Don’t think I’ve ever seen a difference
where #canada and #usa were polar opposites before.
Remote
PAIGE!
@paige@masto.canadiancivil.com
mastodon 4.6.4#Montreal based advocacy journalist.
Human fan!
Can I take a mere 3 hours of your time to discuss #ElectoralReform?
1349 Followers
314 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 03, 2023
PeerTube:
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@paige.canadiancivil.com
#Train enthusiasts in #Canada need mature into activism. It's time to stop reading wikipedia and step up to fix the system.
Print out flyers on passenger priority, go down to the train station and quickly give it to the inevitable line of 100 delayed people who have been screwed by the incompetence of the current government.
Get kicked out for it? Awesome. Go to the CBC and tell them, make it a national story.
Activism is fun, and it works.
You will have our gratitude.
I have a blue collar friend who listens to podcasts all day. It’s wall to wall culture war content and he’s easily the least happy person I know.
The thing is I have another friend, same situation but he listens to CBC and NPR shows, still a decent amount of focus on the culture war but he’s a really popular happy guy, involved in the community etc.
Given regulations aren’t getting passed anytime soon, the media you choose to consume does come down to personal responsibly.
It was nice to finally have a shindig on the slopes of Mont-fedi today.
Credit for #FediMTL @info@social.fedimtl.ca has to go to @meadmin@qlub.social and @Kath@qlub.social at #qlub who ever-cheerfully took on the challenge of piloting our endeavour into a smooth landing and @evan@cosocial.ca for curating the lineup and being the atomic clock the fediverse can rely on.
I got quoted in this piece.
I think @pluralistic@mamot.fr is correct and wish Canada would realize that the "good behaviour" light switch isn't wired to the bulb.
In the end though, this country is so fucking frustratingly conflict adverse from the individual all the way up to the government.
As far as political viability goes, funding something like #NLnet for Canadian orgs and teaming up on the Eurostack over the next few years is my focus. Huge kilometerage 😉 for the money.
https://betakit.com/can-canada-find-digital-sovereignty-in-the-fediverse/
Does life in #Montreal just mean you have fruit flies in your house all summer? Every year I freeze my compost, put away fruit, put recycling outside, have traps and there are literally always a few of them in the house.
Today I was pouring boiling water in my drain thinking that might fix it.
Am I just wasting my time?
I'm very impressed with content strategy and messaging of the Ontario NDP. No notes.
If the feds want to:
- Combat inflation
- Support lower income citizens
- Support domestic industry
- Reduce carbon emissions
A predictable subsidy for electric bus charging infrastructure would lower the cost of transit.
Curiously, #Canada happens to be relatively good at transit and electric buses and reducing infrastructure costs could present a real opportunity.
The charging standard also works for trucks, which our bus manufacturers have dabbled in.
When politicians say they are "Creating Jobs" or "There are going to be X hundred new jobs" as a result of some policy does that resonate with you?
When politicians say they are "Creating Jobs" or "There are going to be X hundred new jobs" as a result of some policy does that resonate with you?
Always shocked me when I looked at #Ontario that around 40% of them kept supporting Doug Ford through his incompetence and bullshit.
But then they go for... the (literally leaderless) Liberals? Meanwhile the NDP and Greens both have interesting leaders and policies that I wish we could vote for in Quebec.
There's simply too much deadweight in their voter base.
Get ready for 1000km of NIMBYs going to town on this. They’ll warp it, they’ll delay it, they’ll kill it.
Whose fault? It really is the government, by avoiding their responsibility to lead on this they have meandered into every rake that a mega project could have.
I wish they’d just put this thing out of its misery, give Alto the infrastructure assets of VIA and a long term budget to build a realistic and modest set of projects.
RE: @reece@masto.canadiancivil.com
The policy lurch inherent to our broken electoral system is terrible for rail mega projects. Look at the UK, US and Canada.
It makes incrementalism the best and in some cases only strategy. The Liberals should have written a passenger rail master plan in 2015 and spent the last decade acquiring and upgrading corridors to get passenger trains running faster and on time.
Gotta say that Ed Conroy who runs #RetroOntario has done a real public service putting together such a comprehensive archive of old Canadian stuff along with context.
https://retrontario.com/
P1/ I’ve been working really hard on my French this year after discovering how helpful AIs are for talking through language concepts.
I’ve had a big realization how wrong I was about one language learning thing: Gender.
People told me, it’s not a big deal if you swap Le/La or say “A le restaurant” and so I just decided to ignore it and let it come naturally in the way that a kid picks it up. To just be patient.
Looks like we're going to have to hope that Péter Magyar who overcame the odds to win big in a rigged electoral system, will now fix the electoral system and restore proportionality.
#Hungary
At night I walk over to the construction site beside my home and count the number of piles they have left to hammer in.
I'm probably as invested in this crew finishing their job the foreman.
Replying to
@strongsand@booping.synth.download passenger priority means that when a freight train and a passenger train encounter each other, the passenger train has priority.
In Canada we do it the other way around, which is responsible for the majority of delays and incredible cost inflation to VIA Rail (and therefore us).
It's yet another offshoot of the oligopoly problem and Canada's chronic issue with regulatory capture and incompetence.
Follow @fedimtl if you want to see recordings from the event roll out over the next day.
I'll post them all in a thread when the encoding jobs are done!
#Labour and the #CAQ could both learn from #Mongolia
The establishment party in power in Mongolia has a large majority but the electoral system would of crushed them in the upcoming election.
They selfishly implemented #ProRep before the election to ensure their political survival. In the end they've actually managed to stay in power for another round.
Establishment parties should give up on their nostalgia for the days of sharing complete dominance when the writing is on the wall. Just do it.
Canadian politics in 2026
Replying to
I’ve spent the last few months trying to figure out why stuff I wear and parts of my house has a kind of weird rubbery smell.
I finally realized that it’s all the chlorine from the pool that I’ve been bringing home reacting with everything.
Replying to
The Labour government in the UK could pass electoral reform RIGHT NOW. Think about that. The threat of yet another incompetent unrepresentative government could be over.
#ukpol
I've always enjoyed the challenge of making short form vertical videos, but the practice of burning in onscreen subtitles sucks as as a creative professional.
It's a huge bummer to scrawl shit all over the thing you've just done. It won't be the way it's done forever so it just feels like making temporary garbage.
RE: @carastern@mastodon.social
That's this post:
@paige@masto.canadiancivil.com
After many years of complaining, I am happy to see a change. But why are they treating this like a promotional exercise and not trying to make rebalancing the network a thing people do?
Are they still going to have that scumbag system where you get emailed a code that you have to manually put in the app to get your bike?
#Bixi #Montreal
Replying to
@Bearshark@theforkiverse.com @kevin@theforkiverse.com most of us have been here for quite a long time.
A wave arrives, after a month 90% of people leave, but the 10% that it works for stay and the population grows.
Replying to
@mpjgregoire in Canada, for a number of factors, all our transport mega projects are too expensive.
It actually wouldn’t get us a lot of anything, which is very frustrating.
A big part of the reason that stuff is so expensive, is our political system is unstable and localized making it rational for politicians to cancel stuff, so cancelation risk gets priced in and expertise, long term planning and star capacity never accumulates.
If you do a compare and contrast of headlines from around the world the price of hydrocarbons is quite an uneven experience for people.
Some places are having a full economic meltdown and fuel shortages. Others, it’s just coming across as an inconvenience.
Come for a ride on May 30th #Montreal
What's the best battery size to impress people with?
Replying to
@NeueWelle@mastodon.social why are they employing people to rebalance a network and not harnessing the userbase?
They could do the wealthsimple thing, and make it a cent per point if you’re with wealth simple and it only discounts your subscription. It doesn’t matter, it just has to actually count.
Replying to
@reece yeah I've noticed over the last decade that I like Hochelaga more each year, kind of where the trendline of life goes. It's slowly where my friends and connections with the city have moved into my 30s.
Replying to
@reece a city that doesn’t allow mixed use retail on most streets is jumping to open a grocery store?
Perhaps the biggest reason produce is cheaper in Montreal is the fruiteries every few blocks undercutting the supermarkets.
Replying to
@danbrotherston @carastern I just think it's people engaged in a team sport.
People who support or are insiders in the current system are pretty transparent.
They haven't experienced life in a normal democracy so they don't know that what has been normalized here is weird.
Replying to
@julian @lps@mograph.social that's the plan, I'm still waiting on the go-ahead to pickup my SSD from the team that filmed it.
Replying to
Replying to
@carastern this is one that reflects a understanding of ProRep as only a closed party list. This isn’t a system anyone has proposed for Canada.
Essentially, it’s a straw-man.
The reason that our politicians are so subservient is due to our electoral system. It makes creating a “Startup party” almost certainly doomed. Look at what happened to Maxime Bernier, in a proportional system he’d be in parliament running a small right wing party.
Replying to
@smithkm @carastern what does “worse” mean? Too many parties and MPs moving between them?
Replying to
@mpjgregoire @paige political parties have their core focus and interests, it took the Ontario liberals a long time to get to HSR too, still got cancelled immediately when the government changed.
Very likely that if the Liberals get in again in the 2030s they could well not do anything on rail until the second term. That’s why I think continuity of a decent idea is more important than the idea.
Replying to
@holger@theforkiverse.com @pj@theforkiverse.com you follow like crazy people/hashtags (then those people repost stuff, which you follow like crazy)
Then after a week, you start culling the accounts you followed when you find they’re not a good fit.