Notices by Tyler Smith (plantarum@ottawa.place)

@mpjgregoire @pjohanneson @davidculley @parismarx

The decline of public services seems to indicate poor policy and motivated attacks as much or more than any inherent shortcomings of the service itself.

Reducing support for agencies like Canada Post, increasing competition from abusive employers like Amazon, we should expect postal service degrades and becomes less sustainable financially. But this is a consequence of choices we make.

I agree with your point that we have more options than the status quo or nothing. But we need to consider the broader context.

The same problem afflicts healthcare and transit.

@daniellatz @blogdiva

Buffet is similarly charitable, and says nice things about taxing the wealthy. But he's also a relentless booster of the abusive monopolies that sustain our oligarchs to the detriment of the rest of us.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/10/folksy-monopolists/#folksy-monopolists

@daniellatz @blogdiva

Gates lobbied for, and got, strict IP protection for COVID vaccines. This effectively blocked access to the vaccines for millions of people.

His charity occurs within the limits of his self-interest.

The #mastodon 'quote tweet' thing, where you include a link to another toot in your toot, is really irritating.

In this particular case, I click the link, which opens the toot up in another tab, where I'm presented with a link to another site which was invisible to readers of the 'quote toot'.

I understand that there are reasons not to implement quote tooting, but this is not a great alternative.

why is #mastodon so slow to show images? Mostly on my phone, it often takes minutes for an image to appear. Is that the server I use, my phone, or just how the fediverse works?

@andrew @feditips

Just listening to #cbc #Ottawa: their economist guest advised listeners that, if they find grocery prices are too high, the solution is to buy shares in grocery chains themselves. Then they'll share in the windfall, and will understand the grocers are just good business people.

Maybe the most patronizing, out of touch take I've heard on inflation.

@cwebber it's odd they would take a firm stance on this kind of messaging, yet don't see any problems with the message they send with such a problematic figurehead.

I say that as a great admirer of RMS, but for all he has accomplished, he's ill-suited to serve as the public face of an organization that wants to encourage outsiders to get on board.