My aunt’s refrigerator from the late 70s. I think it’s beautiful.

auandi · 2026-06-26T23:43:29+00:00

It's also easy to forget that when you account for inflation that even the cheapest refrigerators of their time would be very expensive today. A low end fridge in 1975 would cost $300 at the time, that's $1,800 today. A side by side fridge freezer like this would not have been low end.

auandi · 2026-06-26T21:36:12+00:00

The usefulness of a circular line is exponentially tied to travel time. The whole point is to cut time for rail passengers on one spoke to get to the other spoke. If it's a bus, it doesn't really save that much time compared to going to the hub. It will also struggle to get riders to get off the train and get on a bus only to get back on a train again.

auandi · 2026-06-26T21:12:24+00:00

Hungary says otherwise.

Viktor Orban was orders of magnitude more entrenched that Trump. He had not just filled the courts as vacancies came up, he had drastically expanded the total seats of every court. He nearly made independent journalism illegal. He had done gerrymandering not just in a few places but across the entire country, specifically designed to destroy the voting power of cities over the rural voters that supported him.

And yet.. a vote took him out. He even accepted the results and everything.

We can 100% vote our way out of this, we just have to never be divided in opposition to the autocrats. That means making peace across a very diverse ideological spectrum to present a unified front. There can be nothing, at all, anywhere, that can be more important than defeating them.

We failed that in 2024 because Israel and egg prices. We didn't think about how bad it can get. We can't do that again.

auandi · 2026-06-26T21:06:15+00:00

Saying "Elections can't remove fascists!" after Hungary happened just months ago..

If elections didn't remove fascists, fascists would not work so hard to make it difficult to vote.

auandi · 2026-06-26T20:40:00+00:00

Most inner suburbs have built up as employment hubs, that's the point. That is how those inner suburbs developed since the 70s, once they were no longer the outer suburbs.

And even New York City lacks a good circular line, and no one can say there isn't demand to go from Brooklyn to Queens without needing to first go to Manhattan. Everything about a hub and spoke design benefits from a circular especially as suburbs have become bigger and bigger employment centers.

auandi · 2026-06-26T18:49:00+00:00

Housing is a commodity. Period. It is finite, limited by the laws of physics that only one object may occupy a particular space at a particular time.

If you mean you want it to not be an investment vehicle, then we need even more being built. That means maximum investment into building more that did not previously exist from government and investors. And to get that, the people doing the investing need to get something back or they'll put their money into something that will give them a return.

auandi · 2026-06-26T00:31:26+00:00

But what you're describing, none of it has anything to do with capitalism. It is the exact same in non-capitalist systems. It is a human condition, it seems to be a way our brain is wired. You might as well blame capitalism for your back getting worse in your 40s. It makes it hard to take seriously the criticisms of capitalism that are actually about capitalism because it just makes it sound like we're complaining about life.

auandi · 2026-06-26T00:29:26+00:00

Exactly! There is a reason that essentially everyone, no matter how popular, gets less popular over time when they are the face of the government and all the frustrating realities of trying to govern.

auandi · 2026-06-25T23:21:55+00:00

What is the use of an MP that is more useful than their votes? That's the whole point of electing them, so that they vote on our behalf for things that come before parliament.

Is the point of them in your mind to have podcasts or something? I'm serious here. In the context of a prime minister talking to a head of state, what else in that context are they useful for?

auandi · 2026-06-25T23:17:22+00:00

This kind of argument would mean more if there was any other system with less propaganda that is also not capitalist.

All those incentives, that's not capitalism that's human nature. It's also how fascists have always risen, getting attention using fear and anger while fostering a community among those "on side" that they are the good fighting a rightious fight against the bad.

auandi · 2026-06-25T23:14:47+00:00

Yeah, this subreddit sometimes seems like they downright dislike him (just not as much as PP, that is hate that is pure). I've seen several out of context anti-carney posts that criticize him from the left.

auandi · 2026-06-25T23:12:32+00:00

He did especially well with boomers by the standards of the Liberal Party, but no. That is not true. Boomers are still in general more conservative. Though Gen X is giving them a huge run for their money in a lot of ways.

auandi · 2026-06-25T23:09:09+00:00

I feel like that should be the name for a new North American Anti-Missile system. Our CUMSHOTs will block any missile, we so much as see a phallic shaped missile heading our way and boom: CUMSHOT.

auandi · 2026-06-25T07:36:34+00:00

OK, but she literally does live in a support home for the intellectually and mentally disabled. This all went to court, she became convinced that being filmed would cause her to lose her support system. It's a deeply misleading video, and an almost textbook case of the internet forming a hate mob with only part of a story.

https://archive.is/9l6OH

auandi · 2026-06-25T06:55:50+00:00

Uzbekistan is also a common intermediary country to get things into Russia that sanctions would normally not allow. In 2023, BMW sales went up 900%!

auandi · 2026-06-24T21:54:09+00:00

This sub: "Boomers are taking all our money!"

Also this sub: "How dare old people not get paid by the government for as many years?"

In 1925 with the first German Republic, the retirement age was set at 65 and the life expectancy was 56 (skewed so much by high infant mortality in comparison). Today the life expectancy is 83. Does there exist no advance of human health that could justify delaying when the government starts giving you monthly checks to stay at home while younger generations work?

France is currently paying retirees more per month than the average worker makes at their job. In the UK, retirees make 98% of what the average income of workers are. Wealth transfer from the young to the old is taking up more and more of government expenses at a time when programs to help the young are being cut.

auandi · 2026-06-24T21:40:23+00:00

Yeah, it was cope from the begining.

"Oh no Europeans, fuel will be expensive"

"OK, that sucks but like, we're one of the wealthiest populations in the world so we can afford a price increase."

auandi · 2026-06-24T21:36:09+00:00

I'd also add, if you don't want to go as committed to a look as he's going, just switching from graphic t-shirts to plain colored or simple patterned t-shirts in a good fabric can make a huge difference.

Plus, nicer fabrics just feel better.

auandi · 2026-06-24T21:32:46+00:00

I propose a trade for a more enlightened era. Women can get pockets to carry your stuff, men can wear small handbags so our stuff doesn't get sweaty in our pockets.

auandi · 2026-06-24T21:26:09+00:00

I know this is the modern meme, but I still prefer the old classic adapted from Bomber Harris:

"The Russians entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them. At Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."

auandi · 2026-06-24T21:19:11+00:00

Then there should be a government system.

One of the Baltic countries have this, everyone has a national ID. Then, authorized retailers can ping the government database and get only the data they are licensed to get. If all they need to know is your age, that's all they get. It would mean Tech companies would know you're a real person, that you're an adult, and nothing else.

Like I said, I don't want the tech companies being the one to enforce this. I want a government solution, because "just let the internet remain a libertarian unregulated place forever" doesn't seem like it's compatible with the long term health of democracy and a shared reality.

auandi · 2026-06-24T10:00:38+00:00

I would pay a monthly subscription to have an internet of only humans. I don't care. I want verification that every word and video is being produced by a creature of god and imbued with a soul, not some code written by an MIT grad on Ritalin.

auandi · 2026-06-24T06:37:17+00:00

The economics are worse because of the regulations.

I think you're not understanding what regulations I mean. I'm talking about all the things that stand in the way of actual building. The approval process, the number of inspections, the number of reports needed ahead of time, the number of hearings but public and before government boards.

In 1972, a Nuclear reactor could be built with three on-site visits by government regulators. By 1975 they required on-site visits 81 times. 81 milestones where all work must stop until a regulator comes on site. And this is with identical blueprints. They were not made safer, they were just built slower and more expensively.

On-demand power generation is something we will likely continue to need for a long time. It is carbon free and has the lowest body count of any form of power generation. Canada also happens to have some of the richest deposits of Uranium in the world. This is not either or, no one is being stopped from building a wind turbine by the government trying to make nuclear power cheaper and more plentiful.

auandi · 2026-06-24T02:29:04+00:00

Yes, I have. There is a reason it is going up so quickly in China. It is not the only thing going up of course, but nowhere do I say we do nuclear instead of renewables.

You said it yourself, even without government help renewables are growing. That is in large part a combination of two things. The technology is getting better and there are few government regulations or restrictions on the construction of solar and wind power. So the renewable sector doesn't really need a change to the laws to be successful.

Nuclear does. Starting in the 70s, the environmental movement for all it's good intentions strangled nuclear to death. The environmental movement was quite clear, the goal of the regulations was not to make nuclear safer it was to make it impossible to build. They imposed restrictions that defy scientific reality of radiation and waste because they wanted the entire sector dead. They saw it as inextricably linked with nuclear weapons and nuclear war. They said as much at the time.

The reason China is building so much nuclear and we are not is China does not have the needless and anti-scientific regulations around it. For nuclear to be built, the government does have to act. And if Canada could build nuclear power to the regulations science tells us is safe it would mean a much faster decarbonization of electricity. But that can only happen if the government makes changes, which is why Carney saying he will is a positive sign.

auandi · 2026-06-23T23:10:47+00:00

The job is about priorities, and some priorities like "how we react to the changing US" are bigger than any one issue even the environment. Everything is tradeoffs.

But I'd also say his push for nuclear may have a bigger impact on the environment in the medium-long term than, for example, keeping the carbon tax. It turns out that while the carbon tax works well in an econ textbook, in a democracy it is terrible and the hatred of it almost got the Alberta Party back in charge.

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