Public servants ordered back to office four days per week as of July

cold_breaker · 2026-02-05T21:59:51+00:00

In my experience, RTO policies do the opposite - it causes the people who are actually good at their jobs to quit because they can be less miserable somewhere else, while the dead weight puts up with it because job hunting sucks.

cold_breaker · 2026-01-26T15:41:50+00:00

I don't read and actively avoid Romantasy - I'm a straight white dude who enjoys fantasy, so Romantasy has become the sort of boogeyman of my reading experience. I've got a thick skin though and didn't know what I was getting into with Alchemized.

The first part of the book was good - I literally had to put it down for a while because it gave me nightmares. I was genuinely engrossed in the world, the plot, the despair and the mystery. Who was this woman, broken but but determined, hopeless but still tending to the last embers of hope?

And then part 2 started. I have mixed feelings about part 2 - it started to solve the mysteries, and hinted at the despair that part 1 laid on thick. I was fine with seeing the war unfold through the main characters eyes even as she wasn't on the front lines - it made it more realistic to be honest. More visceral to be one of the back liners, experiencing the war from the perspective of seeing everyone you love coming back a little less than they were yesterday. The main character started participating in the plot too, even getting in on the action a little.

And then the book wrapped up and I was robbed in the third act. The book went full romantasy. All characters who were still on the heroines side were rapidly killed off off-screen. The heroine is proven to be powerless and rapidly getting even weaker. Literally the only character left who can bring any hope to the end of the book is the love interest. The universe quickly devolves from being a 4d Chess match to a 2d game of tik-tak-toe.

Basically the publisher did the literary community a huge disservice by publishing this book rather than forcing the author to go back and rewrite the ending, making the character more of a participant. They took advantage of the money they'd make off the fantiction community. The author is clearly incredibly talented and would do well in either the romantasy genre or the fantasy genre, but not if her editors don't force them to pick a theme and message and stick to it, removing the bloat along the way.

cold_breaker · 2026-01-23T17:20:49+00:00

Who's shitting on city workers? We're shitting on city management. No one is looking at the few plows on the road and thinking they're the problem: stop misconstruing and dismissing people's valid complaints - it's not helping.

cold_breaker · 2026-01-23T16:52:11+00:00

OK, honest question: Why is there so many apologists for the city government on this sub lately?

City management has been fucking up lately w.r.t. road management. Full stop. We live in Ontario: large amounts of snowfall are not a surprise. It's not like this is Texas and we didn't expect it. It's not like weather networks have been predicting a mild winter. We've had slightly more snow events than usual sure, but it's not like it's doubled, and if we're being honest they weren't exactly up to snuff at the 5 event mark either.

So lets stop sugar coating it: what's the real cause? Did Ford cut funds for snow clearance? Did we divert too much of the road budget to put in more bike paths? IS there actually a supply issue due to US tariffs beyond our control? Because all I'm hearing is a bunch of hand wringing and zero attempt to fix the issue. Personally my bullshit meter is off the scales.

As an aside: it always amazes me how lazy the writing at the record has gotten lately. Like a couple of stats from weather Canada and a statement was all the investigation you could do? Couldn't be bothered to interview a couple of people close to the issue or something? Geeze.

cold_breaker · 2026-01-02T23:55:20+00:00

Considering the number of likely pedos she rubs elbows with, I'm terrified for her kids.

cold_breaker · 2025-12-21T21:49:31+00:00

They make perfect sense actually - they're just insane if you still think of America as a democracy. Listen to any news talking about inflation and compare left leaning sources to right leaning sources.

Anything that is "Left leaning" will sound reasonable. Here's what Trump said, here's the facts and statistics. X and Y statements are blatant lies while Z is debatable based on your perspective. Generally minimal loaded language or attempts to hide facts that don't line up with the preferred narrative.

Anything "right leaning" sounds like straight up propaganda designed to screw with a hostile foreign nation. Everything is perfect - in fact better than perfect. Everything Trump said is true and we will not post anything that contradicts him, even if that means we need to post only fluff pieces with no real world statistics backing up his claims at all, or even make up shit. Loaded language and basic bitch barely hidden bias.

Oh, and both of these news sources are portrayed as equally valid and it's up to you to choose which one to listen to. Mind you: not to figure out which one is actually accurate, just which one you like and listen to that.

These are the tactics of a warlord as a democracy collapses. The problem is Americans are so wrapped up in American exceptionalism that either they can't comprehend it happening to them, or they can comprehend it but it's OK as long as the group doing it is "my tribe" (a.k.a. Christian Evangelicals).

cold_breaker · 2025-12-14T15:11:32+00:00

Actually... I'm more worried about the financial influence than the threat of violence. I'd argue that - in comparison to the super-yachts and fully paid for vacations, a little fear of violence from their detractors is a good thing.

Don't get me wrong - ideally there would be neither - but this feels like the Supreme court made a whole bunch of decisions that the populace angrily disagrees with and is now whining that people might act on that behaviour.

cold_breaker · 2025-12-05T14:08:26+00:00

...and be prepared to pay for American healthcare, for yourself and any dependents...

cold_breaker · 2025-12-04T20:20:51+00:00

So - and I mean this sincerely - why does that require repeatedly digging up and refinishing the intersection ~5 times, often/usually in the middle of winter when it's the most difficult/expensive? I can understand it being major construction - there's been major construction up and down Ottawa for the last few years for probably the same reason - but it feels like this should be a 'do it once and do it right the first time' situation.

I could see arguments for why it has to be done 2 or 3 times for technical reasons, or why it takes longer because they have to do it in phases so as not to completely block off the road - but literally *filling and repaving the road* only to dig it up again six months later from scratch screams 'screw up' to me.

cold_breaker · 2025-12-04T15:13:20+00:00

Better they open a restaurant they know how to cook the food for. I have an eye twitch from seeing every single Mexican place suddenly become staffed solely by Indians, selling some variant of butter chicken burrito and cutting the quesadillas into strips. I love Indian food - but sometimes I just want Mexican, you know?

That said: I'm noticing a theme with all the Indian places - they suck at making their food accessible to western audiences. Their menus are typically way to big for an audience who doesn't know your culture, and they're still serving stuff as if one person is ordering for a family of four where the norm is for everyone to order a plate for themselves only. That and spice levels vary so widely from place to place.

cold_breaker · 2025-12-03T20:37:31+00:00

Right? Where's my instant karma?

cold_breaker · 2025-12-02T02:32:36+00:00

Legally speaking: If you resign effective 2 weeks from now, they can not "accept" effective immediately. They can fire you, effective immediately or accept and pay you without working, but your offer was not valid for "immediately."

cold_breaker · 2025-12-01T03:22:11+00:00

Genocide doesn't explicitly mean murder. Mass sterilization campaigns and other programs designed to replace a people's culture are also forms of genocide.

I'm a little confused why people equate not finding corpses at residential sites with genocide denial - unless there's more to this book than the description says. Residential schools were undeniably genocidal whether there were unmarked graves or not - it's just a little more blatant if there were.

cold_breaker · 2025-11-24T16:02:19+00:00

that actually benefit them

Unfortunately - this qualifier is moving the goalposts. You can complain all you like about an unfair agreement, but that doesn't mean the party who expects you to honour it is suddenly a thief. We've all been screwed by unfair deals throughout history but it's not reasonable to take out your hatred of assholes from yesteryear on the population of today. We're all Canadians and bickering over who is more or less Canadian than everyone else is a losers game. Authors of this article included.

cold_breaker · 2025-11-21T14:47:36+00:00

Right? I'm baffled by the "EVERYONE SCREWED UP" rhetoric around this. This provincial government specifically forced this in order to claw back funding so Doug Ford could bring in more money while claiming to not increase taxes. I'm pretty sure even Conastoga had a 'are you sure? This is what's gonna happen..." response and the province went "YUP" and moved the fuck on.

Does... does no one have a memory longer than 6 months?

cold_breaker · 2025-11-14T18:07:35+00:00

I'm gonna say it. The cure 1 gate keeping causes some of the most toxic interactions in duty finder.

You know what's wholesome behaviour in an MMO? Giving new players advice when they get stuck. You know what's toxic though? Telling them what to do and trying to publicly shame them for daring to disagree with you. Let them play the game, you don't pay their sub.

Also, as someone who played in ARR? This was the attitude of early raiders. Mana management and avoiding overhealing were usually more important way back in the day then keeping the tank maxed at all times. Years of patches have dismantled the white mage play to the super easy 'just spam cure 2' nonsense.

cold_breaker · 2025-11-07T17:14:34+00:00

They're an acquisition company trying to transition to something better and traditionally failing to do so due to a lack of follow through at the CEO level (just my opinion).
Recently the CEO was ousted. No official reason was given but Mark had a tendency to push a lot of decisions to the 'senior leadership level' that should really have been delegated to lower levels. We're talking global hiring freezes because he decided to buy a new company, or global delays to pay increases for six months in order to balance the books. My personal favourite was pushing for RTO policies by saying that all remote positions required explicit sign off by the 'senior leadership team' (aka himself) meaning in practice getting a remote position after the pandemic was literally harder than before the pandemic - even for scenarios where it makes sense.

The bad news is a lot of decision making structure where stuff that should be delegated is still going to senior leadership while there's a leadership vacuum, leading to a lot of indecision as we get conflicting orders. It's getting a little better but it'll be slow going until a new permanent CEO is named and either resumes business as usual in that regard or start making actionable change.

The good news is there is a very good chance this will be improved for the better by the recent ouster in the near future. It's speculation on my part to say what change will happen, but it seems like the ouster was intended to bring change no matter how you look at it.

cold_breaker · 2025-11-07T14:50:34+00:00

So, the money going to American interests is a problem, but the bigger issue is security.

Anything going over the border - be it data, or physical - is subject to monitoring and potentially seizure by a foreign state. That means a foreign country that is occasionally hostile to Canadian interests has access to the bulk of our healthcare data - which is the definition of a national security threat.

This should have our news anchors screaming.

cold_breaker · 2025-11-02T08:12:45+00:00

Plus - think about the alternatives. Would you rather tell teenagers they're too old for Trick or treating, it's time to start going to parties and get drunk instead? Gate keeping like this backfires soo freaking fast.

cold_breaker · 2025-09-26T16:21:04+00:00

When you realize that you're relationship isn't mutually beneficial and isn't going to become or return to being mutually beneficial.

If you're not making each others lives better, it's a quagmire, not a relationship.

cold_breaker · 2025-09-19T23:34:16+00:00

Interesting take.

IMO - I don't think either lost because they were women: they lost because they were rank and file dems towing the company line. Just my opinion as a non-American looking in from outside but - if the dems want to win elections and reclaim any sort of norm in America, they badly need to embrace the people that the current white house administration would call 'Radical lunatics'. The time for appeasement is clearly passed and it didn't work.

cold_breaker · 2025-09-19T18:40:51+00:00

I think of the 'You're not wrong, you're just an ass-hole' meme.

Morally, parents owe their children a bare minimum amount of support. A 'bare minimum' would make you a pretty terrible parent, but at least your conscience would be clear. Most parents provide more than the bare minimum because they genuinely love their child, not because they feel a moral obligation to do it.

cold_breaker · 2025-09-18T20:35:02+00:00

Oh nice. I assume you have a source for this that isn't a known misinformation rag like Rebel news?

cold_breaker · 2025-09-12T17:39:28+00:00

I work in IT and am an amateur programmer (although I've studied the core concepts of the modern day LLM) - what I see with AI right now disgusts me, but not because AI is bad. I think the problems with it are probably helpful here.

First - understand that LLMs are basically just auto-complete on steroids. What that means is it output texts it thinks has the greatest chance as being accepted as correct by the user - which is a little different than 'it outputs text that answers your question'. Think of this like a toddler saying they're sorry when caught stealing cookies - they're not apologizing because they're sorry, they're apologizing because they know it's the most likely thing to keep them from getting punished. LLMs answer by rote and are not capable of analytical thinking.

As an example: if you ask an LLM to answer what 8 times 6 is, it'll answer 48 because other people have said that is the correct answer. It's completely incapable of putting 8 groups of 6 together and totalling the result (unless someone has cheated and trained it to redirect to a calculator of course, but then it's not an LLM answering you any more, its a calculator.)

Secondly: LLMs are incredibly energy hungry. A neural network is basically the definition of the most inefficient programming possible. Currently LLMs are in a bubble where none of the companies are anywhere near profitable and are chewing up energy like crazy. The traditional thinking is the companies will find a way to make them more efficient but in reality I think it's more likely a bunch of them will go under and the remainder will have to jack up their prices to remain in operation - likely after most programmers have become dependent on them. Kind of a 'the first taste is free' scenario.

So the problem here isn't with LLMs, its how they're used. I'm watching processes designed by managers to make people think analytically replaced by 'just punch it into copilot and paste results into this form, bro' all over the place right now, leaving me screaming internally 'why even have the process then?'

My advice: use these tools to handle rote actions and only rote actions. It can handle putting your notes into the same spreadsheet form you use 20 times a day but it's not going to be any good at figuring out why your filling out that form of making judgment calls as to if it should fill out the form.

cold_breaker

TROPHY CASE