This reminds me of when Paul Martin tried to drop $13B on DND to make a splash ahead of an election. But they have the same problem now as they did then: there aren’t enough employees to create the contracts to spend that kind of money in time to have delivery by March 31st. Even if you got a contract or two out, can a manufacturer churn out billions in product that fast without having to first build more infrastructure? Can services be procured without hiring and training enough people first? Didn’t fly for Martin either. The investment only paid dividends by the time Harper was in office, so guess who the CAF rank and file was grateful to.

Yeah, we’re pretty close. Put a stronger front bumper and a DRL module on an American car, and it’s about the same. But we also aren’t that different from Europe either. Build a Canadian car with a weaker roof, rear bumper, and child seat anchors, while beefing up the side impact ratings, and adding ESC, AEB, ACC features as standard and you have a European car. Maybe we can agree to take the best of all standards and agree to make them that way. Seems the best way to open things up without just arbitrarily agreeing to adopt another country’s standards wholesale in an attempt to get some market share. We have enough problems with that as is.

Yeah, I looked them up out of curiosity after posting. They look pretty similar. In CanUS, most LATCH seats use a lap belt with clips on either end to connect to the anchors. This lets you slip it between the upper and lower parts of the seat more easily. Looks like ISOFIX is designed so the seat latches right to the anchors, and there is a removable part of the seat that exposes the anchors. The top tether in Europe usually goes to a roof while it is usually on the bottom of the rear part of the seat in CanUS. I think the Euro implementation would likely minimize installation issues, which was the whole point of both standards. To get the lap belt tight enough is a real pain, so they get installed wrong a lot over here. Apparently there are LATCH car seats that also connect directly to the seat anchors, but I have never seen one. Seema like it would be rougher on the interior given how we hide the anchors over here, but it would probably result in fewer bad installs.

I know one of the problems is the clips we use for attaching car seats for small children. Since they don’t match what we use, we’d probably have to switch to European car seats too. No idea which is safer or why we have the differences, but I’d bet there are lots of little safety things that don’t line up between countries. I’m not sure I’m willing to give up our autonomy in this regard just so we can have more products. While I think Europe would probably have better standards than the US, I don’t like the idea of relying on any other countries to determine what is safe enough for Canadians to use.

Oh yeah, for me MW is MechWarrior. Modern Warfare is a BBS door game.

Because the UN General Assembly takes summer holidays too. No matter how eager Carney may be to declare it, he still has to wait for the UNGA to resume in September.

Shit, didn’t have to read past the first comment to find the first name that popped into my head. Agreed, he would be terrible. And yet, I have a feeling I’d still watch the shit out of it.

It really did balance martials. They were actually fun to play in 4e. Encounters were really easy to create and balance. Neither spells nor magic items were wildly overpowered. It was a well thought out and fun to play game. But it sure didn’t feel in any way like D&D.

Looks like Pope Benedict

For above freezing, terrestrial temperatures, Canadians have long depended on the “double it and add 30” rule to understand freedom temperature units while travelling.

Right? Ignore him and let him fade back into obscurity.

The age of consent in your state may surprise you then. It is 16 for most of them. I grew up in Canada, and it was 14 until 2009, and is 16 now. As a father of teenagers, I’ve noted that age of consent is a double-edged sword, “protecting the children” not only from would-be sexual predators, but also from themselves when they choose to express their gender differently. Because what it really is, is an age of asserting bodily autonomy. Whether I like it or not, there comes an age when my teens should have a right to do whatever they want with their own bodies. In my opinion, it’s fine to pick an age to be a legal guideline for when a person is incapable of asserting their own rights, but we should immediately defer to the choice of an individual whenever a person is old enough to demand it.

Yeah, it just sucks that we are all paying about an extra 3% more on everything we buy to cover the interchange fees charged on credit transactions, even if we pay cash. It’s built into all the pricing. Years back, there were places that would discount a price by 3% if you paid cash, but I haven’t seen that in years. Best we can do now is get a cash back card to recover some of the loss. The annual fee cards usually get you more back, so if you use a credit card for everything you can, you might be further ahead.

Doing my marsh-wiggle boy dirty there.

Sadly, its numbers are comparable to Hyundai’s Ioniq 6, which might be the best EV on the market right now. Seems a lot of EVs are tanking in sales now.

From the sound of it, as long as you can take it apart, it is in good condition, and the head and valve aren’t made of plastic, you can refill the suppressing agent (water, foam, CO2 or powder) and repressurize it. If it doesn’t leak, you should be good to go. Plastic working parts seem to indicate the disposable models. I guess take it in and see what they say – one site said they may even refill a disposable if it’s fairly new and holds up well to the process. I see there are some local guidelines that say you should replace anything after x years, regardless of condition, so results may vary.

Hey, get on board, man. It’s for science.

Many firehalls (at least the ones in Canada) will recharge your fire extinguisher for free if you bring it by.

As a kid, I thought they looked like someone nuked the dick out of a crappy frozen mini pizza. But I wouldn’t want to cosplay that.

Have you never had a meeting that bypassed the project manager? Where the three or four people who will actually figure out the technical details start a call and hash everything out in 15 minutes, after weeks of 1 hour meetings that everyone has avoided for months? Every meeting would be like that in a utopia; no more middle managers, just people who know what they’re doing.