Lol, I’ve picked a terrible time to build a homelab. I decided to bite the bullet on the RAM, and now HDDs might suffer the same fate by the time I’m ready to stock up.

Giant stadium style human writing that can be seen from a helicopter perhaps?

I’m not advocating for a system with infinite growth. I don’t disagree with your first point, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a country having a stagnant or declining population, but that’s an over simplification. You need to look at the demographics. When more people are retired and drawing on services than there are people to work and pay for those services, that isn’t sustainable. If you need more care homes for the elderly, than you need more people that work at care homes, for example.

If the housing prices are what they are now, with the current supply and demand, how would stopping new immigration cause a crash in housing prices? The aricle we’re commenting under says that 1/5 of construction workers are immigrants. Would you want to stop bringing in more construction workers to build housing given the current crisis? Like I said before, immigration policy is complicated and needs to be nuanced and strategic, it isn’t an all or nothing situation.

I’d say that’s a fair assessment of things. No worries, I’m happy to get more context on matters I should be better informed on.

As I understand it, immigration is always a balancing act. We have a demographic problem in Canada. As more boomers retire there needs to be workers to take their place and pay taxes to fund services. Many critical industries are experiencing a labour shortage and those jobs need to be filled. Their isn’t enough young Canadian citizens to accomplish this. Immigration can’t just be stopped.

More immigrants will put pressure on the housing market, but the lack of housing is the result of decades of government complacency, as well as support for Canadian housing as an investment vehicle. The amount of houses/housing we need right now is huge. So huge that the current amount of construction workers in Canada cannot build it quickly enough. Immigrant workers will be needed. Undoing the decades of damage done to housing in Canada will take a sustained, long term, and bold effort. Does the current government have the will for that? I’m not super hopeful. Politicians have vested interests in keeping the housing market ‘strong’. I hate to be fatalist, but even if the government does everything right, I don’t expect the cost of housing to decrease any in the medium term.

Unfortunately, I don’t have answers, besides the obvious that immigration policy needs to be nuanced and strategic.

That’s my view of things anyway. I invite anyone to criticise and share knowledge on the subject.

Saving this

Windows is becoming more of a shit show everyday, comically so. Glad I finally installed Linux Mint today. I’ve used Windows exclusively up until now and just quit cold turkey, putting Mint on my daily driver. I was hesitant to upend my computer habits by swapping OS, but I should have done this ages ago. I’m sure I’ll run into some kind of issue sooner than later, but I’ll take a technical problem over one manufactured by a corporation’s greed any day.

PowerToys is so useful. It’s the main thing I will miss if I ever switch to Linux. I’m sure there is software to replace most of the functionality on Linux, but I’ve yet to get the motivation to look into it.

Thanks for all the info. That’s a generous offer too. Take care!

On the point about why they didn’t use cows instead of humans as an energy source. I think I’ve read that in the original conception of the Matrix, the humans’ brains were meant to be used for computation for the machines, rather than the humans being energy sources. This was changed since computers were new to the general public in 1999 and it was believed the concept would be too confusing.

That’s interesting, thanks for that explanantion. I definitely feel like being glued to my desk is something I’d like to avoid.

Maybe I’ll consider moving to Germany now, that could be a whole other adventure.

Thanks for the advice. If I change directions I’m leaning towards something in the realm of IT or electronics technician work. I’d like something with some sort of physical or at least hands on component, or something gameified like you deacribe with closing tickets.

Thanks for the reply, that’s interesting. I’ve been on some construction sites and scaffolders definitely earn their pay. From experience, I think work with a physical component is easier to stay focused on, at least for me.

Could you share what that trade is, even vaguely? I’m curious what kind of job might be suited for someone with ADHD symptoms. I feel it might help me choose a career. No worries if not, and have a good one!

I’m fairly new to the fediverse, but I see it this way. If Threads integrates with the Fediverse then users will become accustomed to the content from Threads, which could cause more friction in the future if there’s a movement to defederate from Threads. I think it would just be easier to avoid all that in the first place. I also feel like if anyone really wants to see Threads content they could make an account there, and then everyone gets what they want. Then there’s all the downsides others are theorizing could happen, but they can’t be comfirmed until Threads actually joins the Fediverse.