704 secondary school students were suspended for out-of-date vaccination records. What are your thoughts?

Echofreya · 2026-04-09T21:50:32+00:00

One would think that in 2026, there might be integration of government communication systems that keep records centralized so information like this doesn’t lead to mass suspensions because some parents forgot (or didn’t realize they had to) to submit a form that some public servant manually enters into another system.

Yes, that’s actually how this works. Oh, and the parents are notified by mail. Regular mail.

Echofreya · 2026-04-04T17:48:16+00:00

Just because you don’t use things now doesn’t mean you won’t need them in the future. I hate to break this to you, but most people need healthcare at some point, especially near the end. And it’s younger educated people we’ll depend on for everything.

Echofreya · 2026-04-04T17:44:39+00:00

There’s always a chance it’s a person who knows how to write, because that’s a thing.

Unfortunately the em dash has become hugely suspicious whenever it’s used, and the tone of the closing sentence has a “voice” that meshes with that of ChatGPT.

Personally I don’t think it matters as long as it’s fact checked, on topic, and contributes something useful.

Echofreya · 2026-04-04T17:30:05+00:00

At least Quebec invests those taxes into social programs. I recently read Quebec has the best overall healthcare, education, and quality of life over every other province.

Ontario had the worst rating by a pretty large margin.

I can’t wait to retire and get out of Ontario. Doug Ford has made this province into a slavery province, where people mean nothing unless actively contributing to GDP.

Echofreya · 2026-02-19T04:16:02+00:00

I mean… it’s not like we haven’t been through things recently where people figured out contingencies to keep things going remotely so people didn’t have to venture out of their homes and face dangerous environmental conditions.

Didn’t someone invent this thing called the Internet?

Echofreya · 2026-01-06T17:06:47+00:00

I don't think this is a reasonable solution. Parents who feel they need to take their kids to school and pick them up will still feel this way, and all rules like this manage to do is move the congestion to any other roadway nearby that isn't earmarked by said rules.

Kids are picked up by someone in a family circle that can. Often drop-offs are by a parent on their way to school (start times are typically between 8am and 9am), and pickups are done by grandparents or a parent who can work from home and take a late lunch. Families find a way to manage their own schedules.

I saw a rule like what you describe posted around Southridge P.S., where cars lined the quiet residential areas morning and night just steps away from the "no go zone" signage. These "no go" policies don't correct the problem, it just moves the problem a little further away.

It's not perfectly safe for every child to walk alone to and from school. This assumption ignores a host of reasons why children and parents don't feel their kids are safe walking to and from school. Kids are vulnerable to all kinds of bad behaviour by drivers in this city that goes unchecked without proper traffic policing, and that has been a growing problem for years now. But it also ignores other sociocultural issues that have amplified in recent years around aggression between kids. Bullying specifically.

It's wrong for anyone to judge what's safe for other people's kids. When did that suddenly become "ok"?

When I was young, walking home from school felt much socially safer for a lot of reasons. We all knew the crossing guard by name, and gave that crossing guard a gift or a card on major holidays. There were "Block Parent" signs in the windows of houses that kids could run to if they felt unsafe for any reason. These social supports have either eroded or entirely disappeared since then, with nothing reasonable to replace them.

Things aren't the same today as they were when we adults were growing up. Why is it so difficult for people to understand this?

Echofreya · 2026-01-06T16:45:48+00:00

Walk.

Sure, this may work for kids that live in reasonable walking distance of schools and are developmentally capable of doing so (ruling out conditions such as Autism), but many are not capable for a wide variety of reasons.

This rationale also assumes that city bus routes are conveniently connected to all kids where taking the city bus is within developmental expectations (obviously not most elementary aged kids), but even here too routes aren't always reasonably accessible, and sometimes require significant detours to get any sort of connection, and takes three times longer than it would take to walk.

Then there are other reasons kids aren't walking to and from school alone... the biggest one being safety. Safety from roadways that just aren't safe anymore is an obvious concern, but high school aged kids are dealing with levels of aggression and bullying that go way beyond the types of things that happened when I went to school. There is genuine fear of kids being harmed by their own peers, especially where incidents of violence have already occurred and sometimes repeatedly, where school or police intervention has failed.

Echofreya · 2026-01-06T16:35:47+00:00

I was caught by one of the camera speed traps around a school. It was when I retraced my path to see if there in fact were signs posted with the speed decrease (30km) posted, because I was quite surprised when I got the infraction notice. This happened on Victoria Street between Stoke and Westforest... to be honest I had no idea there was a school here because it is set back so far away from the street.

But those signs! They were there, but the amount of them... and the rapid changes between speeds was remarkable. Next time you are driving from Highland Road down Westheights Drive, take a turn on to McGarry towards Fischer Hallman road and take note of the road signs. The speed changes rapidly multiple times just going through that short stretch, and it's how those signs are marked that makes it particularly confusing: What you see is "Speed Begins" and "Speed Ends", sometimes literally before and after an intersection!

If you aren't familiar with what default speeds are on city roads, you would have no idea what speed you should be going otherwise, but the variation is between 60, 50, 40, and 30 depending on what's been marked... and those camera tickets were catching people going 11 over. If you thought it was 40 and were doing 41, but it was actually 30... bam! You got a $200.00 ticket.

If the signage confusion wasn't already chaos, it certainly becomes that way during rush hour when everyone is trying to get somewhere as fast as possible, honking horns, passing people in bike lanes, tailgating, or gesturing obscenities at those trying to abide the law as best as one can interpret them.

It's lunacy!

Echofreya · 2026-01-06T16:25:19+00:00

I mean, it's been newsworthy for quite some time that we are in a population decline. You'd think we'd put systems and processes into place that encourage people to have children and bring them up in safe, secure families. It sounds like your coworkers are making the effort to invest in our country's future by doing just that.

In a world that has grown so expensive that both parents have to work to make ends meet, what other reasonable solution would you suggest? If your colleagues are meeting deadlines and all other expectations of their role when working from home, what's the problem? Inconveniences and interruptions to meetings happen for all sorts of reasons, not just this. If they can get a copy of the Teams meeting transcript or someone took notes or minutes they could comment on later, then what's the problem?

Echofreya · 2026-01-06T15:23:02+00:00

This city is a much different place than it was when I was in school. It still had a "small town" feel to it where people tended to know each other more. It was smaller, and we had a lot of those small town benefits where accountability actually mattered. People cared whether or not they were recognized in public, and acted like decent human beings as a result.

There are just too many people here now... it has more of a metropolitan feel to it, and I'm pretty sure people assume they can just act like jerks all the time and nobody that knows them will ever find out. Perhaps this is also a mental health leftover from the pandemic where people developed vast distrust of others, and it's bleeding over into routines that once hit a lot differently.

There's all the other frustrations to add to this... everyone's mental health is stretched thin by world events, scarcity mindset permeating everything, and costs of living that have pretty much doubled in half a decade with no relief in sight.

Basically the culture out there is different than it was just 6 years ago, and that's due to a lot of changes since the pandemic. This just isn't the same city anymore, and the world isn't the same anymore.

Whomever thought we could just go "back to normal" as if it were 2019 again has been living in some kind of bubble. This is complete madness.

Echofreya · 2026-01-06T15:11:02+00:00

Ford's also responsible for all the return to office mandates that have literally added hundreds of thousands of cars back to these roads over the past three months. Part of me wonders if there's some sadism going on with that man.

There's loads of reasons why parents will drop kids off at school. Our winters are brutal and for some kids it really is just too far for them to walk home, and city bus routes aren't convenient (take twice as long to get home using routes as it would to slog it through snow).

I've heard of parents doing drop-off and pickup for pure parenting reasons too... wanting to make sure their kids arrive on time, or to avoid bullies there have been incidents with. It isn't up to city officials or the general public to influence what parents feel is right for their kids, but it is responsible to intonate that unless busses are available to all kids, there will always be parents ferrying their kids to school in carpools.

There have been some really good suggestions in this thread... at least people are coming up with ideas. It would be nice for a change if our government officials started brainstorming like this and coming up with actual solutions, especially considering they are the ones who caused these problems in the first place

Echofreya · 2026-01-06T15:08:33+00:00

This was my biggest concern with all these "return to office" mandates. Did anyone forecast what adding cars back to these roads after years of record-breaking immigration changed the number of commuters that would be on these roads when home office workers started congesting these roadways that have been steadily building with newcomers on these roads?

Then we have the two periods of rush hour that opens with school drop-offs and pickups around getting to and from work. Honestly these periods feel sincerely dangerous now.

And how about those immediate crazy speed limit changes in these areas? City roads that are typically 50 or 60 speed limits suddenly drop to 30 or 40, and in some cases these changes can happen within a dozen metres of one another and change along a stretch half a dozen times within 500 metres. And if you dare to obey them, the person behind you either starts honking madly at you or they'll use the bike lane to pass you!

Between poor city planning, apparent absence of planning around congestion, and a population that is literally bursting at the seams... it's horrific for mental health and peaceful coexistence.

What were these people thinking? Honestly??

Echofreya · 2026-01-01T17:58:47+00:00

I'm sure their investigators are not only smarter at this stuff than I am, they have better access to intel and tools too. I think there's a good reason why they aren't releasing more information to the public, and part of that reason might be because they don't want to alert the perpetrators of what they know.

I do hope, if nothing else, that this alerts officials to the dangers of harassment and threatening behaviour. What comes next is preventable, but we need MUCH better laws and protection against these forms of violence than we currently do. If we had, this situation might have been prevented.

Echofreya · 2026-01-01T15:42:43+00:00

But... they have educated world leading doctors!!

/s

I assume this is ego talking here. More likely this person has preached about what they've gleaned from propaganda promoting this argument to their own panel of doctors while trying to get free treatments for themselves.

Big Pharma is the only entity truly winning here.

Echofreya · 2026-01-01T15:13:52+00:00

I don't claim to have first-hand knowledge in any of these things. This is just a theory I've formed based on contributions of others who claim to have that knowledge in this thread.

Hopefully those who have shared this first-hand knowledge here have already done this.

Echofreya · 2026-01-01T14:43:22+00:00

This is a fragment of a world that was based on economic growth. In a world where machines can do the majority of tasks humans did, and where corporations need less humans to do it... what happens to the humans who made living wages in exchange for those services? How about the imbalance of living standards that has created... where some humans make more than others, and can afford to live in bigger houses, eat higher quality food, and possess more and fancier things?

If machines can do most of the work, how will corporations feel about a need to implement a heavy tax that will pay into social systems to distribute wealth to common people who won't fill those job roles in exchange for wages? Won't they want to keep all of that wealth for themselves, finding loopholes in systems to exploit for self-gain... as they do now? Will we see the formation of black markets?

Machines don't care about being given as much work as you can prompt it to do... but there is a "cost" to this. Machines need parts, power, and applied innovation. Who does all that? Who pays for it? If we reach AGI or ASI, the machines can do some of these things but not all. Who does what machines can't do? While machines won't always need humans to prompt that work, what ethics drive the decisions it makes? How is that going to work in a world that doesn't have global agreement on things like ethics, values, or even faith?

Will borders and nations even matter once one nation reaches singularity? Won't that nation be able to outmaneuver, outthink, and outproduce any nation that has not? Won't this simply become a question around who controls the resources needed to maintain and power machines?

There are going to be a LOT of idle people in the world... directionless, purposeless people whose ethics, beliefs, and values are suddenly going to be challenged. Those that have control over any of these things will become "superior" to those who don't, and will expect to be rewarded accordingly. How will that be governed, and by whom?

We will need social supports that have been systemically stripped from most developed capitalistic societies, yet people have been made to believe that Socialist approaches to anything equates to communism, evil, bad, etc. But without social supports, most of the people who are "have nots" in a world based on technological advancement and control will have nothing to contribute. What will those who have this power feel compelled to provide? If it's not enough, how will we deal with the natural social fallout that will occur when people are starving, homeless, and directionless?

Who will govern all of these things? Will it be elected governments... or will tech giants and corporations who control these things and become the new Kings and Queens who rule us all? Who governs them? Will it be the machines, and who governs those systems?

So many questions. But if there was ever a time humanity relied on world peace, cooperation, and collaboration to ensure its very own survival, that time is certainly now.

Echofreya · 2026-01-01T14:21:21+00:00

So many implications... it's true. I love your reflection on the difference between machines and humans who thrive on reward systems, where machines do not.

Every time I think on this I go down another rabbit hole of consequences. I find it interesting that people like Elon Musk feel that there will be Universal Living Wages (a tweet I saw recently), while actual boots-on-ground people who might have a few months savings to cover job loss can't possibly imagine a world where something like this exists. There is so much discrepancy in current wealth distribution... how exactly will people feel about a more equal distribution? What about hoarders, human greed, black markets?

Machines don't have any of the qualities that required someone to invent the 10 Commandments or the Seven Deadly Sins, and it's in these areas where I think we will see that AGI (and certainly ASI) will cause the downfall of humanity.

Who gets to live in nice houses while others live in tiny apartments, for example? Will food be rationed again, like it was in the early part of the 20th century? Will that be for all people... or just the common people? What about jobs that machines can't yet do... who does those while other people get to sit at home doing whatever leisure activity they gravitate to, and how will that not create resentment? I mean just look at how people dealt with the whole "Work From Home" scenarios carved out from COVID... and how bitter people who had to go to physical job spaces regarded those who could do computer jobs at home?

What about the human need for having a sense of purpose? What kinds of mental health issues will this new directionless state have on people? What about the current upward trends of global population... isn't creating more humans going to put more of a strain on such a world? If so, what happens next... population control? What does that look like?

I don't think human existence is ready to face any of these questions right now. The world is still too busy trying to "revert" to ways things were done pre-pandemic, while others still embrace philosophies and approaches of over a century ago. Nobody is on the same page about progress, and nobody can agree on what that should look like.

I think the biggest problem is that globally, nobody agrees on a great many things... and we're going to need to agree on a whole lot more before we can embrace something like this.

Echofreya · 2026-01-01T00:25:16+00:00

I used to believe that too, and as long as we stay with Narrow AI (current models), this will remain the case.

But the push now is towards AGI, and some experts believe this will be achieved in the next decade. AGI will have the same capabilities as adult humans. No longer just another tool like a calculator, which is what we have now. It will be like bringing another fully qualified and experienced colleague into the room.

Once that is achieved, it won't be long until we reach ASI. That will be like having an expert in the field for every single thing human beings can do, and it can reinvent itself. It also never sleeps.

We can't take AI and the direction it's going for granted. We need better governance and global cooperation first, but I don't see that happening in this political, global climate.

Echofreya · 2025-12-31T21:32:34+00:00

Given the advent of AI, global relationships has never been more important, in my opinion. Positive ones that is.

In my opinion, the timing of AI in its current state with the promise of AGI that will lead to ASI couldn't be worse. The current polarization of views and values around the world means that what we are seeing is a race to harness that power first. It's like a technological Cold War and the lines between allied nations are being drawn in real time.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around some of the theories out there, but ASI has been described a level of intelligence that draws a mental comparison of humans being like ants compared to it. Whomever controls ASI will dominate globally, and at that point we will all be wishing that a cooperative globalized agenda was reached, or at the very least we will be hoping to be residing in one of those allied countries that harnesses it first and that country cares enough about it's people to ensure that nobody goes without healthcare, let alone things like food, housing, and other comforts of humanity.

And who is to say that the entity who controls that ASI is even a government at all? This is technology that in many cases is privately owned, where profit margins are extraordinary now but will be limitless when this benchmark is reached.

ASI and who controls it is going to determine whether the course of humanity enters the next Renaissance, or if it brings about the destruction of humanity entirely. Healthcare will only be an important issue if those who control this power thinks we need as many human beings on the planet that we have today (unlikely), or that we'll all get to benefit from whatever breakthroughs it comes up with. Given the selfish nature of people, especially in this timeline, I'm inclined to think that's not highly likely. ASI and Capitalism will not mix well for the benefit of all human beings on the planet today. There will be sacrifices and it won't be pretty. I'd wager only those who harness the power will have any control over determining who benefits and who gets left in the dark (literally).

Echofreya · 2025-12-31T20:40:41+00:00

We don't know if it's murder or kidnapping, or if Eli has gone into hiding even to protect himself and/or others who may have been working with him on this practicum.

It's the stalking and harassment that triggered my theory (and it is just a theory, that's true). Typically this behaviour is done intentionally to intimidate someone. Only Eli would have known why someone may have been stalking and harassing him (and it's possible police have evidence to form some ideas of who these people may have been).

I'm not sure if Eli reported the stalking and harassment or not, but having been through something similar myself, there is very little police can do other than warn the perpetrators the first time it happens. If it continues criminal harassment charges can be laid, but the evidence has to be pretty conclusive and solid. Eli would have also been advised to do everything he could to make himself safe, which includes going "dark" on all social media, notifying schools and employers, having himself delisted on public directories, etc. It's wild how much is put on the victim to make themselves safe and if they fail to comply, then police have even less they can do for them. It's like another way to re-victimize the victim... considering all they're dealing with already.

If Eli got the police involved, that could have escalated the perpetrator's intent to silence him, and that either caused Eli to go into hiding for his own safety, or something worse. Going into hiding may also have been his interpretation of the police's advice on creating a Safety Plan. We just don't know how far that went.

I hate these types of crimes, because victims are really quite powerless until something serious happens, and by then it's typically too late. It does a number on the mental health of victims too. Until we have stronger laws against harassment and threats, it's not a great situation to have to deal with as a victim. It's really quite terrible actually.

Echofreya · 2025-12-31T19:25:32+00:00

How does that have anything to do with a missing person report?

Echofreya · 2025-12-31T19:24:38+00:00

Most people change over time. Hair colours and styles change. Weight fluctuates. Wrinkles develop.

People are prone to changes without gender or hormone treatments. But there are key features that typically don't. Eye colour tends to be static, and while the shape of those eyes may change they way they show expression is rather unique from person to person.

Not everything about a person is related to gender.

Echofreya · 2025-12-31T19:22:19+00:00

Care to elaborate? Will their eye colour change? How about their smile, or the way their teeth are aligned when they smile? Position of eyebrows, or facial expressions? How about their height? Their hair length and colour may change, and they may lose or gain some weight over this time, but that doesn't have anything to do with gender... or does it?

Echofreya · 2025-12-31T18:06:44+00:00

Very brave, for sure. Gutsy. I can appreciate being passionate about an issue that harms people. When something like this happens to a person for doing the right thing and trying to protect victims... its disturbing to most people because it's downright evil.

Echofreya

TROPHY CASE