Je suis tellement pas la politique au Québec que je viens d’apprendre que c’est la première ministre. Malheureusement on dirait que Drainville est indécrottable.

Eventually AI will even be able to count the number of minutes and seconds passed, and sometimes be confidently wrong. Revolutionary stuff.

Ça serait une bonne idée de limiter l’asphalte aux routes principales. On peut pas continuer de s’étaler et s’attendre à pouvoir se payer des rues asphaltés dans toutes les directions.

Comme c’est là, les gens en milieux urbain financent l’entretien de routes asphaltés dans des endroits très ruraux.

J’habite dans une tour de 20 étages. L’édifice voisin est aussi une tour à logements. On doit avoir en masse de densité pour financer l’entretien de la rue en bas. Mais la personne perdue au bout d’un rang avec 3 voisins étalés sur des km, moins facile à justifier.

They’re no longer gooey here. They were gooey in the 90ies and early 2000 but at some point the recipe changed now they’re grainy and dry.

I have no idea how good plain SSL is but I just use my own IRC server with SSL on top. At least I can control the whole thing.

I know this is a meme community but I was curious about this. It seems some birds do get burned, but not blasted. It varies a lot depending on the installation and it can also be mitigated. Also, the amount of birds dying from this is significantly lower than just the amount of birds hitting windows. For the benefit of other curious people, I’ll try to condense the relevant information from wikipedia and the sources.

In more general terms, a 2016 preliminary study assessed that the annual bird mortality per MW of installed power was similar between U.S. concentrated solar power plants and wind power plants, and higher for fossil fuel power plants.

How it was calculated for fossil fuel

Sovacool estimated avian mortality from fossil fuel power plants across the United States as a result of collision with infrastructure, electrocutions, pollution and contamination, and climate change. In addition, Sovacool estimated climate change-induced avian mortality (in terms of habitat loss and changes in migration) predicted to be the result of fossil fuel power plant operations.

A preliminary assessment of avian mortality at utility-scale solar energy facilities in the United States: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148116301422?via=ihub

Review of Avian Mortality Studies at Concentrating Solar Power Plants: https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1364837

AFAIK there’s no equivalent word for alien in French. The concept is different. Everything coming from space is automatically extraterrestrial. If it’s coming from earth, it’s just a strange/different species or a different form of life. The vagueness of alien doesn’t translate well in French, unless we use the word ‘alien’.

This is interesting as a language quirk. Alien can just mean “different” in English. It doesn’t need to come from space. But English also has extraterrestrial.

As a non native speaker, I had to pause and wonder a bit about “alien”.

Do Icelandic people power their cars with electricity from geothermal? I’m not in Europe but where I live 94% of our electricity is hydroelectric, yet the vast majority of cars are still using gas/petrol. So even if we are independent on electricity, and it’s somewhat clean, we still import oil to power cars and trucks.

I learned your fucking language, the least you can do is learn ours. In fact, more than 45% of the population in Quebec speaks English, while about 10% of English speaking Canadians can speak French.

Bilingualism for French speakers, and unilingualism for English speakers. It’s so insulting every time this happens. And every time they’re like “ooh sorry, I tried but French is haaard”.

One of the pilots, and the crew member that was ejected, are both French speakers. And their company can’t even offer a few words of sympathy in French?! They both learned English you lazy CEO.

I’m usually not very militant about those things, but this happens frequently and it’s so disappointing.

Quand je veux un travail qui demande de parler les deux langues, je dois parler les deux et pas seulement promette que je vais un jour dire quelques mots d’anglais éventuellement après plusieurs années d’“études”. Je dois le prouver sur le champ. Pourquoi les dirigeants à gros salaires ont des passe-droits?!

C’est tellement décevant.

Torrenting a song from cassette? From what specific era should that be? You forgot Napster, Kazaa, and IRC.

Well, I have been “tested” by neuropsychologists and they said I have symptoms that looks like ADHD, but it’s probably not that. I never pushed more as it’s difficult to get any diagnosis or help here in Quebec as an adult. In the end they said I may have PDA, and they will not give me a straight answer.

I still consider myself nerodivergent but according to the medical system here, I don’t have ADHD. I just have a lot of symptoms that are common.

A nice private-public partnership, with a contract guaranteeing profits for the private investors and the public pays for it through taxes.

This reminds me of a few rules of acquisition.

111: Treat people in your debt like family… exploit them.

211: Employees are the rungs on the ladder of success. Don’t hesitate to step on them.

Indeed. I often have my laptop and I’m not confortable just leaving my backpack to them.

Anecdote time. While on vacation in Saint-Martin, the security guard at the grocery store in Marigot insisted that I had to leave my backpack in a secure locker at the entrance. I didn’t want to turn around, walk back to my hotel, leave the bag, and go back, so I reluctantly put it in their locker. But THEY had the key. When I was done and wanted to get my bag back, the security guard was not in sight. He eventually reappeared after a few anguishing minutes and I signalled him from afar that I wanted my bag back. He made a sign that he’d be back soon and took several more minutes to come. So I was standing in the entrance by their lockers, just looking intensely at the security guard in the store, waiting for him to give me back my bag, but he was in no fucking hurry. And while waiting for him to eventually come back, I had enough time to realize that I left money and documents in that backpack.

It’s insulting and the whole thing made me super nervous. I’m never doing that ever again.

Apparently horses sometimes eat small birds. They shouldn’t but it seems it can happen if they are hungry, or bored and/or curious.

Sorry but this is unacceptable to me. If they default to “everyone is a possible thief” then I will avoid them. It’s a horrible way to profile the customers.

I make efforts to walk or bike everywhere, be environmentally friendly, and my backpack is a big part of that. I don’t want to become friendly with the staff of random stores I go to in order for them to let me in with it. It’s already a pain that I can’t use my reusable bags or my own cart/trolley in the stores.

It just doesn’t feel welcoming. And it also seems to be a car centric culture thing, because I live in a metropolis and this “no backpack rule” is pretty rare here, whereas when I go visit friends and family in small towns this rule is everywhere. What’s different? There’s much more people in big cities walking around and shopping with a backpack, compared to a small town where everyone goes to the store with a car.

It’s reverse for me. I don’t have a car so I bring a backpack pretty much anywhere I go. And in that backpack, there’s also a reusable bag.

If stores want me to leave my backpack at the entrance, I turn around and go shopping where they don’t automatically consider you a thief for having a backpack.

So we’re just spreading trash in the environment and feeling good about it because it can be reused by other animals?

This just made me look up and learn about the environmental impact of tennis balls.

Every year, an estimated 300 million tennis balls are manufactured globally, and most of them end up in landfills. The rubber core is pressurized with air or nitrogen to give the ball its signature bounce. However, rubber itself is a challenging material to recycle, especially when combined with pressurization and other materials. The felt covering is partially synthetic (nylon), which contributes to the microplastic pollution problem. Synthetic fibers shed during play, adding to global plastic waste.

I was wondering about the instances when she borrowed a runabout and when the terrorism happened but someone’s gonna have to remind me.

Once she brought back a few Bajorans that were still prisoners since the war, including Li Nalas.

Another time she kidnapped a single Barojan scientist to force him find a cure against a terrorist bioweapon.

What am I missing?