• 12 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • I think just about anything would be better than what he said.

    I wouldn’t say that it was a different time, or anything about the circles I kept.

    I’d go with:

    Clearly, I was ignorant of the harm my costume could cause. In the seventeen years since that photo, I’ve learned a lot about Canada’s history of racism and how harmful stereotypes further marginalized racialized Canadians. If I had better understood the iniquity that racialized Canadians faced, and continue to face, I never would have engaged in what I now recognize and denounce as a gross and harmful caricature.

    My detractors imply that people can’t change. They’re wrong. People can change, and our town can change. I work hard to make this a thriving, welcoming community and I know that we shouldn’t let anyone distract us from the important work we have to do.



  • I think that the classic objection to rail transit is

    What about the last mile?!

    I think that that objection can be almost entirely adressed (on both ends of the ride) with close integration with [e-]bikes/scooters

    But it gets cold!

    So… pedal?

    But it rains and snows!

    Yes, and we’re Canadians with rain and snow gear.

    What about in a blizzard? Well, what do you do in a blizzard right now? Stay home, or risk getting stuck in the cold right?

    Range and charging!

    Right, but when the battery is flat, it’s still a bicycle…







  • m0darn@lemmy.catoScience Memes@mander.xyzAcademic writing
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    5 days ago

    Not who you’re responding to but I must vehemently disagree. In English, which doesn’t have a centralized governing body, the correct way of pronouncing/spelling something depends on your intention and expected audience. If your intended audience is English speakers then the correct spelling is probably octopi or octopuses, whichever you believe will cause the least confusion/distraction (surely it varies regionally).

    However, usually my intention is to portray my unfathomably superior knowledge and intellect, so the correct spelling/pronunciation in this case is: octopodes (which I think he had listed but ironically got ‘corrected’ to ‘octopuses’).






  • m0darn@lemmy.catoScience Memes@mander.xyzAcademic writing
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    6 days ago

    I don’t read much (/any) academic writing, but does it really misuse words the way the link portrays?

    Eg

    • academic writing isn’t prose, like that’s almost the definition of prose.
    • intra-specialized doesn’t mean anything (the intra prefix didn’t work on adjectives)
    • “obfuscating … accessibility” means making it difficult to see that it is accessible, where the author probably actually wants to say “reducing the ability of outsiders to access the meaning”

    I get that it is satire, but imo it would be better satire if he put in the work to actually make it mean something. Unless the point is that academic writers misuse thesauruses this badly.




  • in bc we have two tier pricing, the first X kilowatthours per month is I think 0.08CAD (~0.05USD), the second is 0.15CAD (~0.11USD)

    Our power mostly comes from hydroelectric dams, but we wheel and deal it interprovincially so within the course of a day we’ll spend some time importing and some time exporting which gives us lower rates, and lets other places run more efficiently (ie Fewer gas turbines)


  • Headline and article mischaracterize the report’s findings.

    The country added nearly 1.3 million people last year — a 3.2 per cent increase — while the economy grew by just 1.1 per cent in the same time period. That means more people taking slices out of an economic pie that hasn’t grown much bigger.

    Right, but if we’re talking about GDP per capita growth, we should probably subtract retirees from the population number, and not count new residents that don’t have the right to work. Also, one year data is probably not very valuable because I think the we’re only just now reaching a post-pandemic equilibrium in terms of retirement/ migration flows. Probably a lot better to look at 10 year numbers.

    The news isn’t all bad. Data shows real weekly earnings — a person’s take home pay — has actually increased in Canada, even when accounting for inflation. The household savings rate is also up.

    So it’s not that we’re getting poorer, it’s that we’re not getting richer as quickly?

    This is toxic ‘keeping up with the Joneses’.

    We should focus on equity and sustainability, not growth for growth’s sake.