Half of Canadians under 55 fear for their jobs if recession hits - "The last time fear of job loss was this high was during the beginning of the second year of the pandemic... CIBC senior economist Andrew Grantham said the volume of spending in this country, on a per-person basis, is well below pre-pandemic levels and nearing levels seen only in recessions... two-in-five of those surveyed say they don’t contribute to a TFSA or an RRSP because “they don’t have enough to save,” despite being in the prime of their working lives."
Inmate secretly hacked jail TV system to watch porn in prison - "An inmate at a Norwegian prison has been caught hacking the jail’s prison system so he could watch pornography. The hack enabled him to secretly watch and share pornographic films, and send private messages to fellow prisoners at Halden prison. The Local Norway reports Jan StrØmnes, a prison officer, said the hack was uncovered after prison authorities noticed a suspicious spike in online data traffic on their system as well as unexplained errors with TV sets."
Pubity on X - "🅿️| I heard my mom asking our neighbor for some salt. We had salt at home so I asked her why she was asking. She told me, "They don't have much money and they sometimes ask us for things. So I asked for something small that wouldn't burden them. I want them to feel as if we needed them too. That way, it will be much easier for them to ask us for anything they need." Anonymous"
Burlington was ranked Ontario's most livable city, do you agree? : BurlingtonON - "Fun fact about Burlington. Our biggest tourism draw by a landslide is Ikea. Source: Used to work with Tourism Burlington and was surprised to find it out in a meeting."
Ralkana's Ramblings... - "i love the french, i love the way they pronounce Rs like they’re disgusted with them"
"the english meanwhile seem to have developed some sort of phobia about them"
"When we were discussing the surgery I’d need for my sleep apnea, the surgeon told me I’d never be able to speak French properly because the French R is a uvular sound and I’d no longer have a uvula. … that’s okay? I’m not French? I don’t speak French? I’ve always thought it was the weirdest thing for him to say!"
Bruce Pardy: Rosalie Abella was shameless in making up the law and mainstreaming judicial activism - "Abella was by no means the first or only activist judge at the Supreme Court. She distinguished herself not in holding the conviction that the court knows best, but in her breathtaking shamelessness in putting it into effect. She has been explicit that the buck stops with the court on fashioning social policy. The court’s job, she told Wells, is to do the right thing when politicians won’t. In a 2018 speech in Jerusalem, later published as a column in the Globe and Mail, Abella said that supreme courts must be independent because they are “the final adjudicator(s) of which contested values in a society should triumph.” It was not always thus. Once upon a time, courts were to apply the law but not to make it. Legislatures, not courts, decided social policy since legislatures were elected and had democratic legitimacy. If legislation comported with the division of powers between the provinces and the federal government, courts generally applied it according to its terms. Justice Brian Dickson, later the Supreme Court’s chief justice, in a 1978 decision, rejected the notion that the court should weigh political and socio-economic issues, which would necessarily reflect judges’ personal beliefs. He cited U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo, who wrote in 1921 that a judge “is not to innovate at pleasure. He is not a knight errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.” Some judges still believe in this principle... Our chattering classes largely disagree. In the present era of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, amongst lawyers, academics, mainstream journalists, and social activists, judicial supremacy is now perceived as the natural order of things. Politicians and legislatures are a source of mischief. Courts are there to put things right, bring wisdom to social problems, and achieve equity. The Ontario government’s recent announcement that it would reintroduce legislation to restrict third-party campaign spending using the charter’s notwithstanding clause was met with outrage, not because the law limited freedom of speech — other laws limit freedom of speech that the intelligentsia care little about — but because a court had said the law limited freedom of speech and violated the charter. Abella has been a leading advocate for the “living tree” doctrine of constitutional interpretation, which for decades has given judicial licence to interpret the Constitution “in a manner that is sensitive to evolving circumstances” (which means, we’ll do as we think best) rather than determining meaning based primarily on the words of the text. Perhaps appropriately, the living tree itself is a product of creative misinterpretation. It is said to come from the “Persons Case” decided by the Privy Council in 1929 that held women were eligible for appointment to the Senate under the Constitution Act, 1867. However, the decision itself contains no “doctrine” or endorsement of flexible constitutional interpretation at all... The doctrine that allows for creative misinterpretation of the constitution is the product of creative misinterpretation of the caselaw. It’s all made up. Consequences are easy to find but difficult to catalog. Some examples: the court said in 1993 that the charter does not include the right to assisted suicide, but in 2015 decided that it does"
Rolf Degen on X - "Journalists are twice as likely to be living in precarious conditions as the average member of the working population."
Acutely Precarious? Detecting Objective Precarity in Journalism - "Journalism often gets described as a profession of precarity. However, there is a lack of quantitative research on the topic, since the question remains open, how many journalists actually work under precarious conditions. This paper offers a systematic empirical approach to the phenomenon of precarity by identifying the objective precarious in journalism. Looking at three key parameters of precarity research on the substantial level, contractual level and legal-institutional level, the study can be seen as the first attempt to measure precarity in journalism. Based on the analysis of previous research on precarity in journalism and a literature review of the sociology of work, an operationalization of precarity in journalistic employment was developed and applied to a sample of an online survey of professional journalists in Germany (n = 861). The intensity of precarity was measured in three groups, classifying a quarter of the respondents as acutely precarious. Findings demonstrate that journalists’ precarious status is related to factors like age, gender, employment relationship and media type."
Driver Locked Out of His Car Hilariously Smashes Windshield With Brick, Instead Of Calling A Locksmith - "People lock their own keys in their cars all the time and the quest to retrieve them has led to many creative solutions. Modern cars often come with available remote support that can unlock a car from miles away. One man from Richmond, Canada, with an older Toyota didn’t have that option so he chose a brick through the windshield. Right off the bat let’s clarify that from what we hear in the video, this man probably doesn’t speak English as his first language. That being said, he very likely couldn’t fully understand what the bystanders around him were trying to instruct him to do. Despite that, bashing out one’s own windshield feels like something that most people around the globe would avoid at almost any cost... The cameraman even tells the driver that “there’s mesh in there” (the windshield) and that breaking it won’t work. Instead, he suggests breaking out the rear driver’s side door glass and walks up to the car to point it out so that there’s no confusion due to the language gap. The driver seems determined to break the windshield though and comments that it’s already “broken.”... The cameraman again says that he’d call a tow truck but moments later the brick bashing begins. At that point, the bystanders just do what they can and encourage him to make it all the way through the windshield. One even gives him a bag to allow him to safely put his arm through to get his keys. Of course, the driver accidentally activates the wipers which is comical all by itself. The cameraman makes a great point though. How is he going to see where he’s going now that the windshield is shattered? Evidently, he didn’t think of that."
Crémieux on X - "The clearest sign Republicans aren't playing to win is that when they come to power, they don't even manage to appoint their own people The truth is, there may not be enough Republicans capable of filling those roles, so they're forced to govern hand-in-hand with their opponents"
hotlaps on X - "the hill i will die on: every problem the modern world faces can be traced back to the british"
When you just hate the British
Emil O W Kirkegaard on X - "Among those below 30, support for freedom of speech is a Right-Wing thing. This interaction with age was seen in both UK and US samples."
I still get mocked when I point out the left hate free speech
Spencer Greenberg 🔍 on X - "We Empirically Tested Astrology, And Here's What We Found Many people think that astrology is total bullshit. And yet many others swear by astrology, using it to understand themselves and the world and even buy related products. A YouGov poll found that 32% of Americans at least "somewhat agree" that someone's "astrological sign (e.g., Gemini, Pisces) accurately describes their character and personality traits." While many forms of astrology exist, the simplest formulation (sun sign / zodiac sign) astrology is quite easy to test empirically. So, we decided to put it to the test. We asked 323 people in the U.S. what their zodiac sign is and asked about 37 "life outcomes," including things like political alignment, religiosity, time spent volunteering, suicidal ideation, satisfaction with various areas of their life, BMI, and so on. Then, we trained a linear regression model (Ridge Regression, to be precise) to try to predict each of these 37 life outcomes (one at a time) using each person's zodiac sign (we represent each person by 12 numbers, with a 1 corresponding to their zodiac sign, and a 0 for all the other numbers since people each only have one zodiac sign). As a comparison point, we also measured people's personalities (using a "Big 5" personality test) and used those 5 personality trait scores (extroversion, conscientiousness, etc.) to try to predict these outcomes as well. How did astrology fair when we applied these models to predict life outcomes for new people on whom the model had not been trained? Absolutely horribly - it had no ability to predict the 37 outcomes. Compare this to personality traits, which predicted the outcomes with a reasonable level of accuracy (see the first image below). Varying the parameter of the prediction algorithm (known as "alpha," which tunes to what extent the model avoids overreacting to noise) didn't help either. Astrological sun signs were useless for predicting all 37 outcomes in the sense that making predictions for new people (that the model had not been trained on) was no better using astrological signs than simply predicting the average value for each life outcome (see the second image). So you'd be no more accurate using zodiac signs to predict these life outcomes than simply predicting that every person is exactly average on every outcome. Our results mirror those of OkCupid, which applied its dating compatibility algorithm to every pair of zodiac signs and found no meaningful difference in match scores across any of the pairs (see the third image). Of course, this work we did is only a test of sun sign astrology; it doesn't rule out the possibility that some of the more complex astrological systems work. But some of those systems still have sun signs at their core, so finding no relationships at all between sun signs and life outcomes is evidence against some (but not all) of those other systems working as well."
Diane Yap on X - "You think you can hurt me with mean words? I was raised by an immigrant Asian mother. What she says to me on an average Tuesday is 10x worse than anything you can come up with. I’m invincible."
Emil O W Kirkegaard on X - "What predicts student achievement scores on PISA? Some reseachers had a look. They found that the proxies for genetics (parental variables) and self-rated ability (duh) were the best predictors. Remember the self-esteem movement? It wasn't even significant even in the entire PISA sample."
How to Be Confident—But Not a Narcissist - The Atlantic - "In the ’90s, when I was growing up, self-esteem was treated by adults like a magical invincibility shield. Self-confidence could protect you from all of life’s horrors, the thinking seemed to be. In one excruciating episode, my 10-year-old classmates and I were forced to list qualities we liked about one another as a narcotics officer looked on grimly. Self-esteem would keep us from doing drugs, teachers told us; self-esteem would keep us from having premarital sex. (The first time I had sex with a confident stoner, I was very confused.) In recent years, however, self-esteem’s reputation has soured. Efforts to combat teen pregnancy and drug abuse by building up self-esteem were a flop. The recession happened, and the peppy message of you-can-do-it-ism rang hollow. Certain researchers found that young people were becoming more self-absorbed. All those participation trophies and songs about specialness were, in part, blamed. In working so hard to boost Millennials’ self-esteem, some feared, society actually turned them into entitled narcissists. Some psychology researchers have speculated that narcissism is an inevitable dark side of self-esteem. Narcissists—or people who are arrogant, impulsive, low in empathy, aggressive, and dominant—were thought to be just those who felt too good about themselves. But now self-esteem might be getting a reprieve. New studies hint at the possibility that it and narcissism are fundamentally different personality traits... Self-esteem was associated with one of the two elements of narcissism: narcissistic admiration, or the desire to be loved by others. It was not, however, associated with another element: narcissistic rivalry, or the wish to dominate others... The researchers also found no evidence that higher levels of self-esteem lead to increased narcissism over time... One reason some of those ’90s-era attempts to build self-esteem might have failed, Brummelman speculates, is that they actually did tell kids they were special. The approach inadvertently caused narcissism, not self-esteem... Alas, this matter is not entirely settled. Contrary to this uplifting message, Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist at the University of Queensland, has taken a dimmer view of high self-esteem. He told me via email that a weakness of Cichocka’s study is that the authors used few measures to gauge self-esteem and narcissism. Baumeister said that the sample size was relatively small, and that the average age of the subjects, 40, was a little too old for a study on self-esteem. Typically, kids are the target of self-esteem-boosting efforts... Brummelman, the University of Amsterdam professor, said the trick to increasing your self-esteem without risking becoming a self-obsessed jerk is developing high-quality social relationships"
Azzat Alsalem on X - "Suad Ibrahim Salih is an Egyptian preacher, and Islamic scholar: “it’s allowed to have sexuaI intercourse with animals and corpse of dead wife, it’s legislated by lsIamic scholars.”"
Meme - dumplinmuffin: "Eating a burger and fries with your hands. I just assumed everyone did this. I went to Sweden with my boyfriend and we stopped at a burger joint. Small local place. When the chef heard we were American he immediately wanted us to try a speciality burger he made and tell him what we thought about it. They were all excited when we picked it up with our hands and we realized everyone else in the place was using a fork and knife. Burger was 11/10"
EmeraldFlight: ""AMERICANS! BURGER EXPERTS! FINALLY!""
cheesecake-gnome: "I lived in Poland for a while, and being a big fat American in a small Polish town, I made kind of an impact. There was a burger cart near the old town that I stopped at occasionally, and the owner would freak out every time. "Ah, the American back for my burger, I am so happy!""
'Anansi's Gold' Excerpt: How a Great Ghanaian Con Artist Scammed the World - "Ghanaians love their con men. It’s the national sport. There’s an appreciation for the con, for getting one over on someone, for the sweetener, for kalabule. There have been government crusades against kalabule. One military leader killed people accused of it. But Ghanaians delight in the kind of man who can talk himself out of a bind or into a fortune. (Less so when a woman does it.) In hard times, all you have is your wit, and Ghana has seen a lot of hard times... John Ackah Blay-Miezah was Anansi. His story of Nkrumah’s secret fortune rewrote Ghana’s history and made him fabulously rich. Then it destroyed him. But the story outlived Blay-Miezah. Decades after his death, people are still telling his story and are still hunting for Nkrumah’s gold."
Is it racist to say Ghanaians love con men?
Meme - "LET'S CONSIDER JAMUS LIM'S PROPOSAL
SCAM VICTIMS SHOULD BEAR NO MORE THAN S$100-S$500 OF LOSSES
Financial Institutions and Telcos to bear the rest of the losses
Scammers can collaborate with account holders
Decreased vigilance by consumers
Increased success in scams
Scammers channel money overseas, banks pay account back (-$100/500)
SCAMMERS GAIN
Bank loss
Banks increase cost of their services to cover potential losses (e.g. annual fees, account maintenance fees)
Banks increase difficulty to transact (e.g. more 2FAs and verification, in-person transaction)
Loss of efficiency & time by consumers
CONSUMER LOSS"
Damn greedy financial institutions and telcos!
Why the Gold Standard Is the World's Worst Economic Idea, in 2 Charts - The Atlantic - "The greatest trick Ron Paul ever pulled was convincing the world that the gold standard leads to stable prices... Economics is often a contentious subject, but economists agree about the gold standard -- it is a barbarous relic that belongs in the dustbin of history. As University of Chicago professor Richard Thaler points out, exactly zero economists endorsed the idea in a recent poll. What makes it such an idea non grata? It prevents the central bank from fighting recessions by outsourcing monetary policy decisions to how much gold we have -- which, in turn, depends on our trade balance and on how much of the shiny rock we can dig up. When we peg the dollar to gold we have to raise interest rates when gold is scarce, regardless of the state of the economy. This policy inflexibility was the major cause of the Great Depression, as governments were forced to tighten policy at the worst possible moment. It's no coincidence that the sooner a country abandoned the gold standard, the sooner it began recovering. Why would anyone want to go back to the bad old days? The gold standard limited central banks from printing money when economies needed central banks to print money, and limited governments from running deficits when economies needed governments to run deficits. It was a devilish device for turning recessions into depressions. The answer is that some people aren't worried about depressions. Some people are worried about inflation. Even when none exists. To them, these fetters are the feature, not a bug. It's a simple idea. If governments can't print or spend too much money, prices should be stable. Simple, but wrong. Consider the chart below, which shows headline CPI inflation under the gold standard from June 1919 to March 1933*. Not exactly an, ahem, golden age of price stability. The gold standard should guarantee price stability in the long run, but you know what they say about the long run -- we're all dead. In the short run, prices can change violently under the gold standard, as the balance of trade changes or the physical stock of gold changes. Remember, price stability isn't just about avoiding inflation; it's about avoiding deflation too. The gold standard wasn't good at either -- especially compared to our modern inflation-targeting system... There's been 23 times less variance in prices since the Fed started quantitative easing than there was under the gold standard... The gold standard is a solution in search of a problem. Actually, it's worse than that. It's a problem in search of a problem. Prices would have to fall a great deal if we adopted the gold standard today. In other words, it would turn the imagined problem of price stability into a real problem of price stability. And, of course, this ensuing deflation would send the economy into a death spiral due to still high levels of household debt."
A lot of (mainly) Americans still love the gold standard so much. Probably because they hate their government. Ironically, they also hate inflation
The “Need for Chaos” and Motivations to Share Hostile Political Rumors - "Why are some people motivated to circulate hostile political information? While prior studies have focused on partisan motivations, we demonstrate that some individuals circulate hostile rumors because they wish to unleash chaos to “burn down” the entire political order in the hope they gain status in the process. To understand this psychology, we theorize and measure a novel psychological state, the Need for Chaos, emerging in an interplay of social marginalization and status-oriented personalities. Across eight studies of individuals living in the United States, we show that this need is a strong predictor of motivations to share hostile political rumors, even after accounting for partisan motivations, and can help illuminate differences and commonalities in the frustrations of both historically privileged and marginalized groups. To stem the tide of hostility on social media, the present findings suggest that real-world policy solutions are needed to address social frustrations in the United States."
When life is too good, people get bored and want to stir shit and destroy the system. This can explain why so many people in rich Western countries want to destroy capitalism
Disclose.tv on X - "NEW - Ursula von der Leyen wants to "drive global collaboration" to tackle "misinformation and disinformation" and "polarization.""
Scott Adams on X - "I propose a new standard for "misinformation and disinformation." How about we agree that anyone not willing to debate the other side in public -- or at least describe the other side of the debate fairly -- is assumed to be lying. For example, wouldn't you like to see the counterpoint to this monster's point of view?"
I'm sure calling claims you disapprove of "misinformation and disinformation" isn't "polarization."
Why Toronto’s new grads are fleeing the city - "More than 40 per cent of Ontario post-secondary graduates are considering leaving the province due to the affordability crisis, according to a new survey from the Ontario Real Estate Association. Some economists believe the affordability crisis is now taking precedence over job prospects as to where new graduates decide to start their working life. That can have dire consequence for a pricey city like Toronto — as new graduates establish their careers elsewhere, they’re less likely to move back and actively contribute to the local economy... “I want to help Toronto become the city I know it can be,” Thompson said. “But it’s stagnating and not keeping up with the demands, whether that’s transportation, housing, or amenities. It feels like the city is refusing to grow. You go around the world to other cities and realize Toronto is losing its competitive edge.”... “I much prefer my life in Windsor. My cost of living is cheaper. I get groceries and gas across the border where I pay 20 to 30 per cent less than in Toronto,” she said. “After COVID things have taken a turn for the worse in Toronto. Paying $2,500 for rent isn’t worth it at all. I wouldn’t be able to afford food or have fun in it. What’s the point of living in a city like Toronto if most of your income goes toward rent?” It’s this question that Gherson is most concerned about — if Toronto becomes too expensive will the cultural amenities even matter? Toronto, which used to be an affordable city, meant people could enjoy the entertainment and vibrant cultural life not offered elsewhere in Canada, he said."
Meme - "one time i got tied up and duct taped into a corner while watched my bf fuck a twink and he mocked me the entire time saying the twink's asshole was tighter than mine"
Meme - "I LEFT MY TEDDY IN MY ROOM AND THE HOUSEKEEPER DID THIS? *Teddy bear relaxing*"
"100% would tip"
Meme - Norman Osbourne: "I hate spiders."
"Arachnophobic huh. you must secretly want to fuck spiders"
To Spider-Gwen: "..GWEN? GWEN... IT--IT IS YOU. ISN'T IT? OH MY-- I'D HEARD RUMORS, OF COURSE, BUT EVEN STILL--TO ACTUALLY SEE YOU. TO BE NEAR YOU. WELL, IT'S, FORGIVE ME, IT'S JUST ALL A BIT... INTOXICATING"
Meme - "GUYS WILL SEE THIS AND JUST SAY "HELL YEAH"
Helmets. Their kinds and development during the centuries"
Windows Phone gets revenge on YouTube from the grave by helping users bypass its ad-blocker-blocker - "By switching your user agent on your web browser to Windows Phone you can bypass this pop-up."
German word of the day: Lüften - "Lüften can be a verb or noun in Germany. As a noun it uses the 'das' article and stands for ventilation. The verb lüften means to air out something. It comes from the German word die Luft which means air. The proper airing out of rooms is a very German thing. Hell, it's a way of life. Just check your rent contract. Foreigners in Germany are often surprised to find that ventilating their homes is usually written into their contract and accompanied by instructions. That means it's literally legally binding!... The aim of all this lüften is to stop mould from forming, get rid of smells and to stop rooms from getting too humid. The more people that live in your home, the more airing out you'll have to do. Germans recommend that you turn off your heating while airing out your room (to save on money and to protect the climate) - so be sure to have a big jumper on if you're airing out in winter... There's a fine line between airing out a room and creating a draught, as anyone who's experienced the wrath of a German who fear the Durchzug. Lots of Germans, especially those from older generations, believe that a draught of air or Durchzug will give you a virus like the cold or flu, or a stiff neck. It results in windows being slammed shut on trains (even when it feels like 100C inside) and an unwillingness to install air conditioning or have cooling fans or windows open for a long period of time. It also might be one of the reasons why German people really love wearing scarfs – even when it's not that cold – to stop cold air from invading their neck. And Germany is not the only country where people are worried about this. There's a similar air draught phenomenon in Spain, for example. As non-Germans at The Local, we're not 100 percent sure what counts as Durchzug and what is healthy Lüften. I guess we'll just have to rely on our German friends to keep us right."
Good luck for climate change - where the "solution" is to get people to live in smaller houses
