#My Mastodon Copypasta (formatted for Reddit)

Consider making an account on a Canadian Mastodon instance. Mastodon is a decentralized open-source social media platform similar to X/Twitter. There are many Canadian based general interest “instances” where you can make an account: Mstdn.ca, TheCanadian.Social, CoSocial.ca or any of many others you can find at MastodonServer.ca.

There is no one company fine-tuning an algorithm to entertain you, sell you crypto, and radicalize you, so you’ll need to do some work on setting up your feed. Check out Fedi.Directory, Interesting Accounts to Follow on Mastodon and the Fediverse and Fedi.Tips- An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse.

For some Canadian themed news sources, I recommend the following Mastodon follows. You can follow pretty much any Mastodon account from any Mastodon instance.

• CBC News
• Global News
• The Tyee
• PressProgress
• Meanwhile In Canada
• Winnipeg Free Press
• The Narwhal
• Cory Doctorow
• Michael Geist
• Senator Paula Simmons
• Canadian History Ehx
• Saskatoon Star Phoenix
• Andrew Kurjata, CBC Journalist

Following #Hashtags is also a good way to stay in the loop on a topic. For now, I’d suggest #Canada , #CdnPoli , #ElbowsUp and #Never51st .

There are also Canadian instances for other Federated services, but Mastodon is probably a good gateway. Even if it isn’t your primary social media, at least you’ll have a backstop of news and a way to connect without the algorithms manipulating what to show you. Hope to see you out there.

There are two things that I find soothing in the recent debacle wrt basic Canadian sovereignty.

First, executive authority resides in the PM, and the PM is selected by and must face question period in the House of Commons. The vaunted US system of checks and balances is useless when the other branches are compromised.

Second, the fundamental problem in the US isn’t structural, it’s that around a third of the electorate is okay with the rank corruption and self-dealing from the top. They cheer on the acts of a Presidential monarch. It doesn’t matter how your democracy is structured, when around a third of your electorate no longer values democratic traditions you are in a dangerous place.

In Canada though, we’ve seen a fairly strong repudiation of Maple MAGA and the Qonvoy movement. It’s a little weird, I’ve seen Qonvoyers missing the point, thinking everyone is on side with them somehow, because Canadian flags? But the ratio of pro-Qonvoy pro-Canada sentiment (where there isn’t an obvious and rampant bot problem) seems to skew pretty far away from the Qonvoyers. I think we face the same dangers the US is facing, but it looks like we have a little more runway.

As to point 2, do not rely on Xitter for your news. It has turned into an algorithmically twisted bot-manipulated hellscape of discord and echo chambers. Speaking to the choir here on Lemmy.ca Canada community, but encourage Canadians to make an account on a Canadian Mastodon or Lemmy instance. I recommend dipping their toe into the Fediverse with Mastodon, and just following some Canadian news sources.

This is one of the reasons I really liked the Saab offer. Supporting a domestic aerospace defence industry is probably a good strategic aim.

GCAP would also offer a chance to foster our domestic aerospace industry.

There are other combinations that achieve much the same though. FCAS (Future Combat Air System) is similar to GCAP, a joint France, Germany and Spain project, but it isn’t scheduled to deliver until 2040.

I am in no position to know what’s “best”, but it’s undeniable that there are some good options. It’s unfortunate though that there will be a cost to pay that we went with F-35 all those years ago. Still don’t have a Canadian F-35 in the air.

Another piece of trivia, that I really don’t know if significant is that Sweden nearly joined GCAP. If we went with Gripen and GCAP, and Sweden rejoined GCAP there might be opportunities for long term partnerships. Then again I think there are similar opportunities with Eurofighter and FCAS.

F-35 is the most advanced aircraft currently available. We’ve also already sunk enough money into the program to pay for the first 16 IIRC. This puts us in an awkward position, considering the possibility of degraded functionality of the F-35 without US assistance¹.

One of the worst ways to balloon military spending without getting anything in return is to keep changing your mind and hanging procurement up in endless indecision. Combined with the money already spent, I think we have to stick with F-35 for at least a bit.

I like the Gripen, and I’d suggest a switching some of our 88 fighters to Gripen’s, but apparently Gripen’s aren’t that much cheaper.

Long term though, I think Canada should get in on GCAP, the Global Combat Air Program. It’s not expected to deliver until 2035 if everything sticks to plan, so we’d still need the F-35 or Gripens I was mentioning in the interim.

¹ My understanding is that the “kill-switch” myth is pretty much that, a myth. There are software systems that depend on the US, apparently ALIS/ODIN, plus the MDF file updates. The possibility of a kill-switch can’t be totally excluded IMO though, there is a lot of software in the F-35, and the US writes and patches it all. Even if there isn’t a kill-switch, the US knows what vulnerabilities they are patching, and if any of them where exploitable, I’d imagine they’d know.

That’s kind of what I was thinking.

I used to run Folding@Home, as well as others, as a screensaver. It’s been a while, but I think you had some control of how hard to work the computer. As someone who regularly works with 30 year old computers that run 24/7, it seems weird to kill a GPU by running it,but if it runs cooler maybe it will last longer? Although that defeats the purpose kind of.

Now you need to use the money you saved and the $15 in crypto to buy two identical computers, then run one flat out and the other at around 50% and see how long they last. Report back every couple of years.

Excuse me while I look at extreme uptime posts.

Shalom!

I’ve been advocating joining GCAP, an effort by Japan, UK and Italy to make a 6th gen fighter. It isn’t scheduled to deliver the final design until 2035 though, so we would still need a stopgap.

Still, it would send a pretty strong signal and also allow as a path to reinvigorate our domestic aerospace defence industry.