Western alienation has been around for decades and decades.

It’s difficult to consider something a threat, when it’s become the status quo.

While I think they should decouple from Microsoft / US tech giants, I don’t think there’s a realistic hope in hell of it happening. This is why they have that ‘easily or affordably’ caveat in the announcement. They say they’ll leave it to govt agencies to figure out if its easy / affordable to do.

So somewhere like BC’s Financial Services Authority (the gov agency that oversees provincial credit unions, realtors, insurance companies), which stuck all of their stuff into Microsoft’s Cloud, and retains a skeleton crew in terms of IT support staff (part of their public RFP for sticking things in the cloud, was admitting that fact)… will simply say it’s too difficult and/or costly to decouple from their perspective. And they’ll leave all that government regulatory stuff exposed to the US and the risk of services being cut off summarily as part of trade deterioration / extortion. It’s grimly entertaining to acknowledge that our own government regulators are so dependant on the USA’s services, that they can’t function without them: it lends credence to the crap Trump says, frankly. He could practically ‘turn off’ our financial regulators by forcing Microsoft to deny service.

I’m pretty confident the government isn’t “that” serious about any of this stuff. I’ve written to both my provincial and federal reps asking specifically about whether Microsoft / Tech-giant type subscriptions would be on the cutting board, and none of them want to commit to anything. They’ll openly rip up any Elon contract though, because those are in fashion / a more obvious supporter of the stuff goin on down south – and its a lot simpler to ‘not build’ something, than it is to alter existing stuff.

They have direct access/experience with Liberals making promises for election campaigns, and then doing whatever they want once in power. They have direct experience with a Liberal government causing housing prices to skyrocket at rates previously unseen – the Liberals have literally presided over a period of Canada’s history that utterly destroyed the dreams of many younger folks. They also have access to historical information highlighting how much easier it was for older generations, older generations who have voted consistently to ‘pull the ladder up’ from the next generation. And, most importantly I think, most people aren’t fussed with researching years and years of history before voting.

And the disparity on fronts like housing has grown to a point where lots of younger people are basically saying “We’d rather watch it all burn, so you old people feel the same hopelessness as us”. And again, I can’t fault them for it.

It’s not so much about “pro pierre”, as it is “pro change”. Carney hopefully will do things ‘differently’, but doing stuff like axing carbon taxes and removing environmental reviews from projects, isn’t exactly a “hopeful future” for younger people who are watching things like Jasper and Lytton burn to the ground due to climate change. Carney is essentially an ‘older’ generation of Conservative, who was parachuted into the Liberal leadership because they feel like the Cons move right gives them an opportunity to move ‘right’ to garner more of the disenfranchised conservative voters, while the fear of a hard-right wing movement will keep their left-leaning supporters in line. It’s a gamble that’ll likely pay off, but it’s not one that carries a whole lot of ‘hope’ given the circumstances. There’s a reason more ‘active’ forms of left wing principles, like what you see AOC and Bernie touring on, have more appeal to the younger demo.

Fairly sure the younger cohort is deciding largely based on the past performance of the existing government. Justin’s Liberals have been in power since 2015 – for many 18-28 year olds, the Liberal government is the only party they’ve known / seen. And in that time, have things improved on the housing front?

Or did the government start off campaigning on it as an issue, but then when the issue spiked due to other Liberal policies (mass influx of immigrants post COVID), did they attempt to claim it wasn’t a federal government responsibility? And they then flip flopped on that again, and re-assigned the guy they had in charge of the mass, chaotic influx of immigrants to be in charge of figuring out housing (Miller). A decade of promising advances on that file, and a decade of it getting exponentially worse. And it is exponentially worse, you just have to google charts on housing prices / historical trends to see it, there’ve been tons of articles in the news over the years screaming about it to the ears of deaf politicians. The party swapping leaders last second isn’t going to erase that history, one that was supported by the party at large.

For example, the CMHC has a chart of averages/medians for the vancouver region here: https://www03.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/hmip-pimh/en/TableMapChart/Table?TableId=1.10.1&GeographyId=2410&GeographyTypeId=3&DisplayAs=Table&GeograghyName=Vancouver . From 1990 to 2000, the median went from 280k to 360k – about 30% over 10 years, roughly 3% per year. Even back then it was considered a good move to buy/invest in housing due to the appreciation in value beating inflation targets. From 2015 to 2022 (the end of the tables data), it went from 1.09m to 2.06m – about 89% in 8 years, roughly 11% per year. And that includes years where the COVID immigration disruption “briefly” flattened the increase – it was up to 2m in 2018, dropped to 1.6m in 2020, and then shot back up once the flood gates were re-opened. Wages, to the surprise of absolutely no one, can’t keep up with that sort of increase: it’s completely unhinged. From a younger person’s perspective, that’s what the Liberals did.

That cohort is also young enough that things like Childcare will only apply to a small % of the group. Likewise, likely, for dental coverage – many young people in Uni will get extended coverage from any parental work-coverage, and young people who work will have that potential coverage directly. Dental costs are also less ‘present’ and ubiquitous than housing costs – you gotta pay rent monthly, but you don’t need an annual root canal. Government Dental is a perk more for retired seniors, disabled/long-term unemployed people and middle-aged people who don’t have coverage through work – even the CBC ran stories focusing on the senior demographic for that one (the person highlighted, iirc, was a ~75 year old who’d worked in America most of her life, who is currently still working to pay for her dentures). Hell, even when I was in uni, at least one of my friends, who had coverage, didn’t bother going to the dentist for years cause she just wasn’t fussed. Even as a middle aged person, I’m personally not that fussed with anything the liberals / ndp promise the senior cohort – many millenials are jaded enough at this point, that promises for boomers are viewed as things that will disappear by the time we get old enough to qualify, if we get old enough to qualify given how healthcare/GP access has also deteriorated: I fully expect to die younger than my parents. I can understand why an even younger generation wouldn’t be in favour of putting in social supports for boomers – at this point it isn’t the boomers who are having to pay the taxes, its the boomers voting explicitly to give themselves perks at the expense of younger generations.

I think Pierre / the cons are a terrible choice, personally. But I can fully understand why the younger folks would be swayed by the idea of change, even if its just smashing things apart like we’re seeing in the States. The last decade has been bleak, and there’s no tangible reason to think that the promises of the party in charge during that decade are worth anything going forward.

Yes yes, tactics matter a bit, as does RNG. But it’s still a fairly linear progression line. Like it’s possible to get to the first on-land brain thing fight without hitting level 2. It’s possible to win that fight as a level 1, with just you and shadowheart, technically. But its far far easier if you just play the way they intended, get to level 2 before that fight, and cheese it.

As noted elsewhere, I haven’t even been interested enough to get to the goblin village. So Halsin, Minsc, Minthara are all people I never bothered to get to. Emo goth cleric girl is feminine, though it feels very niche – like a ‘token’ straight semi-human looking girl. So if you want a ‘traditional’ partner, you’re stuck with emo girl? meh. At least if you play as a girl you have a choice of more human looking partners.

Wyll I sorta just assumed was gay, cause all the others were already gay for my ugly little gnome – plus you meet him while he’s taking care of children in the camp, and he runs around in light armor/isn’t a ‘physical’ character class. The most physical male in the first bit is asterion, but he is more agility/dex, which are traditionally more female oriented in d&d (I think old editions gave women +1 dex, men +1 str or something along those lines) – and he’s obsessed with sucking my gnome.

In a broader sense though, its the assertiveness of the different characters that I think causes the impression on my side. All of the women are pretty direct / blunt / to the point about ‘most’ topics (outside of story elements like shadowhearts whatsit); the men are sorta coy and demure.

There’s a whole lot more they could’ve done in that space, but they left it essentially the same as previous games – while I get that it’s well executed, I don’t think of it as having more ‘depth’ in this area than anything previous. So I find it boring / unmotivating.

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.

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.

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…

I’m honestly not totally sure what to think about this one, though I recognise that it’s a big shift/likely a negative overall result.

Reason I’m humming and hawing, is that there are lots of expensive cybersecurity type ‘things’ that rely on the CVE system, without explicitly paying in to that system / supporting it directly, from what I recall / have seen. Take someone like Tenable security, who sell vulnerability scanners that extensively use/integrate with the CVE/NVD databases… companies pay Tenable huge amounts of money for those products. Has Tenable been paying anything into the ‘shared’ public resource pool? How about all those ‘audit’ companies, who charge like 10-30k per audit for doing ‘vulnerability / penetration tests’.

IT Security has been an expensive/profitable area for a long time, while also relying on generally public/shared resources to facilitate a lot of the work. Maybe an ‘industry’ funded consortium is the more appropriate way to go.

Those requirements are designed to allow Quebec’s provincial party a seat at the table, while impeding access for parties such as the Greens and Peoples. They’re basically an example of institutional discrimination that came in fairly recently, with a pretty explicit target/goal.

I have much less interest in sitting through a debate between 4 people, when 1/4 of the time will be dedicated to a guy talking about one province’s interests, and where that party doesn’t even run outside of that province. Guess I’ll just wait for my media bubbles to give me the highlights and hope that it’s not too biased.

Hilarious… so the req is to have someone in the house (or 4% vote share nationally), and run candidates in most ridings. They’re getting cut because the elections folks think they are in violation of the latter there.

While still allowing the Bloc to participate. A party that’s never run a candidate outside of Quebec. A party where every second of time they’re givin on a national stage, only speaks to one province’s interests, in a ‘national’ debate. Who’s been in pretty well every national debate for decades now.

Still a ton of wiggle room here for the province, which is a bit annoying. Over reliance on products from companies like Microsoft is rampant in the gov – tons of gov stuff is in US cloud products. While alternatives exist, it’s very likely they’ll exempt 90% of their entwined supply chains due to ‘cost’ or other out-clauses in this announcement.

It’s vaporware until its commercially available.