@cdarwin@c.im2025-12-24 02:58:47
On November 20th, women stop being paid compared to men.
This is the point in the year when,
on average,
women effectively work for free.
The gender pay gap is now 11.3%,
up from 10.7% last year.
It’s a stark reminder that while progress has been made,
gender pay inequality persists
- and may be higher than we thought.
@scott@carfree.city2025-12-18 03:18:32
"But as you can see, the programs do come at a cost... we estimate about $27.4m a year goes to the administrative costs and also the projected fare revenue reduction."
I'm waiting for the slide where they estimate the much higher cost of all the unmetered parking spaces across the city, and of turning off meters at 6pm and on Sundays. I'm sure that'll definitely be later in this presentation, right?
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-11-17 06:11:16
I think we can actually prove that this constraint is the *only* constraint that can preserve freedom:
1. There will exist actors in a system who will wish to take advantage of others. Evolution drives survival and one strategy for increasing survival in an altruistic society is to become a parasite.
2. Expecting exploitative dynamics, a system needs to have a set of rules to manage exploitation.
3. If the set of rules is static it will lack the requisite variety necessary to manage the infinite possible behavior of humans so the system will fail.
4. If the system is dynamic then it must have a rule set about how it's own rules are updated. This would make the system recursive, which makes the system at least as complex as mathematics. Any system at least as complex as mathematics is necessarily either incomplete or inconsistent (Gödel's incompleteness theorem). If the system is incomplete, then constraints can be evaded which then allow a malicious agent to seize control of the system and update the rules for their own benefit. If constraints are incomplete, then a malicious agent can take advantage of others within the system.
5. Therefore, no social system can possibly protect freedom unless there exists a single metasystemic constraint (that the system must be optional) allowing for the system to be abandoned when compromised.
Oh, you might say, but this just means you have to infinitely abandon systems. Sure, but there's an evolutionary advantage to cooperation so there's evolutionary pressure to *not* be a malicious actor. So a malicious actor being able to compromise the whole system is likely to be a much more rare event. Compromising a system is a lot of work, so the first thing a malicious actor would want to do is preserve that work. They would want to lock you in. The most important objective to a malicious actor compromising a system would be to violate that metasystemic constraint, or all of their work goes out the window when everyone leaves.
And now you understand why borders exist, why fascists are obsessed with maintaining categories like gender, race, ethnicity, etc. This is why even Democrats like Newsom are on board with putting houseless people in concentration camps. And this is why the most important thing anarchists promote is the ability to choose not to be part of any of that.
@paulbusch@mstdn.ca2026-01-18 15:29:23
I've often wondered if a Canadian EV "Kei Car" type program would help the country achieve zero emission goals, provide affordable transportation, and reduce grid lock in our cities.
In 1949, Japan created a special category of keijidosha (light vehicles) created for affordability and maneuverability in dense cities. The Kei car quickly became popular despite strict limits on dimensions (length, width, height) and engine displacement (under 660cc). They were given unique license plates for enforcement purposes and had tax benefits for owners.
What if an "Ion" vehicle category was created in Canada:
- must be manufactured in Canada
- minimum 100Km range, suitable for any urban commute
- limited to 50Km/hr
- restricted to street use, not to be used on highways
- size restrictions, perhaps Smart Car sized for personal vehicles, larger for commercial vehicle category
How many city-dwelling Canadians would buy a cheap EV to run errands and give the finger to big oil?
#KeiCars
https://youtu.be/LtTirdKvyeI
@paulbusch@mstdn.ca2026-01-19 23:20:16
The Avi Lewis AMA on Reddit this afternoon was interesting. He didn't answer my question, and I'll eventually get over it, but he was swinging for the fences with his ideas. His responses would resonate I think with MastoCanucks as they pretty much call for the government to get more involved in providing real solutions. Including building 1M public homes, tackling U.S. ownership of our media, getting rid of FPTP with electoral reform, guaranteed income programs, publicly owned options for major business categories (banks, grocery, phones, etc). Those big ideas could wake up and excite voters while at the same time facing huge opposition from big businesses and wealthy Canadians who would face a new wealth tax.
I hope he wins the leadership. At the very least he'll push the Liberals to be bolder, and maybe even lead a minority government that could bring some of his ideas to fruition.
#CanPoli #NDP
https://www.reddit.com/r/onguardforthee/s/fwKRmDPSvd
@Mediagazer@mstdn.social2026-01-11 07:01:49
The Television Academy sets Emmys rules to allow inquiries about AI use in submissions, and renames Outstanding Television Movie category to Outstanding Movie (Rick Porter/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/emmys-ai-g…
@brichapman@mastodon.social2026-01-18 16:31:00
Eleven organizations just won a combined $5.9M for solutions that are actually changing lives.
The 2026 Zayed Sustainability Prize winners are tackling everything from AI diagnostics to eco-brick production. Since 2008, this prize has impacted over 411 million people through innovations in health, water, energy, and climate action.
@datascience@genomic.social2025-11-14 11:00:01
@datascience@genomic.social2025-11-01 11:00:01
Primer to get you started with Optimization and Mathematical Programming in R #rstats
