You’re right to point out the difficulty of preparing installation media.

Also, for the average person, friction will probably happen during installation - possibly having to circumvent safe boot to install and run a new OS (knowing how to enter the bios, feeling comfortable playing around in the bios, knowing how to even disable safe boot once you’re there, not exposing your device to security vulnerabilities by having safe boot disabled), the need for an existing understanding of how partitions work and how the partitions are structured on your specific device in order to test the waters with a dual boot setup on a drive that has data/functionality you want to preserve. Needing to know the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of swap, /home, and /root partitions. These points all came up on a recent installation, and I’m sure they would scare some people off.

Installation will be easy if you have the time, motivation, existing knowledge and/or bandwidth for a learning curve. But not everybody has that.

And that’s just installation, to say nothing of the actual use of the desktop environment, which is not as intuitive as its often claimed to be.

That’s fair. Actually I don’t think you’re nit picking, you’re pointing to something that gets to the heart of a critical issue with politics.

The AB NDP aren’t far enough left for my taste, and I wish they would have made more meaningful investments and reforms to the education and healthcare systems to make those systems more robust, inclusive, and responsive to the people who use those systems. In not doing that to the degree that I think is fair, I believe they caused harm.

I’m not a policy wonk, and I know that only so much can be accomplished during a single term in office. And as we’ve seen in AB, much work can be undone by a new administration. But in Alberta, to still have private schools that receive public funding, household declarations allowing tax dollars to funnel into special, separate schools where religious dogma is part of the program of studies, and class sizes being what they are - all these things, according to my values and interests, cause measurable harm. Allowing monopolistic privatized telecom and insurance industries who collude to keep prices high, makes it harder for struggling families to eat and live. Going further, it’s arguable that not having a provincial sales tax that directly funds hospitals to improve their ability to efficiently administer emergency care, leads to unnecessary suffering and death. Yet, I have to accept that other citizens with different values and interests than mine will have different, yet still rational and reasonable views about these points.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m ‘both sides’-ing. I’m just making a comment that political choices are complex. I don’t think it’s fair to look at 54% of the votes cast for the UCP, and use that as a justification to make sweeping statements about the mindsets of those voters. The petitioners in Barrhead are a good example of the fact that even in a hardcore conservative area, anti inclusive mentalities remain a minority view. I think it’s troubling that there are 712 people in Barrhead willing to sign their name to a petition to eliminate pride crosswalks. But the fact that there are only 712 is honestly a relief, in the bigger picture. But the media takes a different angle. And then people say “fuck Alberta, that place is full of crazy people”, when the evidence actually suggests that Albertan citizens might be more caring and inclusive than they get credit for. That’s all I’m trying to say.

I think the less we write each other off, & the more we actually talk to each other in good faith about issues, values, and ways forward, the better we can be as a society. Political parties are designed to grind whatever axe they think will get or keep them elected. But, every citizen can and should be doing the hard work of honest discourse, regardless of their political stripe.

I hear you.

I’m not sure there is really any vote that a thoughtful person could make that doesn’t involve some sort of moral compromise. There are things in the AB NDP platform that I really like, and there are some things that I’m indifferent to. There are some things I wish weren’t there, and some things that I really wish they made a bigger deal about. Despite that, I’m inclined to vote for them because I align more closely with them than any other provincial party. I think a lot of conservatives feel the same way about the UCP.

Again, I’m not trying to justify UCP policy in any way whatsoever. Kenney and Smith are both fools, and have made the province measurably worse for almost everybody. Despite that, I don’t think Alberta should be written off in a casual way. And I don’t think even a UCP voter should necessarily be written off. No matter what side of the aisle you’re on, a political choice is a balancing act of competing interests and aims.

Sorry, thank you for the correction on the number of petitioners. I didn’t read the article carefully enough. From the article:

The total number of petitioners submitted to the Town of Barrhead landed at 851, with the total accepted petitioners coming out to 712.

For the record I don’t like what the UCP are doing in Alberta right now either, and I don’t think their approach represents acceptable governance.

You didn’t infer this, but I want to say for the record that it would be incorrect to infer, that just because the UCP received 54-ish% of the popular vote in the last provincial general election, it doesn’t follow that 54% of the population of Alberta is anti-trans. The UCP as a political entity takes aggressive stances on a bundle of issues that rationally-minded conservative voters would (and do) find unappealing. The fact that a Conservative stronghold like Barrhead could only get 10% (correction, 16%) of its citizens behind this petition goes to show that the exclusionary thinking at the core of the petition is overwhelmingly not the norm here among the citizens.

The town of Barrhead has a population of 4320 people. Only 10% (correction, 16%) of the town petitioned for this as-yet-unpassed bylaw. Those individuals don’t even represent the town of Barrhead, much less the entire province.

I don’t mean this personally - I’m surprised that someone who is as vocal about proportional representation as you are would be insensitive to the demographic facts of this matter.

If were going to have a public health system, people should be required to take care of themselves

On the face of it, this sounds sensible. But, thinking more deeply, who should decide the required amount of care a person ought to take? Ideas about what it means to ‘take care of yourself’ are varied. And consider that some citizens of this country are simply unable to take the same personal health decisions that others have the privilege to take without a second thought.

What you’re talking about here isn’t a public system. A healthcare system that only serves certain chosen people is not public in any meaningful sense.

A public healthcare system is imperfect on the whole, but on average, when funded and administered properly, is structured to apportion care based on need, instead of the profit motive. I think that’s worthwhile, and the right thing for a society to do from a moral standpoint.

At this rate, it won’t be long before Poilievre is speaking in full limerick. What an idiot.

The unspoken subtext in Trudeau’s comment is of course “they’re playing silly games while I’m running the country”. Trudeau’s only available response to the end of the supply and confidence agreement is to downplay its significance, while avoiding looking like a bitter jackass. Ironically, his comment is itself exactly the kind of ‘politics’ he’s accusing the other party leaders of practicing. It’s image management, that’s it.

I disagree. And also I don’t understand how your comment is relevant to the conversation. Making a non sequitur like this isn’t constructive. So, nice try but, you will not divide us!

Poilievre is making a string of very strange political gambles. Doing the rhyming nickname thing, trying to look like a cool badass, going on a string of unusual, foolish-looking, public attacks against rivals.

If the Conservatives don’t do as well as expected in the federal election, I wonder what’s next for them, from a leadership, attitude, and policy standpoint.

This will be Gen Z’s first real federal election to participate in. I’m very interested to see their impact. Convention is to assume that the young won’t vote, but, life and livelihood for the youth in Canada has never been worse, at least in my lifetime.

Fair. Though it’s hard to say much about the extent and effect of interference in the 2021 federal election, because much of it is still not known by the public, and there is no plan for disclosure. O’Toole was briefed on matters that concerned him. All the public has gotten are vague claims that the interference “didn’t change the outcome of the election”. The notion that any citizen should find that reassuring is a chilling thought.

And from a cynic’s point of view, it’s arguable that Poilievre’s willful blindness and mealymouthed stance on national security isn’t simply a lucky outcome for foreign powers that seek to influence Canadian politics - it’s a stance that could serve to materially benefit him and his party in a federal election where interference is expected.

And more generally, when choosing a leader, are Conservatives now primed to prefer weak Poilievre-type foreign policy, instead of stronger O’Toole-type foreign policy? Probably. That’s a downstream effect and success of interference. It’s bad news all around, and I don’t think enough is made of the issue.

It seems unlikely to me that their public statements about their situation are a full and accurate reflection of their feelings. I mean, what else are they going to say? “Fuck Boeing, fuck this failed mission, we’re pilots with families and it’s less than ideal that we’ll be stranded up here for 8 months doing busywork while our bone density gets nuked”?

If my employer sent me to a remote island without any of my personal effects, on a vehicle that couldn’t safely return me home, I’d look at any list of tasks they sent me with some measure of bitterness. Even if it was my favourite remote island. Being trapped there would change the colour of things. Working is probably the only thing they can do to keep from going insane.

TFW your election campaign was provably targeted by hostile foreign powers because your foreign policy positions are contrary to their aims and goals.

From a policy standpoint, disengagement is the worst possible strategy. Worse than engagement, and far worse than developing proactive foreign policy in the face of constant foreign interference.

Canada needs to create a foreign agent registry, and establish more sophisticated systems to combat and sanction foreign interference in our political and cultural spaces. For fuck sake, we know for a fact that right now, we have a sitting Member of Parliament (Han Dong) who has their seat as a result of Chinese state influence into their candidacy. The fact that we lack the mechanisms, or the political will, or both, to do something about this, is insanity.

I think the polarization about the issue of what to do about drug addiction is partially a symptom of the fact that different communities have different needs. The approach needs to be different in Gunn than in downtown Edmonton. But, we’re in a position where the political interests of the citizens in those places don’t overlap very much, so no matter what, we’re going to end up with solutions that nobody is fully happy with.

Speaking as a person with absolutely no love for the UCP, and with dissimilar views about how to address the problem of addiction, I don’t hate the fact that they’re actually trying something that might help people. Maybe this program won’t work, but at least it’s an attempt. It’s better than hand waving about abstinence and law and order which takes no effort at all.

Current composition of the House of Commons

• Liberal (156 seats)
• NDP (24)
• Conservative (118)
• Bloc Québécois (32)
• Green (2)
• Independent (3)
• Vacant (3)

Only 4 of those parties have official party status, and the structure of the NDP/Liberal supply and confidence agreement arguably makes them the same party.

So, boiled down, there are 3 parties that are relevant, and only 2 that are relevant to the nation as a whole.

If only a federal political party with electoral victory within their reach had promised a meaningful reform to the first past the post system. Around 2015. That would have really been timely, and materially improved the Canadian political space.

Liberals breaking a promise that wasn’t rooted in a sincere vision of what this country should look like, and instead was made to secure votes from a specific demographic group :shocked pikachu:

Very cool concept.

Always wanted to go to Def Con. Good luck & have fun!