That’s the thing about authoritarians: they attract authoritarian followers (thought not exclusively). If the authoritarian at the top fails to recognize those of their followers that have the same traits and give them enough of a “fiefdom” to rule, then they betray. It’s one of the things that makes fully authoritarian rule fragile (most long-term successful dictators ensure they give enough power to the right people under them).

Oh my god… Quebec and Texas together would be the worst pairing. Other than not wanting the federal government to control anything, they have almost nothing in common. e.g. Montreal is one of North America’s most livable cities; Houston is one of the least.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Canada isn’t ready to accept them. It would require a major change to our Constitution, and opening that can of worms for major revisions isn’t going to happen (history with Quebec, they never signed on the first time and were forced into it, two attempts to renegotiate failed, they had three referenda on separating from Canada…)

Montreal has a ton of separated, two-way bike lanes.

K-W is toying with them, but hasn’t really committed yet.

Now, painted bike gutters is what you get the most of, by far…

Keanu’s Canadian, so… You could become the 11th province?

(this is meant as light-hearted ribbing aimed at someone who clearly wants to see their country go in a better direction, I hope it’s taken as such)

Out of all the States, Minnesota is one of the few I’d have almost zero objection to welcoming in. “Minnesota Nice” and “Canadian Polite” are closely related (but somewhat different).

Sadly, it will never happen. Adding a province requires re-opening the Constitution, and that’s not going to happen. (If you’re too young to remember, look up the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords)

It’s still mind blowing, even if it is a coincidence.

+1

15x the fine, and index it to the wealth total of the world’s top 5% as per some org that tracks it.

At least then the juice will be worth the squeeze.

Agree, and to add: That the Finch West LRT doesn’t have signal priority is criminal. I live in K-W, and the iON is good because it has signal priority, and it still gets stopped by traffic signals relatively frequently.

Alas that I have but one upvote to give.

I work primarily in “classical” AI and have been working with it on-and-off for just under 30 years now. Programmed my first GAs and ANNs in the 90s. I survived Prolog. I’ve had prolonged battles getting entire corporate departments to use the terms “Machine Learning” and “Artificial Intelligence” correctly, understand what they mean, and how to start thinking about them to incorporate them correctly into their work.

Thus why I chose the word “LLM” in my response, not “AI”.

I will admit that I assumed that by “AI” Jimmy Carr was referring to LLMs, as that’s what most people mean these days. I read the TL;DW by @[email protected] but didn’t watch the original content. If I’m wrong in that assumption and he’s referring to classical AI, not LLMs, I’ll edit my original post.

Subhead:

Jasmeet Singh is charged in California with threatening someone in Canada for the Bishnoi gang

I misread that as Jagmeet Singh. My mind was blown for about 0.38s.

Ugh, I’m tired of point 2. Yes, LLMs have found a few patterns in large-scale study analyses that humans hadn’t, but they weren’t deep insights and there had been buried hypotheses around them from existing authors, IIRC (too lazy to source).

I don’t think they generally think that deeply. I think they really do want less illegal immigration (and less legal immigration, and the expulsion of all non-white, non-fundamentalist-Christian people) because that will create the “unified, blessed” nation they believe that they need to have.

That said, they aren’t concerned about dealing with either of those issues rationally or efficiently. It’s moral, not policy. “Impure” people who enter our “pure” nation are evil and must be thown out so we continue to have the favour of our deity (I refuse to write capital-g god here out of respsect for actual, loving Christian doctrine, as rare as it is). You deal with moral violations with exile and shame, not with compassion, wisdom, and welcoming.

Trump doesn’t even get that deep. “How does this play in the ratings? (and secondarily, how do I look?)” That’s it. It’s why he likes Mamdani in person—he gets ratings.

No, they don’t want any immigration, except from white South Africa apparently.

Wilson expressed deep regret about parts of his vote. “There are some things I regret about voting for President Trump? Yes, a hundred percent. Trade policy is one of them… I wish it hadn’t have turned out that way.” Even so, he said given the choices on the ballot, he still would have voted for Trump—reflecting a dilemma felt by many in rural America.

And there you go. “The other stuff” is more important than their own business. I’m willing to forgive a certain amount of being on the wrong side of history once they’ve seen the consequences of their actions, decided that they were wrong, and started the work to repair. But double down? Now you’re saying you actually want this.

Nebula link (if you have Nebula and would like to watch on a service that supports the creators more)

Generally agree. I don’t know enough of the data to say whether or not they should be motorcycles or a new category of vehicle that can be regulated separately, but I’m in favour of increased regulation and licensing as they get more powerful.

↑Motor Power ∝ ↑Frequency of going at high speeds ∝ ↑% of time when a severe accident is possible.

I understand the argument that any given rider doesn’t have to use the power. It’s the same argument as “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. While technically true, it ignores all of the evidence that shows that having the thing accessible increases its use in aggregate. I’m okay with people choosing to put themselves at risk, but a user of a more powerful eBike increases the danger for those around them as well. That kinetic energy works both ways when you hit someone else, and it’s way easier to get up to that energy on a powerful eBike.

I hope we can agree that unlimited eBike power without a license is the incorrect policy. If my bike has as much power as a motorcycle (and electric motorcycles do exist), then I should need to be appropriately licensed. At some insane power, it should probably not be street legal. If you imagine a “smooth morph” between the most powerful electric motorcycle and the least powerful eBike on the market, there is some line where we need to transition categories. I’m willing to argue over where the various categorical lines around vehicle regulation and driver licensing should be, but I hope we can agree that they need to exist.

That said, I’m not sure that the ~25km/h limit in NY is the right limit, I might choose something more like 30-35km/h (~18.5-22 mph). But that’s without any data and I’m not an expert, so 🤷

The main argument here is “if you can go as fast as traffic then you are more like traffic”. Not Just Bikes did a 1.5 hour treatment on how US/Canadian bike infrastructure got the way it did, and the one man responsible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRPduRHBhHI

Point is, this article falls into the trap of accepting the whole “real cyclist” framing of the argument. If there’s separate bike infrastructure, then the idea of needing speed to integrate with car traffic goes away, and the whole article is moot.