Yep the food will probably be HEAVILY dependant on what kind of land and/or my neighbours. I plan on living in Quebec, north of the st Laurent between or near Montreal and Trois Rivières. I’ll probably be looking at essentially a beefed up hobbyist garden for the first long while, maybe chickens, rabbits, ducks, and fishing in the streams for my proteins. But pork and maybe beef locally. Because of the shorter grow season I wanna experiment with hydroponics, but I won’t expect great results just mostly do it as a hobby thing. The land there is already cultivated, some of the oldest cultivated land in the area beyond First Nations cultivation, so fingers crossed maybe I’ll be able to buy an old abandoned farm for decent. Starting my own homestead from scratch in a swamp or wooded area will probably be beyond my abilities for sure

It’s getting cold in Canada, but playing civ 6 is my version of getting warm by the fire.

Im trying to speed run affording a cheap plot of land and to work it to make it self sufficient but close enough to a major city that I can still travel for work if needed. Ideally I’d like a electric vehicle that I can charge on a semi-off grid system but that’s a much longer term plan. I essentially want to return to homesteading/semi-subsistence farming. With current tech and tech around the corner, I feel like with the right moves you can do it with minor to no loss of modern luxury comforts. If I can mostly feed and house myself then logically I only need to work part time for mortgage payments and land taxes, and stray costs of fixing stuff.

it’s kinda like that vegan argument that’s been made lately, that no one is demanding you quit meat cold turkey even reducing is a MAJOR win. It’s hard to quit my participation in capitalism cold turkey, growing my own food, producing my own solar electricity, and overall reducing my consumption needs and having self reliance is a win.

that, and the only true reliable wealth in life is having access to productive land imo. Vegetables grow in the garden all the same regardless of stock prices, and the root cellar still keeps your jarred supplies cold. Im under no delusions of surviving any apocalypses but I will be much safer for some nasty recessions.

also, I just think this kind of lifestyle would be neat. I’d probably do it anyways even if I was dirty rich. It’s my version of a project car in the garage. A project homestead in the woods.

Same. I have had many failed would-be father figures in my life and I always said Jean Luc Picard is the closest I ever had to a positive male authority figure in my life.

Probably would’ve ended him up in some legal trouble somehow but still lame. It’s not to hard to do something like that anonymously but I suppose they wanted the clout and 5 second fame — can’t get that if you use an anonymous account.

Fuckem. If anything I hope the industry gets nationalized (and keeping a strong union) if that means the workers keep their jobs. Letting US companies own our industries was a mistake.

Having worked in the US and now returning to Canada: protect labour rights at all costs. You have no idea how bad it can get. If laws like this pass, they will rob you slowly each year, so minor that it’s not worth fighting over, boiling you slowly until you are destitute. Stronger labour laws makes for a stronger and more wealthy people, and makes for a stronger Canada. Making the top 1% richer through laws like this only makes us a paper tiger.

Not to sound like a conspiracy theory, but after the Russian bot farm thing I think this is a race to have the means to Astro turf the Internet for propaganda.

I think we are going to end up with infranetworks, regionally and nationally to avoid this. And I fear that the only way to confirm that someone is not a bot soon will be ID or some sort of biometrics. I think this is a controversial take, but I’d support a non-anonymous internet/social media alternative if it meant everyone I talk to is a human.

As for a more optimistic take…. I’m sure there’s a lot of complex science shit that instead of actually mindfully researching and experimenting with, can instead just be brute forced. Kinda like those videos where they train “AI” to play racing games or Mario levels, but letting it randomly attempt it thousands of times — and eventually it even beats humans playing it in time and efficiency. Maybe we can use AI to generate more efficient machines?….

I think we are at the point where AI would be okay enough to do simple shit like simplified farm and factory work, low stakes stuff where it fucking up can’t actually have that severe of consequences. That’d require sweeping economical and social reforms to tackle unemployment, and that’s too optimistic for me. This probably won’t get us to a post scarcity society, but it could make a lot of things very trivial and cheap… if introduced ethically. There might be a point where there’s a lot of people that won’t/can’t get a job, many that shouldn’t need to get a job, and what to do with them. Not everyone can be the guy that fixes and builds the AI. Maybe being unemployed will become not a big deal

Why does he look like he’s checking his phone and is disappointed lmao

Brown leather belt to match the boots I think would be an improvement. Tucking in a sweater does look a lil weird but not impossibly so. Having the boots, belt, and watch band matching is usually a pretty consistently good looking combo.

the leather jacket is cool but I feel like the buckles and zippers are a bit much, it can probably be executed better without the sweater. It’s like if Ned Flanders put on a bikers jacket lol. For that jacket I feel either black or grey jeans or weathered light blue jeans would do better, whichever aligns to your personality the most, and maybe black boots to match the jacket leather. That, or a lighter shirt/sweater would make the jacket pop more.

This is all very subjective and nitpicky advice and opinions. Overall the fit looks great. Gives cool uncle who biked to thanksgiving dinner energy.

Why would they think they’d be the exception, even if it were to be peacetime? When I had to live in the US as a permanent resident, that did not exempt me from their draft. It was required to sign up for the selective service for me to go to college actually. Thought it was predatory and I’d prefer not signing up, but seems fair enough to me. If you plan on living somewhere permanently, you will be asked to assist in defending it if needed. Not rocket science.

The opportunity to bypass or avoid drafts or mandatory service with minimal or no consequences is a modern luxury in most western countries.

Teleporter technology is severely underutilized in the show. Unless teleporters is why its a post scarcity society? they just teleport most of the resources out of the ground? Some materials, for reasons not always explained, are not able to be teleported though.

There is a lot of tech in star trek, or any sci fi really, that makes you go “wait couldn’t they use that to x” and the answer is usually yes but that wouldn’t make for good television. Kinda like in that scene in the star wars sequel where they rammed the ship into the imperial mega-ship. Why would the rebels bother fighting fair fights when they can just get random old ships that can barely do hyperdrive, and just ram them into the destroyers? 1 old musky ship for one top of the line star destroyer is an insanely good trade. Or what happens if you did that into a planet? You’d essentially be able to commit a 9/11 terrorist attack on a almost shoestring budget.

The more I think about how potent this tech would be for killing, it gives me a new perspective on the great filter theory.

That’s the one I had in mind when writing the first comment. The worse part is Geordie kept that largely respectable. Could you imagine what someone with no self control and a holodeck of their coworkers could do?

I’d love if there was an exploration of what holodeck usage for civilians looks like. If you can have a holodeck that can bring the entire universe to you, why bother doing anything? Especially since you are already in a post scarcity society where strictly speaking you don’t need to do anything. I always felt that the federation having motivated people is societal momentum from earlier centuries, but in a couple more centuries I think it’s entirely plausible that most of humanity would become simply indifferent to the greater world around them, infinitely entertained by holodecks and again, zero scarcity. Honestly, not so different from the Q in a way. How much of society in Star Trek is actually productive? Someone’s gotta be mining the dilithium. Is there genuinely enough people who just volunteer for that?

How exactly does a post scarcity society function?…. And could they please tell us so we can get there ASAP.

God I loved lower decks. I think that episode still only scratches the surface of malicious use cases for holodeck technology.

Plus I think it helps that much of what the holodeck recreates is centuries old at that point. 21st century earth, long ago. It’s not anyone’s current creations, and then beyond that it’s using data that the federation personally got by exploration. Like if people only used AI to generate medieval drawings I don’t think anyone would be too upset really. Maybe weirded out but not upset. Aside from the environmental concerns I guess.

however generating holo characters that look like your coworkers and doing weird stuff to them is a entirely canon issue. And Star Trek never touched on it, but wow would it be easy to fake footage of historical events in a holodeck, especially to civilizations without advanced technology. I work in history as my career and the amount of YouTube videos telling fake stories and showing fake footage of 20th century history is genuinely terrifying. I don’t know what the solution is. Digitization was meant to preserve historical footage but now it just makes it look just like the fake stuff. If anyone digitized historical footage and the physical no longer exists, verifying anything will become a nightmare and sometimes it would be strictly possible.

Honestly the more I think about the holodeck the more I think it’s dangerous as fuck, literally and socially, and Star Trek shows usually only very innocence uses for it. Like you thought parasocial relationships are bad now?

But for many of these services the EU companies and people are paying customers for these services or revenue generating sources (ads etc). The EU is a massive market and source of income for tech companies surely. It’d be like shooting yourself in the leg just to shoot them in the foot. Nobody would win here.

Specially since they get the same cut per dollar whether it’s a AAA game or indie. With how cost prohibitive many larger publisher titles are becoming, this is just smart.

I’m not tech savvy on this level at all, but would this not also kill or seriously maim the US economy too?

The German and Austrian ones are much better from what I heard internally and I believe they are also unionized? Or just have more labour protections. But yeah the products are cheap and the quality was oftentimes acceptable or even better than name brand stuff. The cheap prices were the only reason I could eat well in the US. I love and hate them.

Pretty much yep lol. To Aldi’s credit, I got USD$18/hr while everywhere else paid at most $11-13/hr. The working conditions sure as hell made you earn it though, I still have back pain from my manager pushing me to unload the food deliveries faster and faster. One whole food pallet of mixed foods, 7ft tall or more, needed to be done in 30 minutes on average, within 3 hours before opening. We would regularly get 6-7 pallets, and during peak sales I’d have to solo 10-13 pallets by myself.

Grocery workers need to unionize YESTERDAY. I wonder if a grocery store union could be an element in solving the overly greedy food profiteering. Call me a communist but food should only be sold exactly at how much it cost to grow and transport it to the store and a living wage for the farmers and employees. Go make profit somewhere else capitalist boy. Deeply interested in how those New York City owned grocery stores will play out. I hope they are successful.

NGL this was mostly just me ranting rather than making any worthwhile discussion lol