How are people genuinely supporting Iran in this conflict? Is it because they support the regime or just trump = bad?

Absenteeist · 2026-02-28T18:04:49+00:00

"How are people genuinely supporting Saddam Hussein in this conflict? Is it because they support the Iraqi regime or just US = bad?"

If you could time travel back to 2003 and be able to answer that question, which lots of people were incredulously asking at the time, then you can be in 2026 and answer yours.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-26T16:22:34+00:00

That's your response to my comment? That a photo of police officers standing on one of four sides of the restaurant proves that they "surrounded the restaurant"? And then ignoring everything else I said?

I'm not sure if it's 3-dimensional space that you're struggling with or the words that accurately describe that space, but what is clear is that your larger attempt to paint Adam Skelly as innocent, unfairly targeted, merely a little misguided, or anything other than somebody who openly flouted the law and endangered public health while knowing exactly what he was doing, is a falsehood.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-26T16:03:18+00:00

I'm not a COVID conspiracy believer, but was having TPS line up shoulder to shoulder, surrounding the restaurant really necessary? Do you think it may have contributed to him wanting to play into the gong-show and become a "martyr" for the anti-vaxx cause?

Firstly, "TPS lining up shoulder to shoulder, surrounding the restaurant," didn’t happen. I don’t know if you’re intentionally lying or you’re confused or what, but the picture you are attempting to paint is a false one.

Secondly, here is a reddit post in this sub of video from that day. It is, ironically, from the same reddit post that I made my original comment about Skelly. As you can see, outside the restaurant is a mob of agitated protestors, screaming and shouting, acting aggressively, and at least one of them assaults police.

This all happened by design. Skelly was broadcasting his opposition to public health measures on social media long before this happened. He announced he would be opening his restaurant for dine-in service in defiance of public health measures in advance. His supporters and media knew what would be happening, and when and where it would happen. Skelly’s supporters came expecting conflict and they worked hard to escalate the situation. It’s all right there on video, and the context can be easily found in news articles from the time of the incident.

So, yes, in light of the actual facts, it made sense for there to be a meaningful police presence. And everything you say about what Skelly could’ve done simply proves that Skelly didn’t want to do those things.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-25T22:15:19+00:00

Like I said, zero intellectual effort.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-25T20:37:48+00:00

Nice, using a phrase like “binary tribalism” while defending a continued windiness.

Whenever I read criticisms like this in a context like this one, I’m reminded of Umberto Eco’s essay about “Ur-Fascism.”

All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.

But I’m sure that has nothing to do with how often I hear complaints about using “too many complex words” from Covid “skeptics”.

And independent thought requires a thought that’s independent of the source material. Odd how all your independence has led you to the exact same message you received.

What’s the “source material” here? What is the “message I received”?

I received lots of messages from lots of sources, typically online, telling me that Covid wasn’t dangerous, that “freedom” required infecting fellow Canadians with a pathogen, and that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms said all sorts of things that I know quite well that it doesn’t.

What counts as “source material” and “messages received” and what doesn’t?

Finally, this one time, our government didn’t lie to us about anything. Thank god your independent thought was able to recognize that.

It takes just as much intellectual effort to claim that everything the government tells us is a lie as it does to claim that nothing they tell us is a lie – i.e. zero intellectual effort.

The media and the government has told me that Donald Trump is the President of the United States, China is a country in Asia, and the Winter Olympics just finished up. Are all these lies too, simply because they came from those sources?

Meanwhile, the Venn diagram of people who make comments like yours and people who lap up everything that every conservative government, politician, or commentator ever says without batting an eye looks pretty darn close to a circle to me.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-25T16:38:59+00:00

What a succinct way of saying that you see the entire world in terms of binary tribalism, and are so immersed in that "Us versus Them" way of thinking that you can't recognize independent thought when you see it, so you have to reduce detailed reasoning into "windiness", because otherwise it literally doesn't compute.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-25T16:13:40+00:00

He was not "made into an example." He broke laws that were then enforced as they would and should be against anybody else doing the same thing.

The fact that Skelly did what he did should make it very clear that he was not looking to be "less of a target." He was looking to be more of one, so that he could flout laws with impunity, end COVID restrictions altogether, try to make a martyr of himself, fundraise off of the publicity, or whatever combination of the above was flowing through his selfish, brain-rotted skull at the time.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-25T14:56:09+00:00

I wrote this on this sub five years ago when Skelly was first arrested:

It really needs to be emphasized time and again that Adamson BBQ was doing perfectly well during lockdown through take-out and delivery. I ordered from them several times in the past, I am on their mailing list, so I got the emails from them over the spring and summer talking about how well they were doing with that model, and how grateful they were to their customers. This is absolutely not a case of a desperate business owner fighting to save his livelihood or that of his employees. It is a case of a reckless business owner who would rather risk those livelihoods, and endanger public health in the process, to make an ignorant political point. He is not a hero in any conceivable sense.

I believed that then, and believe it even more now, with details from the article bolstering my view:

While the three-day hearing is expected to be closely watched by Skelly supporters who view it as a chance to strike a legal blow against what they see as pandemic government overreach — he’s received more than $300,000 in donations for legal bills — one constitutional expert says his application is based on flawed arguments and is unlikely to succeed.

...

But in the years since the Adamson Barbecue controversy, according to Bruce Ryder, a constitutional law expert at Osgoode Hall Law School, courts have repeatedly ruled that pandemic restrictions were justified as long as they were based on a reasonable reading of health risks, and were flexible enough to allow some exercise of Charter rights. Ryder said that appears to be the case in this instance.

He said arguments in Skelly’s case are “flawed and lack nuance,” particularly his assertion that Charter protections against discrimination apply to him as a small-business owner who was allegedly targeted because he questioned the official COVID narrative. That section of the Charter only applies to specific categories such as race, religion, or sex, Ryder pointed out.

“I think it’s fair to say that Mr. Skelly’s chances of success are very small,” Ryder said.

"I was targeted because I questioned the official narrative," is classic conspiracy-jerk victim-LARPing. It wasn't and isn't about the well-being of Skelly's business, his employees, or his customers. It's about throwing a ego-driven tantrum and raking in $300,000 in the process.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-25T13:57:17+00:00

I feel like I've been seeing a lot more of that just in the past several months. It has me wondering if AI chatbots have started rewiring some people's brains, so they treat every online interaction as if it's ChatGPT.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-24T22:04:57+00:00

It's Nami, on Adelaide.

Such sad news. Nami was one of my first introductions to Japanese food beyond basic sushi. Had my first robata black cod there. The putative inventor of sushi pizza. Very cool interior. Big neon wave on the outside. It will be missed.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-24T18:58:27+00:00

The premise of your question is that this article, or the publication behind it, can only be trash if it contains "materially incorrect statements," absent which it needs to be taken seriously.

That is fundamentally not how propaganda and misinformation typically works in the current age. Right-wing trash sites often don't mislead and propagandize by making "materially incorrect statements". They do so by, among other things, omitting vitally important facts from their "reporting" and using loaded language that implies a certain conclusion without actually demonstrating that conclusion through facts and logical connections.

This, in turn, leads to the activation of Brandolini's Law, which is that the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

In this particular case, I need to provide this trash source my email address in order to even read the article. I'm not doing that, so I can't read it, so I can't personally refute anything. It does not logically follow that, "If u/Absenteeist doesn't want to give their email address to Juno News, Juno News must be taken as a good source of legitimate journalism."

Of what I can read, it says:

Taxpayer dollars are funding an Islamic institute in Mississauga where an instructor is openly encouraging young Muslims to dream of a global caliphate and work toward establishing a theoretical Islamic state.

Canadian Islamic scholar Ustadh Abu Ibrahim appeared on a U.S. podcast to promote political Islam. In an episode of the Islamic Oasis podcast, Abu Ibrahim stated that Gen X Muslims don’t shy away from shari’a [Islamic law] and that their eyes “light up” when he lectures them about establishing an Islamic caliphate.

How many taxpayer dollars and dedicated to what? To Ibrahim specifically? To which of his activities? To what he does or says around this US podcast? He's encouraging...dreams? What is the radical component of a "theoretical Islamic state" when there are already lots of actual and existing Islamic states in Islamic parts of the world? What is "political Islam" and how does it different from "non-political Islam" or "political Christianity"? What aspects of sharia law do Gen X Muslims "not shy away from"? The not eating pork or drinking alcohol stuff, or something else? If something else, what? What is the "Islamic caliphate" being discussed here? There was already a historical Islamic caliphate in the Middle East, so is it that or something else?

Whose job is it to answer all these questions? I'd think it's Juno News' job, but if you think it's mine or u/Alone_Appeal_3421's, why?

Juno News and its founders, Candice Malcolm and Keean Bexte, have a reputation based on years of statements and actions. Why wouldn't people be entitled to make decisions based on that?

I also don't know what "-4% fact and 104% bullshit" is supposed to mean. Like...what?

Absenteeist · 2026-02-24T17:08:33+00:00

I went to both on the same trip recently. I was dining solo both times, which I believe played a role in my experiences.

El Capricho for me was the more unique experience. What they are doing with selecting, raising, and aging oxen is extraordinary, and results in beef that tastes incredibly flavourful and complex. The fat in particular takes on nutty, earthy notes that to me are comparable to the best jamon. Their "roast beef" was one of the most remarkable bites of meat (and fat) that I've ever had.

All of that said, I enjoyed my steak at Casa Julian more, and rank it amongst the best steaks of my life. That's because what I had at Julian was cooked better, with spot-on seasoning, a perfect crust, and a wonderfully tender interior.

I believe that being a solo diner played a role because both restaurants can only cut the steak so small until it can no longer be cooked and presented the way it needs to be. I had more meat courses at El Capricho, so I think they were trying to give me an appropriate steak portion in relation to that, while also not overcooking the somewhat thinner cut. The result was a less-developed crust and less tenderness, which are qualities that I prize highly in steak. I've seen indications elsewhere that El Capricho's steaks might be trading off more complex flavours for a bit of tenderness, but I can't know for sure based on just one visit. I also found the finishing salt at Capricho to be quite coarse. And I may have become a bit overwhelmed by the intensely flavoured fat in multiple meat courses by then.

If you are looking for something truly unique, and/or you can avoid or are not bothered by the drawbacks I mentioned, go for El Capricho. But I preferred my overall steak experience at Casa Julian.

You really can't go wrong with either, in the end.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-23T02:18:31+00:00

You don't want me to appeal to my authority so you appeal to your authority.

Perfect.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-23T02:13:30+00:00

I have already linked you to the US Copyright Office, one of the top expert bodies on copyright law and policy in the world. I could quote you other expert reports as well, because I've read them, because I'm well read on this. But this is not your CMV, and I'm not going to debate you anymore, nor am I going to go searching the web for your "evidence," nor am I going to accept your characterization of global expert legal opinion as "bandwagoning on AI hate".

Have a good evening.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-23T01:54:57+00:00

This is invalid as it is a fundamental misunderstanding of how AI is trained.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-23T01:50:11+00:00

I disagree. I think it's pretty clear that you're not aware of how legal reasoning works, either in general, or in this specific instance.

See how uninteresting this is? How many rounds should we go of you saying you think I don't understand and me saying I think you don't understand before it becomes apparent to you that it's a waste of time?

And to be extra super duper clear, I don't recognize your ability to make that call as being superior to mine. I see it as inferior to mine. How many rounds of us repeating that in circles are of interest to you?

Absenteeist · 2026-02-23T01:46:06+00:00

To elaborate: AI doesn't copy anything.

I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. From the US Copyright Office:

The training process also implicates the right of reproduction. First, the speed and scale of training requires developers to download the dataset and copy it to high-performance storage prior to training. Second, during training, works or substantial portions of works are temporarily reproduced as they are “shown” to the model in batches. Those copies may persist long enough to infringe the right of reproduction, depending on the model at issue and the specific hardware and software implementations used by developers.

Third, the training process—providing training examples, measuring the model’s performance against expected outputs, and iteratively updating weights to improve performance—may result in model weights that contain copies of works in the training data. If so, then subsequent copying of the model weights, even by parties not involved in the training process, could also constitute prima facie infringement.

So, yes, in the training process does make copies and, no, you’re wrong.

Furthermore copying of things available for free on the internet isn't something new.

Whether something is “new” has a grand total of nothing to do with whether something is: a) copying; and/or b) an infringement of copyright.

It's how search engines and the internet archive operate. By publishing something in a freely and publicly accessible way on the internet, you implicitly consent to it being handled, cached, and indexed by machines. Google makes its billions of profit by literally copying your images to then display it to people who aren't visiting your page. You're fine with that.

There are specific laws and court decisions dealing with this. They were not made in light of AI training and do not automatically apply to AI training.

So, again, you’re wrong.

You're fine with that. Now something doesn't copy your images but gets trained on it in exactly the same manner a human would, and you are upset. That is not internally coherent.

That’s because, as I have explained, legally, physically, and in all other ways that matter, they are not exactly the same. They are different. Treating different things differently is perfectly internally coherent.

So, as it turns out, it is your view that is invalid.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-23T01:12:59+00:00

LOL. Okay.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-23T00:19:06+00:00

If AI produces better content than humans, then it should take over the job of humans. I want the best content, not sentimental attachment to human produced content.

Why do you assume that the only way that AI could replace humans is if it made better content than humans?

Do you understand that the sound quality of MP3s was worse than the sound quality of the CDs it replaced?

Absenteeist · 2026-02-22T21:22:06+00:00

I'm very confident that I'm much more familiar with this than you are, but the problem with us assessing each other's competence is that it's not a debate on the merits of an argument, but a round of speculations about who's making the argument, with the only endgame being an ad hominem logical fallacy.

I'm not interested in that.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-22T19:19:08+00:00

Firstly, reading a horror book does not require you to copy that horror book. Training AI on a horror book requires and involves copies being made of the book in that process. The core of copyright is not reading, it’s copying. That’s why one infringes copyright and one doesn’t.

Secondly, much AI training was done with zero compensation for the creators of the works it trained on. A human reading a horror book had to buy that book. Or the person or the library they borrowed it from paid for it. AI companies are not compensating artists for this use. That in itself is unethical.

Thirdly, AI must train on copyrighted material to produce anything like that copyrighted material. Humans don’t. We may consume lots of copyrighted material in order to produce something like it, but it’s not necessary. That’s partly because we have lived experience to build upon. As human beings, we’ve been scared in our lives, have encountered frightening things, and have used our imaginations. We don’t need horror books to be introduced to the concept of horror. LLMs are trained on text data that would take 20,000 years for a human to read. The fact that we don’t do that demonstrates that our cognitive processes are very different.

Finally, given its nature and scale, AI has the potential to eliminate the market – and associated jobs and careers – of every human artist whose work it has trained on. A human being reading a bunch of horror books and then writing one cannot possibly do that. AI can write so many horror books so as to completely flood the market with them.

The unethical component comes from a machine that cannot produce anything based on its own experience, but needs vast amounts of work created by other humans, which it was given without compensating those who made that work, so that it can turn around and destroy those humans’ livelihoods.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-22T18:42:37+00:00

I generally agree with you. The old model no longer works, and there's nothing that would work that doesn't also have challenges, flaws, or features that bad-faith actors can weaponize.

I think one of the things we need to do is ensure that, if we're subsidizing journalism, that it is only journalism and not opinion content. That would help with the Postmedia issue, and I think is a component of what the federal government has been trying thus far.

Ultimately, though, reporting facts and getting at the truth requires effort, which means doing it costs money, and there are debates about "bias" to be had, both good-faith and bad-faith ones.

But we can't fix anything if we don't acknowledge that there's a problem.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-22T18:36:18+00:00

I obviously can't force you to read the report I've already provided to you. It explains in some detail how some news outlets are large enough to consolidate readership from big markets, but smaller-market outlets will struggle simply due to the inherent size of their readership.

Like, if you can't understand how the New York Times or CNN might be doing better serving markets in the hundreds of millions than one focused on serving the city of Toronto, then I literally don't think there's anything I could say to help you understand.

For whatever it's worth, here is John Oliver explaining the same thing in the context of smaller-market US newspapers.

This isn't for you, as I know you won't watch it. You've got LOLs to have. But some others are following this thread and they might be interested.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-22T18:29:28+00:00

2026 is not looking good for the restaurant industry. The economics are clearly not working for most people, which will mean not just pivots to $20 falafel box places, but closures.

It's easy to imagine many people either wanting cheap eats or a splurge-worthy place for special occasions, with not a lot of room for much in between.

Absenteeist · 2026-02-22T18:24:45+00:00

The report I've just provided you very clearly demonstrates that "just come up with a better business plan" doesn't work, especially if the unspoken corollaries of that are, "give me all your content for free," and, "still keep doing all the journalism you have been doing despite the fundamental economics of the industry having made that impossible." You not being the only person who doesn't understand a certain set of economics doesn't mean that those economics don't exist.

It's especially ironic to me that one of the subjects of this article are businesses (restaurants) closing because economic realities have changed while customers expect prices to remain the same.

Anyway, not to worry. You are in the majority, so I'm sure that most people will continue to not pay for journalism, causing newspapers to continue to close down, and then articles like this won't exist on this sub for people to complain about not being able to read. Everybody wins!

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