I had those when I was a kid a few decades ago and they had the tip coloured in red. They were designed to look like fake cigarette, but in candy form, for kids. However because of anti tobacco movements, they renamed them to "candy sticks" and removed the red tip.
I think OP is trying to recreate the old ones.
EDIT:
I guess I don't fit anywhere because fuck guns.
J'imagine que mes ancêtres qui ont refusés la conscription se sont fait dire la même chose.
I don't have a house and my apartment is owned by a billion dollar company. If I had a house, it wouldn't be mine and I would be defending the mortgage/property of the bank. Home is where the heart is. The rest is a piece of land owned by the system. I've already left my native region because I've been told to leave if I didn't like it there.
My loved ones are all conservatives and/or capitalists that would vote for the same shit Republicans are doing, while denying it. Last election, the country would have voted for Conservatives if it were not for the orange turd threatening us.
The Québecois were conquered centuries ago by the English and oppressed into submission so they would be forced into this country. And to this day, we still even can't have an agreement on the constitution. We are still into a constitutional impasse and the country risks imploding and threatens the other parts to either agree or be kicked out, every time we're talking about it, to the point that we're just ignoring it.
I don't think any of this is worth helping the military industrial complex into getting exactly what it's been wanting for the last decades.
And no. I'm not leaving. I'm too poor and stuck here. You sound exactly like an American. So patriotic! So much to defend! Love it or leave it!
It's exactly what they both wanted. An increase in military spending, and paranoia.
You too can help defend our capitalist country where housing is unaffordable to most people and where natural resources are exploited to profit multinational corporations.
It's your choice. It's either defending neoliberalism by helping to kill other poor people also convinced they are defending their country by invading another, or their fascism.
Meanwhile the rich will watch the poor fight and kill each others with weapons that they sold them.
I seriously think individuals should be prepared for general catastrophic events, but I'm personally not willing to "defend" this land that is not mine in the first place.
Being a subject of capitalistic country A instead of capitalistic country Z is not worth helping an organization that has the goal of killing other humans. Even if it's just helping with driving a truck, or with the tech, it's indirectly assisting those that will do the killing.
Less annoying than construction workers leaving their pickup trucks in pedestrian crossings with a high visibility vest jammed in the window.
It can be expressed by a graffiti that I saw on the side of a bike path in Montreal, in French: "L'humanité ne court pas à sa perte, elle y va en voiture". Or something like "Humanity is not running to ruins, it's taking a car".
As much as I want to blame giant corporations and capitalism for a lot of our societal problems, this sentence resumes so well how common people also enable all of this by refusing to change and just going with the easiest option. I know we won't reach our climate change goals. I know because when I say I organized my life around the fact that I don't need a car, everyone tells me that they couldn't live without a car, that it's very useful, and that I should get one. I'm not even a real adult as long as I don't have a car. I'll feel so much freedom when I'll have a car. I should just get a car! Just get an electric one! Like, instead of encouraging people to live without a car, the vast vast majority of people will actually encourage others to get one.
So yeah, we're not "running" to our loss. We're wasting energy to move our fat asses in individual motorized multi ton metal cubes to go there faster. It's so useful! So practical! So fast! There's no time to waste. Like Marge Simpson once said: "Outta my way, Nature!"
It's a giant metaphor for the rest of our society. Same with all the AI hype, food delivery apps, and over consumption in general. We're digging our graves out of excessive "convenience", and cars are one example of this.
Am I so out of touch?
No it's the users who are wrong.
The revealing part is how much Apple Intelligence relies on ChatGPT. Nearly nothing works without it.
I won't lie, I have favourites.
To me cycling is preferable for anything under 20/30 km. My city has a metro and it's my second option for this type of distance but I've had multiple issues with it in the past and always come back to cycling for short distances. It's never crowded and there's no ticket inspectors.
Then for medium distances, I can cycle about 100 km but I prefer suburban rail as they allow me to bring my bike and continue from a station, for a reasonable price. The other option are suburban buses, that often also take bikes, but are overcrowded.
Unfortunately I hate the intercity trains here, managed by VIA Rail, as they are super expensive last minute, and won't take bikes.
As for coaches, their network and services are steadily shrinking throughout the years, with reduced departures. Some will take bikes if they are in a box, and for a fee.
Taxis/ride sharing/Uber/Lyft, I hate these things. They perpetuate car dependency and it's just paying someone to use a car.
And I'm undecided about micro transit like e-scooters. I don't like them dangerously zigzagging around pedestrians and/or slower cyclists.
In essence, because transit is pretty bad here, I heavily prefer active transportation, but I will use public and private transit any time if it means to avoid using a car.
Anything but a fucking car.
Reportage intéressant sur la piste et les abords du canal en 1987.
À la fin elle retourne au centre-ville et c'est impressionnant de voir le côté nord du canal, qui a un moment était complètement remblayé, et toute la transformation qui s'y est produite.
J'ai essayé de trouver un emplacement similaire pour faire une comparaison
En fait, voici une image aérienne de la tête du canal en 1988.
I knew steamboats were common on bigger rivers between cities, but I didn't expect to find out that there were steamboats on a small rural river between a town and two villages in southern Québec. I wonder how long it must have taken for the 30 km trip.
This boat must have been rendered obsolete by two railway lines running parallel on each side of the river, which are also now both abandoned.
For context, in red, the itinerary of the steamboat, and in brown, the abandoned railways.
I wanted to explore this rail trail for a while and was finally able to bike most of it. Le Parc du Corridor Aérobique is a 58 km rail trail somewhat isolated from the rest of the cycling network.
As I have no car, I took a train from Montréal to Saint-Jérôme and cycled to the trail head in the village of Morin-Heights, via the very popular P'tit Train du Nord rail trail. Here's my return itinerary and the profile.
The surface quality varies quite a bit. Sometimes it's crushed gravel, sometimes it's dirt with rocks pointing out and painted orange. There's a few bits on roads but the vast majority is a dedicated trail. Wild camping is not permitted in Québec but there are three sites with platforms along the trail, where one can pitch a tent and spend the night.
I just got back and didn't expect such a spectacle of colours. It was glorious. I'll have to go back!
Here are some more pictures.
Went to a camping in the Laurentians in Québec (Ste-Agathe) and there were those things near some camp sites. The sites are only accessible by footpaths. No car access. And if you bring a bike, you have to walk it up a hill, so I doubt they are bike racks.
EDIT: I have sent an email to the park and they have been kind enough to reply. It's just a type of fireplace with a grate. They didn't give more info than just this. Thanks to everyone for pitching in!
Spring has sprung, the cycling networks in Québec, the Route Verte and other regional or municipal paths, are now mostly open.
So it's again possible to explore or use the network to go camping, as part of touring, or just to get from point A to B.
And you should know that if you are touring or arriving on a bike, there is a program called "Bienvenue Cyclistes" where all national parks (provincial parks here) will offer you a campground for less than $10. Keep in mind you also have to pay entry fees that are around $10 too. About the same for some wood. This is also possible in some other establishments. Consult the map linked above.
You should also know that you can use public transit around Montréal to bring your bike with you. It's included in the ticket. So you can take the metro, but more importantly, the REM, and the commuter trains. There are also some exo buses with bike racks. So you can go to St-Jérôme for Le P'tit Train du Nord in a commuter train with your bike for a few dollars. From that trail you can also reach another park, Parc national du Mont Tremblant
Today I'm going to see my family from Montréal to the Drummondville region. In the other direction. The ~140 km to get there is entirely bike trails/paths. I cut the itinerary in two stages and stop in a small national park called the Parc national de la Yamaska for a night of camping.
The first part to get there is using a network of local bike trails. The first from Longueuil to Chambly is called La montée du Chemin de Chambly. Then from the other side of the Richelieu river there is a trail called La route des Champs to Granby. And from Granby to the park it's local trails. They have very nice cycling infra in that region.
Here are some pictures of La route des Champs and the local trail before the park.
Then tomorrow, I will use another trail connecting to the park called La Campagnarde. This one goes to Drummondville, entirely on small gravel, and sometimes very remote and quiet.
I do this multiple times a year so I thought I would share some tricks and adventures. And I've been encouraged to by /u/Evkob.
Have fun cycling everyone!
I've been doing some rail trails on the "green roads" (routes vertes) to visit my parents for the last three weekends and I stopped at the park for overnights as I didn't want to cycle the full 140 km in one shot and then back. It's getting greener!
The Yamaska National Park is a small park located around a reservoir in southern Québec. From there it's possible to access multiple rail trails and "linear parks" going in all directions.
More pictures in the comments.
The last two upgrades have broken my audio setup.
First the options for Network Server and Network Access in paprefs were greyed out and my sinks disappeared after upgrading to bookworm. I just had to create a link to an existing file and it was working again but, it's weird that it was needed in the first place. Pretty sure it has something to do with the change from pulseaudio to pipewire but I'm not very up to date on that subject and I just want to have my current setup to continue working.
Then yesterday I just launch a simple apt-get upgrade and after rebooting my sinks disappeared again. The network options in paprefs were still available, but changing them did nothing. I had to create the file ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf.d/10-gsettings.conf and stuff it with "pulse.cmd = [ { cmd = "load-module" args = "module-gsettings" flags = [ "nofail" ] } ]" in order to have my sinks back.
I know it's not only a Debian thing, as I can see this happening to people on Arch forums, but as Debian is supposed to be the "stable" one, I find it amusing that a simple upgrade can break your sound.
Using Boost for Lemmy, I got an obvious political ad from the right asking to sign a petition to scrap the gun "ban" in Canada (it's a registry not a ban).
Now I understand this is an ad but I don't appreciate having propaganda from the right injected into my browsing on lemmy. Have better ads, or let us report them.
The practice must vary depending on the region and the tolerance level of the local police and parking enforcement. Around Montreal, when there's no parking near a work site, some construction workers just abandon their pickup trucks anywhere there's any amount of space, often in crosswalks because that's where there's "space" left, and jam a high-vis vest in their window to show "who they are", hoping they won't get a ticket. And apparently it works or they wouldn't be doing it that much.
I find it dangerous for pedestrians as they are now emerging from both sides of a pickup truck higher than they are, making it difficult to see them from the vehicles passing that crosswalk, but it's unfortunately a frequent thing here.