Victor Villas

It was definitely something that came out of conversations with Macron and friends. I think it’s a part of closing ties with key figures of the EU, but can’t honestly say if it’s playing out well because the gram of goodwill acquired in the EU has to balance against the ounce of aggression, bullying and pettiness coming from the USA

Well it’s supposedly hard to do the right thing when doing the bad thing is going to be cheered by your peers and put hefty sums in your pockets

Even if they do give a little of shit sometimes, they’re ready to look the other way.

Being managed by the central bank is a major advantage though. All banks immediately adopted it, and all financial institutions were in on it pretty quickly. In a matter of 5 years it went from “what’s that?” to a guarantee. Brazil is one of the very few places I’ve been where it’s totally practical to never carry a wallet and pix is a major part of it.

I think the real problem with the world right now is aging demographics

Is this even a sensible framing? To seek the one main thing wrong with the world right now?

It’s a variation of that silly debate game of choosing “money, sex or power” as the thing that “moves the world”.

Did I say otherwise? If you can get in touch with Mr Ahmadinejad maybe yeah you can find someone to answer your question, but still, everything I said stands.

No friendship required to get them to build the fleet we need, just capital

Okay? Point still stands. Would take years to build that capacity. By all means let’s do it, but BC Ferries can’t wait.

some (strongly) believe they should be wiped off the earth. Why?

I don’t know if you’ll find devil advocates willing to entertain such a hyperbolic frame of reference.

There are people out there who also think that Arabs should be wiped off the earth, but I don’t think it’s worth asking why. Makes more sense to shun those people off than giving them space for discourse.

I would see this more like that if Rustad actually presented environmental and human rights as the reasoning behind his preference, but we actually know that it a combination of racism and just run of the mill anti-China (from red-scare) because it’s Rustad. He never showed signs of caring about China’s emissions or Uyghurs or anything else that might actually be valid criticism.

No ship builders in BC presented a bid because they’re all busy. So saying that these ships should be built in BC is effectively saying that we should wait for it them to be buildable in BC, and with that you’re telling the people who depend on BC Ferries that they’ll have to suck it up being served by a derelict fleet because we don’t want to do business with China.

This is all pretty silly to be honest. Chinese shipyards presented a bid. They won the bid. That’s all there is to it.

That’s how you end up with Fascism

It really wasn’t how we ended up with fascism in the actual instance of fascism so…

they are called coops

No they are not.

Of course coops exist in Canada but it’s not the same thing

That’s fair, though I also think it’s fair to criticize the use of BMI and acknowledge all of its flaws. Perhaps mr givesofmefucks is just stating this position but with harsher wording.

The alternatives to YouTube already exist, like PeerTube. The issue is lack of content and the critical mass to attract content creators.

So you also agree that studies point that BMI doesn’t work very well in diagnostics? Because you’re replying the statement with a boldened sentence agreeing with gp.

Or perhaps was the point that it’s not true that “it doesn’t really mean shit now” since the BMI still has some usefulness at the population level?

BMI is a somewhat valid indicator of health for most members of society, which makes it a reasonable population health metric.

That’s a half truth to some extent. Muscle mass isn’t the only thing that fumbles the BMI math. The calculation is also notoriously less useful for women in general, and for black/latino women specifically even more misrepresentative. And even outside those groups BMI isn’t really a “reasonable” health metric by today’s standards. But it ins’t totally useless either, so I guess it depends on what we mean with “reasonable”.

I’m with you aspirationally but this is just a beaverton benign joke on language purists, nothing to be so angry about

Indeed I don’t disagree, I think it’s worth experimenting with this and driving fines look like a good place to start

I’m in agreement that we need systemic solutions, and those involve improving road design, so we agree for the most part on the most important aspect of this.

punishing people for being successful.

But issuing bigger fines for breaking the law is very, VERY far from punishing people for being successful. It’s a correction of an unfortunate truth: if you’re wealthy, you can afford to drive recklessly.

What does the top speed of a car has to do with how safe it is to go 10 km/h over the posted speed limit?