I don’t think Canada has an Alabama. As conservative as they are, Alberta is wealthy, highly educated, and they frequently vote for women and POC. They like “small government”, but also have some of the highest paid government workers in the country. I just don’t see much similarity.
I think the comparison to Texas is more apt because they’re both conservative petro states with center left suburban sprawl cities.
These are good points. But I wonder if the longer life really comes from it being a general purpose computer per se. The points you make are more about the internet connectivity of the device. You can use a DOS machine in 2023 because it’s almost like an appliance. It works just as well now as a text editor as in the 90s. But an internet connected device has to be supported, and good enough for today’s processor intensive web apps. That general purpose DOS machine, like the first iPad, is never running Discord or Netflix.
Because they are a soulless profit-maximizing corporation, there will come a time when Apple stops supporting perfectly functioning iPads for no reason, but I’m not sure we’re there yet. The iPads they stopped supporting really do suck from a hardware perspective.
I agree the iPad is almost completely useless, but I don’t think comparing it to 13 years before the iPad is useful. My MacBook Air is 11 years old and it’s still great because it’s good enough to run YouTube, all the major websites, office suites, etc. It’s still getting security updates from Apple. I think that’s what 90% of people use a laptop for. A computer two years older than it, on the other hand, might be useless. It’s not really linear. Hopefully, iPads from 5 years ago can last over a decade.
I think you’re forgetting the other half of the slogan: decentralized social network. You want to maximize decentralization? Disconnect from the internet and type to yourself on textpad. What we want out of the fediverse are the advantages of bringing people together, with the benefits of decentralization. No one wants decentralization as an end in itself.
So, if cross-posts are not showing up in my feed, then I have to actively look for cross-posts separately in the communities? How would I even know they exist? That’s still not what I want. In other words, there are two kinds of cross-posts: (1) redundant posts to overlapping demographics. I don’t want to see more than one of these. (2) commentary cross-posts. I want to see these as separate posts.
Sibling communities would hide (1) and not (2).
I like that you’re imagining new ways to do this. That’s what I’m trying to do too. This brave new world of community created multi-communities honestly sounds a lot like sibling communities to me. There’s the question of who is making the multi-communities, and to me the natural response is “the communities themselves”. There’s less user friction if a community is just already affiliated with a bunch of other communities voluntarily.
This is a good idea too, but I do see them as different implementations with different advantages.
I suppose some of this is a matter of taste as well.
Maybe it does already happen? Then again, I don’t want it to always happen!
Cross-posting itself can also be a form of commentary. For example, c/London might cross-post something from c/NewYork — “Hey, this would be a cool idea for our city too!” Or “They’re talking about us. Thoughts?” — and the separate set of comments are desirable because they come from a different community. I want these to be two separate posts sometimes.
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Multi-communities seem similar. Is that a grouping the user makes? If so, I think that’s too much work and will still lead to unnecessary fracturing. What if I follow a few Technology communities and a new one is made since the last time I checked? Do I have to go through and manually check if all my multi-communities are current?
Good points. I’ll be more explicit about the details:
If, at the time of formation, you don’t know which communities would be siblings, then it’s the same as the current status quo, so I don’t see that as a comparative disadvantage. In any case, there’s no reason to rush into siblinghood. One hope would be that the existence of the term “sibling community” itself would encourage people to discuss possible connections, even when they’re not yet connected. I hope it brings like-minded groups together.
The sibling relation would need the consent of both mod teams, not just one side, so it can be unilaterally severed, but only jointly formed. No one would force lefty news and righty news to become siblings. But there are currently 5+ major “Technology” communities that are almost entirely overlapping. I hope siblings would allow them to overlap where appropriate but maintain their unique identities.
Good idea. Will do.
Yeah that’s a great example, especially because they have slightly different names. If you’re not in the know, you might never know.
That’s interesting. I think I vaguely remember those too. The term “affiliates” sounds so corporate nowadays, but I think it’s a similar idea.
I’m also strongly in the camp of “stay separate”. I wouldn’t ever want to give that up. But I’m also frequently frustrated by discoverability of related communities and needlessly separated small userbases.
I agree. Do you feel this proposal doesn’t address that? My hope is that sibling communities would allow us to keep redundancy and diversity while still enjoying some of the benefits of sometimes coming together.
This is an incredible project. This channel has made me realize that the plain angular modernist aesthetic is really limiting.
It always drives me crazy that, in Canada and the US, there’s a “charming part of the city” and we all lament that there’s not more of them. We could, at any time, decide to build more, but instead we make it illegal, mostly for the sake of cars.
But, like you said, the foreign makers are also making big cars to comply with our corrupt pro-corporate regulations.
EVs are looking to be both more expensive and more dangerous. I have zero hope that they will be an improvement in any way except emissions.
We need weight and size based taxation to discourage big cars. More than that, we need to move away from car dependence.
Consumer preference is part of it, but car manufacturers have also intentionally stopped competing for the low end and small vehicle market. It’s textbook tacit cooperation.
During the pandemic, there was a chip shortage that led makers to prioritize high margin cars like trucks and luxury SUVs. Many makers decided that they liked being a low volume high price seller and just cut their lower priced cars altogether. If everyone does it at the same time, there’s no market mechanism to punish them. Many people can’t buy smaller cars even if they wanted. It doesn’t help that all of our car regulations in the US and Canada encourage this by having much weaker regulations for bigger vehicles. The whole market is a mess.
On The Media - a podcast analyzing the media, giving historical and scientific context to news coverage. In the process, it turns out to be the best in depth news shows. Academics and journalists love this show but it doesn’t seem to be as big of a hit with the greater public. I recommend this show very highly.
Also listen to a bunch of nerdy academic podcasts like The Dissenter and New Books in Science, Psychology, Philosophy, etc in the New Books networks.
“Instead of seeking happiness, save money with misery”
Americans support a lot of things they don’t vote for. Most Americans want universal healthcare, higher taxes on the rich, more government services, etc. But many famously “vote against their interests”. Abortion is turning out to be the surprising exception.
Saskatchewan is the birthplace of the NDP (Canada’s social democratic party), universal public healthcare (ever heard of Tommy Douglas?), and historically one of the pillars of the labour movement. It’s now the most conservative province, but still has tons of new immigrants, racial and cultural diversity, good education, and well funded government services. The SK NDP ruled almost continuously from 1971 to 2006.
SK is much more like midwestern farm states that were formerly pro-labour pro-union hotbeds but are now more moderate or conservative, like Iowa and Wisconsin.