Moonbox

That's a silly false-equivalence, requiring you to believe that being gay or bi or whatever is an ideological stance.

I think it would have to hack/trick the software somehow into thinking it was scanning a 3D image. I have no idea how hard it would be but I don't think taking a picture of either does the trick.

It's not that easy for AI to crack passwords. They are good at cracking basic "mydogsname" passwords made by people, and can learn how to predict these from data breaches etc, but AI isn't making passwords obsolete. There are numerous safeguards that can be implemented beyond simple passwords as well. AI does represent a lot of security problems though, and just being able to impersonate someone's voice has troubling implications.

Empires held together by large militaries and/or absolute monarchs by force is not "getting along". There is a reason this model collapsed.

Whataboutism. and Vladimir Putin is a revanchist looking to bring back those "glory days" for his country.

As is usually the case with you, you're arguing a strawman. The question was whether the opening of the Western Front tipped the scales in Russia's favour, as you seemed so certain. The "western front" never opened up until June 1944, or in the summer of 1943 if you want to count the relatively small Sicily or Italy campaigns. The Germans had already lost in the east by then. If you're arguing that Germany could have defeated the USSR if the UK etc were never involved, it doesn't matter, because that conflict predated the Eastern Front so it's pointless to hypothesize about it.

You're 100% right. The last German offensive in the East was in the summer of 43, and it was a complete failure. By that point the Russian advantage in weapons, manpower and logistics was overwhelming.

If you consider a full-page, ~10 paragraph ramble to be a "condense concise response", then that's a cry for help. That you imagined me staring at my screen in frustration just because I didn't respond quickly after you posted at 1:30am (my time) is a worrying glimpse into your mindset. The possibility that people sleep, work, play sports etc, and don't prioritize responding to walls of text is lost on you. As for the response itself, it didn't require my best. When you're literally explaining that square footage helps determine property prices (as if anyone argued otherwise, anywhere), you're just debating with yourself again.

You've acknowledged in the past that the Liberals aren't unique in their neglect for the military. I agree with you, but I don't think I've been alive for a Prime Minister who properly looked after our military.

You wrote a ~500 word post explaining that square footage is a factor in real-estate property prices. If we've established anything it's that you couldn't organize your thoughts into a concise response, and that you lost the thread of debate.

The Dinosaurs also had radioactive material in their food chain. Basically every rock and every spec of dirt on the planet has small amounts of radionuclides from uranium-238, thorium-232 and potassium-40 decay. Our species has evolved for millions of years to co-exist with both cosmic and terrestrial radiation.

There's already radioactive material in your food chain. There's radioactive material in the air you breath as well. Now you're getting it. 👍

No, but that's not at all what's happening. If you spill a bit of gasoline on your driveway while you're filling your lawnmower, you're not calling in an environmental disaster, are you? Gasoline is toxic after all. FYI you're ingesting and breathing in small amounts of (non-depleted) uranium every day. Somehow you're still here.

If that were true, then the Russians with their own depleted uranium rounds would be using WMDs as well. Do they tell you that on Russia Today? Fortunately, pufts of depleted uranium dust from small penetrators end up being farts in the wind, and the spookiness of the word "uranium" is exaggerated. If you're not in the vehicle that gets hit, and you're not licking DU rounds or fragments, you'll be alright. There are Gulf and Serbian war veterans still alive today with inoperable DU fragments in their body, ~30 years later.

That was point. They calculate taxes based on property value because it's the only thing that makes sense, not because it's simple. I provided an example, and now you've provided several on top of that, showing us why a municipality doesn't give a crap what your square footage is. It's a consideration for how much your property is worth. It has nothing to do with how municipalities set their property tax rates, which is what you've been saying. No, this is what you were arguing: Which is ridiculous. The municipal budget could not care less what your square foot price is. All they care about is what your property is worth, how much revenue that generates for them, and what the budget surplus or deficit is. If they are taking less money in than they are spending, they have to either cut spending or raise taxes. In Toronto's case, they can keep trying to go back to the provincial and federal governments for handouts, but it hasn't worked lately. Consequently, property taxes rates have gone UP, while square footage per person has done the opposite.

There you go again, proclaiming victory for yourself. 🙄 Utter nonsense. Nothing would be simpler than charging a flat property tax rate by square footage. It would eliminate the need for MPAC assessments and streamline everything. It would also be retarded, because property taxes on a $3M condo DT would be lower than a dilapidated wreck on the wrong side of the river, among other reasons. Lower rates are possible because property values are higher and generate more revenue, and because population density allows lower per-capita service costs. The idea that City Halls are setting their budgets based on their average resident's square footage is ridiculous.

There's a reason why square footage isn't the main determinant of market value, and it's the same reason why municipalities don't set property tax rates by the square foot. Your breakdown is irrelevant. Even then, you used numbers for only downtown Toronto, where folks buy 500 sq ft closets condos so they can live in walkable communities close to all of the cool amenities and not have to drive anywhere, which wildly skews the numbers you tried to break down, and even then, property taxes are still higher (in sq footage) in freaking Guelph.

I know, but it's the same thing. Nobody wants to go back to then either. Presumably everyone. Practically? The system isn't set up fairly. That's not really a productivity question though. I think we can do better than this sort of criticism. There's something there, for sure, but we're not going to have much of a conversation based on that sort of loaded commentary.

Yes, but it was also "living" in the 18th century, or the Dark Ages. Nobody wants to go back to either. Even then, however, you at least had relatively insulated local economies. If anyone wanted "stuff", they had to buy it from someone close by. It doesn't really work the same in the global economy. Yes, I thought the same thing and that's why I'm not panicking, and why I didn't start a thread about it. This isn't a new trend. It's a long and worrying facet of Canadian culture/economic thinking that merits attention rather than outright dismissal (though I agree it's silly to blame it on "socialism" or Justin or whatever).

Growth vs no growth isn't a useful measurement. Human progress will drive the world towards productivity increases almost by default. These measurements should all be relative and comparison based, and Canada is lagging behind in productivity growth vs its peers and has been for the last 20 years, and is expected to continue doing so for the next 20 if we continue on the same path. We don't have a properly diversified economy. We have low rates of business capital investment and our GDP per hour worked is substantially lower than our peers. The OECD just ranked us dead last on predicted real GDP growth for the next 40 years. Thank God we can at least dig stuff out of the ground and sell it abroad, and bid up our real estate prices to pad our numbers.

Not relevant for a few reasons: 1) Property taxes are percentage-based rather than on square footage for clear and deliberate reasons. 2) The MPAC assessments for 2023 are based on values from 7 years ago and are no way reflective of current market values 3) Low property taxes are a feedback loop driving prices higher anyways, just like low interest rates did. Regardless, we can also look at Toronto's satellite communities and commuter towns (places like Brampton, Guelph, Ajax, Pickering, Oshawa etc) to see property values in the same neighborhood as Toronto, yet roughly double the residential property tax rates. Even on a per-square foot basis, Toronto's still a lot lower than its neighbors. TDLR: I pay more property tax in Guelph than someone does for a same-sized home in Toronto worth $2M+

The residential rate is the lowest of any municipality in Ontario, and ~50% below the national average. The commercial property tax rate is also below-average as well (by 10-15%), though there's an argument to be made that at least this encourages economic activity. https://www.altusgroup.com/insights/canadian-property-tax-benchmark-report/ (download the "report" on the front page). Great. I'm not one. I'm not particularly concerned with how people are going to afford to keep their big assets either.

With a silly list of choices.

Hopefully right away, because Toronto has some of the lowest property tax rates in the country and constantly relies on handouts and subsidies from the provincial and federal governments.

While reasonable people across Europe have concluded the opposite in the face of Russian aggression, which was the whole raison d'etre of NATO in the first place. You're free to think whatever you like, but you've yet to make a convincing argument for it.