Allan 📊 @allan

@codewiz I think they rely on increased sales due to the rebate coupled with most people being actually too lazy to send in any rebate forms

@UberTumbleweed this is pretty consistent with ETS, whose vision seems to be pushing everyone who was still using ETS to give up and drive themselves

@MightyPork a gas range

I forgot that epcor is putting in new utility poles today and so there is no electricity on the whole block while they do this.

It actually took me a while to notice, it was showering in the dark that did it, because I guess my Sunday morning routine doesn't require electricity?

Who's the weirdo that hand grinds the beans for his pour over coffee? oh right, this guy, who can still make a perfect brew in the dark.

@kai I think that often when I complain about things I should really reflect on why I feel affronted. Maybe I should work harder on letting things go.

@codewiz I'm from Alberta, Canada, though my family is from Saskatchewan. I was raised not to complain about specific people, and especially not to their faces, because that's rude. Whereas complaining about the weather or the vicissitudes of fate is acceptable, but sort of crass?

My coworker is not from Alberta, so maybe she's just used to a different culture of complaining?

I was talking with someone at work who claimed that I don't complain about stuff, and that this is a bad thing.

I find this a bizarre observation for a few reasons
1. I think I complain all the time, it's really one of my main hobbies
2. I've always thought complaining was a negative.

update: I've decided to go skiing.

@sixohsix @ink_slinger there's all the environmental devastation caused by oil production and coal mining (e.g. mountain top removal)

there's the political and social consequences of propping up petrostate autocracies

there are lots of good reasons why abandoning fossil fuels would be good for the world

@ink_slinger yeah, reducing GHG emissions mostly goes hand in hand with reducing all the other kinds of air pollution too

Climate change has been a fact for as long as I've been alive. It is a remarkable piece of disinformation that keeps people under the illusion this is all new and contentious.

It just seems utterly pointless to debate this anymore. Like at this point if you don't believe in climate change it is because you don't want to believe, what am I going to say that will change your mind? Also why should I care what you believe?

One thing I would love to stop debating is climate change

Part of my job is quantifying GHG emissions for the carbon tax and honestly nary a week goes by without someone cornering me and holding forth on how climate change isn't real, or it is real but is some natural variation and not due to people, or that it's real, caused by humans, but the impacts are vastly overstated and thus there is no point in reducing emissions.

..and I just don't fucking care.

@Supernova they may not be headed for recycling. After China stopped taking unsorted plastics and other recycling a lot of municipalities were stuck with nowhere to send their recycling. It's become something of a crisis.

In the meantime all that is going to the landfill, while nobody wants to admit it publicly.

@sixohsix theosophy in general is full of the wonderful and the bizarre, the modern fusion with fringe archaeology and ancient astronauts takes it to a whole new level of the sublimely weird

This is an internet rabbit hole worth falling down

But by far my favourite episode was s12e10 on the Akashic Records, one of the threads was basically that literally anyone who has ever had a truly novel idea (Newton, Darwin, Einstein, etc.) had those thoughts beamed into their heads by transdimensional psychic aliens that are shaping human evolution

This actually pops up in a couple episodes but the Akashic Records one is probably the most lucid account

I hate that I know this.

There's a thread going on Metafilter about ancient aliens, and I am physically restraining myself from "well actually" -ing about the true breadth and depth of ancient astronaut theories.

I don't want to excuse it all as not racist, it so clearly is, but Europe is not exempt from ancient alien visitation by any stretch of the imagination.

My favourite episode from the most recent season was how Leonardo da Vinci was abducted by aliens and basically the Renaissance was all aliens.

Neil Gaiman came to town and gave a talk as part of the EPL speakers series tonight. That man gives a good talk, he answered questions with delightful anecdotes and read excerpts from Good Omens, Norse Mythology, and an as yet unpublished book called Art Matters.

It was a sold out audience too, in the Shaw, which makes him literally a literary rock star.

The holidays are approaching and I'm thinking of weaseling out of visiting my family. I always feel obligated to go, but I actively dislike Christmas and would much prefer to not celebrate it at all.

That said, I don't really want to just sit around the house, so I need to come up with something to do/somewhere to go to make use of all this time away from work. If I take 4 days off on top of existing days off I end up with a 13 day break from work 🤔