Victor Villas

some (strongly) believe they should be wiped off the earth. Why?

I don’t know if you’ll find devil advocates willing to entertain such a hyperbolic frame of reference.

There are people out there who also think that Arabs should be wiped off the earth, but I don’t think it’s worth asking why. Makes more sense to shun those people off than giving them space for discourse.

That’s how you end up with Fascism

It really wasn’t how we ended up with fascism in the actual instance of fascism so…

they are called coops

No they are not.

Of course coops exist in Canada but it’s not the same thing

That’s fair, though I also think it’s fair to criticize the use of BMI and acknowledge all of its flaws. Perhaps mr givesofmefucks is just stating this position but with harsher wording.

So you also agree that studies point that BMI doesn’t work very well in diagnostics? Because you’re replying the statement with a boldened sentence agreeing with gp.

Or perhaps was the point that it’s not true that “it doesn’t really mean shit now” since the BMI still has some usefulness at the population level?

BMI is a somewhat valid indicator of health for most members of society, which makes it a reasonable population health metric.

That’s a half truth to some extent. Muscle mass isn’t the only thing that fumbles the BMI math. The calculation is also notoriously less useful for women in general, and for black/latino women specifically even more misrepresentative. And even outside those groups BMI isn’t really a “reasonable” health metric by today’s standards. But it ins’t totally useless either, so I guess it depends on what we mean with “reasonable”.

I’m with you aspirationally but this is just a beaverton benign joke on language purists, nothing to be so angry about

Indeed I don’t disagree, I think it’s worth experimenting with this and driving fines look like a good place to start

I’m in agreement that we need systemic solutions, and those involve improving road design, so we agree for the most part on the most important aspect of this.

punishing people for being successful.

But issuing bigger fines for breaking the law is very, VERY far from punishing people for being successful. It’s a correction of an unfortunate truth: if you’re wealthy, you can afford to drive recklessly.

What does the top speed of a car has to do with how safe it is to go 10 km/h over the posted speed limit?

So let’s push for that instead of pushing to remove cameras. In fact, proportional fines would probably increase the revenue, which would bring the funds to improve the road design so folks don’t get the wrong impression of the speed they’re supposed to be in. Also let’s push for better transit so poor people are not forced to drive and risk getting fined.

doesn’t feel fair

Why? Why does it feel unfair to follow the speed limit?

If only we had real world data showing that there are several examples of speed cameras having a positive effect on driver behavior… Even if it was “just a cash grab”, it’s still a productive thing to do, as it can be used to fund the infrastructure changes of actually designing roads to their desired speeds.

poor people

a sports car that can go like 100 in second gear

lmao ok

JFC, a new low for The Walrus.

I donate monthly, but will pause my donations for the rest of the year and I sent them an email explaining why. I hope this partnership costs them dearly, though of I course I hope they survive it and learn the right thing from this.

Maybe some day in the distant future our policy-makers will understand that updating a few signs doesn’t make a damn difference.

Yes it does, even if compliance is low, and the reason is what you yourself is saying

You need physical speed reduction methods such as speedbumps, roundabouts, raised crosswalks, etc.

Traffic engineers won’t do these road diets on 50km/h streets. Changing the speed limit is an important first step that enables further changes to road infrastructure to help enforce the updated speed limits. This sweeping change is a MAJOR victory, that has been argued for many years. That we were able to pass this for so many neighbourhoods at once is great news and should be celebrated.

This was discussed at length during the council meeting, including later in the same day where another vote was passed to update the commitments and plans for the municipal Vision Zero initiative, which are in fact going to require infrastructure projects.

Sometimes, though I have been prioritizing CBC originals lately I’m still finishing Handmaids Tale

I don’t really think cloud compute is a social good deserving of a government agency to be honest. I think the government should build out its datacenters and use it to build stuff, like a federal instant payment system that replaces Interac. But I don’t really buy the argument that the government should bother to sell some of its capacity.

Whatever the government tries to sell here is going to be akin to IBM Cloud platform. It’s going to be clunky, evolve slowly, with lame support. No sane business should choose that. It makes more sense to pick a non-US company with Canadian-located datacenters. Who should choose a slowly moving bureaucratic provider? The government itself. So just keep it private.

Wouldn’t they just move their money over a place that would hide it?

Moving the money shouldn’t make a difference, though. You pay taxes regardless of where you the money comes from or goes to.

Hiding income is illegal already. So more enforcement and steeper fines are about the only things left to do in that case.

Evidence really is sparse. Nonexistent, even

You might be reading too much into what I wrote. Saying it’s a pointless discourse is not the same as saying that I believe a peaceful resolution is forever impossible.