Notices by AlexanderVI (alexandervi@stranger.social)

#Ottawa , last gasp of #Winter as seen from the Château Laurier.

@evan if you sincerely believe the Canadian Forces can go toe to toe against the US military, I completely understand your reasoning.
From the numbers, and from what I have seen of the US military up close, we are going to have very different opinions on that.

I am glad we are at least having frank discussions about this. I hope DND is as well.

For clarity, my family came to Canada as refugees when New York was evacuated in 1783. I have personally lived in the States. I will not do so again

@evan no, I am not saying that.
I'm specifically saying the invasion piece is not a good idea, in my opinion. Many other aspects of your plan are sound goals, and I sincerely hope we can avoid the worst. I agree we need to maximize friction.

I'm taking a Scouting approach: Be Prepared. We need civil defence organization and emergency preparedness efforts so we can support each other. We should be massively expanding something like the Reserves, maybe even a Swiss approach.

I'm preparing.

@evan At present, if there's a full scale invasion, no such thing is possible. This is the most powerful military in all human history we are talking about.

To be clear, yes, a troublesome insurgency that adds to the domestic American polycrisis such that continuing is impossible is likely our only hope. But we should not be unrealistic. Vietnam went on for ages.

And moving millions of people hundreds of kilometres is simply not feasible and would pretty much immediately end our economy.

@evan I'm sorry, I agree we need to have a strong plan, but pre-emptively invading the United States is, frankly, insane.

Nothing will more quickly galvanize Americans to believe Trump's lies about how we are soooo bad. Our vestigial armed forces are in no position to make such an effort. Salients are a nightmare to defend, even if forces are equal.
We would be carpet bombed to oblivion.
Abandoning cities just gives them free real estate. Lower home prices 🇺🇸!

And nobody is going to help us.

I cannot believe I'm at a place where I see a story indicating #Germany is significantly rearming and my response is "thank Christ already".

#eupoli

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/14/friedrich-merz-germany-greens-support-defence-funding-plan

@chu they've normalized kids getting shot to death in math class, there's no limit

Ok, #Marvel , I don't know how this happened, but the #Fantastic4 trailer tells me that someone over there might actually care about the #JackKirby era and, against all odds, I am hyped for this #film.

@benroyce @akaruiwrx also worth mentioning that the US does not just have oodles of extra industrial and extractive capacity on standby. One thing tariffs do is encourage buying domestically produced items, but if your economy cannot meet its own demand for a given item, putting a tariff on that item just makes the item more expensive.

And if you're an American manufacturer and you use that item in your products, your cost, and thus your price to consumers, increases.

So #Deepseek "tanked" #Nvidia ?

No, Nvidia was an industry leader before the AI bullshit factory got going in earnest last year, it still makes products that are sought after in the market, and it's still worth a bajillion dollars.

What tanked was every free-money-machine fever dream spouted by casino economists, techbros, and finfluencers. Nvidia will probably still be making a lot of money for some time to come.

As everything becomes hype, don't believe the hype.

#investing #StockMarket

@liztai considering this is the greatest imaginable propaganda victory at an up front cost of basically zero, the additional investment to push out the improved features for non-Chinese users must be a bargain, whatever it cost.

@robcinos
I'm not an expert, but is having this much capital tied up in nonproductive financial mirages boosted by sweaty Twitch streamers typically a good thing for an economy, or a bad thing?

@falcennial

@Adam_Cadmon1 have had this happen multiple times. It's crazy how spoofable phone numbers are. Now, if I see my bank come up on caller ID, I just let it go to VM and call my bank directly right away. One area where mild paranoia is quite warranted these days.

@SallyStrange fun detail that may or may not be included: we offloaded tonnes of basically non biodegradable garbage to China under the guise of "recycling" schemes.

@AnarchoNinaWrites you can add "tacit governmental support" to the Ottawa occupation - Premier #DougFord should have used the provincial police when the city police collapsed like a wet towel, but he needed to pander to the loons and strategically wanted to make it a problem for Trudeau. This resulted in the Feds invoking some extremely hefty public order legislation (the courts just ruled this was unconstitutional) because it was clear no other force was going to clear the trucks.