"No room for context or nuance allowed right! If the rule isn't applied the exact same way even for oppressive regimes might as well not help anyone!" - you I guess

I have a new petition: can we please name the next two pieces of Canadian military hardware blackjack and hooker?

it depends a lot on how you are using them tools wise. as a sharding database for document storage they are nearly equivalent. when it comes to ecosystem opensearch's is smaller and a bit more specialized but very open. elasticsearch has a lot more fancy enterprise tooling and tools but can be annoying to work with unless you have a full license for all the features. it's better to ask what is your use case/expectations and choose based on that.

I think the real ask here is that this "Sovereign wealth fund" contain more than just the new national public projects pegged to returns with very little to no input on the project and instead act like a managed group of assets that are "professionally managed" like pension funds do with their wholly owned investments where these projects (though public) are set up like a business with a board and executives managers etc. that answer to the SWF chairs on their board with the SWF asking questions like how are you growing the value of the service/project. It wouldn't have to be purely monetary either, everyone always thinks of the train line that sells utility space along the line, adding additional lines to increase the amount of business that can be done, maybe the oil company that wants another pipeline somewhere else to reach different customers, but the real argument is that you can expand this beyond direct monetary value generated. for example You improved patient outcomes by 20% in this Hospital group this year your job next year is to identify whether you will be able to take on the increase in population of X city or whether you will need an additional hospital to meet demand, if the new hospital is chosen How will you improve the health outcomes within your system, new capabilities? additional capacity? Oh you have a problem with your municipal trash system that is not properly funded and lowers how much the municipal waste company can do well guess what the SWF board is going to show up and make you fix it so that it works well and it doesn't lower the value of all the other assets in that city. in contrast it keeps the local politicians from dumping money in some pet project that will not have any demonstrable returns.

Sounds Nice right?

the problem is that this needs to be done slowly over time or piecemeal by local governments with provable metrics assets etc. that can be measured in some useful way with fair metrics that politicians can influence but not dictate or completely control. not all things run well as a business and trying to decide what should and should not be governed by monetary concerns or public outcomes is tricky. Singapore is talked about a lot but without getting into a long discussion Singapore has a very different idea of what governments can demand and do to public utilities and public outcomes then what the average westerner is comfortable with.

i also worry that if this is pushed down to local governments we run into the whole problem of the provinces taking ownership of these services from municipalities as they are "creature of the province" and none of the municipal or federal government end up with any access to the money to add to these funds.

Maybe I didn't make it clear I said "more of an ally" implying a sliding scale from "hostile enemy" to "close ally" with many(or infinite) steps in between. you could drop any country on that scale somewhere and argue that they belong before or after any other country on that slide based on who is around them and how hostile they are to Canada. my argument was only that Russia was far closer to the "hostile enemy" side as it has far more practical and territorial ambitions as it relates to Canada. I do not believe Israel has territorial ambitions for Canada and has better functional relations on a country to country basis. not moral. because as I said before not all arguments are moral. Please try and understand this is not about black and white terms like ally and enemy. Those don't even really exist in any permanence when it comes to countries anyways. If it helps you can ignore any of my mention of ally and replace it with "risk" or "party less likely to try and directly fight a war against us".

you keep trying to make it just one thing. it isn't. saying it's "just geopolitics" is just as shortsided and wrong as saying its just moral. it is a mix. it always has been.

because there is more to sanctions then just moral arguments unfortunately. and whether I agree with it or like it Israel is more of an ally then russia is so it is much easier to sanction russia. that much should be obvious though obviously a shit excuse for Palestinians.

to be clear that is 16 of the 49,000. that is all lotus has brought over. this was a publicity stunt and a dumb one. if the government or whatever agency is in charge of approvals had half a brain they would have brought over a couple cheap ones first to camouflage this BS but apparently we are not even worth the attempt of subterfuge.

this is not an "either, or" or a "what about" both are horrific we should do these sanctions to russia, and at least the equivalent to Israel. we can do more than one thing at once.

look, this problem we have with china is the same we have with the USA, and even Europe, these governments have rules on the books that they can mandate companies to transfer data to them without the other countries consent if they have access or can compel access to the data. If we actually care about this we need to put our big boy/girl pants on and ban companies that we care about from using these services. you can't stop private people from using tiktok/telegram/azure/aws/etc. if they do not accept money from them or add in an "other" option for geographic location. The only way to address this without pissing off everyone is to treat them all equally and blame the others and their shit laws. (they'll all still be pissed but at least they have good arguments for why we would still do it.)

The Article:

One-third of Canadians say their personal finances have worsened in the last month as gas prices and inflation rise amid the war in Iran, according to a new poll.

The survey conducted by Canada Pulse Insights for CityNews found 60 per cent said their financial position remained the same, while one in 10 said their situation had improved.

Those who said their financial position had worsened were those earning $50,000 or less (40 per cent) and those living in Atlantic Canada (37 per cent). East Coasters were followed closely behind by those in British Columbia at 35 per cent and Alberta at 34 per cent.

Poll respondents who said their financial position had improved were those aged 18 to 24 at 14 per cent, men at 13 per cent and those earning over $50,000 per year (11 per cent). Improvement was also noted in Quebec at 14 per cent.

Meanwhile, nearly 80 per cent of those surveyed said they would be worried about their personal or family day-to-day finances, and 34 per cent said they would likely struggle to make ends meet.

A total of 14 per cent believed they could lose their job or be laid off because of a lack of work and said they would not have the ability to purchase the products they need for themselves or their family.

Nearly one in 10 Canadians, 13 per cent, said they would likely default on making payments on loans or a mortgage, and seven per cent said they are likely to declare bankruptcy.

The survey’s release comes as gas prices were expected to jump 10 cents on Wednesday to 195.9 cents per litre, the highest since the summer of 2022.

I wonder if they intend to bring back the veggie dogs? they seemed to be pretty well loved.