For Lemmings from other areas, it doesn’t read like a warning, exactly, but in the context of what the Alberta government has been doing it kind of is.

This government has blown up one Calgary transport plan already (they’re literally building two halves that don’t reach downtown now), so that may or may not be wise. Cities don’t really have constitutional protections in Canada or Alberta.

Yes it would. Looking back I think the time machine wouldn’t buy us more than those few years, though. The things that made it accessible, fun and (sometimes artificially, unnaturally) useful were the exact same things that made it easy to repurpose into the monstrosity it gradually became.

The Wild West period was scattered and had shitty accessibility. Companies like Google inevitably arrived to make the process of browsing smoother, but as of 2010 hadn’t started being evil yet. The alternate timeline that doesn’t suck probably would have involved email growing directly into a version of ActivityPub in the 90’s and website dominance being bypassed entirely. (Although ISP struggles would have taken on a whole new dimension)

That’s where I’d go too. It was really the calm before the storm.

Security is a lot better in most respects. Used to be most traffic on the Internet wasn’t encrypted.

This is so true, although I kind of wish I had more time to fully explore the prank potential. The shit I could have convinced people of with a spoofed Wikipedia article…

About which definition of the word to use, or that one possible definition applies?

Honestly good in general if you live in a place that’s sometimes night.

Ah, look at that post history. Openly fascist troll, never mind.

I mean, this is Lemmy, it’s a show about making fun of us.

And honestly I’d respect that if they put effort into it, but “lol nerd” is like 90% of the plot.

Because it’s their money……

So? There’s lots of restrictions on what you can do with your money. Most people agree this is a good thing.

It has also already been taxed.

Kind of the same answer. Governments can legislate whatever they want, including tax number n+1 in addition to the n you paid while alive.

Are you against having a government at all? Do you believe in a certain natural right that would restrict inheritance tax specifically? You came in here with a bombshell take and it feels incomplete without some context, haha.

I was literally in the ER on Tuesday.

You must be in one of the provinces that are on the privatisation slippery slope. Alberta isn’t really yet.

Would a casually non-Japanese character even fly over there? My sense is that they still exoticise everyone else.

We know what authoritarianism is.

Do we? A lot of people think it’s when one guy controls everything. In reality, autocracies have hella internal dynamics and quite often exercise less control than a democracy would over a given thing as a result. There’s also people that think having to take simple measures to avoid spreading plagues is authoritarian, and people who think entirely removing due process isn’t.

To actually answer: It depends on context, because it’s not really an ideology in itself. It can mean opposing existing autocracies, or it can mean opposing more mechanisms of control, perhaps in the fear it will eventually lead to autocracy. Sometimes it just means whoever wants to not have to do anything.

Why?

The “make every company a cooperative” concept has been proposed before. For certain companies it could make sense, but it gets a little tricky when it’s anything that needs significant funds to get off the ground.

Corporations were invented for a reason: it creates a mechanism whereby investors can put money in up front in exchange for a share of possible profits once the venture gets going. For example, that makes it possible to build a billion dollar nuclear reactor with 100 staff people who couldn’t each pay 10 million dollars.

The mechanism that creates billionaires is only sort of related. Elon Musk, for example, built up his wealth through tangential involvement with a series of really successful companies.

Like going to a post office.

You walk in, show your health ID, get treated, then leave.

Edit: Assuming you’re going to a hospital. Family doctor care is similar, although in my province they’re contractors, and it can be hard to find one with an opening for new patients right now.

Oh, I just noticed it wait time was requested. It varies for family doctors; the local one that sucks can pretty much always get you in immediately. I’m with one that needs a couple days notice now, haha.

If you get referred to a specialist it’s a long wait, like many months, and when you do go it’s a human production line coordinated down to the second.

If by personality you mean individual-level differences in behavior, yes, definitely. (It’s old now but it holds up)

I mean, it’d be odd if there was variation like there is in all organisms but it somehow didn’t extend to the brain.

Even wilder, because of the semi-decentralised way an octopus’s central nervous system is set up, it’s been suggested each tentacle might have a personality of it’s own on top of the octopus’s!

My interpretation of what that means is something like “knowledge about how to live well”.

One thing I wish I knew when I was younger is that no matter how smart you are, you’re not that smart. Basically, unless you have a positive argument why someone else hasn’t thought of a thing, they have.

A simple corollary to that is that meritocracy doesn’t exist, which is also why this fact gets played down in public discourse.

Avoiding the famous things…

Tracking mud into someone’s house. The most striking cultural difference is literally just taking your shoes off as a guest.

Alligators, tropical diseases, hurricanes for the most part.

Flag-worship. Which is ironic because tomorrow is Canada Day, but really the US is on a whole other level.

Government deadlock.

Pennies.

Embargoing Cuba.

A pretty long track record of high-quality journalism. Same as the BBC.

Sure, they’re owned by Qatar. As of last I checked it serves as more of a status symbol than a propaganda outlet, though, at least in English.