It’s only sustainable if the government pours money into the communities to keep people living there. Whether intentional or not, many reservations are like this. Farming or mining communities, on the other hand, usually simply vanish.

In managed economies (like the Soviet Union), they could force spawn communities and populate them with whomever they were forcibly relocating there. Many of those communities still exist today (look at a map of the steppe in Kazakhstan and you’ll see a map of prison colonies).

Canada tried some similar things, but I don’t think they are politically palatable – See: Resolute Bay or similar. They forced the people to move, but didn’t create the primary economy required for the communities to thrive.

Somehow they passed though, right?

I lived in the NWT for a long time (and also lived in Thompson), so it gave me some perspective on the northern economies. I’m not an economist though, so I don’t have a real good plan. I do, however, see things that are clearly not working.

However, I’m also not a fan of fly-in fly-out mining. And Thompson is a great example here – it was set up as a remote mining camp and the miners literally had a strike forcing the company to build the town so they could live with their families. However, almost all new mines, unless they’re established immediately adjacent to existing infrastructure, are set up so that no town ever forms. I think that building out our infrastructure and establishing new communities is important, and mining towns play a huge roll in that. Hell, Yellowknife is a great example – established as a mining town and mostly stays alive now without the mines under the streets.

But I’m also of the opinion that any place without a primary economy should be allowed to die, rather than get propped up forever. Using the NWT as an example: there are 20 something towns in NWT, but only two of them have a functioning primary economy: Yellowknife and (barely) Hay River. The government keeps trying to move government services to the other towns to keep people employed. So your health card renewal paperwork is processed in Inuvik, for example. But now they have to pay extra to get someone to live somewhere where no one in their right mind wants to live, and the cost to the rest of the economy gets worse due to inefficiencies. MB doesn’t do a lot of this (compared to the NWT), but with potential end-of-mining looming over Thompson, and already affecting Flin Flon, I suspect that this will become a thing to prop up dying towns.

Great headline but doesn’t indicate what replaced it.

Carbon dioxide still getting produced in massive quantities.

Coal and other hydrocarbons still being produced for export. But, hey, if it gets burned in another jurisdiction that isn’t our problem, right? We will put up those glass barriers all the way to space so our atmospheres don’t mix.

Southern Alberta is probably the best place in Canada for massive scale solar installations. Get on it.

The side fell off. That’s rigorous maritime-engineering standards.

Snow geese in both morphs – nice!

e: I realize now that the dark morph is wrong – thus, not snow geese.

I’m assuming this is trying really hard to be edgy about the copyright expiry without actually being edgy. Am I off the mark here?

Unfortunately, infrastructure doesn’t solve the social issues in town. But it’s good to see investment happening – with luck it’ll keep the town alive in the long term eventuality of mine closures. Flin Flon is struggling now.

Works wonderfully, but I wish there was a cheaper solution so it can have more coverage. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth though.

Nope. Just so that you don’t starve in a crisis. Grass tastes gross. ;)

Humanitarian crisis for sure.

Tangent. If I was a mad genetic scientist with no ethics, there are a few things I’d do – engineering a virus to deliver a few “software patches” to our DNA. One of those things would be to engineer the production of cellulase as an enzyme in our digestive system – so we can get energy from grass and such in an emergency. Probably the Law of Unintended Consequences will make this worse for humanity somehow (Begun the Grass Wars have!). Mosquitos also get blood sucking removed, in an attempt to make them purely pollinating insects. Vote for Troy as mad scientist!

Won’t help the hungry in Sudan now, though. So I’m open to better ideas. Sadly, I largely have bad ideas. If I’m on the side of full external military intervention, it would be considered “colonial”. It’s hard to propose any solution that isn’t just “send aid” – and you don’t want to do that because it gets seized by the parties involved to support their conflict. Do we just watch it play out and accept refugees? That’s lame – how many millions will die in each of the above scenarios. Fuck.

No one commenting on your playlist? You’re cathartic music experience is showing :)

Early computer aided art and programs I’ve written, dating back decades.

In the mid 1990s I used ImpulseTracker to create music. The music sucks. But losing the original source .IT files would be heartbreaking.

Likewise, my first programs, written as a child in MS DOS batch files circa 1991 – basic menu driven interfaces that facilitated launching my installed sharware… I don’t have the games the program points to anymore, but that isn’t the point ;)

Not after reading their comment history.

All people who think porn is bad are bad. They are projecting their own unhealthy suppressed sexualities onto others because of the shame they associate with their own sexuality

– DancingBear, 7 days ago

Thus I am concluding you are pro Russian and taking all opportunities to block all porn starring Ukranians. Which will be basically every site on the internet. A pity, since you seem to like it a lot.

NSFW, but the next obvious thing to do is…

https://www.xnxx.com/search/Josephine+Jackson

Fourth panel. AI trained on all the above, floods it all with generated content rendering the signal-to-noise ratio too terrible to tolerate, even for corporations.

Blue orange colours
Movie posters everywhere
Look like this photo

I spent an hour today trying to find a real source for this quote, often misattributed to Churchill. And failed. Found some sources saying it predates Churchill, but no direct references. Seems an adage that is quite old though.

Lithium as well, if I recall correctly. Most lithium is theorized to date to the big bang. There are no current pathways to create it, and only pathways that destroy it.

Most helium also dates to big bang, but some was created through fusion or alpha decay.