Have you ever actually been to downtown Ottawa, where those protests were held?

It's not "a residential area" in any sense.

The moderately-wide Ottawa River forms the north-west edge of the downtown area.

Along it are the Alexandra Bridge, Major's Hill Park, the Rideau Canal, Parliament Hill, the Supreme Court, Library and Archives Canada, and other government-related buildings and infrastructure. Those aren't residential.

Immediately south-east of those is Wellington Street, where those protests were held, literally right in front of Parliament Hill. It's about as close as they could physically get to the Parliament Buildings.

South-west of that, there are numerous government office buildings, commercial office buildings, small shops, restaurants, a few hotels, and so on for a number of blocks. Again, those aren't residential.

Also keep in mind that the government-imposed lockdowns and other restrictions being protested were preventing or severely limiting the use of the offices, hotels, restaurants, and other businesses in the area.

You have to go out about 1 km from Parliament Hill before you even begin to start encountering any significant number of apartment buildings and residences.

Downtown Ottawa is not "a residential area", and those protesters were in the most relevant, appropriate, and reasonable place they could have been to protest policies imposed by the Government of Canada.

It's something I've seen time and time again, in a wide variety of discussions forums, for decades now.

Such people will happily do it for free, and they're willing to dedicate many hours per day to it, too.

I don't understand their motivation(s), but perhaps it simply gives them a sense of power, control, or influence that they otherwise don't have in their lives outside of the Internet.

That's the position I'm in, along with some other people I've talked to recently, too.

For our situations, the M4 would likely offer more than enough processing power, and the efficiency and physical size are attractive, but a maximum of 32 GB of RAM definitely isn't sufficient.

The M4 Pro's 64 GB of RAM is somewhat better, but the cost of those upgrades are very hard to justify.

I'd also prefer to use the system for at least 5 years, and likely up to 10 years, if not longer. Even if 64 GB is tolerable now, I can easily see it becoming insufficient for my needs before then.

The lack of reasonably-priced internal storage, while easier to work around than the lack of sufficient and reasonably-priced RAM, doesn't help matters, too.

Even if future Studio models, for example, might allow for a more ideal amount of RAM, I have to expect that unjustifiable upgrade costs will likely still be an issue, and then there's the wait on top of that.

I can easily see myself and the others I've talked to settling for PCs, rather than making unjustifiably-expensive Mac purchases.

Over that time period in Canada, I've also seen a 2 to 3 times increase in the unit price of many other basic grocery items, including dried pasta, rice, bread, canned goods, bags of frozen vegetables (peas, corn), meat, and so on.

The government-reported inflation numbers are well below what I've experienced and what many people in Canada I've talked to have told me they're experiencing.

Today, the Conservative Party is a centre-left party. They support big government, taxation, immigration, interventionism, and other policies that are inherently not compatible with "right wing" ideologies.

Comparing the Conservative Party's platform to that of the centrist People's Party makes the Conservative's centre-left positioning more obvious.

Recently, the Conservative Party's platform has more closely resembled the farther-left Liberal Party's platform than it has the centrist People's Party platform.

This was at a long-established mall shop that specialized in photography products and services. The same photographer had taken suitable photos of some other people in line ahead of us rather quickly.

The studio area was professional enough, with a backdrop, with dedicated photography lighting, with ample lighting in the shop beyond that, and with an adjustable stool for the subject to sit on.

The camera appeared to be a DSLR with a lens and a lens hood, similar enough to what I've seen professional wedding photographers use. It was initially on a tripod, although the photographer eventually removed it during later attempts.

Despite being in a highly-controlled purpose-built environment, and using photography equipment much better than that of a typical laptop or phone camera, the photographer still couldn't take a suitable photo of this particular woman, despite repeated attempts and adjustments to the camera's settings and to the environment.

Was the photographer "racist"? I would guess not, given the effort he put in, and the frustration he was exhibiting at the lack of success.

Was the camera "racist"? No, obviously not.

Sometimes it can just be difficult to take a suitable photo, even when using higher-end equipment in a rather ideal environment.

It has nothing to do with "racism".

I'm surprised when people don't already engage in questioning like that.

I've had to be doing it for decades at this point.

Much of the worst advice and information I've ever received has come from expensive human so-called "professionals" and "experts" like doctors, accountants, lawyers, financial advisors, professors, journalists, mechanics, and so on.

I now assume that anything such "experts" tell me is wrong, and too often that ends up being true.

Sourcing information and advice from a larger pool of online knowledge, even if the sources may be deemed "amateur" or "hobbyist" or "unreliable", has generally provided me with far better results and outcomes.

If an LLM is built upon a wide base of source information, I'm inclined to trust what it generates more than what a single human "professional" or "expert" says.

Taxation is inherently a left-wing concept. Under right-wing ideologies, there would not be any taxpayer money to give "cronies" because such funds never would be collected from taxpayers in the first place.

Public debt is inherently a left-wing concept. Under right-wing ideologies, there wouldn't even be any government entity capable of incurring debt.

"Cultural institutions" involving the government are inherently a left-wing concept. Under right-wing ideologies, the government simply wouldn't have the resources to create "cultural institutions" and any such entities that did exist would be created, funded, and operated by the private sector alone.

If you're truly upset about the things you just described, then it's because you dislike left-wing ideologies, even if you don't recognize it.

Left-wing ideologies inherently promote concepts like collectivist big government, high taxation, massive government spending, and government-controlled infrastructure.

Right-wing ideologies, on the other hand, inherently promote individualism, minimal to no taxation, minimal to no government spending, and privately-controlled infrastructure.

That's just the fundamental nature of a two-dimensional political spectrum. It has nothing to do with me.

Anyone claiming that a government exhibiting decidedly left-wing traits is somehow "far right" is simply making a wrong analysis.

Ultimately, though, they're still left-wing parties in practice, pushing left-wing ideologies, regardless of the facade they might try to put up.

A party doesn't just become "right wing" because they claim to be, especially when their actions and policies are decidedly left-wing.

Such behaviour fundamentally contradicts even the mildest of right-of-centre ideologies.

An actual right-of-centre government would never even consider starting such a project.

If a right-of-centre government happened to inherit one that had been started by a previous administration, for example, such a project would be immediately terminated, any assets liquidated, and the proceeds directly returned to the taxpayers.

The only way that such a project would ever exist under a right-of-centre government would be if it were initiated, funded, built, operated, and maintained solely by the private sector, without any government involvement at all.

Practices such as the collection of taxes, raising public debt, and government built/run infrastructure are part of left-of-centre ideologies, and certainly not right-of-centre in any way.

I'm more familiar with Canada's taxpayer-funded, "universal" provincial health care systems than the European ones, so I'll describe the costs we typically see with them.

Government health care spending makes up a huge portion of the provincial budgets each year. This results in costs like high tax rates, and significant government debt. (Those, in turn, introduce other costs, such as the stifling of business development and employment, among others.)

Another significant cost is the poor quality of service. Long delays are the norm. This can mean single-digit hours-long waits for emergency service, double-digit hours-long waits for semi-emergency situations, and weeks to months for routine diagnostics and specialist appointments.

A lot of Canadians don't have a family doctor, and walk-in clinics are typically quite busy and have relatively short hours, so people end up going to emergency rooms even for relatively minor health issues. That only exacerbates the problems there.

Even once you're finally seen by a practitioner, there is little incentive for them to do a good job because there's pretty much no competition, and no punishment for providing poor service. Don't expect a favourable outcome, especially for anything requiring in-depth investigation or long-term treatment.

Common dental, vision, and pharmaceutical costs often aren't covered by the provincial systems, which results in many Canadians paying even more money for costly private medical coverage on top of the "universal" coverage they've already paid for via taxation and public debt.

It's very revealing that despite paying a lot for the local health care systems, Canadians with the means to do so will often seek treatment in the US anyways. Even if they have to travel and pay a lot more money to do that, at least it tends to result in much faster, and much higher quality, service than they would ever have received in Canada.

We'd see far more reasonable pricing, and much less need for something like medical insurance, without the regulations that artificially limit the supply of practitioners and clinics, that prevent competition, and that introduce unnecessary costs, among other distortions.

What matters to me is the validity of the content being produced, regardless of who produces it. If foreign-owned outlets do a better job than locally-owned outlets at providing factual, complete, and as-objective-as-possible reporting, that's fine with me.

When I consider events or situations I've had direct knowledge of, or where I've had access to direct witness accounts and raw footage that I trust, some of the worst reporting in my opinion has been from CBC News. With CBC being a Crown corporation, CBC News could perhaps be considered the most inherently "Canadian-owned" of the mainstream news outlets.

On the other hand, for such situations, I've generally found reporting from Postmedia's various outlets to be among the most accurate, complete, and objective of that from the mainstream outlets, even if it may be considered foreign-owned.

The company involved doesn't matter, and the reason for the knee-jerk reaction doesn't matter. It's a business practice that all customers should definitely watch out for and take seriously, even if they haven't been affected by it (yet).

They might have had value at some point in the past, but they probably haven't retained that value well at all.

For example, enough of the information in those encyclopedia sets, non-fiction books, and magazines is probably now out-of-date, invalid, wrong, or incomplete.

Most of the paperback books and magazines I've seen discarded in boxes along sidewalks are merely previous generations' equivalents of "cheap short term attention catching hooks" from when such things inherently required more physical overhead.

A good chunk of those items probably weren't particularly wanted to begin with, or are infeasible to keep now. No replacements are needed or wanted.

Some of the books, tapes, devices, and other items were probably given as birthday, Christmas, graduation, etc., gifts. They might not have even been that useful to the recipients to begin with. Physical gift-giving like that is less-common these days in my experience, with gift cards and even cash replacing physical items. A lot of items given as gifts in the past are simply no longer offered for sale today, or are so cheap that giving them can even be seen as insulting by some people.

Much of the new housing stock in places like Canada, Europe, and even the US to a lesser extent are small apartments. A lot of people just don't have space for items in general, especially when downsizing or moving into a retirement or care facility.

Enough of the items I see discarded are also damaged, broken, or otherwise unusable, too.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/cbc-no-caucasian

While it was portrayed as a "mistake" during the subsequent backtracking, that incident certainly planted a seed of doubt in my mind.

Bringing in low-skill, low-productivity, and often criminally-inclined foreigners (especially refugees) has also been a significant and socially-costly problem in Canada.

Bringing in foreign "students" has harmed the quality and reputation of Canada's education systems.

Bringing in adult foreigners to do the low-end, part-time jobs that Canadian high school students and university students used to do has hurt Canada economically, and resulted in atrocious service in many retail stores and restaurants.

Bringing in huge numbers of foreigners each year, while simultaneously restricting the construction of new housing, has created severe pricing distortions in the housing and rental markets. These foreigners also put immense strain on the already-insufficient transportation and health care infrastructure.

What you say about "integration" is a myth. A visit to the cities surrounding Vancouver or Toronto will make that very clear, very quickly.

Immigration has been disastrous for Canada.

For example, based on my experience and the experiences of other people in Canada I've talked to, Canada Post seems to just deliver a pick-up notice slip, rather than the parcel itself.

It's particularly annoying when the recipient has been available to receive the parcel, but Canada Post doesn't even appear to make an attempt to deliver, although the slip is left behind.

The recipient then has to go down to a Canada Post outlet with the slip to actually receive the parcel.

On the other hand, FedEx, UPS, and other private sector (I, too, would exclude Purolator) couriers consistently manage to deliver parcels directly to me, right into my hands, even if it might occasionally take a second attempt. I haven't had to go to a UPS or FedEx depot in well over a decade.

In my opinion, delivering a parcel directly to the recipient is a different service than delivering the parcel to the same city and then requiring the recipient to complete the job.