For millennia, the sense of smell has been widely undervalued — ranked far below vision by the likes of Immanuel Kant and Sigmund Freud. In 2021, a survey in the journal Brain Sciences found that people consistently ranked smell below vision and hearing — and even below commercial products. One quarter of college students...
A foreign multinational company can export Canadian blood plasma products for profit abroad, The Breach has learned. That flies in the face of what’s been pledged by Canadian Blood Services and Grifols, the Spanish multinational corporation that is trying to open private plasma collection centres across Ontario and already...
That an unelected person or department that’s part of our federal services has had and will have such a huge effect on this country’s politics for several years, the next federal election, and this country’s ability to respond to the growing climate crisis is a cause for concern regarding the integrity of our democracy. An investigation is warranted
It’s understandable that this person has this much influence, even though it’s not an elected position.
Unelected parliamentary bodies are supposed to support transparency, fairness, and debate - they’re not supposed to take a prominent role in shaping policy and communicating it to the public. I think it’s good that the PBO issues reports from a supposedly non-partisan perspective, but I don’t think it’s good how little oversight they themselves receive, as this incident reveals. The Government and Opposition (or all parties) should get advance copies of the PBO’s reports for public consumption, and the published reports should include that commentary from the Government, Opposition, and/or all parties
The proposed new scheme would not be conscription, where people are legally required to join the armed forces for a period. But it would compel people by law to complete a community programme over a 12-month period, or enrol in a year-long military training scheme, when they turn 18.
A 51-year-old Calgary man who suffers debilitating cluster headaches has won a Federal Court battle forcing Health Canada to reconsider his bid for legal access to psilocybin to treat his extreme pain....
Thanks for sharing. I’m glad you’ve got something that works well for those headaches and is cost effective. Most drug industry meds are to be taken daily. There’s not a lot of money in something like this for the drug companies lol
In 2023, a shocking one out of every five people in Canada were food insecure — defined as having a lack of access to food, or concern over lack of food access. Severe food insecurity — when people miss meals and sometimes go days without food — rose by 50 per cent....
This is similar to the previous post based on the Toronto Star article, but this press release adds that the unions are trying to directly legally intervene on the matter as well....
I don’t think most people who are against the idea of a carbon rebate/tax will be swayed by new figures. I hope policy-makers learn from this debacle of misnaming a green initiative that puts money in the pockets of most Canadians a “tax”. It effortlessly becomes a Conservative soundbite. And the corporate-controlled mainstream media get people into a froth in no time
This report isn’t about grocer finances. It’s about the analysis of food prices, and basically it says that a lot of the info that people are fed through the media and that is used to inform policy-making is not evidence-backed and doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Their point is that if we want to ensure food is affordable, etc., we need real data and not the bogus reports that are currently out there. The first step in getting real data are calling out current reports as bogus.
These reports are not scientific publications, but rather qualify as “grey literature” — information produced outside traditional academic publishing channels.
Nevertheless, they are published under the logos of academic institutions and government agencies. Given their prominence in Canadian media and policy, we believe it is important for the public to know that the arguments presented in these reports do not live up to scientific standards.
You’re suggesting that a UK Miners’ Union being less than fully welcoming of support from a Gay and Lesbian group in 1984 (40 years ago) is notable evidence worth considering to understand how this situation will play out?
Premier Doug Ford’s push to get beer and wine into convenience stores ahead of schedule will cost Ontario taxpayers at least $225 million, but there’s evidence the full price tag actually adds up to hundreds of millions more....
As an Ontarian, I feel like Ford’s destroying this province; it saddens and angers me.
Loblaws owner, Galen Weston, among others, is going to make a good chunk of $$$ off this. I’m sure he extends his thanks
It’s unclear what timeframe the OLP estimate is for, but there’s the startup cost on record of $225 million and an estimated $150 to $200 million [let’s call it $175] of revenue loss per year from “Official figures from the Ministry of Finance and the LCBO”. After 5 years that’s an estimated $1.1 billion
A new report commissioned by an industry lobby group on the federal government’s proposed emissions cap stirred up strong reactions from both oil and gas supporters and environmental groups on Monday....
From what I’ve read, carbon capture is, at best, an effective part of a transition away from reliance on fossil fuels as we systemically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, at worst, a bogus intervention, designed to distract populations from the larger necessary task of reducing reliance on fossil fuels and perpetuate the idea that we’re not facing crisis and can stay the course of doing little.
Tl;Dr: when fossil fuel companies talk about carbon capture, they’re lying and distracting from the real issues in order to keep doing what they’re doing
I’d say in about 2 years, the entire place is going to be bots with AI generated content that try to mimic “real users” using their new Dynamic Product Ads tool
Yeah, it’s just partially like that now lol. A few weeks ago there was a side-by-side reddit screenshot post on Lemmy. It showed the exact same reddit post, with the exact same tens of comments (all word for word, some in response to each other iirc), from different accounts less than a year apart. 100% fabrication. I’d never seen such extensive bot-masquerading as people behaviour; it was a realization moment for me
Tbh, policing of criticism of the Israeli government and their ongoing colonialist genocide of the Palestinian people has been so profoundly pervasive and oppressive in Canada (and US, Germany, and other countries), at least the half year or so, that I consider Chow’s comments and non-participation pretty courageous and commendable actually. Like you, I certainly would have liked a more principled stance that explicitly denounces genocide, but given the almost absurd level of censorship and whitewashing that’s been going on, I think she’s perhaps saying and doing as much as she can. It’s clear to me that this is much larger than her. I’m glad she’s mildly voicing dissent about the flag-raising at Toronto City Hall. It’s a @#$%ing travesty
I miss the days of VHS and DVD shelfs in homes, for example. If you bought the tapes and had them in your home, no corporate entity could alter those tapes without your consent, monitor how many times you watch them, sell your data to whomever they please without your knowledge, roll out new mandatory conditions to a ‘user...
Another problem caused by greedflation: companies want to collect both money and data for every usage (edit: I forgot to include “push ads in your face” as well)
I understand your pause on purchasing the robot vacuum. So many of these devices seem designed to collect every bit of your data that they can get their hands on, ostensibly justified by some veneer of convenience to the customer (ie, data livestock) or their ‘safety’ or ‘privacy’ (lol). As someone with lesser tech knowledge than you do to manage such data siphoning, I think it’s safe to say I’ll never be interested in owning a robot vacuum
I might’ve misspoke about never paying for a video game again. I do like the look of gog. I’m really out of the loop when it comes to gaming. I like more privacy- and ownership-respecting platforms, and I would (do) pay for those. What I meant was I’d caught a glimpse of the direction of the mainstream gaming industry with WC3, and I realized it wouldn’t work for me and had to get off it. I use LibreOffice. I’ll check out the libre gaming software, thanks!
They’ll obviously win when we run away. We should take the fight to them.
I appreciate your point of view. The way I see it, I think maybe 95/100 people blindly trust big tech companies and 5 of us don’t (to the willing we’ll avoid mainstream social media, for example); the proportion is debatable, but I think it’s a very uneven divide. I don’t think we have enough power to “stick it” to big tech. I also don’t think we need to. I participated in the reddit blackout last summer and then I left it altogether for here (Lemmy), which I enjoy more and want to help grow more than I did the last place. I guess I do want some people to keep big tech in check and whistle-blow, at least to help spread awareness. I guess I’m just not the person for the job, and I think that’s okay. More tech savvy people would do well in those roles :)
Great points! Ownership, control, access, possession - these might apply differently to different things. I could see ownership being more relevant than other concepts in digital documentation of one’s genetic information, for example. I think a public library model (ie, access) would work pretty satisfactorily for entertainment media. Our language might have lagged behind the privacy, consumer, and legal concerns of today. My knowledge certainly has, but that can be changed ;)
Thank you very much, kind Lemmy! I think it makes sense for me to postpone that a bit due to other things going on at the moment. But it was really helpful to vent and to hear words of empathy and support from people like you :)
It’s a little beyond me, but I was under the impression that the dictionary lookup feature is purely local. Saying that out loud I’m now not so sure lol
Thanks for the info! I general sail the seven seas for that suff but thought it was a pretty good example of the larger trend.
I played guitar for 5+ years, never really learning properly, but being able to jam okay. I can’t do that any more, but I have a pretty good knowledge base to start from. It’s probably a matter of I should just do whatever’s fun until I’m picking up the guitar a few times a week regularly - then I can get more focused. For easy-starting fun, that’s probably strumming and singing through songs on a less ad and malware-bloated website. To get serious, I’d like to work with a metronome, maybe finally feel confident with a 12-bar blues, transcribe some solos perhaps. Very old school 😎. Do you play or want to learn?
I think I’m more or less with @verdigris. I’d get behind the position that most large corporations have bent the rules of society so much to their favour and accrued so much wealth at the expense of ordinary people that we don’t owe them anything at this point. I got mad respect for the independent creators. But I feel there’s no moral transgression with streaming a pirated show vis-a-vis the corporations missing out on making a few bucks from that, to use a example. It’s not black and white; actors and others salaries are important and related. But those “you wouldn’t steal a car, so why are you trying to a CD/DVD?” ads were clearly corporate propaganda, as another example
What would a child say if they were asked whether they would steal a loaf of bread to feed their starving family if they had no other way of saving them? What would you say? Does context matter in moral judgements?
Canadians who have lost their sense of smell say it's misunderstood, undervalued — and deserves more attention (www.cbc.ca)
For millennia, the sense of smell has been widely undervalued — ranked far below vision by the likes of Immanuel Kant and Sigmund Freud. In 2021, a survey in the journal Brain Sciences found that people consistently ranked smell below vision and hearing — and even below commercial products. One quarter of college students...
Canadian blood plasma products can be sold abroad for profit by pharma giant ⋆ The Breach (breachmedia.ca)
A foreign multinational company can export Canadian blood plasma products for profit abroad, The Breach has learned. That flies in the face of what’s been pledged by Canadian Blood Services and Grifols, the Spanish multinational corporation that is trying to open private plasma collection centres across Ontario and already...
The carbon pricing debate is somehow getting worse (www.cbc.ca)
Canada Exported Record $30.6 Million Of Military Goods To Israel In 2023 (www.readthemaple.com)
Young Canadians are being priced out of home ownership and even parenthood. Why on earth would mandatory national service make them love their country more? (www.thestar.com)
This could be humorous… but it’s actually tragic (climatejustice.social)
climatejustice.social/…/112535649882421445
Health Canada must reconsider man's bid to use magic mushrooms for cluster headaches, Federal Court rules (www.cbc.ca)
A 51-year-old Calgary man who suffers debilitating cluster headaches has won a Federal Court battle forcing Health Canada to reconsider his bid for legal access to psilocybin to treat his extreme pain....
An oligopoly is driving up grocery prices. What can we do? (www.nationalobserver.com)
In 2023, a shocking one out of every five people in Canada were food insecure — defined as having a lack of access to food, or concern over lack of food access. Severe food insecurity — when people miss meals and sometimes go days without food — rose by 50 per cent....
Unions seek intervenor status to protect the Charter of Rights and Freedoms at the University of Toronto protests (usw.ca)
This is similar to the previous post based on the Toronto Star article, but this press release adds that the unions are trying to directly legally intervene on the matter as well....
Revisions to PBO's carbon tax analysis will 'vindicate' government, minister predicts (www.cbc.ca)
Why are grocery bills so high? A new study looks at the science behind food price reporting (theconversation.com)
web.archive.org/…/why-are-grocery-bills-so-high-a…...
For the good of the country, rich Canadians need to pay higher taxes on passive income (policyoptions.irpp.org)
web.archive.org/web/…/tax-the-rich/...
‘We will be your human shields’: Why unions are showing up in force to support the U of T pro-Palestinian protest encampment (www.thestar.com)
web.archive.org/…/article_562a3da0-1c62-11ef-91f5…...
Doug Ford's change to booze sales could cost far more than $225M (www.cbc.ca)
Premier Doug Ford’s push to get beer and wine into convenience stores ahead of schedule will cost Ontario taxpayers at least $225 million, but there’s evidence the full price tag actually adds up to hundreds of millions more....
Oil and gas lobby group says emissions cap could cost sector $75B in lost investment (www.cbc.ca)
A new report commissioned by an industry lobby group on the federal government’s proposed emissions cap stirred up strong reactions from both oil and gas supporters and environmental groups on Monday....
Out shopping, found this: (lemmy.world)
The level of engagement on Reddit these days
https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/179560d9-e33b-4e1e-83a9-7507868d46d4.png...
Badonkadonk she's mine. (lemmy.world)
Olivia Chow skips Toronto's Israeli flag raising event as 'it's a bit divisive' (nationalpost.com)
‘There’s a war going on in the Middle East and people are protesting every weekend,’ the Mayor of Toronto said in a statement
Coming to terms with no longer having privacy and control over my technology
I miss the days of VHS and DVD shelfs in homes, for example. If you bought the tapes and had them in your home, no corporate entity could alter those tapes without your consent, monitor how many times you watch them, sell your data to whomever they please without your knowledge, roll out new mandatory conditions to a ‘user...
Conservatives want to bring back the smoking rooms in Tim Hortons ultimately, and fuck the planet. (lemmy.world)