[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 7 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Yea I assumed that your main point was some kind of sacrifice, not the smartphones themselves. If it weren't for the smartphones you'd be phrasing your gotcha around TVs, or washing machines, or fridges, or indoor plumbing. I've seen this very conservative argument before.

Progressivism and leftism aren't some kind of ascetic christianity and nobody needs a morality preacher. Social progress is not about individual morality. And it's not a zero sum game either.

There is enough food production and wealth in the world to eliminate hunger and extreme poverty already. I could be a selfish asshole not willing to part with my sneaker collection and that would still be the case.

Maybe there is a future where carrying around a smartphone isn't necessary because we've rebuilt human connection in communities. The damn things are addictive misery machines under capitalism anyway. But that's very different from going around wagging the finger at people that say "we could feed the hungry".

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 17 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

Weird gotcha. What is this the early 2000s when smartphones were rich people toys?

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 2 points 21 hours ago

There is Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) but default Mint is Ubuntu based (Ubuntu is also based on Debian).

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 71 points 22 hours ago

What's wrong with overnight oats? I really like them.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 3 points 22 hours ago

Of all the things to kick-start industry on another planet, isn't a nuclear fucking plant the most complex?

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

We can ask to join Schengen though, like Iceland.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago

Fantastic comment. This is good social movement theory.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago

That was quite the John Deere commercial.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

In the 60s and early 70s, Spain, Portugal, Greece were all authoritarian dictatorships. The western European countries effectively cut off links with them and applied pressure. When the people of each of them overthrew their dictatorships, EEC/EU membership was used as a stabilizing force, and as an aspirational milestone for full democratization.

The EU of the 2010s could have played such a stabilizing role in Mediterranean countries after the Arab Spring. Tunisia had a budding democracy. If the Europeans had taken it seriously and extended a hand for some kind of EU association/integration (like Iceland, Norway or Switzerland), it might have done for them exactly what it did for Spain, Portugal, Greece.

Instead, the Europeans decided to hyperfocus on the symptoms of immigration and embraced democratic dumping. So long as the dictator in Tunis, this homunculus called Kais, stops the migrants, he gets to do whatever he wants. Just so racist northern European hicks don't vote far right. Well, guess what, they still vote far right and the migrants stilll keep coming.

Europeans just don't seem to be able to wrap their little brains around the simple fact that they need to treat Africans as people who deserve to aspire to democracy and progress in their own countries too.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 16 points 3 days ago

When cost of living is up, union support should be non negotiable.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 15 points 4 days ago

Cool. Now do Northern Cyprus. What do you mean "no"?

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submitted 4 days ago by theacharnian@lemmy.ca to c/europe@feddit.org

Turns out Abbé Pierre was a creep... This is like learning Mohter Theresa was a sexual predator.

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submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by theacharnian@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

According to Barbara Bedont, Alkhdour's lawyer, the charges come from a protest that took place last Thursday in front of the Liberal campaign office, with Miller nearby. Bedont said Alkhdour was packing her belongings after the protest, when Miller showed up in a vehicle. She said Alkhdour approached the vehicle and "expressed her feelings about his policies." "They said 'shame on you' and 'you're a child killer.' Things like that — political speech," the lawyer said, adding that Miller was in the vehicle the whole time before it drove off. She said the interaction lasted about five seconds, with Alkhdour standing about a metre away from the vehicle, and the other two people charged standing further back. "At no time was he ever threatened," Bedont said. "There was no violence. It was a purely peaceful expression of her political views."

Alkhdour's protests began shortly after the death of her 13-year-old daughter, Jana Elkahlout, who was born with cerebral palsy. Alkhdour, her husband and two of her children moved to Quebec in 2019, and started the process of bringing Jana to Canada, after she was forced to stay in Gaza due to the unavailability of safe ambulance travel between there and Egypt. After years of trying to get her daughter to come to Canada, the family finally received the green light from the federal government in January, but Jana was already dead.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/28449417

Canadian mega landlord using AI ‘pricing scheme’ as it massively hikes rents

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submitted 1 week ago by theacharnian@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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submitted 3 weeks ago by theacharnian@lemmy.ca to c/world@lemmy.world
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submitted 3 weeks ago by theacharnian@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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submitted 1 month ago by theacharnian@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by theacharnian@lemmy.ca to c/anarchism@slrpnk.net

Discussions about scarcity and anarchism that I've seen online seem to always talk about "scarcity in the large", i.e. how does an anarchist society allocate production, food, labour, materials etc.

I've a question about anarchism and scarcity in the small. Say, a really nice location, eg. a breezy location in a very hot climate, or the room with the nice windows in the community centre, or Bag End at the top of the hill. Say, an anarchist community has decided to use the location for purpose X, but a minority wants to use it for purpose Y. Maybe an even smaller minority wants to do Z, and a bunch of other people have their own little ideas about how to use it. Some are transient and could be accommodated (you get it on Tuesdays 5-7) but others might not be ("our sculpture project needs to dry out in that specific spot for the next 4 months, we know it blocks the view but it's the only place the breeze hits just right!") or could be contradictory (the siesta people vs the loud backgammon players can't both use the spot at high noon) or antagonistic (the teenagers who want to party late vs the new parents who need quiet for the babies). And dis-association doesn't really help here because that's the nice spot for many kilometers around or there is literally no way to create another beach for our small island community because that's literally the only place on the island where sand exists, so we can't just off and leave. (* Many of these examples are imagining a hot summer in an anarchist Greece, sorry it's almost August.)

It looks to me like a simple non-life-and-death scenario like this could potentially completely poison and destroy a community and in the face of that it would be the little death of anti-authoritarian organizing. Like yea, when life and death matters are at hand, anarchists will band together and conquer the bread. But petty small-scale little shit where it's managing annoyances and small grievances, I don't think non-authoritarian decision making can solve. And I suspect it's crap like this that has killed off many intentional communities and experiments or made them veer away from non-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian organizing.

Have anarchist thinkers seriously thought of this?

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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by theacharnian@lemmy.ca to c/fuck_ai@lemmy.world
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submitted 2 months ago by theacharnian@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

Submitting for this truly astonishing quote:

" Landlords in Quebec, however, feel they need to catch up to other provinces as Quebec is still one of the most affordable places to live in the country, said Jean-Olivier Reed, a spokesperson for the Quebec Landlord Association (APQ)."

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submitted 3 months ago by theacharnian@lemmy.ca to c/quebec@lemmy.ca

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/23000968

Incapables de trouver du travail en français au Nouveau-Brunswick, ils pensent partir au Québec

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submitted 3 months ago by theacharnian@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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theacharnian

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