You misunderstand me. I don’t think I know better than doctors. Far from it. What I want from a doctor is information and informed choice, not a gatekeeper who makes decisions for me. As a group, physicians have been slow to adopt the patient-centered informed choice mentality that, for example, nurse practitioners and midwives have more thoroughly adopted.

The fact that you’ve doubled down here on calling patients idiots for being somewhat distrustful of the typical arrogant physician attitude confirms what I’m saying.

If I was going under anesthesia for a planned procedure, I would not drink or use drugs beforehand. If it was an unplanned emergency, I guess it would depend on the circumstances, but you are citing an extreme circumstance. If someone is actively high at the time they end up in the emergency department, well, that’s bad luck and it might be wise to disclose since the staff will figure it out pretty darn quick anyway. Same if you are a severe alcoholic or opiate addict. That’s not what I’m talking about, though. I’m talking about when doctors or nurses ask you about it as a lifestyle question.

You know as well as I do that the health care system classifies people in terms of their risk factors and then use that profile to make decisions about you. Once classified as a “drug user” in your chart, many doctors and nurses will treat you differently. They may or may not “care” from a moral perspective, and we know that they won’t tell family or police, but that won’t necessarily stop them from denying you necessary pain relief or deprioritizing you in triage. That’s the actual concern.

There is absolutely no reason to tell a doctor if you use cannabis or engage in moderate alcohol use or occasionally use cocaine, LSD, or psylocibin. If you are prescribed a medication that has an interaction with a recreational drug, the doctor can simply tell you that. They don’t need to know if you use that drug from time to time. Only you, the patient, need to know that so you can avoid the interaction. More extreme forms of drug use are a different story, of course.

Edit: Let me add one other overarching point. I think people are sick and tired of having doctors make decisions for them. I don’t need a nanny. I need information about risks and benefits in order to make an informed choice. Doctors rarely do that. Instead, they decide what should be prescribed, or not prescribed, regardless of the patient’s wishes. I know the reason is fear of liability, but here we are nonetheless.

I used to trust HCPs, but I know many of them now and have heard them shit-talk and judge their patients for mental health issues and drug use (among other things). I would NEVER, EVER tell a doctor or nurse about any form of drug or alcohol use now, or any kind of anger issues that could possibly be interpreted as aggressive. Especially not in a hospital where everything gets recorded in an electronic chart and may be used against you in the future. Fuck that.

The Middle East is strategically important, so the West can’t just ignore it. But it doesn’t make sense to get emotionally involved in what happens there. The protests against Israel do not make sense to me given the wider context in the region.

I know it isn’t a popular position right now, but I believe the Israelis are correct in their assessment that Hamas needs to be thoroughly crushed. True, it is only a short-term remedy because Iran will simply fund another generation of jihadis, but it may give Israel another decade or two of relative peace. Hamas only wants one thing and that is to destroy Israel. Hezbollah is similar and also needs to be crushed and Lebanon liberated, but that is a more difficult job that’ll have to wait. Both Hezbollah and Hamas are so thoroughly entrenched in their ideology and, more importantly, in a black market economy, that they will never become legitimate state actors.

So, how does the situation with Iran and their proxies get resolved? Peace processes have been tried for decades only to be scuttled by extremists. The West has sanctioned the hell out of Iran and yet they are still able to supply their proxies with tens of thousands of rockets. Protesters say that Israel needs to give the Palestinians their own state and then the hostilities will end. Yes, that’s a nice goal, but I don’t believe for a second that Iran will stop fomenting violence against Israel no matter how many concessions the Israelis make to the Palestinians. Does anyone, in their heart of hearts, truly believe that Iran will ever stop funding terrorism against Israel and the West as long as the Ayatollahs are in charge? Will any amount of justice for Palslestine appease the Ayatollahs? I don’t think so.

I hate to say it because war is the worst way to solve conflicts, but I suspect that the Middle East will remain a violent stalemate until the Ayatollahs are removed from power.

To be fair, it’s because US politics at the moment is a train-wreck in progress and its hard to look away. Or, more accurately, the US news portrays US politics as a train-wreck in progress, with civil war and right-wing dictatorship just over the horizon. Both political parties and the whole media establishment are literally spending billions of dollars to attract eyeballs, so the drama of US presidential politics is off-the-scale and the whole world is watching, not just Canada.

Canadian politics at the moment is a snooze-fest by comparison. However, when crazy US-style drama does go down in Canada, like when our COVID trucker convoy noisily occupied Ottawa for a few weeks, we were glued to that instead.

For Americans, you can think of Canada as being like Minnesota. Sure, we get a dramatic event every once in a while, but mostly it’s boringly reasonable, center-left, earnest, and low-drama.

Hold up there, cowboy. Hawaiian pizza is Canadian cuisine, not American.

Trudeau is our Biden. He’s an old news incumbent and he’s got to go if we want any chance of beating snide Skippy. Trudeau cannot possibly have missed the way Biden bowed out and made way for new blood, and how that has energized the left and moved the needle with swing voters.

The same thing could happen with the NDP, if Singh would bow out. Of course, if they both pull a Biden, it might split the vote even worse. So, I guess we’d better hope that the NDP ditches Singh, but that Trudeau, unable to bear the thought of living in an empty house without Sophie and the kids, desperately clings to power like a madman.

Oh man, reading your comment just gave me 90s vibes. That was the peak when atheism was quite controversial. Nowadays, it is a bit weird if someone does practice a religion. Religious beliefs are not an innate trait, but a choice, at least in the West. We should be actively discouraging people from being religious in the same way we discourage misogyny, racism, etc. I’m very uncomfortable with some of the comments in this thread that suggest that discouraging the wearing of religious symbols is some form of crypto-racism. Religion is a completely different category and we need to be able to criticize it harshly and relentlessly without the suggestion that it is a type of racism.

No job, no credit, no references, and a backed up landlord-tenant board, meaning that the landlord can’t evict for at least a year if they don’t pay the rent… no surprise that they had to put cash up front.

The bigger issue, though, is why stay in downtown Toronto? It’s the second most expensive real estate market in Canada and an extremely competitive job market. There are a hundreds other less expensive places of live that would greatly value an influx of people with skills. Where I live (not Toronto), half of our IT department are newcomers from India and Africa who were smart enough to realize that there is more to Canada than Toronto.

Simply put: he’s an asshole-alo-alo-alo-alo.

And they are helping the Aussies develop nuclear-powered subs, notably with UK reactors, though.

Yes, agreed, electoral reform is definitely a sore point.

This is true of most politicians. They know that getting elected is not really about policy, but rather about capturing the sentiments of the population. When Trudeau was elected, the country was sick of the dour Harper et al brand and wanted a younger, hipper PM with a hope-and-change message. Now that Trudeau has run through his idea list, and Canadians are unhappy with the economy, Poilievre just needs to reflect that sentiment. You hardly ever hear him talk about actual policy because he knows that concrete ideas can be attacked. Riding the wave of resentment is the successful strategy for him, so he rarely says anything beyond criticizing Trudea. I’m pretty sure that the Liberals are resigned to losing at this point, and one gets the sense that Trudeau is just tired. And Freeland is smart enough to keep her powder dry and wait until we get sick of Poilievre in turn.

Uh-oh, you’ve triggered one of my favourite topics: cost-conscious cruising. Get ready, because I do enjoy dispelling myths about sailing. :)

People think sailing is expensive, but it is absolutely within reach for the middle class, as long as you are willing to put in the work to do your own maintenance and repair. Look at your average small-city marina and you’ll see that most of the sailboats are 30 to 40 year old fiberglass production boats. They basically last forever if you take care of them and at that age their cost depreciation curve has plateaued. So, the cost of entry is reasonable and relatively risk-free.

If you have any interest in sailing, I recommend checking out your local marina to see if they have a weekly keelboat race. Many sailors love to race and they always need crew. This is the best way to learn to sail for free. If you don’t like the pressure of racing, you can sign up for a learn-to-sail course for a couple hundred dollars.

If you enjoy that experience and want to cruise, I suggest reading a few practical books about cost-conscious cruising. Don’t watch the hot young video bloggers sailing million-dollar catamarans for YouTube and Instagram. Much like Linux vs Windows or open-source vs closed-source, sailing is as much about philosophy as it is about execution. You can spend big bucks on the latest and greatest, or you can buy old hardware and revive it with some learning and elbow grease.

The most common question in cruising is, how much does it cost? And the answer is, strangely, it costs as much or as little as you want to spend. You can spend millions or thousands of dollars, depending on your skills, your willingness to learn, and what you are willing to live with. I know a couple that lived for a year sailing the US East Coast in a 22-foot sailboat that they got for free. That’s an extremely small cruising boat, by the way, with just a bucket for a head.

Think of sailboat cruising like living in an RV: you can live in an old 1965 VW camper van or a tent trailer or fancy stainless steel Airstream or a huge diesel Winnebago. It’s up to you, but there are trade-offs. You can probably buy a broke-down old camper van on the cheap right now, if you are willing to learn to fix it up and then live in a very small space. Or you can work and scrimp for half a lifetime to afford that huge Winnebago. Most of us would pick something in the middle, making trade-offs between comfort, time, and cost.

A good book to start thinking about the philosophy of cost-conscious sailing is “Get Real, Get Gone” by Rick Page. Their philosophy is that small and simple is better than big and fancy for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is affordability and the ability to get started sooner than later. But be careful. If you read it, you may ditch your life ashore and end up a sea gypsy floating around the Caribbean in a small boat learning to fix diesel engines!

Also, by the way, there are plenty of smart, nerdy, do-it-yourself sailors. There is significant overlap in attitudes and mindset between the do-it-yourself sailor and the self-hosting computer nerd.

But truly, I hope I have convinced you that sailing is not only for the rich. It is for the adventurous. As a matter of fact, I’m heading out today for a week of wilderness sailing on board my very affordable sailboat. Maybe I’ll see you out there one day!

There is a certain satisfying symmetry to sailing the high seas while sailing the high seas.

I like the idea of using an industrial pc. Small sailboats experience a lot of vibration and sometimes violent bouncing, slamming, and heeling. Most things on a sailboat have been tossed around and flung onto the floor at some point, so it will have to be bolted down.

I don’t know, maybe something like this?

KINGDEL Desktop Computer, Fanless PC, Intel i7 8th Gen CPU, 32GB DDR4 RAM, 1TB NVMe SSD, HD Port, VGA, 2xCOM RS232, W-11 Pro https://a.co/d/0eODy8RH

I was looking at something like this mini-router with OpenWRT:

GL.iNet GL-AXT1800 (Slate AX) Pocket-sized Wi-Fi 6 Gigabit Travel Router, Extender/Repeater for Hotel&Public Network, VPN Client&Server, OpenWrt, Adguard Home, USB 3.0, Network Storage, TF card slot https://a.co/d/0iP7qaKj

For a signal booster: weBoost Drive Reach Overland - Cell Phone Signal Booster for Off Road Vehicles | Boosts 5G & 4G LTE for All U.S. Carriers - Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile & More | Made in The U.S. | FCC Approved https://a.co/d/00PNi0AE

Yeah, good point. Now that you mention it, there is no real reason to run the server 24/7 on the boat. Also, HDDs would not be happy with the amount of bouncing that small sailboats undergo while at sea.

Yes, I think you’re right that distro doesn’t matter. As I’ve been reading through the responses, I realize that the two main issues are storage (don’t want to use HDDs on a bounching boat, but SSDs are expensive per TB) and power (limited battery and variable voltage). As you say, corrosion may also been an issue that I hadn’t considered. I’ll probably have to check in with the sailing forums to see if people have trouble with their laptops corroding at sea. This server isn’t likely to get splashed directly, but it will be exposed to a lot of humidity and variable temperatures.

Hmmm, looking at the cost of large SSDs, I think you’re right that I should downgrade my storage requirements. Or perhaps I could use a large HDD that is turned off while underway for “long-term” storage and a smaller SSD for media that I want immediately available. That would avoid the problem of spinning a HDD while bouncing around in high wind and waves.

And, yes, we do have books, lol. But we also enjoy movies. :)

I live on Lake Superior, but this server planning is for a year-long voyage from Lake Superior to New York to the Bahamas and back. So, I do need to take salt and humidity into account.

This is a good idea. A modern laptop is already power efficient and has its own battery, which I guess would act like a UPS and protect the motherboard from big swings in voltage from the main battery bank.

I think you’ve hit on the key difference between home and boat use: the variable voltage. My battery varies between about 13.3V and about 11.2V depending on its charge state. I’ll look into these.

No, I didn’t know that was an option. Cool idea, though. No pun intended, but I’ll take it.

I just had to buy a new gas furnace and air conditioner, so, with my mind on global warming, I asked the furnace guy what it would cost to put in a heat pump. He said he has put in quite a few, but the costs have gone way up. He also said that in our climate I would need an electric back-up furnace for winter because a heat pump loses efficiency quickly at temps below -15C. The cost was going to be around $30,000, compared to $15,000 for the new gas furnace and AC. Also, electricity in Ontario is an incredibly expensive way to heat, so that would be a big extra monthly cost in the winter. An in-ground geothermal system would be about $65,000, he said.

It isn’t hard to see why gas is still popular, and that it will continue to be far into the future unless we undertake some kind of national project to replace our fossil fuel infrastructure with nuclear for the needed electricity and then convert our cars and homes over to full electric.

HRTO certainly has a large backlog. The backlog has doubled in the last 6 years to 9,527 cases according to the latest HRTO annual report. To put that backlog number in context, only 40 cases received a substantive final decision in 2023/24, and that was actually a large percentage increase in decisions compared to the previous few years. Prior to the pandemic, though, the HRTO was making about 100 decisions per year, so one wonders if the backlog itself has slowed down the ability to make substantive decisions because staff are too busy managing the backlog and trying to clarify a massive number of low quality claims.

Many COVIDiots filed human rights cases that clogged up the system a few years ago, though I’m not sure if those cases are still in the system or if the HRTO disposed of them en masse at some point. The annual report showed that dismissals without hearing have also doubled. Regardless, human rights complaints about mask mandates and vaccination were well-publicized and made people realize that the HRTO could be a vehicle for all kinds of new complaints.

Unlike a civil law suit, making a human rights complaint is free and does not expose the complainant to civil liability for costs. Nor do most complainants need or avail themselves of legal representation because the HRTO provides a lot of free assistance to complainants. (That said, the amount of support provided has also decreased recently due to the backlog, so the number of abandoned claims has also increased.) In any case, it is easy to make frivolous and vexatious claims with no legal advice because there is no cost and no risk in doing so. At the same time, the backlog and pressures in the system make it equally difficult to get legitimate claims adjudicated in a timely fashion. While we obviously need a barrier-free system for making legitimate human rights complaints, such systems are easily abused. With no costs or risks, the current system is the perfect vehicle for making unfounded accusations to intimidate defendants, cast aspersions, and entangle them in legal proceedings.

As I said above, we need barrier-free (or at least low-barrier) systems for human rights claims, but barrier-free systems always break down when they are gamed in large numbers. Backlogs create serious problems for legitimate claimants as they block access to timely justice and create administrative barriers for unsophisticated and unrepresented claimants. I’m not sure what the solution is, but the current system isn’t working for anyone.

This article is bullshit. There have always been good landlords and bad landlords, good tenants and bad tenants. Renting is supposed to be mutually beneficial and it usually is, but sometimes it isn’t and that’s why we have laws and a tribunal: to protect both parties to the rental agreement.

Recent media stories about landlords and tenants are driven by two things: a MASSIVELY UNREASONABLE housing shortage and a MASSIVELY UNREASONABLE backlog at the landlord-tenant board. The housing shortage certainly favors the landlord, and the backlog at the LTB favors the tenant.

If the LTB is there to arbitrate all kinds of disputes in a fair manner, why does the backlog at the LTB favour the tenant? Well, the nuclear option for landlords is eviction, which they cannot do without the LTB. Whereas the nuclear option for tenants is not paying the rent, which is grounds for an eviction the landlord cannot obtain. That means the tenant can live rent-free for one to two years, if they do not mind being evicted in the end. And if the tenant is poor, it hardly matters that the LTB eventually orders the tenant to pay back-rent they do not have.

So, why have some recent stories been about the tenants-from-hell? Because it is the flip side of the large number of other stories about house prices and rents becoming unreasonable. There are news stories everyday about high house prices, high rents, low rental availability, increasing population, and the collective burden all of this places on younger generations. There are thousands of articles about this, and the media needs grist for the mill, so naturally they want to cover a different angle. Nobody cares about faceless corporate landlords, so they run stories about landlords or tenants with a human face. We, the public, lap up these human interest stories because we are programmed by evolution to find human drama at the individual amd small group level engaging. Thus, ragebait draws clicks.

And that is ehat this article is as well. It does nothing but push an oppressor-oppressed narrative to make people mad. It’s ragebait masquerading as media analysis. The fact is that renting is as old as civilization itself and will always be with us. It is necessary because many people cannot or do not want to own a home. In a balanced market with a reasonable arbitration mechanism, the interests of landlords and tenants are also approximately balanced. But right now we have neither a balanced market nor a reasonable arbitration mechanism. In this context, stories about rapacious landlords and scumbag tenants are just stories about the range of human nature when the rules of fair conduct are not enforced. We can’t change human nature, but we can shape the market and the dispute resolution mechanism.

Change “user” to your actual user name.

I’m not sure what you mean when you say that developers serve no purpose. Maybe there is a definitional problem here. Maybe you are thinking of planners rather than developers. Developers organize, design, finance, and gain approvals for housing projects. Often they are also the general contractor for the building phase. Planners, on the other hand, ensure that projects meet the requirements of municipal Official Plans and the Planning Act (in Ontario).

It is true, though, that a lot of developers submit shitty plans that municipal planners have to fix. That’s because the average developer doesn’t give a single shit about the public good and only seeks to maximize personal profit. So, they treat the Planning Act as an obstacle to work around rather than making a good faith effort to follow the principles of good city planning.

Yeah, midwifery is a very tough job and should be better compensated. The call schedule is nuts!

The acceptance rate at Canadian med schools is about 1 in a 1000, and most of those 1000 applicants are qualified in the sense of having decent grades and passing the MCAT. There is no shortage of qualified applicants for med school. This issue is that there is a shortage of funded positions in med schools.

In addition, we admit many trained physicians via our immigration system. We have a system for training these physicians to work in the Canadian health care system, but it is woefully inadequate. I’m sure my numbers are out of date, but about a decade ago there were 5000 physician applicants to that training system with only 5 slots available. And, if you were not among the lucky 5 after 3 years on the list, you were no longer eligible. As a result, we have tens of thousands of trained physicians who gave up on medicine and now work in other fields.

So, the logical next question is, why? The answer is that there is a convergence of interests between the government and the physicians associations. Physicians don’t want their profession flooded with additional members because it weakens their bargaining position with the government. And the government does not particularly want to license a whole bunch more physicians because each new physician they add represents a long-term expense to the health care system.

Health care consumer demand in a system like ours with no point-of-service fees is effectively bottomless. You could triple the number of physicians and they would all be busy. The only curb on consumer demand is rationing, which is done by limiting the number of licensed physicians.

Nurse practitioners could definitely fill the primary care gap independently, but that’s not what physicians want. Physicians want nurse practitioners to work under them so that they can get a cut for every patient the NP sees.

All of that is to say that it is always about money. Always. It is no accident that there is a primary care shortage, and no mystery as to why either. Cost containment by the government and turf-protection by physician groups are the main reasons.

Fortunately, there has been some movement on alternatives. There are a few more NP-led clinics being approved. Midwifery was legalized in the 90s, and midwives and pharmacists in Ontario have had their scope expanded in recent years to include the ability to diagnose and treat a range of minor ailments. All of this helps, though hopefully it is only the thin edge of the wedge in terms of broadening the base of primary care.

I’m not sure I understand you. Who is this “we” that can already afford to provide healthcare for the planet?

If you mean all the taxpayers in the world can afford to pay for all the health care of all the people in the world to a high standard, that just isn’t true. Canada is a highly developed country with lots of resources to devote to modern health care, but much of the world is not like that. The need for health care FAR outstrips the supply. Even in Canada.

Second, we in Canada don’t have any control over the health care policies of the rest of the world. If you are just musing about how the whole world should come together and prioritize medicine instead of bombs, well, sure, I guess most everyone would agree with that. But that’s like wishing for world peace. It’s not a realistic health care policy for Canada. As I said, and which you pointedly did not respond to, we can’t freely open our health care system to the victims of America’s dysfunctional health care system, not to mention the rest of the world. Sure, it would be great if Canada could heal the world, but we can’t. It isn’t about “fairness”, it is about our ability to maintain a functioning system in a world we don’t control.

Thirdly, the argument that ending military spending would significantly improve health care is a nice idea, but it is a red herring. Canada, and most Western nations, spend less than 2% of GDP on military. Ending military spending would help a little bit, but it wouldn’t “solve” the problem of funding health care.

While I understand the sentiment, it is unrealistic and naive. Doctors and nurses get paid. Someone has to pay them, and while you may be personally happy to see the system cover the costs for one illegal undocumented immigrant, the supply of money and health care resources is not endless. Indeed, we already have a massive shortage of doctors in large parts of Canada. Obviously, our model of health care doesn’t work if we allow non-taxpaying, non-citizens to have free treatment. Imagine, if you will, the millions of Americans that would flood our country if they could get free health care here.

Very true. The cost-of-living crisis is happening around the world. The main issue with Canada is, and always has been, that it is cold. That’s why Canada is so under-populated. Of course, this also means that Canada will (probably) become more desirable as it warms and more southerly countries become unliveable due to climate change.

In addition, some immigrants have unrealistic expectations of Canada. A friend of mine originally from Nigeria has family back home that literally asked him to go to a bank machine, take out some money, and send it to them because they thought ATMs just gave out free money in Canada. His wife also doesn’t like the fact that Canada is less socially stratified. Being a university graduate in Nigeria makes you a big man (or woman) and you can lord it over poorly-paid tradesmen and other lower classes. Whereas in Canada, there’s a good chance that your plumber makes more money than you do!

Yeah, I do understand that we, like the US, also have a Constitution. Do you? Our Constitution includes a Charter of Rights and Freedoms which protects against unreasonable search and seizure. You should look it up sometime. Here’s a starting point from the Canadian Encyclopedia:

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/constitution

Edit: I should also say that protections against unreasonable search and seizure long predate the Canadian and US Constitutions and are derived from our countries’ common lineage back to England. If you are ever confused about why Canada and US have many similar rights and freedoms, it is because both Canada and the US were British colonies before achieving independence.

Um, yeah, Canada has a Constitution and the Charter is a part of it:

The Constitution Act, 1982 gave Canada complete independence from Britain. Months of negotiations between the federal and provincial governments were held to determine how to “patriate” the country’s last British-held powers from Britain. The resulting Constitution Act, 1982 made several changes to Canada’s constitutional structure. The most important were the creation of an amending formula (the criteria that would have to be met to make future changes) and the addition of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/constitution

So, yeah, I am Canadian and laws in Canada can be unconstitutional. If you are curious about it our constitution, try finding basic information about it before condescending to teach someone else about it.

If there is no reason to suspect a crime, then this seems like unreasonable search and seizure, which is unconstitutional. It’s like randomly searching people’s homes to see if anything illegal is going on. Actually worse, it’s like searching EVERYONE’S home.

Gluetun is the bomb. You don’t realize how much automated tracking of the torrent-verse is out there until your VPN connection drops unexpectedly and your torrent client continues merrily downloading in the clear. Gluetun is a fantastic killswitch and has never failed me. All hail the developer.

This is so true. I get the sense that a lot of human rights complaints nowadays are vexatious or inappropriate (many by COVIDiots), which only makes it harder for the legitimate complaints to be taken seriously and heard in a timely manner. Another reason for so many human rights complaints is that it doesn’t cost anything to make a human rights complaint in my province, whereas it does cost money to start a lawsuit and the plaintiff can be on the hook for costs if the lawsuit is without merit. It is unfortunate when people take advantage of a valuable mechanism like the human rights tribunal for the wrong reasons.

Interesting, thanks. Forty-five minutes down a dirt road sounds like a dream. Ours is 1.5 hours down the highway, then 1 hour on logging roads, and the final leg is a good half-hour by boat through a labyrinth of narrow channels. No road access and no services. The log cabin is a Wendall Beckwith design so it looks cool, but my wife’s father didn’t take good care of it so it leaked quite a bit before I put a metal roof on it. (That was fun with boat access and a small generator only capable of running a jigsaw, let me tell you.) We have an open invitation for any of our friends that want to use it and no one ever takes us up on it, so I suspect it will still be quite affordable for someone, if we ever decide to sell it.