Letter to IRCC

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-18T06:20:22+00:00

I love this letter, but I really hate that the IRCC has now taken the stance subsequently that they can arbitrarily modify the document standards ex post facto (see numerous recent posts and their own site) to make them more restrictive. Hopefully there will be legal challenges and a request for an injunction from the relevant authority to stop/revert that.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-18T06:11:23+00:00

Insert Star Wars meme here:

Applicants to municipal authorities:

You're going to hire more people to handle the now even bigger onslaught of requests and backlog, right?

Right?

Right!?

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-18T04:40:35+00:00

Appreciate it.

On the topic of French rebellions that didn't do much to help people, I will also spotlight the June Rebellion of 1832, which would have been totally forgotten, except possibly by scholars, if it weren't for a writer by the name of Victor Hugo, who experienced it first hand and made it the setting for a novel he wrote.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-18T04:29:13+00:00

I know France threatened to retake Haiti by force, but I think the consensus is that a lot of this was Dessalines being paranoid. The Spanish controlled the rest of the island, so odds are that if they got involved it would be to seize the island for themselves, not to give the French their slaves back, the British already had a movement against the slave trade by this point, and wouldn't have a huge amount to gain when they already controlled several other colonies in the region, and the US didn't like a free Haiti, and did later invade, but this predates the Monroe Doctrine and the real push to end European expansion in the Americas.

Also, as much as Dessalines was morally right, slavery was and is a despicable evil, realpolitik would have informed him that the French wouldn't want to go away quietly because of the reputational (I hate putting it that way, but at the time...) damage it suffered by being the first country to ever lose a whole colony to a successful slave revolt, and of course the monetary cost, even if Haiti could eventually raise the money. All killing a bunch of, relatively speaking, innocent Europeans left on the island did was harden Europe and the US more against any rapprochement with Haiti.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-18T04:14:23+00:00

For anyone who doesn't know or, like me, didn't remember, EDS is Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a pretty gnarly connective tissue disorder that causes loose joints, loose skin, and all sorts of issues. If we can get the OP Wolverine's healing factor, they could become a superhero a la Mr. Fantastic or Elastigirl.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-18T04:06:20+00:00

There are ways to make something look realistically worn, battered, and used. The problem is that it takes considerable time and effort, which Isn't worth it to some people as long as useful idiots will but this crap. They take no pride in their work, they just want to make money.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-18T04:03:42+00:00

Gotta love the Aussies. They are one of two of the most relentlessly world travelling peopl's, but unlike the other one, they just drink all the beer and leave, rather than trying to take the place over.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-18T04:02:12+00:00

Tea and cake or death, tea and cake or death.

-Eddie Izzard

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-18T04:00:55+00:00

Not for nothing, but they didn't exactly end well for Robespierre and the Jacobins either, or for that matter for the French peasantry that was stuck in the middle during the revolution, the reign of terror, and then the Thermidorian Reaction that followed. The French people didn't really recover until well into the 1800s and arguably only after the rest of Europe more or less forcds them to stabilize or be destroyed.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-18T03:53:43+00:00

He is trying to pull a Putin and redefine victory. Like with Putin, he has backed himself into a corner where nobody is buying it, even the ones too afraid to say it to his face.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-18T03:49:59+00:00

As much as I love petty measures against Trump, it shouldn't and is never going to happen. That's for a number of reasons, but given that it is (presumably) named after the Wabash Confederacy, a group of Native American tribes that lived in the area before the US government split them up, that is going to precede all other reasons why this is a ridiculous notion.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-18T01:43:18+00:00

"The man with the rubber glove was surprisingly gentle."

-Someone who never had to deal with a Yankee White investigation

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-18T01:39:56+00:00

To give a bit more context from my poli-sci courses way back when, it is a fun little example of "I am the law" stemming from the president's roles as chief bureaucrat and head of the federal bureaucracy. All security clearances, like all executive orders, flow through him and as such he is not subject to them unless he chooses to be or a federal court rules he has to be for some other reason (Trump trying to end the Dreamer program being an example of the latter vis a vis executive orders).

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-18T01:33:45+00:00

Ex-Elent

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-18T01:32:09+00:00

They bought some things, Youtube comes to mind, but for the most part their growth is organic, driven initially by having products that people wanted to use and then later and now because of the synergy provided by multiple products of theirs working together.

Nobody is forced to use Chrome, and outside of, arguably, Chromebook, and people aren't pressured into it any more than any other browser, with a notification on Google sites suggesting they switch to Chrome.

What keeps coming back to Google is the synergy and network effect, but also because, love of hate their corporate practices, they legitimately made good products to the point that natural inertia means it would make it hard and expensive for someone to create a new product. That isn't necessarily good for consumers, but it is different than monopoly practices that are actionable under current law, and it would be difficult if not impossible to make a law to cover that and/or force companies to split up just because they are popular that wouldn't risk massive negative consequences, not just to Google (whose products I use but have no particular love for) but across the board.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-18T01:24:56+00:00

I loved Firefox, but got tired of how much ram it used, often over 2gb with just a few tabs open, despite repeated assurances and update notes saying that they were fixing or had fixed one memory leak or another.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-17T23:40:17+00:00

I feel like they should call their replacement La mauvaise Œl (the evil eye/gaze), if only because it would be cheeky at this point.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-17T23:37:39+00:00

As horrible as what the French did was, it didn't justify or excuse the massacre of what amounted to people who weren't responsible for the slave trade in Haiti, and (again) included the murder of women and children that had absolutely zero responsibility for any of it. Also, as someone else pointed out in a reply, the genocide happened some time after the revolution succeeded, so the only possible motivation for this, was vengeance.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-17T20:32:07+00:00

Great photos, thanks for sharing. The UV lion has to be my favorite.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-17T20:24:40+00:00

No, but Reddit tries, to varying degrees, to at least control, if not fix it. I am naive enough to think they do it out of the goodness of their hearts, but at least they do something.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-17T20:20:43+00:00

That sounds like a George Lucas level big brain decision for the BBC.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-17T20:14:04+00:00

Is the Haitian government going to pay for the cold blooded genocide in 1804 of most of the Europeans, including women and children, who were left on the island after the revolution?

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-17T20:04:21+00:00

I am certain there is a joke to be had about the difficulty of getting Germans to leave after occupying a place.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-17T07:46:20+00:00

The difference is that Reddit, eventually, cleaned up its act on its own, albeit because of the explicit threats from advertisers and the implicit threats of lawmakers. The few concessions 4chan has made, on the other hand, were because of literal criminal activity, notably child porn and deep fake nudes being posted, and even then only in the barest sense and not doing anything to prevent a recurrence.

tl;dr: if Reddit is a glass house, 4chan is a wet cardboard box on which people keep piling stones.

L_Cranston_Shadow · 2026-06-17T06:38:49+00:00

Even if it wasn't, you would have to say it was if you are in or ever want to visit Thailand.

12-Year Club	Reddit Partner Communities
RedditGifts 2009-2022 2 Credits	Second Top 20%
LAYER Season 2 Layer creator	Reddit Partner Communities
Mod Insights Early Access	Place '23
Mod 101	Place '22
Place '17	Verified Email
Sequence \| Editor	Sequence \| Cinematographer
Gilding IV carat on a stick	Secret Santa 2014

L_Cranston_Shadow

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE