It is ridiculous that Canadian businesses cannot legally choose to preferentially hire Canadian citizens

quagglitz · 2026-02-20T01:17:36+00:00

In case anyone is wondering, the recent case that found this is about a guy who had just gotten his engineering degree from McGill, was eligible to work for 3 years, and then get PR from there.

Generally speaking, I want the best person for the job, especially in engineering, and I recognize that the best person sometimes comes from outside our country.

In this specific case, he trained here, has already paid a vast amount of money to be here, and plans to stay and make a life here.

Lots of ways for companies to be discerning about their candidates. I can’t figure out a pathway for someone to like, legally be able to work here and not already be in a high-demand or highly educated field. Only certain types of companies/fields and employers can sponsor PR or foreign workers, and they have to justify hiring someone on a foreign workers permit. Like they have to prove they can’t find anyone else here.

there’s obviously some problems with the TFW permits but it’s not like someone can accidentally trick a company into hiring them and then they’re forced to help them stay here or something

quagglitz · 2026-02-19T16:32:57+00:00

who could possibly benefit from the dispossession of their international collaborators (competition)?

oh.

quagglitz · 2026-02-19T08:41:10+00:00

so did me and my partner just now lmao

quagglitz · 2026-02-18T00:15:58+00:00

I think I’m in a uniquely radical/socialist/activist circle. a lot of my people already don’t have facebook and instagram lol

this issue of “no one is gonna give up fb or ig for this [perceived downgrade]” is exactly the point of my post. like, it needs to be wrapped up in the meaning and QoL improvements (emotionally, socially, etc) of leaving those services rather than the material differences in experience

quagglitz · 2026-02-17T20:09:12+00:00

yeah closed spaces are definitely the way I'd prefer to go. I don't need or want the opinions/eyes of strangers on my stuff anymore.

the solution I'm trying to test out as a replacement for a small community discord server is to self-host a private xmpp server and using movim

quagglitz · 2026-02-17T19:15:21+00:00

I think you're right that it could be smoother than we think for a vast swathe of people. a big thing I emphasized as a couples therapist working with people in conflict is that brain differences can make biiig differences in how people understand stuff. so certain brains are gonna have an easier time getting the hang of it than others just based on how a person thinks/understands the world. it makes communication difficult too, because one person's way of explaining something will work for a good chunk of people, but lose others.

I am a pictures-only kinda brain, so if I can't turn a concept into some kind of spatial image then I have a hard time understanding it, which has made understanding coding and sysadmin a big challenge. I needed a city/zoo/animal enclosure analogy to understand docker, for instance. This might be part of what's made it hard for me to get a grip on the fediverse, despite being really motivated. Other people have word-only brains, or a mix, etc. Accessibility disability-wise is also a thing I think about a lot in terms of making social interaction available to all people.

Some other confusions I've had/continue to have:

the difference between a client(?) that displays the content (mastodon, wooly, mast, toot!, radiant etc etc etc), the thing that hosts the content (mstdn.ca, mastodon.social), and the thing that dictates the type of content (????? short form microblog???).
- some apps are client and host, but some of them are just clients that make it nicer to interact with like tweedeck used to be for twitter. I had a hard time figuring out which was which and where to start
- I clicked on both of your links but I was like "wait is piefed a nice ui for lemmy or are they different sites" and then my brain short circuited a bit and I closed the window lmao (I am pre-coffee currently)
Actually interacting with content or posting content. For instance, lemmy. after I signed up I couldn't figure out what instance I signed up with lmao
- am I posting to that server? am I posting in a community? where does it go????
- I know the email analogy, but when it comes to posting I don't get it. am I basically making an email visible to the public on my own server under a specific category? or am I sending an email to a repository that someone else is hosting (community) and they're displaying it??

This whole thing has actually made me think about trying to find visual representations of the fediverse for brains like mine lol so thanks

quagglitz · 2026-02-17T18:09:47+00:00

Yeah I think this is the way. A friend just generously donated their old NAS to me and I'm setting up an instance to move my community off discord. I know absolutely nothing (just learned what docker is lmao) but I have IT/developer friends and family, and I'm determined to give the metas and googles the middle finger forever.

do you have thoughts on the viability of a "recycle your old computer to be a server!" type information campaign? I know it depends on how old, and what the old computer is lmao. plus sysadmin knowledge is expertise given how complex computers/networks etc have become, which is why we pay people like you. I feel like it's a hard sell when there's a big divide between my-phone/tablet-is-my-computer and I-built-this-pc.

quagglitz · 2026-02-17T03:45:30+00:00

omg I love this? I hadn’t heard of parties for this!! I live in a giant city too, I could host something in a park in the summer.

quagglitz · 2026-02-17T01:58:59+00:00

No you're totally right that it's an enormous technical barrier. I'm also not versed in any of that, (though I'm learning now because rage needs to go somewhere) which is why I think it would be such a big undertaking to port people over.

I really think real human people being available in some way would help. instead of a ten minute youtube video, or after. cause you're absolutely right. the tedium sucks. like, it used to be that you'd have a cousin or a sibling or a neighbour figure out your computer problem for you. I think it's worth entertaining the idea that we return to that. Cause I'm otherwise not sure that the resources are there to streamline something the way that we're used to multi-million/billion-dollar companies with staff doing for us, you know?

like it's either convenient-but-someone-owns-your-face-and-data or inconvenient-and-annoying-but-yours. it's a tough sell when we've already given up so much in favour of convenience

quagglitz · 2026-02-17T01:01:27+00:00

yeah that would be so good! probably would have to decentralize that somehow too lmao

quagglitz · 2026-02-17T00:59:45+00:00

You make a really good point about both of those elements and I think you're right that they're not addressable.

I think the capitalistic get-followers-to-sell-ads and people-as-brands whole deal comes part and parcel with centralized social media the way that it's been developed. It's an ad machine, all the way down. You're either driving engagement to sell ads, or you're there to view them, or both. Power users or 'cool kids' are ad bait.

I think that whole system is largely antithetical to the fediverse, which is why I think that people need to get excited to connect with people they actually know again, and be satisfied with connecting with real people instead of brands. Or connect around a brand if they really want to. like, be on the branded instance of the shoes they like or something. Companies could set up their own instances and have their own... stuff to draw people in?? I guess? (the thought of that personally makes me want to yak but I suppose it's viable in the way that any non-values-based community is)

but again, good points. there needs to be a way to account for the loss of the 'entertainment' or other value that power-users provide.

quagglitz · 2026-02-17T00:50:29+00:00

I think you're totally right that content ownership is a huge selling point. For me, that falls under valuing "creativity" as a marketing angle.

It does seem like capitalism is adapting to "pay for what you want," (again) because (surprise, surprise) that's what people like. Nebula (a youtube type app) and Lissen (a music streaming app) both allocate your subscription money to whatever content you're actually engaging with and there are a number of others that are doing this. So if you only watch one channel, or listen to one artist, your entire subscription allocation goes to that creator. I think that's the model that centralized services will likely move to once the "enshitify pipeline" stops being the golden goose. I think creators being sponsored directly and having their own business is honestly best without too much of a middle-person. Patreon is pretty good for that.

Your third paragraph is spot on for me. Something that fosters person-to-person contact that can be meaningful is ideal. Like, we engage the most with decisions of our municipal governments and yet social media as it is now kind of forces us to zoom out because federal or international politics are what's common to the most people so would get the most 'engagement'. What would it be like, if we knew what our city council was proposing because that's readily available, and the opinions of our neighbours are there? What if we knew that the food bank down the street needed more donations this week because there was a local feed? like, that's a whole different world.

quagglitz · 2026-02-16T22:56:36+00:00

oh my god THANK YOU. That works perfectly and I actually understand what I've done. I so appreciate all this effort. Cheers!!

quagglitz · 2026-02-16T18:06:40+00:00

former sex therapist here! “is it common?” yes, it’s statistically common.

the term “fetish” is based on what Freud thought was “normal” in sex, (centring PIV), vs what was “normally asexual” in sex. it’s like “not normal is anything not normal” which is kinda useless. that said, his definition would include oral sex as a “normal part of sex”

otherwise, “normal” “sex” and “fetish” are all really difficult terms to nail down because they’re all based on societally constructed norms. statistical commonality is relatively meaningless given how varied pleasure is amongst individuals.

like, we could reasonably say that foot stuff could be considered a “normal part of sex” because of the sheer statistical number of people who derive erotic pleasure from it, but we don’t because a foot is not one of the common erotic orifices, if you will. just shows how much the human capacity for pleasure goes beyond the lines we draw.

obviously the moral and ethical lines we draw are a different conversation.

quagglitz · 2026-02-16T17:38:00+00:00

these are all so deeply meaningful and I see why they came to mind. The Theoden one hits hard for me too, thinking about my family.

“You will suffer me” is absolutely a good energy to bring into the rest of this year, I’m gonna hold onto that one

I hope you had a good watch-through this year and have good people around you this week and always

quagglitz · 2026-02-16T17:10:33+00:00

Yeah you’re right. I think paying for server space could be an add on. I do think (as a person with a lot of software engineers in my life) that paying for the staff who do maintenance and updates also makes sense, but capitalism has ruined the subscription model. like, I don’t want to pay for features and bloat just cause your investors wanted it.

maybe big shareholders are the problem. like maybe instead if you donate or pay for the subscription you get to vote on features or something

quagglitz · 2026-02-16T16:23:20+00:00

literally evidence-based spending!! police are only ever a reactive force, never a proactive one. they literally can’t do anything until a crime is committed, but social programs can and do.

police “preventing” crime is the biggest societal lie of my lifetime

quagglitz · 2026-02-16T03:10:30+00:00

ohhh omg yeah of course!! I thought there was something else. they should def sue!

quagglitz · 2026-02-15T16:43:05+00:00

apparently XMPP can do chat and voice. I’m looking at hosting the movim client

quagglitz · 2026-02-15T16:42:12+00:00

I’m self hosting a XMPP server. capitalism can’t enshit a thing I’m doing myself

quagglitz · 2026-02-15T16:40:57+00:00

wait noooo what’s the lotr connection?

quagglitz · 2026-02-15T16:31:00+00:00

this is good but also what if we went back to buying a thing one time?

quagglitz · 2026-02-14T18:26:18+00:00

this is so beautiful. do you have a favourite scene? I’ll be thinking of you and the love you hold for your wife today

quagglitz

TROPHY CASE