Skip Navigation
How Legalism Empowers Populism
  • There's legalism, and then there's legalism. There are intricate and restrictive laws that make it impossible for people to get both good and bad things done, and then there are intricate and restrictive traditions that form the basis for our system of government by keeping parliament from ending up with only the power to put a rubber stamp on whatever diktats came out of the PMO this week. Putting Poilievre and Trudeau so near the opposite extremes of your scale leaves very little room for anyone more legalistic or more autocratic than them.

  • Canada dropped the Digital Services Tax because of dairy supply management
  • Perhaps the prime minister could take a moment out of his busy schedule to tell us what the fuck he was thinking if it's anything other than "we're absolutely desperate to make a deal and have no choice but to give them whatever they want."

  • No really, why are groceries so expensive now?
  • In Canada I assume the vast majority of the increase goes to corporate profits because that's what our economy seems designed to maximise, but it's also worth noting that world food prices are back up to levels not seen since the 1970s: https://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/

  • Linux suffers from a lot of unaddressed security problems.
  • Worst of all, root access is often granted to humans — a species known to be vulnerable to the most idiotic phishing scams you could imagine.

  • Which Distros Are Doing Best Currently?
  • Debian is still the best at being Debian. I rate it the least likely to give me any unpleasant surprises.

  • What to do with too many raspberries and strawberries?
  • Yeah making jam is quite easy. Basically just add some sugar and pectin and put it on the stove until it's jam.

    Otherwise, put them in the freezer.

  • Wine 10.11 Makes More Preparations For NTSYNC Support
  • It's nice to have ntsync, I've been using it for a few weeks. Knowing that the thread sync api is solid means one less thing to worry about when debugging modded skyrim.

  • Employees at Palantir probably don't like the idea of having their personal data harvested. But they are quite enthusiastic about collecting yours.
  • I assume they do sometimes have feelings but it's pretty hard to imagine how people who'd agree to work for Palantir would feel about literally anything other than being highly paid which they presumably enjoy.

  • 'Orwellian': Louisiana redefines natural gas — a planet-warming fossil fuel — as green energy
  • People in 2032: "Weren't we supposed to give up fossil fuels? I can't believe we're still using cleangreen comfygas."

  • Zohran Mamdani’s victory should be a wake-up call to Canadian progressives
  • Singh wants price controls on food. Mamdani wants publicly-owned grocery stores. They are not the same.

  • Federal Liberals reintroduce cybersecurity bill meant to protect critical infrastructure
  • Oh right, this one which the previous government had the decency to abandon after everyone pointed out the problems: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d64e0f63-70d4-46ac-b9e4-709547d6c438

    The bill allows the federal government to "secretly order telecom providers" to "do anything or refrain from doing anything… necessary to secure the Canadian telecommunications system"

  • HDMI 2.2 interface finalised with 4K at 480 Hz and 12K at 120 Hz support, but you're going to need a new cable
  • I don't know, there's just something about it.

    For a long time we had VGA for video cables. There was no VGA version 2.1.9, now supporting 1024x768 mode with 16-bit colour. Cables did not cost $29. There were no rent-seeking patent holders charging license fees, or at least they weren't obnoxious enough that we knew about them. It didn't have five different types of connectors. There was no VGA consortium constantly keeping itself in the news with periodic press releases. Companies didn't need to sign away their soul to write drivers for it. There was no VGA copy protection trying to keep us from decoding our own video streams. Cables didn't include enough microelectronics to power a space shuttle.

    Somehow I think we could do better.

  • What is your up- & downvote behaviour?
  • I have only one strict rule: I see the Moomin comic, I upvote it.

  • Woman charged with unintentional arson after cigarette allegedly started fire on Greek Island
  • arson, n. The crime of deliberately starting a fire with intent to cause damage.

    The dictionary confirms my understanding that "unintentional arson" is a contradiction in terms. We must therefore find the defendant not guilty.

  • Prague is an Absolute Nightmare
  • If you're only going to watch one video this week about urban planning in Prague, this one is a fine choice.

  • Mod managers for Linux?
  • Mostly I just install Skyrim mods manually because I'm insane I guess, but for some games I like to run Mod Organizer 2 under proton. Your whole linux filesystem can be made accessible to windows programs, not sure if it is by default. But anyway since we're talking steam games here the game itself normally will be in the same place as usual, as far as windows programs know.

  • Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
  • Your other doubts and concerns seem slightly biased, e.g. wondering what settings could be tweaked on only one of the systems being tested and then reminding us all that there do still exist some things that won't run on SteamOS. It's only that one that is outright ridiculous.

  • Cyberastrology: The theory that if you know the exact network conditions at the time someone first connected to the Internet, such as ping times to the major servers of the cyberzodiac, you can

    Cyberastrology: The theory that if you know the exact network conditions at the time someone first connected to the Internet, such as ping times to the major servers of the cyberzodiac, you can predict their future.

    10
    pencanada.ca Joint Call for the Withdrawal of Bill C-2

    PEN Canada joins 39 organizations and 132 individuals in a joint letter demanding a complete withdrawal of Bill C-2. The following letter was sent this week to Canadian authorities…

    Joint Call for the Withdrawal of Bill C-2
    0
    Unspoken Implications: A Preliminary Analysis of Bill C-2 and Canada’s Potential Data-Sharing Obligations Towards the United States and Other Countries
    citizenlab.ca Unspoken Implications: A Preliminary Analysis of Bill C-2 and Canada’s Potential Data-Sharing Obligations Towards the United States and Other Countries - The Citizen Lab

    On June 3, 2025, the Canadian government tabled Bill C-2, omnibus legislation that, if passed, would introduce a wide array of new federal agency and law enforcement powers, and would significantly reform substantive and due process laws in Canada for migrants and asylum seekers. Our preliminary ana...

    Unspoken Implications: A Preliminary Analysis of Bill C-2 and Canada’s Potential Data-Sharing Obligations Towards the United States and Other Countries - The Citizen Lab
    2
    30 years ago somebody told me their opinion about "Changes" but I didn't know what Changes was. I just remembered to look it up, and according to Wikipedia it could've been any of about 50 things.

    30 years ago somebody told me their opinion about "Changes" but I didn't know what Changes was. I just remembered to look it up, and according to Wikipedia it could've been any of about 50 things.

    10
    Browsers should probably just stop sending user-agent header at all, ideally.

    Browsers should probably just stop sending user-agent header at all, ideally.

    If anyone else was wondering why some websites and the "Alternate Player for Twitch.tv" extension stopped working in the latest Librewolf update, it's because they changed the userAgent string from Firefox to LibreWolf and way too much shitty code is confused by it looking like firefox but then not being firefox.

    9
    Justin Ling: While everyone focuses on Carney and Poilievre, some of the election’s most interesting ideas are coming from [The Green Party of Canada]
    www.thestar.com Justin Ling: While everyone focuses on Carney and Poilievre, some of the election’s most interesting ideas are coming from an unlikely place

    The Green Party have often been cast as a protest vote, or as a refuge for idealists. That is now changing.

    Justin Ling: While everyone focuses on Carney and Poilievre, some of the election’s most interesting ideas are coming from an unlikely place

    > > > Even before the election was called, the Greens unveiled their plan to counter the global and domestic challenges posed by Donald Trump’s chaotic government. It’s chock full of good ideas, including many you wouldn’t normally expect: Improving the east-west energy grid to beef up national energy sovereignty; ramping up domestic artillery production; the stoppage of observing U.S-imposed intellectual property laws; and integrating more closely with the European, Australian, and Ukrainian defence industries. > >

    1
    Well I decided to upgrade to Debian testing last night on my desktop here, just for fun. It seems fine.

    Well I decided to upgrade to Debian testing last night on my desktop here, just for fun. It seems fine.

    Xfce4-screensaver wasn't in bullseye so I had an old locally compiled version installed, which may have been the cause of some video problems. Replaced with the debian build.

    A broken bash completion script I had removed came back and was annoying until I remembered what I'd done.

    Old searx install didn't work, neither did latest searxng install script from git. Too many python errors for me, so I gave up and ran the docker container instead. That was the only frustrating part.

    Skyrim runs more smoothly and amdgpu hasn't crashed yet. It had been getting bad lately, locking up during video playback sometimes (maybe once a week) in the past month or two. I think perhaps running the newest kernels with the old mesa was a bad combination.

    I ran out of disk space on the EFI partition during install, but it recovered no problem.

    Other than that no problems so far.

    0
    Trump cuts target world-leading greenhouse gas observatory in Hawaii

    They're talking about closing the main support office for the Mauna Loa Observatory — which is "recognised as the birthplace of global carbon dioxide monitoring and maintains the world's longest record of measurements of atmospheric CO2."

    1
    a new Community Shaders version appears
    www.nexusmods.com Community Shaders

    Open-source SKSE core plugin for community-driven advanced graphics modifications for AE, SE and VR.

    Community Shaders

    Changelog once again didn't make it to nexus but it looks fairly substantial.

    2
    More carbon dioxide in oceans could harm carbon-eating microbes

    The carbon dioxide (CO2) spewing from human activities is not only changing Earth’s atmosphere, it’s also rapidly acidifying the planet’s oceans. In 50 years, that acidification could reduce the oceans’ ability to absorb CO2 by 10% as it takes a toll on phytoplankton

    ... Nevertheless, it’s still too early to conclude that the projected declines in phytoplankton will inevitably reduce CO2 uptake by the world’s oceans, Church and others caution. It’s still possible the declines could be offset by higher plankton growth rates at high latitudes and other global processes involved in carbon cycling. However, Church says, “It certainly doesn’t help.”

    0
    Are we selling your data? Who can say, really? What does "selling" even mean? We'll just need you to agree to new some terms of use to be sure we can get away with whatever it is we'll be doing. Don't

    Are we selling your data? Who can say, really? What does "selling" even mean? We'll just need you to agree to new some terms of use to be sure we can get away with whatever it is we'll be doing. Don't worry about it!

    #firefox

    1
    Canada-U.S. Cross-Border Surveillance Negotiations Raise Constitutional and Human Rights Whirlwind under U.S. CLOUD Act
    citizenlab.ca Canada-U.S. Cross-Border Surveillance Negotiations Raise Constitutional and Human Rights Whirlwind under U.S. CLOUD Act - The Citizen Lab

    Legal researchers Cynthia Khoo and Kate Robertson warn that a Canada-U.S. CLOUD agreement would extend the reach of U.S. law enforcement into Canada’s digital terrain to an unprecedented extent, and that if signed, this agreement would effectively allow U.S. police to demand personal data directly f...

    Canada-U.S. Cross-Border Surveillance Negotiations Raise Constitutional and Human Rights Whirlwind under U.S. CLOUD Act - The Citizen Lab
    1
    What is going on with loops.video? Once in a while I follow a link to there and it plays the video no problem, on a nice minimalist web page with no distractions... and then I wonder what other videos

    What is going on with loops.video? Once in a while I follow a link to there and it plays the video no problem, on a nice minimalist web page with no distractions... and then I wonder what other videos might exist and there seems to be no way to find out. It just plays that one it started with, looping forever. What am I missing?

    3
    As expected, the long-awaited ntsync has made its way into kernel 6.14.

    As expected, the long-awaited ntsync has made its way into kernel 6.14.

    > ntsync "driver" to handle Windows locking types enabling Wine to work much better on many workloads (i.e. games). The driver framework was in 6.13, but now it's enabled and fully working properly. Should make many SteamOS users happy. Even comes with tests!

    1
    Incursion de Mark Carney et de Chrystia Freeland au Québec

    Meanwhile, in Québec... Carney demonstrates that he can parle français, Freeland goes on Tout le monde en parle.

    0
    If 2024 was the year of "age verification" let's build on this success and make 2025 the year of height verification. We must develop a consensus about where to draw the line, so that we can finally

    If 2024 was the year of "age verification" let's build on this success and make 2025 the year of height verification. We must develop a consensus about where to draw the line, so that we can finally say "you must be at least this tall to use social media."

    3
    If modded Skyrim isn't the best game you ever played, you just need to add more mods. Sometimes they combine in ways that are better than expected. Today's discoveries:

    If modded Skyrim isn't the best game you ever played, you just need to add more mods. Sometimes they combine in ways that are better than expected. Today's discoveries:

    1. Walking around at a somewhat normal pace in the game most of the time thanks to "Controller Walk Run Toggle" (speed configured with Autorun) means travel takes long enough that even the relatively mild effect of cold that's the default in Sunhelm becomes significant. It's not seemingly instant like some versions of survival mode, more like you've actually been outside for enough time that it makes sense you'd be feeling the cold.

    My Skyrim time scale is set so there's still enough time to travel pretty far in a day but at one point it was getting dark and I had to think for a moment about how to stay warm that night. Just then the lights at the inn came into view. It felt a lot like it does irl when you're walking in the woods, it's a little longer than expected to get home, and it's getting dark. Peak hiking simulator. Combined with dense forests and combat that's deadly and quick, it feels pretty good.

    1. With the dodge mod I'm using, going into sprint mode by holding the button for a moment toggles from walk to run, as it should. Exiting the sprint by doing a dodge roll doesn't toggle it back, so you're left doing the default Skyrim jogging. But then another dodge roll (if you're out of combat and no weapons drawn) does go back to a walk for some reason. So after a little practice to get used to the sequence you can just use that one button to toggle it, leaving the d-pad button free for other uses.
    15
    kbal kbal @fedia.io

    I'd appreciate it if everyone could just stop burning fossil fuels, please. Thank you for your cooperation.

    Posts 57
    Comments 1.7K