People who go hunting don’t go by “off the top of their head”.

Now I can’t speak to the laws in California for hunting, but in Canada they have pretty crazy strict laws regarding illegal hunting, including seizure of anything used in the act (trucks, atvs, guns, boats, etc), removal of gun license, and huge fines.

A quick google search shows the method they’ve used, and have been using for the last decade as an attempt to stop the spread: Barred owls are much more aggressive, and playing their calls can lure them in to fight, in a way the spotted owls don’t, so you don’t need to just go based on visual differences. Here’s one article about the removal process up to now with an interview of a biologist who’s pro-hunting.

Relocation of the barred owls isn’t feasible, because no matter where you send them, there’s probably already owls there, and relocation often results in the animal dying off anyway.

What’s the alternative? Watch as the spotted owls are out-competed and go extinct due to human development and habitat destruction? To me, that seems worse. We already hunt to maintain populations of animals in other species - deer spring to mind. Since we’ve eliminated many of the deer’s predators, we need to maintain that role, which includes setting hunting targets each year. Why are these owls different?

Totally unrelated, but this is an interesting book

EVs make a difference for anyone in an area with low density. I live in the country relatively close to population centres, but it’s impossible for me to ever imagine transit being even near me.

We will literally always have a need for small, individual vehicles of some kind for most the population. If we could reduce that to one car, then supplement with transit, where available, or carpooling? Then also make that car an EV instead of ICE? That’s a huge emissions reduction

The term has been trademarked since 1995 for different uses. This isn’t anything new and there’s no signs they intend to use it aggressively. https://trademarks.justia.com/856/81/cyberpunk-85681741.html

Pretty sure they bought the trademark from the company who owned it previous (for a 1980s era board game if I recall correctly). They bought it to prevent shitty 2077 clones with the same name from popping up. I haven’t heard of them actively pursuing copyright infringement against others who use cyberpunk.

I can speak to this as I’m just going through it now.

I’m a young male in good health. I started having weird heart palpitations randomly starting last year. Had them four times, but they normally go away after 20ish mins. GP reviewed me, said it seemed fine, but to go in to ER if anything about them changed (ie more frequent, more intense, lasted longer).

Last friday they went on for an hour, so I went in. Entered at 11am.

Was triaged within 15mins, including an ECG. Once they confirmed it wasn’t an active heart attack, I sat in the waiting room for two hours. I then saw a doctor, got a chest X-Ray, and bloodwork taken within 45mins. I proceeded to sit in the room hooked up to the vitals monitor for four hours while they ran my bloodwork, and the ER doc came back. He sent me a requisition for a cardiologist and told me to take aspirin until I saw the specialist.

I saw the Cardiologist on Wednesday, and he’s explained he’s not concerned given my lack of other risk factors. He’s now sent me over for an ultrasound and 36hr halter monitor next Monday. He said unless something weird comes back or he wants another test, he won’t see me again, and I should follow up with my GP 2 weeks after I finish the halter monitor.

So within 3 or 4 weeks I had a full range of tests done, and my biggest expense was $7.50 parking for the 30min cardiologist appointment, which I was actually unironically complaining about to my wife last night.

The article goes into a good amount of detail and information from both sides without arguing/favouring one. It focuses on the legal side rather than the vaccines themselves, which is nice.

All that said, I can’t see them winning this one. In the article they talk about the provision in the NDA (sec 126) which makes it an offense to refuse a vaccination:

Every person who, on receiving an order to submit to inoculation, re-inoculation, vaccination, re-vaccination, other immunization procedures, immunity tests, blood examination or treatment against any infectious disease, wilfully and without reasonable excuse disobeys that order is guilty of an offence and on conviction is liable to imprisonment for less than two years or to less punishment.

This pretty clearly defines that it is an offense, so unless the lawsuit is able to successfully argue that this section of the NDA is a violation, they’re sunk. Additionally, the fact that the CAF was able and willing to accommodate those who were ‘unable’ to get the vaccine and chose only to attack those who were ‘unwilling’ to is another mark against the lawsuit.

The problem is bigger than that.

The government has had lobbying for years from the private sector, and the O/G sector has had big money to throw around. They get pushback from these companies when they try to up the ‘just in case’ fund that is there to cover costs of rehab in case the company goes under. But since that isn’t enough, they’re often left unmanaged. In the article above they talk about the two easiest examples - mine rehabilitation and orphan well cleanup.

If a company ignores well decommissioning, they can cut costs, suck up as much oil as possible, then declare bankruptcy and walk away from the requirements to clean up, leaving the public to pay for it.

Why should they be responsible for cleanup?

This one is easy. You make the mess, you clean it up. Basic kindergarten levels of societal responsibility.

There’s no law or contract that compels this.

There is, actually, but they’re avoiding it by a number of legal loopholes (as mentioned above). Socially/morally, they have the responsibility to do so, but they’ve managed to legally avoid it/ignore it. Hence the ‘shirk’

The argument is that there should be a greater amount of laws and regulations surrounding the O/G or resource extraction sector and their impacts, but often you hear complaints from those employed in those sectors about government overreach and unnecessary bureaucracy/red tape hampering and smothering the free market.

This article is important as it highlights why we need more regulation and the danger of letting these companies continue to act they way they have for years.

Yeah but living in it for at least 2 yrs it is considered long term. From the article, the Town has been aware of it for at least that long, so who knows how long it’s actually been

Battery heating makes an enormous difference. I live in Ontario and generally average about -15 to -20 during the winter. Bought a Hyundai Kona EV in 2020 and it’s been great. Actual range in summer is about 450km cuz I drive like an old man, and it drops to about 350km with my high traction winter tires, battery heating, and cabin heating.

The Kona also won for the best actual range during winter a few years ago

https://yourtestdriver.com/electric-vehicle-winter-weather-test/

Yes and no.

RVs don’t have to meet the building codes the same way that houses do. I’d be very skeptical of the covered porch the man built that houses a furnace - there’s no comment in the article about that, but I’d be surprised if it met all the requirements for long term housing.

It’s fair for the Town to enforce their bylaws and housing codes. We have building codes for a reason.

Additionally, from the article

“We’re required to enforce our bylaws and I think that it’s demonstrated that we do sympathize with the situation they’re in, because we’ve been working with them for the last two years,” Crowder said.

It sounds like it’s taken quite a while for them to prepare building plans. They say they ‘have them in hand and plan to start the building process soon’, which means they haven’t actually applied yet. I’m curious what their sewer, water, and power situation is, as those hookups and/or septic beds also require permits from the Town. Living somewhere without running water or sewage removal is a concern for the neighbors.

Two years for just rough plans without having got approval from the Town yet? That’s a slow timeline. Especially if they’re living on the site the whole time. They haven’t started the process yet? Why doesn’t the Town say ‘start the process and we can discuss extending your time allowed in the trailer’?

This is an odd situation, but the article doesn’t go into enough details for us to get outraged about the Town’s role.

I don’t disagree - not being able to meet the minimum amount agreed on is not sufficient as a country.

But reading the article, it seems those in the actual combined defense meetings between Canada and the US have not commented or raised to the Canadian side their lack of funding. Additionally, Canada is looking to expand the definition of military spending - not sure how much that would actually change our percentage though.

And to call our military a joke isn’t really valid - we do spend a shit ton of money on military. Not anywhere near the US, but we can’t compare ourselves to the worldwide military superpower with 10x our population and 11x our GDP. Canada still places in at 6th in the NATO countries on raw dollar spending.

One of the bigger problems is the failure of the construction industry as a whole. Compared to many other jobs, typical home builder trades (carpenter, roofer, brick layer) aren’t competitive with white collar jobs.

-The hours through the summer are awful, with 16+ hour days being the norm. Then you hit the winter and are laid off and have to go on EI. If you’re not good at budgeting, that swing can fuck up your finances.

-Work is physically demanding and often leaves you going home, eating, and sleeping to repeat the next day

-Pay is highly dependent on your company. Many only offer you an hourly rate while on site and working. Commuting (which can vary from a half hour to 2+hrs each way per day) is either on your own dime or at a discounted “travel” rate.

-Often people have a hard time starting an apprenticeship even if they’re great workers with the education requirement done. The boss won’t fill out the paperwork and actually teach the stuff they’re supposed to, just using them as cheap/subsidized grunt labour.

-Bosses and the culture is awful. There are likely those who don’t mind it, and there are companies which are better, but by and large my experience with various trades is highly misogynistic, dashes of racism, and lots or brash yelling instead of actual instruction. Communication is awful, and new workers are treated like shit to “earn their way in”/“do their time”.

So it’s hardly a surprise when there’s less interest in trades/manual labour, especially when the pay is good, but not great.

I hate the “turn to the government”/why didn’t anyone foresee this and subsidize the training that these articles often have. Sure, a portion of it is that. But a larger portion is the last 30 years of “Go to University to get a good job” that parents and schools have been pushing, plus a general unwillingness of the construction industry to improve their culture or increase wages to attract good workers/talent.

I feel like even if they had just prioritized the rail line growth in the early 2000s we’d be fine. Barrie is just starting to get their second line so there can be two way trains all day. All of the other Toronto suburbs need to have dedicated rail service accompanied by densification near those stations.

Did you read the article? Unless I’m missing something, this was always a temporary setup (4-6 wks) for them to get settled. It’s now ending, which means we’ll have to take fewer, or just use the federal 2wk program, which is less than ideal.

I’ve been playing the early release Furthest Frontier which has been good. Not buggy for me, though it is lacking a decent endgame IMO.

Age of Empires is a pretty standard one, though more war focused than exploration/growth.

I’ve played They are Billions and it’s pretty good, though general online consensus is that the campaign is entirely unforgiving if you use your upgrade points in an unoptimized way, but is otherwise good. The one offs are fun and overall a well designed game.

On a smaller scale, This War of Mine is a really good game, though not quite a full colony sim it hits the same itch for me and has a lot of stark and rough choices.

Ehh, reading the article makes it clear that the farmer fucked up.

Best case, he gave it a thumbs up to show he read it and then forgot to ever follow up or reject the contract. However it seems like he had previously accepted and executed contracts via text, which reduces this likelihood.

Worst case, he did the thumbs up to show he agreed to it, and now is trying to back out either because he can’t make the deadline, or because the price of it has shot up.

Neither case is great for the farmer. Contracts can be made from whatever form - verbal contracts are perfectly acceptable, so I’m not sure why people are freaking out about this. If he had said “Agreed”, or “yes” in response to the text then that would be taken as confirmation of the contract too.

So background - Civil engineer with ~5Years of experience. Now fully licensed in Ontario. Have a wife and expecting our first child this year.

My FIL is dual and has been harping on me to move there since I graduated. Pay is, on average, much higher. Current 85k CAD, likely 100-120k USD if I moved.

However as a P. eng I’d need to rewrite two massive technical exams before I’d be able to be licensed there, and not all states have reciprocal licenses, meaning if we moved in the states I may have to rewrite them again. Additionally, with a family, average insurance costs eat up all/most of the difference in salary - my FIL is C-suite executive and that’s roughly what he paid for his insurance yearly between co-pays and premiums.

Then add on more tribalism, high prevalence of guns, and the generally huge wealthy disparity they get, and Ive decided it’s not worth the move.

But weigh the factors for yourself. If you can, try to go work somewhere for a month or so to see how it feels

I’ve got the 2021 Kona EV and while you do lose range in the winter, it’s more like 100km/450km. That’s with intense grip heavy winter tires and the heater running. In Ontario, so regularly ran it with -35c temps. It’s cold and you lose some range, but not 400miles out of a 700mile range

Tl;Dr: Labour talks fall apart. Business owners turn to government saying “please force them back, look at how much money they bring in”.

Well shit man, if it was me and they were bringing in that much money, seems like you’d be more willing to negotiate. There was no claims of unreasonable demands in the article, which makes me think they werent crazy