YOU TRUST WOKEPEDIA?! DATS ANTIFA PROPAGANDA! /s

buncha folks talking about savings accounts and rates, its easier to think of accounts in three categories: loans, savings, demand. The last one being where the money’s available to you ‘on demand’ with no extra conditions – ie. a chequing account, or a ‘savings’ account with a low rate… because the money’s available on demand.

Higher rate savings accounts are common, I don’t know why people almost always seem confused by the notion. You get a term deposit/gic or whatever, where you lock money in for X period, to get a higher rate – and if you tap that money before the period’s over, you lose the interest.

Locked in deposit rates will almost always be about 1-2% lower than regular mortgage rates that people pay, with CUs using the difference for operation costs. So like my CU has mortgage rates just shy of 5% at the moment, and term deposit rates of around 2.7-3% give or take. A rate cut was just announced in Canada, so those will likely go down a bit this week.

Meh, I’ve written to MPs/MLAs a few times on this sort of subject. They aren’t going to ditch Microsoft without a HUGE demand from the public. They ignored Canada’s antiquated privacy laws for so long – letting it focus on “Data Residency” rather than “Data Sovereignty”. So even while the US put in things like the CLOUD act to allow them to take anything in a US cloud, Canada sat there like idiots thinking “if the servers are in Canada, we’re safe and secure!”. Pretty well all our government agencies and regulators are using Microsoft products / are integrated with Microsoft’s cloud. Hell, my Niece/Nephew in elementary school literally got signed up with Microsoft accounts for their school work – indoctrinated in like grade 2. All our financial services are entrenched in Microsoft’s ecosystem too – like, quite literally, most ATMs run on Windows by decree from Payments Canada, and our financial regulator sites / document transfers are all via Microsoft cloud.

Our government can’t function without a subscription to a USA company. It’s difficult to argue we’re a sovereign nation once you realise that. It also helps to explain why the government is so incapable of doing anything about the current situation – they already screwed us all over, based on a foolish assumption that the USA would always be a reliable partner.

And as for them changing, there’s a reason every time you hear them talk about elbows up / pro-canada procurement pushes, they include caveats like “if it’s too hard” or “if it’s too expensive”. They use those as easy outs for anything related to technology. “If we use linux, we’d have to hire people who can maintain linux! We’ve already outsourced all our technical know how to the USA, so it’d cost us a ton to reclaim that capability!”.

Because SLAs, paper controls, are what stops fascists and gross abuse by tech companies.

As a foreigner/westerner, I don’t get why Iran would do this at this point. There are western powers in that region that don’t comply with international treaties related to Nuclear weapons/capabilities. Israel being the obvious one, where “no ones totally sure” how many nukes or what capabilities they have. The west also seems to use the IAEA to help it find good targets/sort out logistics for attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, be they civilian/compliant with international norms or not.

They’ve been screwed fairly regularly when trying to comply / align with the IAEA and various political agreements on development. I don’t see why they don’t just go strengthen ties with Russia, NK and China, and say “screw you” to the traditional USA-oriented international rules. Not even the USA bothers to follow those rules anymore.

True, and Israel’s hunt for german nazi’s in foreign jurisdictions sets some precedent in handling that sort of thing.

Aaaahahahahaah, yeah, ok man, I’ll believe it when I see it.

These days its more likely that Trump will apologize to Putin, and offer to provide him with more sophisticated Drones that can better avoid NATO defenses – and that the Americans will strongly oppose any actual military action against their new ally. Has the EU not grasped all the crap he’s been doing ??

Act like fascists, get treated like fascists.

To me it seems naive to think that the disparity between the people of Gaza, and the people of Israel, is not dissimilar to the wealth inequality of the poor, and the rich. People seem to gloss over how modern western democracies generally got going – through violent revolutions with lots of dead rich people. And those movements were often seeded by essentially the middle class military, who the rich had paid to outfit with the intent that they’d carry out the upper class’s orders. People like Cromwell didn’t exactly wake up one day, and just happen to trip across a bunch of Cannons to point at the British royalty. Until there’d been that blunder from the nobility giving the military too much autonomy, coupled with the advent of Canons, the ability for regular peasants to rise up against the nobility and their goon squads was pretty fuckin limited. For such a revolutionary figure to emerge from a poor, downtrodden and financially bereft area such as Gaza, would just be highly improbable.

Like China hired gangs of thugs with bats to beat the shit out of Democratic advocates during the crack down in Hong Kong, and has taken out bounties on people living abroad who advocate too vocally for human rights in the region. You can’t realistically look at what went on there, in my view, and say that the people didn’t try really hard to maintain their civil liberties – but were beaten down quite explicitly by force and the sheer scale of resources available to the CCP. Yes, if there was some mass uprising all across the country they could spontaneously change their systems of governance – but that’s practically unheard of in real world countries of note in modern times. Taking a more realistic view of the situation doesn’t make it any better, in that things will most likely continue to suck for most people, but it at least sets more reasonable expectations.

Right, by that reasoning the people of Gaza are willingly allowing themselves to be genocided. They should just rise up and declare a democracy in the region.

Oh, wait, the real world doesn’t work like that.

You think Canada’s approach is better?! TELL CARNEY. The government’s push for Open Banking and increased fintechs is literally them wanting to bring in all these nonsense variant fintech apps… for reasons unknown.

Your phrasing of “allowing” implies that these guys are in power through some sort of legitimate electoral process. They’re both dictators, who claimed power through force and intimidation. There’s no “let” about it, nor any “say” in the situation from people at large.

Just because dictators demand to be called by western elected official terminology in translations to english media, doesn’t make them same animal. It’s propaganda meant to normalize their rule.

Well, that latest mass shooting in the media was done by a trans person, yea? And Trump’s busy deploying National Guard units to most blue states in an authoritarian/fascist push…

So I imagine, that the left may have a chance of getting gun control on the agenda this time. Though it may not look like how they want it to. It’d be gun control to deny lgbtq+ and blue voters guns.

They’re in the minority on lemmy, sure.

It’s accurate to describe it as abnormal – something that’s less common deviates from what is normal, is abnormal. There’s often a connection to abnormal things being ‘worrying’, and lgbtq+ stuff falls into that category for many as well – case in point, Snoop. Few parents ‘wish’ their kids to be lgbtq+, it worries them, even if many will (hopefully) love their kids regardless. I reckon lemmy has a significant number of lgbtq+ people on it, which presents echo chamber bias. I still think it’s important to voice dissenting opinions / views, even if it triggers a bunch of people – so long as it’s done in a generally neutral fashion. My communication skills feel ok to me, though some groan that I write longer posts. Sure, I often have people post ad hominem type insults / personal attacks against things I post, but I rarely respond back attacking the personality/character of those folks (admittedly, I’ve been more lax lately).

Sorta like how there are seemingly a lot of FN people in many of the Canadian subs. Most/many of the articles that get posted there are primarily about FN topics, with FN bias. While I know my views on FN issues are not “in line” with the FN narrative, I still think it’s important to highlight things in a mostly neutral manner, so that there’s a diversity of opinions presented to the broader community. Without more diverse opinions displayed, it gives the wrong impression to readers of the general public opinion about various topics – I doubt I really need to go on about the risks of echo chambers on social media.

I know about ancient greece, and as I’ve said I don’t care personally what people do / who they love. Don’t assume just because I consider homosexual behaviour to be abnormal, that I’m somehow opposed to it / think it inherently “wrong” or anything. I also don’t have a personal issue with it in movies, particularly more adult themed movies – though I do think it’s massively over-represented at this point, as almost every movie/show I see has heavy lgbtq+ themes wedged in haphazardly, often to the detriment of the plot.

Younger generations claiming to be lgbtq+, or being on the gender spectrum, doesn’t really impact my view, I admit. First, it’s still a minority, which makes it abnormal. Grouping all abnormal types together also inflates the perspective of how common it is for any one subset. Young people are also more inclined to be affected by perceptions of benefits / “going along with what’s approved in media”. Even the stats on that site generally support this, noting that the breakdown between men/women is hugely lopsided amongst Gen Z, and with the bulk of the change seemingly being women identifying as bisexual. That fits quite a bit with how its presented in media – so I’d still question whether it’s kids being ‘genuine’ in their experiences/feelings, or if it’s media pushing certain messages and kids reacting to those messages. Media can clearly influence peoples world views / perspectives, at times in ways that aren’t authentic – we’re all keen to recognise as such when we talk about the negative impact of fox news – so it’d seem strange to pretend like it can’t have a similar reality-distorting effect in this area, given the level of over-representation of lgbtq+ themes. Particularly bi-sexual women, as media likes to treat women as sex objects desired by “everyone”, and wedge in some lesbian sex scenes to boot. Almost every series/movie has lgbtq+ stuff in it these days, which is one reason Snoop is uncomfortable taking kids to movies – it’s gotten pretty rare to see a same-race healthy relationship straight couple in media.

To approach it from a slightly different angle: it’s like trying to find non-emo edgelord male characters in anime (which, in its space, feeds the indoctrination of alpha male sorts) – or the negative male stereo-types pushed by people like Tate. If we accept/recognise that certain media representations can “make” young people more extreme in that sort of space, then I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to say that media can “make” young people more gender fluid on the flip side. Part of being young, is lacking critical objectivity.

Also, in terms of the polling and benefits, hell, I personally identify as “other” on all government polls, because “other” gets preferential treatment/hiring options, while “male” gets rejection letters. That isn’t an authentic response, but it’s a necessary response to get past certain hiring criteria – I’ve literally had rejection letters stating “you’re not part of an equity group” in the past, when I answered male (in Canada, literally the reason the federal government rejected my application). Workplaces have no business blocking people from employment due to their preference, even when it comes to us CIS folks.

As for seeing things in public – a kid could see a horrific car accident by chance, corpses everywhere. That doesn’t mean it’s appropriate to show a 6 year old graphic death scenes. Or to use a less extreme example, and a fairly common one, they could walk in on their parents fucking – it still wouldn’t be appropriate for a movie for kids to have a bunch of sex scenes. Content involving adult stuff should have an adult rating, even if “some” kids may encounter those things earlier in life by happenstance.

Me personally? I wouldn’t care either way. I’ve seen a woman on the street fingering the ass of a muslim dude before, and just sorta walked by. But I don’t have kids. I imagine if I had kids, I’d be opposed to public ass-blasting.

A parent that I work with has had awkward conversations with his kids, after they came to Canada and saw guys kissing / making out in public. I can appreciate that such PDAs can prompt similar ‘awkward’ conversations, but also that they’re much less ‘common’ than encountering them as part of a big budget movie – and encountering them in public is often an easier way for parents to broach the subject. Kids noticing that stuff is unavoidable as they mature, but having it forced to the front by media / schools is questionable, and I can appreciate the parents’ concerns on that front.

Poor word choice perhaps, wasn’t intending it to be taken as ‘hard core’ graphic sex bdsm, but more hardcore bdsm as in a couple clearly into that lifestyle - like a dad that wears a collar or whatnot. The latter would still be inappropriate as it would prompt questions difficult to answer for parents, and topics that are reasonably beyond a kids maturity level. It’d be fine in a pg-13, but not in a G.

It’s an abnormal relationship type with a dom and a sub. Just like homosexual relationships are abnormal relationships with non standard partners involved. One is just more abnormal than the other. Both raise questions about sex, as was the point with Snoops clip – his kid explicitly asked about sex stuff, because he encountered the abnormal couple on screen. Snoop wasn’t comfortable discussing that with his grandkid in a movie theatre, and felt put out. That’s a valid response, no matter how many lgbtq+ people scream in nonsensical rage.

You may not like the point, but it doesn’t make it invalid. Just like you may not like hetero people’s reaction to homosexual content in kids media, but that doesn’t make their reactions “wrong”.

If you put a bunch of hard core BDSM content into a movie for kids, it’d be considered inappropriate. Even if the BDSM community argued we have ‘no problem’ exposing kids to other kinds of relationships. It’d prompt similar uncomfortable questions for adults, and I reckon could lead to negative interactions that could damage the parent/child relationship.

No matter how you spin it, lgbtq+ gender stuff is abnormal, and applies to a relatively small minority of people in the overall population. Forcing those conversations onto hetero couples is inappropriate. Children of lgbtq+ couples may/can have those conversations earlier, as their households will likely encounter the questions regardless – just like a family of hard core BDSM practitioners would need to explain to their kids why mommy and daddy have a dungeon in the basement. That doesn’t mean every kid, and every family, should go through the same crap. Especially if, as a non-member of that community, your response will almost definitely be “wrong” according to that community.