Of course. My meat tenderizer connected to the internet has an accelerometer and sensors. For a small monthly subscription fee it tells me how hard I need to beat the meat, and for how long. All powered by AI for my convenience.

The rural town where I grew up had passenger trains for 120 years but they were discontinued in the 90ies. My mother likes to say "when I was a kid we took the train to visit my uncle". But now getting in or out of there requires a car.

So I had to move in a city for the "privilege" of having barely acceptable transit by European standards. And it still feels weird to take a train multiple times a week when some of my friends and family never did in their entire life.

A bicycle. No gas to pay, no parking fees, no insurance, and I can do most of the maintenance.

I wonder if those are more popular with men.

Maybe they could also give copies of the song Benzin by Ramstein, to listen while you sniff your nostalgic gasoline scented air "freshener".

I did tech support on the phone and sometimes I needed to guide people into installing the RSA Authenticator app for 2FA. I ended up describing the icon just to be sure people would install the right app, because even if they type its full name, the sponsored result will be first, and it's not what we want.

I type the EXACT name of what I want and the store still proposes another app as the first result. Such a frustrating user experience.

Yeah. It's always a bit pathetic to watch or read about the efforts of cities to make things safer around here.

The scheme that is very popular here to "secure" intersections is to add an exclusive pedestrian phase (a scramble) to the traffic lights cycle. So everyone has to wait for everyone. No pedestrians are crossing while cars are moving through an intersection, and no cars are crossing the intersection while pedestrians are. But it's tuned for cars and pedestrians have to wait an eternity to have their exclusive phase. So what happens? Pedestrians are eventually losing patience and cross traffic like chickens.

Exclusive phases are also encouraging car drivers never to yield to pedestrians or cyclists, because they never have to. So in some cities where they mainly have this type of crossing, car drivers are not stopping where there's no traffic lights. Some cities even have to leave orange flags on the side of the road so that pedestrians can wave them in front or cars while crossing.

And don't get me wrong, scrambles are wonderful for pedestrians when they are in the majority, and when they are configured for pedestrians first. It's just that some cities here put them at every intersection as a way to separate cars and pedestrians, for safety, and it's frustrating. And then they scold pedestrians for not waiting "their" turn.

As a pedestrian and cyclist, it's one of the things I see when I change city. I really don't like walking in Québec City for this because you have to let cars pass in all the directions first before you are allowed to cross. In Montréal everyone crosses at the same time but they put straight arrows on green lights for a few seconds at the beginning of the cycle, so pedestrians and cyclists have a few seconds to start crossing before cars can try to crush them. And I prefer this. A lot.

It depends what we are talking about.

Why? It's made specifically so that cyclists and pedestrians can be at an angle where it's easy to see them from a car. Motorists have a better view of cyclists and pedestrians than in a + intersection.

They are rare here in Montreal but we have a few like this on Nun's Island and they work fine without any traffic lights.

If you want to be serious, the word state and état are both coming from an older version of French when it was written estat. French replaced ES with É because it wasn't pronouncing the S, while English dropped the E and kept pronouncing the S. It happened to multiple words, although some also come from Latin.

Étrange - Strange. Époux - Spouse. École - School. Épice - Spice. Éponge - Sponge.

It also happened with circumflex.

Hôpital - Hospital. Forêt - Forest. Pâte - Paste.

Here's a whole video about exactly this.

And as a Canadian, I'm even envious of the trains in the US. Pretty much the only thing but here we are.

Anecdote time: I was visiting Europe, sitting in Liège and arrived there from Aachen with a train ticket I bought the day before. My next step was Brussels or Ghent but I wasn't decided yet and didn't have a ticket, so I just bought one on the spot for the next train, in an hour. While eating fast food and waiting for that train, I was trying to book a train in Canada next week when I'd return, to go from Montréal to Drummondville. However I was already too late. There was still available tickets but there were over $100 CAD for a trip that would normally cost about $32 CAD if I would have booked it a month in advance. And the next departure was 3 hours later, still overpriced. So, no train in Canada for me, even a week in advance.

In short, in Canada, there's only 5 trains a day between major cities, and you have to book weeks in advance otherwise the prices can triple if you're last minute. And they don't take bikes. And they weigh your bagage.

So I was in Europe, taking trains last minute here and there, while unable to book a train ticket at a reasonable price for the next week in Canada. VIA Rail sucks so much.

In short, Montreal gets a new metro (the REM), financed by a pension fund (CDPQ) in a Private-Public Partnership. But the contract makes it illegal for public transit to compete with the new metro, slowly cannibalizing the public system (the ARTM).

Not even people in Québec are very much aware of this. It's pretty much only transit users and transit fans in Montréal that are aware of this, because it's affecting the quality of transit.

I think it's what makes this model perfidious. People can only see the new shiny metro system and don't care how it's financed. In fact, they see it as a success! Lots of foamers/transit enthusiasts are skipping this part because we got a new metro built in record time.

I'm not a fan of Cult MTL but they have a pretty complete article on the situation:

It’s a private, for-profit system that eats away at public transit funding, saps consumer confidence and is designed not to complement public transit, but compete with it.

So, of course it would be good for pension funds to invest in local projects. Just, please, not like this one.

As long as it's not like the PPP with the CDPQ and the REM.

The REM itself is fine but the no competition clause from public transit entities is unacceptable. The REM makes it illegal for public transit to compete with it. Everything must feed into the REM to maximize the return on the investment. And the return is coming from public money.

If a suburb doesn't have adequate transit but is not projected to be a good return on the investment, no transit for the citizens. It now has to be profitable and it's going to slowly make Montréal/the ARTM dependent on an investment fund to get more transit.

What a shitty way to invest in your own community.