we need to pull out the stops at this point. Go after Foreign ownership, corporate ownership. Go after Vacant properties through taxes, and go after the short term rental market.

Foreign ownership might be say a few percent, short term rentals might be a few percent. But you couple 3-4 small sources and suddenly you are freeing up some 5-10% of housing and putting it back on the long term rental market or they are being sold on the open market... to people who want a home.

Does solving the problem have an immediate political benefit? I actually don't think it does.

Does letting the community argue about the issue have immediate political benefit? Well - it certainly will sweep other issues (read: scandals) under the rug.

So I'm going to say, the community 100% will be brought into it, the location will end up being unselected, and the issue will be kicked down the curb for the next time the government needs an issue to debate about and to distract people with.

Not all old designs were bad. And one has to understand that the USSR, UK, France, and the US all had a shared objective (by the way, these are the primary nations designing and creating nuclear reactors back in the 50's and 60's). And the goal? Plutonium for Nuclear Bombs. You can imagine how this changes design Parameters.

So now lets talk about the CANDU Reactor, designed in 1955 (or there abouts).

It's an oddity of the day - Designed for energy generation for civilian use, without the desire to actively produce Plutonium. Functionally speaking, complete fission of the material with the least degree of enrichment possible for efficient opperation was the design goal. And what you get is well, this.

Beyond this, because it is a Heavy Water Reactor (CANDU standing for Canada Deuterium Uranium), it's moderator is well, heavy water - which is interesting as two things: If it boils off, the neutron regulator (which is slowing down neutrons to encourage fission in the core) boils off. And Boiling water takes away a LOT of heat. Beyond this, heated water will naturally circulate so even if active pumps pushing the water through the system fail, natural circulation can occur until corrective action is taken.

Yes, there are newer designs that are probably safer. But don't just say "old designs bad" without understanding the design constraints created by the circumstances to which they were created. Look at also, all of the designs of the era. There is a reason pretty much everyone can name Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukushima. And anyone with half a length of common sense would avoid putting a nuclear reactor on Japan - a place that has an active Valcano, is prone to tsunami's, and sits at the intersecting point of three tectonic plates... It's kind of a bad place for it. Not impossible to do safely, but when you use a reactor design that is basically set up for the production of plutonium by the very design constraints and such of the day: It's not surprising.

And then we can talk about SMR's.

Do you have any idea how much energy is used in the form of combustibles to heat homes, and power vehicles? It's absolutely massive. Beyond this - the energy density of Petrol is something like 25-45x that of batteries - meaning for the same weight of fuel as a battery, you can go MUCH further, even factoring in the lower efficiency of an ICE engine (20-30%) vs. Electric (something like 90%). However, Electric Vehicles also have higher ware and tare on roads, tires, breaks, bridges, etc. And that means a higher TCO (Total cost of Operation) outside of the vehicle itself.

You might say "Improve Public Transport" And I'm all for it - but that requires doubling the average population density in urban centres to START to be practical. And achieving that is a decades long (like closer to half a century, if not longer) undertaking that has a huge environmental cost do to the tare down of existing buildings.

What all this means: To replace combustibles, we don't just need a tripling of Nuclear - we need to increase it by an order of magnitude (10x it for clarity), 2 orders of magnitude increase of wind (100x), and we should aim for three orders of magnitude for solar (1000x). If you do that, AND improve average home insulation value, then we can start to get somewhere reasonable.

To be clear: We can do it.

1. Solar Roof Incentives for generally sunny cities (ex. Calgary)
2. Off Shore Wind
3. Dual Use Installations - So Parking Lots with Solar Covers for instance. Bonus points for onsight energy storage to buffer generation for charging cars.
4. SMR's for remote area's (think far northern area's where diesel generators are the norm, as it reduces the need to ship fuel)

You will note that Hydro isn't listed here - and for good reason: The environmental destruction, and long term upkeep is extremely impactful on the environment.

All of this, by the way, is something like a trillion dollar investment. And what is the Canadian Governments investment plan? 4-5 billion by 2035? If the Canadian Government wants to get serious - they need to start making the entire government beaurocracy far more lean, far more mean, and take the savings and throw it into everything that reduces power use, as well as renewable generation.

And finally: Start jacking up the minimum wage, start increasing labor protections, and the entire why? So that people can afford to invest into these things for themselves on a wide scale.

Well, ya. The Liberals are on the way out, so they can put into place policies and such that force future spending on things people want, that will have to get cancelled do to budgetary constraints. And if the future parties do plow forward with it, you can shit can on it and rally the people that don't want it into a frenzy, and sweep all of this up under a rug somewhere by the time you get to the next election.

Welcome to Flip Flop First Past the Post Politics when you have a defacto two party system.

The problem is many fronted.

1. Free trade: When you are competing with lower cost of production regions, with dirt cheap shipping do to the way you can basically register a ship any where with a port - you have a competition problem. In other words: Free trade benefited those with money - and acted to displace manufacturing jobs. Thing is - there are far fewer designers that you need.

2. Money Printing as a Stop Gap to Dissuade dissidence against Long Shot Downs: Reality is the lockdown scenario that kept service possitions from being filled and used, could have been far shorter with a far harder lock down early on to allow time to implement precautions. This would have lead to 1-2 months of lowered economic activity, instead of say a year of it.

3. No solid organized plan to account for inflation: Had a policy of increasing minimum wage WITH inflation do to the printing of money been implemented, we would have actually been alright. Yes money would have been devalued, but the buying power of the average Canadian would have kept up with inflation avoiding the problems we are seeing.

4. Extended time of low interest rates: This leads to high debt ratio's, which - if and when interest rates need to go up, tightens belts, and results in layoffs and so on. This in turn pinches the economy and can very easily kick off a spiral of lowered spending that degrades the economy with lower demand. The end result is a very difficult to control spiral downard that only starts several months OR LONGER after the offending change that is the trigger of it do to the lag time. What this means, is even if corrective action is taken - it's too late.

Of course - admitting a recession, would mean admitting the government did not just fail in one spot, but in basically everything. And we all know how well modern day politicians accept blame.