This post and article just looks like rage / click bait. Can we stop spreading crap like this?

If I do the math of what a six day international trip to multiple locations on the other side of the planet would cost me, then account for the fact that there were 53 people on the plane (many who staff to be paid), RCMP security was required, yes the Prime Minister and officials probably stay in better accommodations and eat better food than I do, and this trip was completed for an official purpose, then this doesn’t really look like an outrageous expense at all.

The article is ridiculous. It complains about $2,500 in official gifts, and quotes someone from a “Canadian taxpayers federation” about how inflation in Canada is so high the PM flies to Singapore for food. Boom, got’em. Sick burn. So is the article about official trip expenses or about inflation?

It pisses me off because this type of rhetoric does nothing to address real problems. It dishonestly manufactures rage and distrust without proposing real solutions or progress.

Big thumbs down.

No idea. I’ve been slowly setting myself up to move abroad as the things that are important to me either don’t exist in Canada or are disappearing year after year.

This comment isn’t meant to be flippant. I personally believe walkable cities, decent public transit, and decent public services are an important part of preventing social decay. Canada generally doesn’t have much of this left. Seeing public healthcare slip away (not just increasing privatization but even just degradation in quality of public care) feels like the last straw for me.

I’m excited to explore new places later this year. Nowhere is perfect but certainly there are places with a better balance of positives, or so I suspect.

Except that wireless headphones have more complexity, points of failure, and usually shorter life. Just avoiding batteries alone should give a longer life and do less environmental harm.

My thoughts as well. Seemed more significant than just losing train of thought.

I’m loving this kind of commentary. Positive (different than apathetic or gullible) and practical. A huge contrast to some other places on the internet. Just wanted to say this is noticed and appreciated and will hopefully encourage others (including myself) to do better.

TL;DR: You’re correct, in my professional opinion.

The catalyst in most hydrogen fuel cells are still too expensive and have a limited life. Hydrogen will mostly be sourced as a waste product from oil and gas extraction (though it could be done with clean electricity and electrolysis), that’s why oil and gas companies are becoming so interested in pushing hydrogen (see the successful “clean” natural gas campaigns, but depending on how you measure it natural gas can result in more emissions than coal and is just a bunch of greenwashing. Same would happen with hydrogen in my opinion). Additionally, we’d have to build out an entire hydrogen delivery infrastructure that serves only that purpose. We’ll just end up with commercial fuel stations like we have now. Fuel cells (for many fuels) can make sense in very remote applications, or industrial applications where specific waste gasses can be turned into supplemental electricity right on site.

Battery-electric on the other hand is much more flexible and fits into our existing infrastructure better. It’s not just power dense batteries for cars; it’s (maybe gravity) batteries for communities, safe and long-lived (maybe salt) batteries for homes, better batteries for our electronics. Research in one area can support improvement of the others. They all connect to the same electricity grid so the energy can be shared among applications. Batteries play a role in decentralizing and democratizing energy (today you can put PV on your house, charge your car or home battery, use your car to power your house in a power outage, etc). As mentioned we can use greener and cleaner batteries (even completely non-chemical) in some applications, and one day we can hopefully get to the point of using ultra- or super-capacitors in place of high-density chemical batteries. In the mean time we have batteries that work and are getting quite affordable, we can transition to this solution now without waiting for a miracle breakthrough, then continue to iterate the technology over time.