StillPaisleyCat

joined 2 years ago

Surprised by some of the comments here.

Whether or not the solution being proposed is the best or only one is the question.

Instead several users are taking any discussion as being anti-democratic.

The Chief Electoral Officer of Canada raised concerns about how these long ballots were impeding the democratic process, including by presenting barriers to accessibility by voters.

This has become an increasing problem, with former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s riding being targeted in 2019.

There seem to be two kinds of barriers:

  • physical barriers to finding and marking the ballot of their choice
  • becoming informed of the positions and intents of candidates when there are so many candidates that do not actually intend to serve as MPs.

The underlying issue seems to be that a small group of qualified voters in a targeted riding are nominating a very large number of candidates.

That is 60+ candidates put forward by the longest ballot group were all nominated by the same small number of voters.

Is this reasonable?

Democratic rights are balanced with responsibility under the Charter. Is it reasonable for a single voter to sign the nomination papers for 50 candidates or even 20.

Only being able to sign the papers for one candidate in one election period may be too limiting as not all candidates obtain enough signatures to be minor drop out later for other reasons.

Would limiting the right to sign nomination papers to 2 or 5 candidates be a reasonable balance under the Charter?

While this specific solution being proposed by this CPC member may be too restrictive, it seems worth a debate.

And perhaps the second issue of voters being able to reasonably obtain information about the intent and positions of candidates would be resolved if there were not so many nominated candidates.

The Rhinoceros party position that their candidates would resign if elected was well known so voters could make an informed choice. The current long ballot situation doesn’t offer that choice.

A proactive referral to the Supreme Court of Canada might be the best way to get an understanding of the balance of democratic rights. It would be best to have a read on what would be a reasonable limitation on both those who sign nominations and those who put themselves forward vs the responsibility to have accessible ballots with candidates who intend to serve before any changes to the the elections act is brought forward.

Check out altgrocery.ca for a list and map of farmers markets across Canada.

The reason WHO frames common risk factors and common chronic diseases is because persons with these risks, conditions and diseases often end up with more than one of these diseases.

e.g., WHO now considers obesity a disease in itself, but obesity is also a biological risk factor for cancer and diabetes.

There are a lot of interrelationships in the risks.

More, with these conditions, they are also more vulnerable to infectious diseases.

It’s important though to keep in mind that, as I note in another reply, these kinds of studies aren’t just about informing individuals’ choices.

They’re not about ‘blaming’ or ‘shaming’ individuals choices.

They are about understanding what are the underlying determinants of health and risk factors that are shaping health outcomes.

Back to the study in question, and the OP’s remark that they were surprised that people were eating that much processed meat daily…

If the protein sources that are most available and affordable are the most unhealthy, preprocessed ones, then consumers will buy and consume more of these than healthier ones.

And their preferences and consumption habits will be shaped by these experiences.

And that will affect overall health and life expectancy of the population.

I would argue that this is missing the point - and so, in fact, is the article reporting on the study.

What is important to keep in mind is that the benefit of this research is not primarily about ‘telling’ or ‘informing’ individuals so that they can make different food consumption decisions.

It’s more about how food environments are shaped to encourage healthy or unhealthy choices.

If eating that much processed meat daily or weekly increases cancer risks, what’s driving or nudging people towards that.

Is it barriers to availability, accessibility or affordability of healthier and palatable choices?

My point is that raising risks of getting hit by a car, or other accidental causes of injury and death beyond the individual’s control, is a deflection.

Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada.

Full stop.

No one single risk factor is responsible for that. Building the evidence base to be able to both inform individual behaviour but also to inform food safety regulations is important.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 5 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Cancer is the leading cause of premature mortality and morbidity (death and disability) in Canada.

So, an accumulation of small risks, and avoidance of risks, have significant benefits at both the individual and population levels.

The general population needs to be aware that unhealthy eating is impacting their lives and quality of life.

Let’s stick to the peer reviewed science and evidence consensus.

WHO established the four behavioural common risk factors for the four major chronic noncommunicable diseases decades ago.

The kind of research synthesis in this article is about continuing to build the evidence on relative and absolute risks, and in some cases look at how these differences impact different populations more or less due to intersecting determinants.

Common risk factors

  • unhealthy diet
  • physical inactivity
  • tobacco use
  • harmful use of alcohol
  • air pollution added more recently

Major chronic noncommunicable diseases

  • cancer
  • cardiovascular diseases
  • diabetes
  • chronic respiratory diseases
[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Ooh.

While I have enjoyed working on the OG 1701 and the Delta in previous years, a change up will be a great.

Looking forward to doing other ships in future years!

Biovert is excellent.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I feel as though the entire point of this was to make Canadians feel ashamed and discouraged on the day before our national holiday.

And in that Trump was successful. It’s brutal and bullying propaganda.

No success of realpolitik in negotiations can undo that.

The business community and media were calling the digital services tax an unforced error.

But the real unforced error is Carney getting played to do something destructive to national unity heading into Canada Day.

This is one of the few cases where his lack of political experience is showing. I’m wondering if his team will let him understand that and see the polling impact.

Cancelled by Disney but picked up by AMC for the US and Canada.

It’s been a long wait to see it in North America, but at least it will be available.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I have sent you a DM.

Good luck. Great grandparents born in Canada can be enough. That would make your grandparents ok your mother’s side citizens. (There have been some retroactive corrections of women’s loss of citizenship in marriage.)

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Do you have a Canadian ancestor?

The 2023 Bjorkquist decision overturned the first generation limit to pass down citizenship. There is an Interim measure to accept applications for special grants of citizenship beyond one generation and there is a bill in Parliament to put in place a remedy to address the findings of the Superior Court of Ontario (which the federal government has not appealed).

 

We picked up some good deals from the promotion this week.

 

Several Star Trek licensed games are on Steam, now at a significantly discounted price for the annual Star Trek Day celebration.

These include the MMP Star Trek Online, but also single player games Star Trek Bridge Crew and Star Trek Resurgence (a choose your own path role play game).

We’d waited until Resurgence came to Steam, because we did want to buy it from Epic, but decided to be even more patient and wait for a sale so we could get it for our teens as well. I’ve been playing in parallel with one of our teens and debating the impacts of our very different choices.

I have had Bridge Crew since 2022, but we got copies for the teens yesterday. One is into it. It requires running an Ubisoft account synched to Steam which can be annoying, but otherwise G2G.

 

Having reached my exasperation on the total lack of information from Bell Media on a Canadian release, I asked @GoodAaron@mastodon.social if he or the Hagemans could share any information. Here is his reply on Mastodon.

It’s great to have EPs who will engage with us.

I’m still gearing up my recipes for a Star Trek Prodigy Soirée for the premiere!

In case you haven’t seen this, CBS entertainment sponsored a social media influencer to develop watch party ideas for the Prodigy Season 1 finale Supernova Soirée .

I’ve been experimenting and building on some of these ideas for the premiere of season two. One of Canada’s favourite ice cream brands has this interesting suggestion for A triple-berry yogurt sorbet float punch that seems very Star Trek Prodigy themed.

 

More departures of former Viacom senior executives from Paramount Global in the wake of Baklish’s firing.

 

The Directors Guild of Canada (Ontario) ‘Hot List’ compilation of Ontario-based production information has been updated with a new CBS Studios show ‘Ivory Tower’ to begin Accounting & Art Department preproduction in March.

 

While all TAS episodes had some kind of moral lesson, S1 E10 was an outright criticism of substance use.

M’Ress and Scotty, unwittingly exposed, end up enamoured then incensed with one another. One is never sure how different that is from a Caitian’s usual romantic style.

Chapel comes off badly in this one. As Spock puts it “A few moments of love, paid for with several hours of hatred.” It’s all the more poignant given SNW’s deepening of their backstory.

 
 
 

As much as most of us have long had any remaining interest in a fourth Kelvin movie long exhausted by the endless repetition of hype and failure, there does seem to be more confirmation of significant creative differences on the script that was in development in 2022.

James MacKinnon, longtime makeup designer, shared some context during an interview on his work on Picard and future ambitions. He explained that he was hired by Matt Shankman in 2022 to work on preproduction but was fired after a week when the work shut down.

“We were supposed to shoot in the middle of [2022] and it was supposed to come out the following year [2023], but I think a script rewrite went in a different direction.”

This aligns with previous comments from Zoe Saldaña that creative issues around the script were a factor in the movie not going ahead.

 

I have realized that I need a new editing tool that will let me use panels with more than 6 frames.

A private message with a recommendation would be appreciated sincerely.

 

Anyone interested?

I can see so much potential for guidance from a telepathic Aenar engineer & an avianoid counsellor.

 

While there was an announcement shortly before the WGA strike, and Alex Kurtzman confirmed the writers room is back up and at work during an NYCC panel, Paramount+ is moving forward on promotional information about the forthcoming new ‘Starfleet Academy’ show.

Will be keeping an eye out for information about preproduction design work starting up in Ontario.

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