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sowbug 21 hours ago [-]
Related: episode 653 of 99% Invisible mentions Peace Arch Park, which is along the US-Canada border in Blaine, Washington, and Surrey, British Columbia. Anyone from either country can enter the park and mingle with people from the other country. There's supposedly strong incentive, because of a treaty from the War of 1812, for both countries to keep their side of the park open:
If Canada broke the treaty, in theory, the U.S. could lay claim to parts of Ontario and Quebec. And if America broke it, Canada could get parts of Maine, Michigan, and Wisconsin. So, basically, North American geography as we know it is contingent on this early 1800s treaty remaining in effect.
The podcast was from December -- an eternity ago in these interesting times -- and I don't know whether anything has changed since then.
This is a good story, but you can read both the Treaty of Ghent (which ended the War of 1812 while keeping the US-Canada border the same) and Rush-Bagot (which restricted naval fleets on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain). Neither document states anything about the border needing to remain open or without barriers.
The podcast's transcript suggests that their source for this is https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/peace-arch-u.... The person confidently claiming that any closure of the park would result in catastrophe is an immigration lawyer, not a historian:
"Saunders said the treaty stipulates there could not be any boundaries or physical barriers erected on the northern border of the U.S. — and if either side violated that treaty — the boundaries revert back to pre-treaty."
Since the Treaty of Ghent restored the pre-War of 1812 borders of both the United States and Canada, this doesn't make any sense. Canadian historian C. P. Stacey states that the period after the War of 1812 actually saw more border fortification than the years before (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1840618).
I mentioned that the idea that a 19th century treaty keeps the US-Canada border demilitarized was a good story, but I think the truth is an even better one: that the border is demilitarized because both countries know that they can trust their neighbor. Let's hope it stays that way.
PearlRiver 20 hours ago [-]
America does not want friends only vassals. Which arguably is what Canada became after the British left.
highpost 20 hours ago [-]
We went to Peace Arch Park several times during COVID to visit relatives in Canada. And then I noticed the tents on the eastern edge of the park. What's that all about? I called it the End Zone. Couples separated by the border would meet there. One park ranger said he saw things he couldn't unsee...
darepublic 20 hours ago [-]
I have a hard time believing that Canada would ever get parts of the US if America broke this. Even if the signed document included unambiguous promises written in the verified DNA of a famous American president or other extravagances
nemomarx 22 hours ago [-]
It's not an unfair reaction to the main entrance being closed, but it is a little sad.
The northern border used to be so much more flexible and I don't see any real benefits from doing all this.
Beannation 21 hours ago [-]
I really hope we get back to times where we were really best friends. It was good for both countries and was a model for international relationships/partnerships.
bluGill 21 hours ago [-]
Write your congressman. If congress decides the people care things will change, but when they hear nothing they don't care.
Beannation 21 hours ago [-]
Im Canadian, so I cant do much to affect American policy. I'm generally happy with how Canada's politicians are handling this situation. I do hope more Americans do what you say, it is why democracy exists.
asteroidburger 20 hours ago [-]
The nice thing about having a rep that supports my ideals is I don't really see the need to. It won't change anything, and I don't need to convince them.
bluGill 20 hours ago [-]
It is important because they need to decide priority. And if they are not strong supporters they may even change their opinion to get votes next fall if they see the political winds. (I don't know your representative, some are more swayed by the winds that others)
Beannation 18 hours ago [-]
mid terms will be fun, and scary to watch. Consequential times....
otikik 21 hours ago [-]
They will care more if you pay them instead, though.
nemomarx 20 hours ago [-]
Given how cheap some politicians are, a pro Canadian lobby could do wonders. If AIPAC can get so much influence for so little why not.
mothballed 20 hours ago [-]
AIPAC bought the KY-04 seat by pumping so much money into shows demented boomers watch that they completely upset the usual primary voters in the state by getting truckload of demented people to show up from a 30 second sound blurb played over and over that Massie was selling out Kentucky to the democrats. This despite the fact the votes from last term's primary voters basically did not change at all.
It's actually mind blowing how effective AIPAC is. They managed to upset one of the most popular Republicans in the US house by a genius campaign at non-voting demented boomers by tricking them to believe probably the most conservative guy in the entire congress is secretly a Democrat.
throwaway27448 21 hours ago [-]
> If congress decides the people care things will change
Hah
GJim 21 hours ago [-]
That fatalistic attitude is why your democracy is in peril.
Get off your arse and take lessons on protesting from the French.
Arubis 20 hours ago [-]
The French have more of a social safety net, which enables extended protests. I understand the irony in stating this (well then, USian, get off your ass and demand a social safety net), but the chicken-and-egg problem is real. This is setting aside cultural mores and biases; for an example thereof, see sibling comment.
embedding-shape 20 hours ago [-]
> The French have more of a social safety net, which enables extended protests
How do you think they got those in the first place though?
I-M-S 20 hours ago [-]
Those rights were won at the time when stomachs were more often empty than full and before video games got really good.
embedding-shape 20 hours ago [-]
Ah, meaning things need to get worse before they get better... The video games part reminds me of "Opium of the masses", probably some truth in that.
mrguyorama 19 hours ago [-]
To get the basics of welfare the US has now, it took 25% of the country being unemployed,, everyone seeing their hard working grandparents dying in the ditch at the end of their life with nothing, and constant bread lines everywhere.
Oh, and massive organization of voters and rabid progressive populist support.
President Trump, above all, is the clearest and most direct example of how you absolutely can get what you vote for in the US. Republicans did not want Trump and fought it as much as they could. They openly declared how bad he was and how stupid and how awful he would be, and it didn't matter. Because people voted.
Donald Trump is in flagrant violation of constitutional law constantly, again, and it doesn't matter because voters want it.
He should be in prison but it doesn't matter because voters wanted him, wanted his bullshit, and voted against anyone who got in their way.
And yet, losers will STILL insist that "voting doesn't matter" or "Blah blah money in politics"
All you gotta do is vote people.
DFHippie 18 hours ago [-]
There's also a propaganda feedback loop. It's not like Trump's voters are innocent, though. They want to be told lies.
Arubis 19 hours ago [-]
I don't disagree, hence the chicken-and-egg problem.
redsocksfan45 20 hours ago [-]
[dead]
kashunstva 19 hours ago [-]
It is one reason, but certainly not the only one.
The Citizens United decision virtually ensures that the average voter, even in aggregate, has nothing important to say. Shortly, one particular U.S. citizen will have a net worth of $1T; and this, more than anything will ensure that “We the People” are only noise, compared to the real signal.
throwaway27448 18 hours ago [-]
> Get off your arse and take lessons on protesting from the French.
Sir, I'm fleeing this country. The time to protest was 30 years ago. Or 70 years ago. Either way, it is well in the past. This country will need to crash and detox from its addiction to money before it can become a real democracy.
GJim 3 hours ago [-]
> Sir, I'm fleeing this country.
Where to?
Because unless you become a citizen of the country you are fleeing to (a process that, *IF* it is open to you, will take years), you will have even less rights to vote and protest than you do now.
throwaway27448 52 minutes ago [-]
> you will have even less rights to vote and protest than you do now.
That may be true. But there won't be the pretense that I'm living in the most free, democratic place on earth when I'm obviously not.
bluGill 20 hours ago [-]
That is a problem, but the larger problem is people don't have an informed vote. They vote for a party straight down without considering what they really support, or what the unintended consequences of those things are.
mindslight 19 hours ago [-]
The other half of this is there is so little choice that a voter does have. On the national level it's just over one bit of information per year. Over 12 years - 3 presidential races, 6 congressional reps, 4 senators. I'm not counting primaries because while they can shape policy, they can just as well unshape policy from people voting strategically ("electable"). And a voter can only vote in half of the primaries, so primaries are already part of the dynamic ushering people into these packaged sports teams of the major parties.
In addition to the obvious fixes like Ranked Pairs voting, I'd say we need a Constitutional amendment bringing back independent agencies with their heads being directly elected rather than merely picked by whomever wins the presidential race. For example you shouldn't have to balance your guess of how you think one president will treat the ATF vs the NSF. Or the President shouldn't have any power over the Attorney General, as it's the Attorney General who should be prosecuting a criminal President, rather than merely being a lapdog in the criminal conspiracy. A race for each agency would also create focus on each agency head's actual results, rather than how the current guy is using a round-robin of all these different departments to create a tough-looking spectacle in one area, only to move on to another one when the actual results start becoming apparent.
We also need the right to recall for all national politicians, for obvious reasons.
21 hours ago [-]
engineer_22 21 hours ago [-]
Social unrest is not usually a hallmark of a functioning society.
GJim 3 hours ago [-]
Social unrest is how equality and functional societies were obtained.
throwaway27448 4 minutes ago [-]
Alright so let's obtain that society
bluGill 22 minutes ago [-]
A society needs to allow that unrest first. Both directly allow it, but also the type of thinking that would cause it.
paganel 20 hours ago [-]
The representative system in the US is all but dead when it comes to high-power politics, this second Trump presidency has vigorously shown that. They weren't of that much use before, also, apart from blocking a few essential things here and there. They're also not at the Caligula's horse in the Senate moment, but they're rapidly going that way.
bluGill 21 hours ago [-]
Midterm elections are coming up.
amanaplanacanal 21 hours ago [-]
I think they are afraid they are going to get creamed in November, but for some reason they are more afraid of the president.
They might not be wrong about this, the president is known for siccing the department of Justice on his political enemies.
cmrdporcupine 21 hours ago [-]
As a Canadian watching from a distance the fact that the administration and its congressional allies etc don't seem to be concerned at all about what is going to happen in November gives me a lot of apprehension about what they might know that is not being stated publicly.
Midterms coming up and prosecuting an endless "war" that doubles gas prices, and not seeming concerned at all about the blowback?
What's up with that?
SpicyLemonZest 21 hours ago [-]
Once you accept that Trump is literally senile, a lot of things click into place. Why does he seem unable to predict obvious consequences of the actions he takes? Why does he fixate on random mean words and repeat them with no regard for normal political strategy? Why does he randomly fall asleep on camera?
When he says that he has no reason to worry because the polls show everyone loves him, I think he genuinely believes that.
cmrdporcupine 20 hours ago [-]
That's a given, but what is the excuse for Bessent and so on, who are clearly very smart. Just in a really bad way.
kashunstva 19 hours ago [-]
Bessent is really smart? It’s possible he may be; but he communicates so poorly, that unless you knew anything of his background (I do not.) then it would be hard to assess. If he understands anything about monetary policy, apart from personal enrichment - which of course is a given in this administration, one couldn’t discern that from his public utterances.
cmrdporcupine 18 hours ago [-]
I'd say it's not ... smart about economics. No, he clearly is not. He's a blunt ideological tool for a kleptocracy.
More smart about politics and power in the Machiavellian sense.
SpicyLemonZest 17 hours ago [-]
They correctly understand that a boss who randomly assigns them new shoes (https://archive.is/2Z4qS) is too far gone and will not reward them for bringing attention to political issues he thinks are fake news. I'm sure Bessent is already planning his tell-all memoir about how he worked hard behind the scenes against the scheming viziers who were causing all the problems.
thatguy0900 19 hours ago [-]
To some extent those people have all been vastly enriching themselves with insider trading. They're going to be getting pardons as well. What's the worst that will probably happen to them, they retire to some country with their new fortunes?
throwaway27448 18 hours ago [-]
When you figure out how to leverage a vote to get something, let me know. Last time I tried this I was screamed at for electing a fascist for withholding it.
bluGill 14 hours ago [-]
You will be screamed at no matter what you do. So don't let that get in your way. It is important to vote. Remember when people are screaming that at least you're sending a message because votes even for third parties are counted and when third parties start to get a lot of attention that does change what the major parties do. So don't worry about so-called wasted votes. They're never wasted. Sometimes you don't have a good option, but you can pick the best option you have.
GJim 3 hours ago [-]
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice".
throwaway27448 51 minutes ago [-]
When our state furnishes candidates worth voting for, maybe I'll consider it a democracy.
16 hours ago [-]
brightball 21 hours ago [-]
It's apparently a response due to a noticeable increase in apprehensions over the last 6 years.
Funnelling “problems” to known points is better than pushing those problems to any of a bazillion other points.
But i guess ticking “we did something” checkboxes keeps the paycheck deposits flowing.
mothballed 21 hours ago [-]
Apprehensions on the northern border usually want to be found, as asylum claims. Anyone who wants to cross illegally at the northern border could easily do so since forever. So in this case the bazillion other points land in Canada, since those that wanted to illegal into the US from the North always could. That's a "win" for the US from the perspective of the administration.
Scoundreller 20 hours ago [-]
> Apprehensions on the northern border usually want to be found, as asylum claims
Not anymore, not right away anyway:
> The new terms allow each country to expel asylum seekers who apply for protection within 14 days of crossing the U.S.-Canada border between ports of entry.
To a wannabe authoritarian, fear and uncertainty are benefits. They love to flex in shitty ways.
21 hours ago [-]
derbOac 20 hours ago [-]
It's more than a little sad to me.
buckle8017 21 hours ago [-]
Canada allowed millions of temporary foreign workers in.
Unfortunately the border actually needs to be more sealed.
Scoundreller 21 hours ago [-]
These moves annoy a lot of people (or cost money) and manages to go from a 0.00000001% to a 0.000000010001% sealed border.
Once again, borders doing what they do best: waste honest people’s resources.
recursivecaveat 15 hours ago [-]
You realize that the library is not like a portal right? It's just a building that happens to be on the invisible line. If you wanted to cross the border you could just travel to any point along the countless miles of uninhabited wilderness outside the town and walk across.
20 hours ago [-]
nubinetwork 21 hours ago [-]
Not the first time something like this has happened either. A small road in Montana/Alberta is being sectioned off because it sits on the border... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly7gl95nnpo
mschuster91 20 hours ago [-]
Truly, Trump is an inverse Midas - everything he touched turns to shit. Even if the Trump/MAGA administration goes peacefully (the fact that one has to state this as a possibility instead of a certainty is shocking enough), the Canadian road will remain, a permanent reminder of the idiocy.
slater 18 hours ago [-]
> the fact that one has to state this as a possibility instead of a certainty is shocking enough
yeah.. i get the feeling they learned from J6, and won't make those same mistakes again :(
Scoundreller 22 hours ago [-]
There’s a joke to be made with this headline: is there now an entrance for Canadians, Americans and a new 3rd one for Quebeckers that refuse to use an entrance for Canadians?
22 hours ago [-]
pluc 22 hours ago [-]
That's a pretty good example of US-Canada relations. That entrance isn't getting closed when the US regains its sanity. The new reality is that it exists now.
georgeburdell 21 hours ago [-]
You are absolving Canada of blame for admitting millions of immigrants from the same countries that often illegally immigrate to the U.S.
8note 19 hours ago [-]
this remains an american problem for creating a demand for underpaid and untracked workers
mschuster91 20 hours ago [-]
That's bollocks, the majority of immigrants to the US come from their Southern border.
cwmma 20 hours ago [-]
It depends on the year, sometimes it's actually visa overstays.
jmye 20 hours ago [-]
Millions from specific countries? Over decades, or do you not actually know anything about Canadian immigration?
How "often" do they "illegally immigrate to the US"? Come on, be specific. Surely this isn't absolute bullshit.
Believe it or not, the library predates the understanding of monads as a mathematical concept! Though it can be argued it is an example of a functor (the library is mapped over two countries).
Evidlo 22 hours ago [-]
A library is just a manuscript depository in the category of lending institutions.
skipants 22 hours ago [-]
> Though it can be argued it is an example of a functor (the library is mapped over two countries).
Now that's a special kind of joke I can only find on HackerNews
22 hours ago [-]
calmbonsai 21 hours ago [-]
It should not have been necessary, but this is the new reality under the U.S.'s recent lack of probity.
I'm so glad both towns an other private donors pulled together to make this happen.
Towaway69 21 hours ago [-]
Maybe it's time for a European President to come and visit, speak these important words[1]:
As an American, I'm deeply ashamed of m̶y̶ this country.
I don't expect the damage to be undone within my lifetime.
josefritzishere 21 hours ago [-]
All of North America should have open borders like a Schengen zone. This xenophobia is bad for the economy.
stuxnet79 21 hours ago [-]
Believe me an open border would do nothing but increase xenophobia. Canada is dealing with its own immigration crisis with a ton of newcomers DDoSing the overextended healthcare system and real estate market.
totony 20 hours ago [-]
Canada DoS'd its own healthcare. I'm mostly familiar with Quebec but the overextended healthcare system is mainly our own doing, so is housing shortage.
stuxnet79 20 hours ago [-]
Well the structural issues have been present for some time but the influx of newcomers during COVID did not help the situation. Not saying it is right, but these newcomers have become a scapegoat and it's stoked the flames of xenophobia which was previously never an issue in this country.
Also QC for all it's local issues has largely been insulated from "over-immigration" due to the language requirements. If your only experience is there you may not be aware of the scale of the problem.
I'm not saying over-immigration has no downsides, clearly it did not help our overstrained system, but to say it caused it is to willfully blind ourselves to the structural issues that lead to these issues in the first place. i.e. they will never be fixed
greggoB 21 hours ago [-]
Europe has open borders and this hasn't facilitated any increase in xenophobia that I'm aware of, despite many countries having many immigrants.
South Africa by contrast does not have open borders, and is currently going through another bout of violent xenophobia.
I don't think these two things are specifically related.
lmm 20 hours ago [-]
> hasn't facilitated any increase in xenophobia that I'm aware of
Then you haven't been paying attention.
> South Africa by contrast does not have open borders, and is currently going through another bout of violent xenophobia.
Arguably a legacy of the time when it did.
greggoB 16 hours ago [-]
> Then you haven't been paying attention.
I live here, I think I'd notice if events like the current Belfast riots happened on a more regular basis.
> Arguably a legacy of the time when it did.
I'm from there, so I'd be interested to know what time period that would be?
lmm 12 hours ago [-]
> I live here, I think I'd notice if events like the current Belfast riots happened on a more regular basis.
The island of Ireland has had pretty low immigration (not to mention not even having open borders in the sense usually meant by "Europe has open borders", other than between a pair of neighbouring countries with very strong cultural ties), if that's where you mean by "here" you may have been insulated from it. Where I was, while it didn't spill out into rioting (mostly) there was a palpable uptick in xenophobia when Romania and Bulgaria were admitted into the EU, and another with the 2015 migrant crisis (which ultimately lead to many of those open borders being closed, temporarily or "temporarily").
> I'm from there, so I'd be interested to know what time period that would be?
Pre-1902; one could haggle over the exact date depending on what one considers an open border.
engineer_22 20 hours ago [-]
> hasn't facilitated any increase in xenophobia that I'm aware of
My friends in Europe describe the situation differently
greggoB 16 hours ago [-]
Where would they be located?
snowpid 18 hours ago [-]
"Europe has open borders and this hasn't facilitated any increase in xenophobia that I'm aware of, despite many countries having many immigrants."
My guess you are naive but intra European racism was always a thing (easy example was Hitler). The EU tries to combat it and reduced definitely thanks to Erasmus, better weath of East Europe, well open borders but oh boy it still exists.
greggoB 16 hours ago [-]
So taking your premise on face value, how has open borders specifically augmented/facilitated this racism exactly?
snowpid 37 minutes ago [-]
Thanks and you're right I misread the sentence (in line with other commentaters). Though because of xenophobia there was much hesitation against open borders (e.g. Germany and Poland, where Germen didnt like incoming Polish)
mothballed 16 hours ago [-]
Not sure about them, but having lived or spent time in a many other cultures and countries, I found that I'd often start off with a cheery or neutral view of them but then when I get to know them and actually live with them there were points of cultural contention that were a lot less tolerable up close than at an easy distance where they were not my concern and that can often show up as projected as "racism." This doesn't mean they do things the wrong thing, it's just annoying to have to pick up a bunch of new and often incompatible new cultural systems to accommodate immigrants. If you're going to them, that's one thing and comes with the territory; but when they're coming to you and maybe you're already exhausted with johnny keeping you up all night and working enough hour to pay rent that extra effort to accommodate 10 extra different cultures 9 of whom might be unhappy if you treat them all the exact same could obviously be exhausting.
Then you start thinking maybe your mental or even physical burden could be lessened if you just had to deal with one cultural system or at least the previous number of ones you had to deal with. You start thinking maybe something like 1000 new Afghans would be a bit harder to deal with for you than 1000 new Frenchman. I don't think there's much stronger way of bringing about racism than actually getting to know and see other cultures, at a distance you can gloss over about anything as "we're all equal humans who should sing koombaya" but the rubber meets the road when your kid is trying to sleep for school and the local arabs have set up blaring calls to prayer at 2am.
BobaFloutist 19 hours ago [-]
I don't understand, why have some of the newcomers become builders and doctors?
nubinetwork 16 hours ago [-]
Historically, the doctors come here for training, and leave for the US, where the pay is better.
stuxnet79 17 hours ago [-]
There are multiple reasons.
(1) Canada over-indexed on low skill immigration. High skill white collar professionals either directly immigrate to the US, immigrate to Canada with the intent to move to the US eventually or they stay in their own countries because COL in Canada's major economic centres is astronomical.
(2) Supply of doctors is artificially constrained by the governing bodies. It is much more difficult to become a physician in Canada vs the US. Salaries are also substantially lower. No surprise that the ratio of available doctors to patients is concerning.
The housing crisis in Canada is a complicated topic and I'm not informed enough to offer a summary of what led us to this mess. But this Wikipedia article [1] provides a good overview.
In the 90s, it was the norm for people in northern maine to cross into canada and vice versa, like weekly, to do certain shopping. We regularly took advantage of the low value of the Canadian dollar back then, and every grocery store in the US had daily Canadian customers.
Crossing the border was pretty much just agreeing that you weren't trafficking any specific produce. That's it.
Fort Kent, Maine is literally across a river from Canada. The bridge and border crossing is basically part of the town, and it was a normal daily thing to drive to the other side of the river and do something in Canada, like eat at the nice Chinese restaurant, "The Maple Leaf".
Every northern maine school had regular field trips across the border.
The two communities were basically one. There was no border. It was just a line on a map and a nod to your local friend who worked in the booth.
The southern border used to be similarly uncontrolled. The "Immigrants" and migrant workers who pick your produce have been a normal thing in US history forever. They wouldn't stay in the US, because the border was so lax they didn't expect any trouble coming back in the next time they need the paycheck.
The reaction to 9/11 was atrocious. All it did was kill already struggling communities in rural areas, hurt hardworking Americans, waste billions of taxpayer dollars on "Super duper important" airport scanners sold by a friend of the Bush admin, which then sat unused in a warehouse and we stopped using them entirely shortly after.
Forgeties79 22 hours ago [-]
Just makes me sad.
boringg 22 hours ago [-]
Agreed. Rupture is real and permanent, driven by one side.
sschueller 22 hours ago [-]
"Mr. Trump, tear down this wall."
mindslight 21 hours ago [-]
I wonder what this regime's Swan Lake is going to be. Probably medication commercials.
gjskngnf 22 hours ago [-]
[dead]
icase 21 hours ago [-]
en tant que séparatiste québécois, moi, ça me va
_verandaguy 17 hours ago [-]
Isn't it usually "souverainiste?"
zulux 22 hours ago [-]
This idea is adorable, but ultimately untenable if either country drifts in its views on how its citizens should behave.
I suspect that Canada isn't fond of how Americans view guns, and I suspect that the US is not quite on board with blasphemy/hurty-words laws. I suspect the divergence will grow.
skipants 22 hours ago [-]
> I suspect that Canada isn't fond of how Americans view guns
I'm putting this into my overflowing bucket of internet comments that doesn't "get" Canadians. Sorry to be curt but, since Canada-USA relations has been more at the forefront, I've seen too many comments that just "don't get it" and it riles me up each time.
They've had the 2nd amendment since their country was founded. It has no bearing on relations between the two countries, both at a micro and macro level.
We respect that they are their own country and have their own ways of doing things, which isn't even the same across each state. We respect US sovereignty over their own laws. It's the lack of respect for ours by the current US administration that is upsetting.
That's basically all its come down to. Oh, and the tariffs don't help either.
selectodude 21 hours ago [-]
Also the idea that Canada is in any way anti-gun is ludicrous.
wl 21 hours ago [-]
With very few exceptions, you can’t acquire handguns in Canada anymore. They’ve also banned most semiautomatic rifles.
Maybe Canadian public opinion isn’t anti-gun, but the current government seems to be.
selectodude 21 hours ago [-]
It doesn’t take too much effort to square the idea of being fine with firearms while not being a weapon-access absolutist. I’m able to have nuanced opinions about a lot of things that have negative externalities. Like how cigarettes kick ass but so do indoor smoking bans.
cmrdporcupine 21 hours ago [-]
As an occasional pipe or cigar smoker... I'm personally trying to square this "cigarettes kick ass" thing with real world experience :-)
Really? How?
selectodude 21 hours ago [-]
Simple. Cigarettes make you cool and hot, offering or bumming a light outside is instant chemistry to chat somebody up, and although I haven’t been a chronic smoker in probably a decade now, a drunk cig outside on a chilly night still hits like crack.
It’s not the heater itself, it’s everything else about them that is 10/10.
cmrdporcupine 21 hours ago [-]
It's funny / overall-positive to compare how we seemingly see them to how my daughter's generation (18) sees them. In my 20s in the 90s despite being a mainly-non-smoker I felt/thought as you. That's not how my daughter or her peers think though.
selectodude 21 hours ago [-]
I live in a pretty cosmopolitan city and I’m happy to report the kids are smoking free range all natural cigarettes again. Vaping is now uncool.
cmrdporcupine 21 hours ago [-]
Oh these kids are all weed smokers (sigh) and eye rolling at flavoured nicotine vapers is def. a thing.
cmrdporcupine 21 hours ago [-]
Right, so.
We're not anti-gun. Just anti the "only used explicitly for killing people" kind of gun.
I grew up and live in rural Canada. Rifles for hunting or farming are just part of life. Though the long gun registry did make them more of a hassle.
Why do you need a killing-person gun? What's that for?
wl 40 minutes ago [-]
> We're not anti-gun. Just anti the "only used explicitly for killing people" kind of gun.
That doesn't square with Canadian classifying tasers (purely defensive, non-lethal) and anti-materiel rifles as prohibited firearms. Not that those kinds of bans don't have some sort of legitimate public policy basis, but there's something else going on here.
mothballed 21 hours ago [-]
I'm not yielding to your premise but I'll entertain it for a moment. Massive biological differences aside, the rough composition and weight of a deer isn't so much different than a human. An AR chambered in something like 6.5 is one of the most ergonomic and effective deer killing machines you could possibly use. Very light, able to make follow up shots easily, swappable magazines, insane aftermarket availability and cheap ammunition for training because nearly the entire US military uses the parts, etc etc.
BobaFloutist 19 hours ago [-]
How many deer are you trying to kill in one go??
mothballed 18 hours ago [-]
That's not determined by the gun but rather the magazine. The 30 round magazine is popular largely because it's often the cheapest and most readily available as the tooling was scaled up for mass production for the military. You can buy a 5 round magazine to put in an AR style gun it's just harder to find and it's not clear you're gaining much beyond maybe a slight hair better ergonomics or mobility from certain shooting positions so most hunters don't buy them.
If you want to single-load cartridges or pin to a 3 round magazine or whatever, have at it. Most of the argument still applies and especially the cheapness and parts availability and intercompatibility with mass after market options. Plus you'll be able to use a larger mag when target shooting. Another plus even if you don't care about magazine size is you can easily swap the barrel (actually upper receiver) without having to legally buy a new gun, so you can train with very cheap .22 ammunition using all the same ergonomics / muscle memory for when you hunt deer.
BobaFloutist 17 hours ago [-]
You know what, I will accept that there's some decent arguments for why hunters would want access to ARs.
Do you think it makes sense that people that don't hunt would prefer for widely, easily accessible weapons to be largely less efficient at killing human beings? It feels like many gun owners and gun enthusiasts struggle to accept any compromise. And I won't say this is particular to them, I think most people have some pet regulatory peeve, but it sure makes it difficult to have conversations about it!
mothballed 17 hours ago [-]
What you're running to in the USA is not a conversation on hunting but rather the 2A considerations, under which a fundamental quality of the weapons is availability of efficiency at killing human beings.
cmrdporcupine 17 hours ago [-]
And this is what I'm trying to poke at. These conversations go nowhere with a certain milieux and a lot of it is driven by a values thing that emphasizes not just the 2A but a whole thing about "right to self-defense."
To which I would counterpoise -- self-defense from what? If your society is so degraded and broken that you need to be armed to the teeth you have much bigger problems than the government taking your handguns. That's a sign of a sick and broken society and individual firearms only make it worse. So "gun rights" is frankly the entirely wrong conversation.
Same with the whole thing of "well-armed militias" to defend from government. What? Do these people really think that a few sidearms and some ARs or whatever are going to deter an actual tyrannical regime by force?
That's simply not how any revolution has ever happened. They usually happen when governments lose legitimacy enough that the armed forces and police simply walk away from defending those in power. If you're in a shootout with the armed forces, you've already lost.
So, I also question the 2A people and what their actual motives are and who they intend to use the guns on.
8note 19 hours ago [-]
can you back this up with how many hunters prefer going out with handguns as their weapon of choice for hunting deer?
mothballed 18 hours ago [-]
There's actually a shit-ton of deer hunters in the US that hunt with .300 blackout under 16" barrel AR-type weapons that are legally "handguns." In part because the handgun-length barrel makes it less unwieldy when you add a suppressor on the end (if they put a stock on it, it becomes a short barreled [baddy] 'rifle' again but for retarded vestigial legal reasons they put a "brace" on it which does the same thing but magically means you don't need an NFA stamp). Though that was not directly question posed to which I answered.
It's kind of antiquated to use a "rifle"-length barrel for intermediate cartridge nowadays. The military uses a 14.5" barrel as standard issue for the AR-15 type rifle, which is "handgun" length, and most intermediate cartridges are handier and lighter in a legally handgun sized barrel for targets within the range of what you're likely to see in wooded areas. This means to use the most practical intermediate cartridge lengths you actually legally have a handgun with a "brace" on it.
cmrdporcupine 21 hours ago [-]
I mean, I've not heard any of the hunters I know complaining about the efficacy of their hunting rifles for taking down deer, moose, or even bears.
mothballed 21 hours ago [-]
It's my understanding hunters in Canada are often using the SKS for intermediate cartridge hunting, largely because it's/was cheap and wildly available, which was designed for killing people.
mothballed 21 hours ago [-]
Everyone with a rifle and a hacksaw has ready access to a very loud handgun.
jeromegv 22 hours ago [-]
This... has... nothing to do... with how the 2 countries view guns or blasphemy laws (??).
This library worked well for a hundred of year, and then the US government decided they wanted to invade Canada, wage an economic war, and needed to protect their border at all cost in case an invasion of migrants would come from... that library.
llm_nerd 22 hours ago [-]
Kristi "Dog Killer" Noem did a little act in the library where she jumped between the American and Canadian sides, saying "51st state" every time she went to the Canadian side. Which is unbelievably pathetic: When you have to deploy rape tactics to try to get someone to join you (while simultaneously trying to convince everyone how wonderful and great you are) -- something many in this administration are very accustomed to -- how completely busted and pathetic is your country?
This whole administration is just vile, and are long past the point where there should have been an uprising. Just an absolute idiocracy. A worldwide pariah, spiralling down the toilet.
sschueller 22 hours ago [-]
I don't agree with most of what Germany does and I am sure they are not very fond of our (Switzerland) "liberal" gun laws, yet I can just walk/drive or take a train across the border and no one gives 2 cents.
yieldcrv 21 hours ago [-]
Germans and your other neighbors call you guys weird, took me a while before I stopped by but for me - an American - Switzerland is perfect
guns, jets, immigration sovereignty and a disinterest in peer pressure about it, similar combination of cultural influences, publicly traded central bank that just creates money and buys US tech stocks and produces dividends, ATMs that dispense $200, $500 and $1000 denominations and nobody batting an eye about it
just some tweaks to life that stand out to me, all the other normal stuff is cool too
only citizenship I would consider trying to marry into
pibaker 21 hours ago [-]
>lauds a foreign country for being anti immigration
>wants to immigrate there
>not by making an economical case that having you in the country will make them richer
>but by trying to marry a local
Real talk. You may want to delete this post before you actually do the citizenship by marriage thing, buddy. Marrying for the express intent of obtaining citizenship is generally considered citizenship fraud.
yieldcrv 20 hours ago [-]
one out of many possible interpretations, pound sand
hilariously 22 hours ago [-]
Ultimately its one country unilaterally acted the fool and is reaping the rewards of that idiocy. Any other explanation of what's going on is either willfully blind or so uninformed that they should not share their ideas with others.
cmrdporcupine 22 hours ago [-]
My god, they want it so desperately to be something else they're willing to resort to complete misinformation.
There's some bizarre pseudo-libertarian contingent out there that seems to genuinely believing that Canada is some place where we arrest people with Jordan Peterson books off the street and that the Ottawa "trucker" convoy was some sort of colour revolution brutally stamped out by a Communist Regime(tm).
(When actually if said "truckers" had tried what they did on the US side of the border, DHS would have just shot them, and the vaccination law that they were supposedly protesting was a law demanded by the US and the Trudeau gov't tried multiple times to have it delayed/deferred)
haritha-j 22 hours ago [-]
Yeah, could be that, could be the open threat of invasion, I dunno.
1over137 22 hours ago [-]
Canada technically had a blasphemy law on the books until 2018, but it was basically gathering dust, the last conviction was in 1927.
cmrdporcupine 21 hours ago [-]
He's just dog-whistling some disinformation about Canada's hate speech laws. In my experience where I've made the mistake of actually engaging... It's usually about trans people and pronouns and some family court case in BC that they spread half-facts about, and so on.
Sanzig 21 hours ago [-]
And Canada's hate speech laws are pretty reserved compared to some of their European counterparts. You pretty much have to be an actual goose-stepping Nazi or white robed Klansman to catch a charge.
22 hours ago [-]
cmrdporcupine 21 hours ago [-]
"Hurty-words"
Remind me again -- which country is it that demands to see the content of your social media feeds at the border, and then chooses to deport (or worse, detain) you based on what your feed says about their president and his thieving gang of companions?
Or detains and deports academics with green cards based on their stated opinions about what's happening in Gaza?
I could go on.
themaninthedark 20 hours ago [-]
>A French-Palestinian member of the European Parliament says she was denied entry into Canada only days before she was scheduled to participate in conferences in Montreal.
>Rima Hassan wrote online that she was "prevented" from coming to Canada in what she described as an attempt at censorship.
Cultural differences are not why this happened. This is explicitly because of the trump administration and its draconian approach to immigration. This is a very symbolic and sad thing to see happen
If Canada broke the treaty, in theory, the U.S. could lay claim to parts of Ontario and Quebec. And if America broke it, Canada could get parts of Maine, Michigan, and Wisconsin. So, basically, North American geography as we know it is contingent on this early 1800s treaty remaining in effect.
The podcast was from December -- an eternity ago in these interesting times -- and I don't know whether anything has changed since then.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/653-beyond-the-99-inv...
The podcast's transcript suggests that their source for this is https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/peace-arch-u.... The person confidently claiming that any closure of the park would result in catastrophe is an immigration lawyer, not a historian:
"Saunders said the treaty stipulates there could not be any boundaries or physical barriers erected on the northern border of the U.S. — and if either side violated that treaty — the boundaries revert back to pre-treaty."
Since the Treaty of Ghent restored the pre-War of 1812 borders of both the United States and Canada, this doesn't make any sense. Canadian historian C. P. Stacey states that the period after the War of 1812 actually saw more border fortification than the years before (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1840618).
I mentioned that the idea that a 19th century treaty keeps the US-Canada border demilitarized was a good story, but I think the truth is an even better one: that the border is demilitarized because both countries know that they can trust their neighbor. Let's hope it stays that way.
The northern border used to be so much more flexible and I don't see any real benefits from doing all this.
It's actually mind blowing how effective AIPAC is. They managed to upset one of the most popular Republicans in the US house by a genius campaign at non-voting demented boomers by tricking them to believe probably the most conservative guy in the entire congress is secretly a Democrat.
Hah
Get off your arse and take lessons on protesting from the French.
How do you think they got those in the first place though?
Oh, and massive organization of voters and rabid progressive populist support.
President Trump, above all, is the clearest and most direct example of how you absolutely can get what you vote for in the US. Republicans did not want Trump and fought it as much as they could. They openly declared how bad he was and how stupid and how awful he would be, and it didn't matter. Because people voted.
Donald Trump is in flagrant violation of constitutional law constantly, again, and it doesn't matter because voters want it.
He should be in prison but it doesn't matter because voters wanted him, wanted his bullshit, and voted against anyone who got in their way.
And yet, losers will STILL insist that "voting doesn't matter" or "Blah blah money in politics"
All you gotta do is vote people.
The Citizens United decision virtually ensures that the average voter, even in aggregate, has nothing important to say. Shortly, one particular U.S. citizen will have a net worth of $1T; and this, more than anything will ensure that “We the People” are only noise, compared to the real signal.
Sir, I'm fleeing this country. The time to protest was 30 years ago. Or 70 years ago. Either way, it is well in the past. This country will need to crash and detox from its addiction to money before it can become a real democracy.
Where to?
Because unless you become a citizen of the country you are fleeing to (a process that, *IF* it is open to you, will take years), you will have even less rights to vote and protest than you do now.
That may be true. But there won't be the pretense that I'm living in the most free, democratic place on earth when I'm obviously not.
In addition to the obvious fixes like Ranked Pairs voting, I'd say we need a Constitutional amendment bringing back independent agencies with their heads being directly elected rather than merely picked by whomever wins the presidential race. For example you shouldn't have to balance your guess of how you think one president will treat the ATF vs the NSF. Or the President shouldn't have any power over the Attorney General, as it's the Attorney General who should be prosecuting a criminal President, rather than merely being a lapdog in the criminal conspiracy. A race for each agency would also create focus on each agency head's actual results, rather than how the current guy is using a round-robin of all these different departments to create a tough-looking spectacle in one area, only to move on to another one when the actual results start becoming apparent.
We also need the right to recall for all national politicians, for obvious reasons.
They might not be wrong about this, the president is known for siccing the department of Justice on his political enemies.
Midterms coming up and prosecuting an endless "war" that doubles gas prices, and not seeming concerned at all about the blowback?
What's up with that?
When he says that he has no reason to worry because the polls show everyone loves him, I think he genuinely believes that.
More smart about politics and power in the Machiavellian sense.
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-107501
But i guess ticking “we did something” checkboxes keeps the paycheck deposits flowing.
Not anymore, not right away anyway:
> The new terms allow each country to expel asylum seekers who apply for protection within 14 days of crossing the U.S.-Canada border between ports of entry.
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/us-canada-ex...
Unfortunately the border actually needs to be more sealed.
Once again, borders doing what they do best: waste honest people’s resources.
yeah.. i get the feeling they learned from J6, and won't make those same mistakes again :(
How "often" do they "illegally immigrate to the US"? Come on, be specific. Surely this isn't absolute bullshit.
> Haskell Free Library
Has zero to do with haskell the language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_Free_Library_and_Opera...
Now that's a special kind of joke I can only find on HackerNews
I'm so glad both towns an other private donors pulled together to make this happen.
> Mr. Trump, tear down this door!
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tear_down_this_wall!
I don't expect the damage to be undone within my lifetime.
Also QC for all it's local issues has largely been insulated from "over-immigration" due to the language requirements. If your only experience is there you may not be aware of the scale of the problem.
I'm not saying over-immigration has no downsides, clearly it did not help our overstrained system, but to say it caused it is to willfully blind ourselves to the structural issues that lead to these issues in the first place. i.e. they will never be fixed
South Africa by contrast does not have open borders, and is currently going through another bout of violent xenophobia.
I don't think these two things are specifically related.
Then you haven't been paying attention.
> South Africa by contrast does not have open borders, and is currently going through another bout of violent xenophobia.
Arguably a legacy of the time when it did.
I live here, I think I'd notice if events like the current Belfast riots happened on a more regular basis.
> Arguably a legacy of the time when it did.
I'm from there, so I'd be interested to know what time period that would be?
The island of Ireland has had pretty low immigration (not to mention not even having open borders in the sense usually meant by "Europe has open borders", other than between a pair of neighbouring countries with very strong cultural ties), if that's where you mean by "here" you may have been insulated from it. Where I was, while it didn't spill out into rioting (mostly) there was a palpable uptick in xenophobia when Romania and Bulgaria were admitted into the EU, and another with the 2015 migrant crisis (which ultimately lead to many of those open borders being closed, temporarily or "temporarily").
> I'm from there, so I'd be interested to know what time period that would be?
Pre-1902; one could haggle over the exact date depending on what one considers an open border.
My friends in Europe describe the situation differently
My guess you are naive but intra European racism was always a thing (easy example was Hitler). The EU tries to combat it and reduced definitely thanks to Erasmus, better weath of East Europe, well open borders but oh boy it still exists.
Then you start thinking maybe your mental or even physical burden could be lessened if you just had to deal with one cultural system or at least the previous number of ones you had to deal with. You start thinking maybe something like 1000 new Afghans would be a bit harder to deal with for you than 1000 new Frenchman. I don't think there's much stronger way of bringing about racism than actually getting to know and see other cultures, at a distance you can gloss over about anything as "we're all equal humans who should sing koombaya" but the rubber meets the road when your kid is trying to sleep for school and the local arabs have set up blaring calls to prayer at 2am.
(1) Canada over-indexed on low skill immigration. High skill white collar professionals either directly immigrate to the US, immigrate to Canada with the intent to move to the US eventually or they stay in their own countries because COL in Canada's major economic centres is astronomical.
(2) Supply of doctors is artificially constrained by the governing bodies. It is much more difficult to become a physician in Canada vs the US. Salaries are also substantially lower. No surprise that the ratio of available doctors to patients is concerning.
The housing crisis in Canada is a complicated topic and I'm not informed enough to offer a summary of what led us to this mess. But this Wikipedia article [1] provides a good overview.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_property_bubble
In the 90s, it was the norm for people in northern maine to cross into canada and vice versa, like weekly, to do certain shopping. We regularly took advantage of the low value of the Canadian dollar back then, and every grocery store in the US had daily Canadian customers.
Crossing the border was pretty much just agreeing that you weren't trafficking any specific produce. That's it.
Fort Kent, Maine is literally across a river from Canada. The bridge and border crossing is basically part of the town, and it was a normal daily thing to drive to the other side of the river and do something in Canada, like eat at the nice Chinese restaurant, "The Maple Leaf".
Every northern maine school had regular field trips across the border.
The two communities were basically one. There was no border. It was just a line on a map and a nod to your local friend who worked in the booth.
The southern border used to be similarly uncontrolled. The "Immigrants" and migrant workers who pick your produce have been a normal thing in US history forever. They wouldn't stay in the US, because the border was so lax they didn't expect any trouble coming back in the next time they need the paycheck.
The reaction to 9/11 was atrocious. All it did was kill already struggling communities in rural areas, hurt hardworking Americans, waste billions of taxpayer dollars on "Super duper important" airport scanners sold by a friend of the Bush admin, which then sat unused in a warehouse and we stopped using them entirely shortly after.
I suspect that Canada isn't fond of how Americans view guns, and I suspect that the US is not quite on board with blasphemy/hurty-words laws. I suspect the divergence will grow.
I'm putting this into my overflowing bucket of internet comments that doesn't "get" Canadians. Sorry to be curt but, since Canada-USA relations has been more at the forefront, I've seen too many comments that just "don't get it" and it riles me up each time.
They've had the 2nd amendment since their country was founded. It has no bearing on relations between the two countries, both at a micro and macro level.
We respect that they are their own country and have their own ways of doing things, which isn't even the same across each state. We respect US sovereignty over their own laws. It's the lack of respect for ours by the current US administration that is upsetting.
That's basically all its come down to. Oh, and the tariffs don't help either.
Maybe Canadian public opinion isn’t anti-gun, but the current government seems to be.
Really? How?
It’s not the heater itself, it’s everything else about them that is 10/10.
We're not anti-gun. Just anti the "only used explicitly for killing people" kind of gun.
I grew up and live in rural Canada. Rifles for hunting or farming are just part of life. Though the long gun registry did make them more of a hassle.
Why do you need a killing-person gun? What's that for?
That doesn't square with Canadian classifying tasers (purely defensive, non-lethal) and anti-materiel rifles as prohibited firearms. Not that those kinds of bans don't have some sort of legitimate public policy basis, but there's something else going on here.
If you want to single-load cartridges or pin to a 3 round magazine or whatever, have at it. Most of the argument still applies and especially the cheapness and parts availability and intercompatibility with mass after market options. Plus you'll be able to use a larger mag when target shooting. Another plus even if you don't care about magazine size is you can easily swap the barrel (actually upper receiver) without having to legally buy a new gun, so you can train with very cheap .22 ammunition using all the same ergonomics / muscle memory for when you hunt deer.
Do you think it makes sense that people that don't hunt would prefer for widely, easily accessible weapons to be largely less efficient at killing human beings? It feels like many gun owners and gun enthusiasts struggle to accept any compromise. And I won't say this is particular to them, I think most people have some pet regulatory peeve, but it sure makes it difficult to have conversations about it!
To which I would counterpoise -- self-defense from what? If your society is so degraded and broken that you need to be armed to the teeth you have much bigger problems than the government taking your handguns. That's a sign of a sick and broken society and individual firearms only make it worse. So "gun rights" is frankly the entirely wrong conversation.
Same with the whole thing of "well-armed militias" to defend from government. What? Do these people really think that a few sidearms and some ARs or whatever are going to deter an actual tyrannical regime by force?
That's simply not how any revolution has ever happened. They usually happen when governments lose legitimacy enough that the armed forces and police simply walk away from defending those in power. If you're in a shootout with the armed forces, you've already lost.
So, I also question the 2A people and what their actual motives are and who they intend to use the guns on.
It's kind of antiquated to use a "rifle"-length barrel for intermediate cartridge nowadays. The military uses a 14.5" barrel as standard issue for the AR-15 type rifle, which is "handgun" length, and most intermediate cartridges are handier and lighter in a legally handgun sized barrel for targets within the range of what you're likely to see in wooded areas. This means to use the most practical intermediate cartridge lengths you actually legally have a handgun with a "brace" on it.
This library worked well for a hundred of year, and then the US government decided they wanted to invade Canada, wage an economic war, and needed to protect their border at all cost in case an invasion of migrants would come from... that library.
This whole administration is just vile, and are long past the point where there should have been an uprising. Just an absolute idiocracy. A worldwide pariah, spiralling down the toilet.
guns, jets, immigration sovereignty and a disinterest in peer pressure about it, similar combination of cultural influences, publicly traded central bank that just creates money and buys US tech stocks and produces dividends, ATMs that dispense $200, $500 and $1000 denominations and nobody batting an eye about it
just some tweaks to life that stand out to me, all the other normal stuff is cool too
only citizenship I would consider trying to marry into
>wants to immigrate there
>not by making an economical case that having you in the country will make them richer
>but by trying to marry a local
Real talk. You may want to delete this post before you actually do the citizenship by marriage thing, buddy. Marrying for the express intent of obtaining citizenship is generally considered citizenship fraud.
There's some bizarre pseudo-libertarian contingent out there that seems to genuinely believing that Canada is some place where we arrest people with Jordan Peterson books off the street and that the Ottawa "trucker" convoy was some sort of colour revolution brutally stamped out by a Communist Regime(tm).
(When actually if said "truckers" had tried what they did on the US side of the border, DHS would have just shot them, and the vaccination law that they were supposedly protesting was a law demanded by the US and the Trudeau gov't tried multiple times to have it delayed/deferred)
Remind me again -- which country is it that demands to see the content of your social media feeds at the border, and then chooses to deport (or worse, detain) you based on what your feed says about their president and his thieving gang of companions?
Or detains and deports academics with green cards based on their stated opinions about what's happening in Gaza?
I could go on.
>Rima Hassan wrote online that she was "prevented" from coming to Canada in what she described as an attempt at censorship.
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2242739/pro-palestin...