Randsacked

@ggreenwald Glenn Greenwald on the wrong side of history, as usual.

A huge crowd of Iranians assembles in Revolution Square in Tehran to express gratitude and love for Israel and the US, heralding them as liberators. Oh, it's actually to commemorate the new Iranian leader and condemn attacks by two foreign states:

@NazaninNour Roger Waters is the original Kanye West.

Roger Waters says Iranians don’t want regime change. He also says the police in Iran came out to protect shopkeepers, and were attacked by violent thugs. He’s calling protesters violent thugs. Tens of thousands murdered by the regime, and he’s on the regime’s side. 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡!

This👇is exactly right. One of the most fascinating briefings I received as a federal Immigration Minister was from a foreign intelligence agency about the connections between Venezuela and the Iranian terror proxy Hizbollah. And they showed me the receipts. I saw in detail how the Venezuelan regime imported raw cocaine from the FARC Marxist terror group in Colombia, and worked with the Al Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps to ship it in "dark" planes to Beirut, where it was then processed in Hizbollah facilities in the Bekaa Valley. The refined product was then shipped to Europe, and the proceeds used to finance Hizbollah operations, including weapons procurement. When I asked how a fundamentalist organization could do this given that narcotics are haram, I was shown fatwas issued by Hizbollah imams indicating that as long as the drugs were sold to kaffirs, and the proceeds used to finance "the struggle," that it was religiously sanctioned. I was also shown details on how Hizbollah agents were using Canada to launder illicit funds by buying stolen cars with cash from criminals gangs, and then shipping them out of the Port of Montreal for resale in West Africa. All of this was possible because of extremely close coordination between the Iranian and Venezuelan regimes. The agency was concerned that Canada was being lax about permitting Iranian and Hizbollah agents to enter the country. Prompted by this, I travelled to Damascus to spend time with our officials from various agencies drilling down on how to improve radically security screening of visa applicants from Lebanon and Iran. This was in 2008! All evidence suggests the cooperation between these two abhorrent regimes has only grown since then, with Iran providing Venezuela with arms, helping to sustain its dwindling oil industry, and to market its sanctioned crude. In return, Venezuela has acted as a kind of giant base of operations for Iran in the Western Hemisphere, including the IGRC and Hizbollah's ongoing involvement in drug trafficking and money laundering. And, of course, both regimes have been in lockstep diplomatically, including with their shared enthusiasm for their biggest ally: Putin's Russia. Upshot: stable democratic governments in both Iran and Venezuela this year would be a massive gain for global peace and security, including for Canada.

@JShamess @FrankfortDarryl Same argument can be applied to the art world. Canada Council and other incentives for artists have undercut the need to respond to market forces, resulting in bland, woke, poor art seeking approval from granting agencies rather than sophisticated collectors with taste.

@FrankfortDarryl I’ve been told by one CEO of a large REIT if CMHC didn’t exist we would have a more balanced markets as he considered it a “Frankenstein sub prime funding model”

I thought capitalism meant markets adjust themselves. What we have in Canada isn’t that. It’s a market wrapped in policy, nudged by incentives, distorted by rules, and constantly “corrected” by people who’ve never risked a dollar of their own. Prices aren’t discovering anything. They’re being steered. Supply isn’t responding to demand, it’s responding to approvals, exemptions, rebates, penalties, and political mood swings. From where I sit, if government stepped back instead of constantly intervening, the market would be more stable, more honest, and far closer to what people actually want and need. This isn’t free market capitalism. It’s managed scarcity pretending to be policy.

@foolishyangban @EricDLombardi Companies taking these cost savings will soon be without mid-level management due to their elimination of juniors learning business. This problem will accelerate soon after when there are similarly few capable seniors to lead. Resulting instability will eventually rebalance.

I think you’re missing the point here. No one is going to take the excess capacity because of the aforementioned soft cap to total required work in certain white collar corporate functions! I’m sure there are areas of the enterprise that have marginal benefits to adding more AI-assisted manpower. My view is that those areas are limited, though. Productivity gains will come from employing less people!

In general, I think people overestimate the damage AI will do to white collar jobs (+jobs in general) and underestimate that humans almost always choose to produce more when given tools/training that make them more productive are available.

@EricDLombardi I’ve been using AI as much as possible over the past 18 months an encouraging my team to do the same. We just closed out by far our best year, which we ended with exactly the same team we started with. We are not replacing people with AI, we are making them better with it.

Ask the Canadian Medical Association to reverse its stance on employer-funded care - Sign the Petition! chng.it/n5dd6cc2Lb via @CdnChange

@donnelly_b @ArabiaBianca The other comments already list the obvious so here are some less known but still awesome suggestions: Fundy National Park Kouchibouguac National Park Saskatoon and driving through the plains Rock climbing in Squamish Fernie Alpine Resort

Last night, @ArabiaBianca and I decided that we need to spend far more time traveling within Canada. So we're going to make a point of doing that next year. Where should we go? 🇨🇦

@brianstelter In Canada, Germany, the UK, and other countries, campaigns for national leadership are often as short as 6 weeks.

Some Democratic party sources are "already floating the idea of opening it up to all contenders, having, let's call it a five-week speed-dating primary, maybe having debates between now and the convention, and then leaving it up to the convention."

@North_Resists Is the government not “the people” especially in a communist country? If not, then what, everyone gets to own land and homes the government paid for? So, who gets to decide who gets which piece of land and which home?

#NoShitSherlock take a look at any area in history with rampant inequality and famine. Do you think the people starving to death owned the land?!

@North_Resists ChatGPT, describe the two biggest man-caused famines known to history: 1 The Great Chinese Famine (1959-61) 15-45 million dead. 2 The Soviet Famine (1932-33) 3.5-7 million dead, caused by severe policy failures, deliberate political actions, and oppressive gov’t actions.

@North_Resists History actually teaches that the most starvation and famine took place in communist Stalinist Russia, communist Maoist China, and currently in Kim’s North Korea, all places where the government owned all land assets. #History

@IRPlawyer Governments do not provide housing. Developers and investors create and provide housing. In a free society, everyone has the opportunity to be a developer or investor; one does not need special rights to do so, just moxie and intelligence.

What a great idea. The government SHOULD provide free homes to everyone. (you haven't been on this page long enough if you think housing security for everyone is gonna be a gotcha with me)

@WOWYOUREDUMB2 Landlords do not set the price of rent. They seek the most rent the market will pay. Tenants seek to pay the least amount of rent for what they need/desire. The market sets the price.

@IRPlawyer @MJPhillips76 This is an incredibly naive understanding of the property market, especially for a lawyer. Are you suggesting that the very existence of landlords causes higher rents? So, the government should provide free homes for everyone who can’t afford to own?

@MJPhillips76 People who own homes that are used by tenants are people who also own homes that they live in. So they have more homes than they need, increasing the cost of housing supply overall.

The BC government should pass a law that says that a property owner cannot demolish or evict to renovate a place with an existing residential tenancy unless the owner secures a comparable tenancy for each tenant in advance of the eviction.

@JShamess One of the reasons employees are returning to the office is that they are now starting to wake to the fact that their colleagues who do work from the office are visibly advancing their careers and seeing their salaries rise faster than those clinging to the WFH fantasy.

A story from one of the most digital oriented people on the planet Gary V: Gary: This is why companies are in deep sh*t An employee came up to me a couple weeks ago and she was very transparent. “I was really considering quitting when we went to a couple more days in the office, I didn’t want to commute, my commute is a pain in the ass. I got up yesterday and walked over three seats to ask somebody something and I got the answer in 12 seconds. “That used to take 3 weeks” I would ask for a meeting, that would take a week, they would cancel. Then reschedule another week then get the answer. It took 12 seconds. Gary V: That’s why companies are in deep sh*t because speed and efficiency and effectiveness matter. Also, it’s wild how many people become lifelong friends after 6 weeks of being in the same general area. What is your experience?

Broken bureaucracy. High rise residential construction on hold, this time due to a permit delayed because city staff can’t figure out how to accept the free land they required for approvals. 🤦‍♂️ Please sire, may I give you free land? brandondonnelly.com/2024/05/29/ple… via @donnelly_b