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#1 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-09-30 15:21:28

It's getting worse. This YouTube channel is an American who comments on all things Canadian. He says he's an average American trying to learn about Canada. He's shocked and apologetic at the behaviour of this US border officer.
YouTube: US Border Officer Road Rages at a Canadian (American Reaction)

A man driving a Car with Ontario license plates, just driving down the highway within the US 2 miles from the Canadian border. A man driving a truck with a large emblem saying "US Customs and Border Protection", drives beside the car with his window rolled down, yells at the car "... to the US again. Never come to the US again. Yeah, go." Then sees the camera and gets shy. Video includes close-up of his license plate, and map showing where this occurred. Just south of border crossing on I-190 near Niagara Falls, New York.

#2 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-09-11 12:25:03

"Constitutional Republic" vs "Democracy" is playing with words, pandering to partisan politics. You should rise above that. Look what the US is supposed to be, and what it is becoming.

The US will not be a Constitutional Republic if Trump continues what he is doing now. It is becoming a fascist totalitarian dictatorship. If he can, there will be no more elections. Constitutional separation of powers has already been challenged. Courts have ordered Trump to stop deporting people nabbed by ICE. Courts have ordered individuals who have landed immigrant status, legal residents, to be returned to the US. Trump and his team have refused. Blatant refusal to comply with court orders means the Constitution no longer exists. Trump claimed he has the ability to interpret law. The Constitution says the President does no such thing, the Courts do that. Trump claimed the ability to create tariffs by executive order. The Constitution says only Congress can do that. A ruling by the Appellate Court said all of his tariffs are illegal. They gave him time to appeal to the Supreme Court, but if he doesn't do so within the deadline, Court ruling will repeal all tariffs. Now the question is whether Trump will order Border Services and the IRS to collect it anyway, even though it's illegal.

Your Constitution Republic is being dismantled quickly, as you watch.

#3 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-09-11 11:25:05

YouTube: People Around the World React in Horror to the Fall of American Democracy

This YouTuber covers another YouTube video. The original is 32 minutes 21 seconds long. This one 17:56. The young woman in the original is an immigrant from Germany to the US, who normally has light content comparing culture of the US to Germany. But this one covers the fall of democracy. Her 90 year old father remembers what it was like when Nazis took over Germany. He says what Trump is doing today is exactly the same. In fact, the administration is following "Project 2025" word-for-word. That is turning the US not just authoritarian, but totalitarian. Say goodbye to freedom and democracy. Many Americans don't understand what's happening because it's happening so fast.

#4 Re: Not So Free Chat » Peter Zeihan again: and also other thinkers: » 2025-09-11 11:07:21

Void: You don't understand what I said. This is the interglacial cycle. It happens every 100,000 years. There's roughly 80,000 years of ice age, followed by 20,000 years of interglacial. The interglacial is the warm period between ice ages. Then another ice age. The interglacial is not stable. There's roughly 13,000 years of global warming as the ice melts, then as soon as the peak temperature is achieved it reverses to become global cooling. So 7,000 years of global cooling. Then the next ice age begins. It doesn't start with a tall wall of ice moving across the land, it starts with snow. The snow from the last winter does not completely melt during the summer. When the first snow of the next winter arrives, some of the snow of the last winter is still there. The second summer, more snow survives to the next winter. It slowly accumulates until summer is just not warm enough to melt snow. At least at what we not consider "temperate" latitudes, the ground is covered with snow all year. Then the snow gets deeper every year. Eventually the snow get so deep that the weight of the snow crushes the snow at the bottom to become ice.

Based on ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, if we follow the pattern of the last 3 interglacial cycles, the peak temperature will be 5°C above the pre-industrial temperature. Previous ice cores resulted in 6°C ±1.25°. But a new ice core together with better methods of analyzing have refined that. They now say 5° ±fraction of a degree. That's not contradictory, just more precise.

Milankovitch cycles control ice ages. These cycles combine to create ice ages:

  • orbital eccentricity: Earth's orbit changes from nearly circular to more elipitical, then back.

  • obliquity: axial tilt increases and decreases.

  • axial precession: which direction does the axis of rotation point? Currently it points to the North Star, Polaris. It rotates.

  • apsidal precession: the elipse of Earth's orbit precesses around the Sun.

  • orbital inclination: Earth's orbit is inclined vs the invariable plane

#5 Re: Not So Free Chat » Peter Zeihan again: and also other thinkers: » 2025-09-11 10:14:23

Hmm. Tried to look up exactly what climate was like in north Africa during the ice age. It was actually quite dry. "Tropical rain forest" is not correct. But it did change. In this chart, "BP" means years Before Present.
dia-98-3.jpg

#6 Re: Not So Free Chat » Peter Zeihan again: and also other thinkers: » 2025-09-11 10:08:42

Void: if you click the link "The Discovery" in the article you linked, it takes you to a Facebook post. That says:

On the frozen coast of Antarctica, archaeologists made a discovery that still puzzles historians. They found the oldest known human remains on the continent—belonging to a young Chilean woman from the early 1800s.

Tests showed she likely came from the Yaghan people of southern Chile and Tierra del Fuego, a community famous for their seafaring skills and ability to survive extreme cold. Her bones were dated between 1819 and 1825, a time when almost no records of people in Antarctica existed.

How she ended up there is a mystery. Some believe she may have joined whalers or sealers heading south. Others wonder if indigenous groups themselves once sailed further than history gives them credit for.

What makes her story so striking is the silence of the record—no journals, no reports, nothing to explain her journey. She stands alone, a single trace of humanity in one of the world’s harshest places.

Her remains remind us that Antarctica’s story didn’t just begin with European explorers. It’s a sign of how human history is far more connected and surprising than we often imagine.

This isn't the oldest human ever, it's just the oldest human in Antarctica. A date of 1819-1825 is hardly controversial. So the indigenous people of Chile had boats before European explorers arrived. Duh! How do they think Polynesian people spread across the islands of the Pacific? How do they think Australian aborigines got there? There's an increasing body of evidence that people explored the planet long before the European age of exploration. Modern humans have been on this planet for 300,000 years. What do they think humans did all that time? No, civilization is not 5,000 years old, it's much older. That's just how old written record goes. Surviving written record.

There's evidence of wheat within walking distance of Göbekli Tepe that's 22,000 years ago. People who built Göbekli Tepe were not hunter-gatherers, they were farmers. Duh! The oldest evidence of wheat is in the Levant (Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine) that is 26,000 years old. When scientists started using satellites to find archaeology sites, they found roughly 200 stone buildings in the Sahara. Not all have been explored. They're different ages, different construction styles, and different purposes. Most are not tombs. One has a painting of a lake with trees and animals, including hippopotamus. As the planet warmed out of the last ice age, north Africa warmed from subarctic, to temperate, to tropical rain forest, to savanna, to desert. Sahara started small, then grew. One radar satellite is able to see beneath the sand of the Sahara, and sees groves in the bedrock from ancient river systems. They can see how far the Sahara expanded during the past several interglacial cycles, and it's larger than today. The planet hasn't finished warming out of the last ice age. Thousands of years ago when north Africa was a lush, people lived there. When it became desert, they had to leave. That was before invention of writing, so we have no written record of those people. Warming out of the last ice age began 20,000 years ago. In the 1960s/'70s/'80s/'90s scientists believed the ice age ended 11,000 years ago. Today they consider it to have ended 11,700 years ago. That's just another digit of precision.

So a skeleton in Antarctica that's only 200 years old? Sure. I would want a more authoritative source than Facebook, but it's hardly radical.

#9 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-07-16 16:48:31

kbd512 wrote:

Your parents paid $25 in 1984 for a device which I can buy for $10 in 2025:
EZ DUZ IT - USA Made Can Opener - $9.95

No, I said that I had to pay $25 in 1984 for a product that I paid $1.25 in the 20-teens.
True Living 3-in-1 Can & Bottle Opener

#10 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-07-15 10:23:42

YouTube: This is why so many Americans are moving to Russia
This is a young man from the UK, living in Ukraine and reporting on the war. He visited Kursk when Ukraine occupied it. He took video while he was in Kursk. Ukraine did not destroy residential areas, the Russians did that themselves when they re-captured Kursk.

He speaks about an article in the New York Times. The article was written by someone embedded with Russian forces, and every word of the article was approved by Moscow. He reports the article is incorrect, full of Russian propaganda. For one thing, claims of what happened in Kursk are in direct contradiction to what he saw when he was in Kursk. He also points out the New York Times has a habit of this: in the 1930s they wrote an article saying how great and wonderful the Nazis were. If you've heard about the New York Times article, then watch this video.

Ps. The video starts with a report of one family: husband, wife, and children, who moved to a town in Russia setup for Americans. The Russians forced the husband into the Russian army, sent him to fight in Ukraine, right at the front line, and with no training what so ever. We can now speculate how many days before he's killed.

#11 Re: Not So Free Chat » Peter Zeihan again: and also other thinkers: » 2025-07-15 10:00:51

YouTube: Stop Worrying About the BRICS Alliance || Peter Zeihan
Peter says BRICS is not an issue. They have expanded to include a bunch of countries that are at each other's throats. Consequently they can't agree on anything. There is no interest in forming a new currency that would displace the US dollar. The only country interested in making BRICS become a power to unseat the US from world leadership, and forming a new foreign exchange currency / reserve currency, is Russia. MAGA is worried about BRICS, but MAGA wants to give Russia a pass. A contradiction they haven't quite understood yet. So how will this turn out?

#12 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-07-13 18:22:21

kbd512,
Click the YouTube video above Watch it.

#13 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-07-13 15:06:52

For kbd512,
You really think the US doesn't engage in significant trade today? Do you think products in Walmart or various dollar stores are made in the US? Do you think iPhones are made in the US? Do you think any manufactured product is made in the US? Below is a video of a YouTuber who tried to manufacture something as an experiment, to see if it's possible to manufacture something simple in the US today.

As an anecdote: when I moved out of my parents house into my first apartment in 1984, a hand-held can opener cost $25 in Canadian dollars in 1984 dollars. Calculating Canadian inflation from that year to today, then converting to US dollars, that's $50. Just before COVID I bought a new can opener at the dollar store for $1.25 in Canadian dollars. From the 1920s through early 1960s there were a series of stores called "5 and dime" because everything was either 5¢ or 10¢. Dollar stores are today's equivalent. After converting for inflation, prices of a dollar store are the same as a "5 and dime". In other words, prices are what they should be. From the mid-1960s through mid-1980s, retailers and all companies gouged us for every day items. So prices are back to what they should be. But if you try to "re-shore" industry without addressing the problems that led to the 1980s price gouging, then you will not only return to that price gouging, it will be worse.

Are you prepared for $50 can openers; and I mean hand-held ones, not electric. Are you prepared for laptop computers that cost $10,000 in US dollars today? That's for a basic laptop, not a gaming system. A gaming system would cost $40,000. Or an iPhone 16 for $20,000? Perhaps the "budget" iPhone 16e for "only" $15,000. Are you prepared for American cars to increase by $10,000 over current prices? These numbers aren't out of thin air.

I Tried To Make Something In America (The Smarter Scrubber Experiment) - Smarter Every Day 308

YouTube: click image for video
hqdefault.jpg

#14 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-07-11 22:01:14

Void,
The US has been taking Canada for everything it can take for a long time. We have tried to form a fair partnership. The US has demanded all Canadian oil go to the US, and at a price far below world market price. All lumber must go to the US, and American house construction firms loved it, but US saw mills complained. US logging companies complained as well, even though the US doesn't have enough forests to provide enough lumber. Canadian lumber companies suffered greatly under tariffs and restrictions imposed by George W. With everything, the US insisted that the US benefit, that Canada get screwed. But Canada found a way to survive. Canadian large retailers got bought out or forced into bankruptcy. Well, in some cases. Eaton's was a major Canadian department store, but the 3rd generation of the family that owned it was not keeping up with new technology. The British company Woolworth was bought out by a Canadian firm in the 1960s, became a large discount retailer called Woolco. But Woolco was bought out by Walmart in 1994. Zellers was another large discount retailer, but bought out by Target, opening March 2013, closed January 2015. They really screwed up; long story.

Free trade is good for everyone, mostly for the US. It isn't a "cost", it's a benefit. It has reduced cost of goods, and increased the overall economy. Trump's tariffs have already started a recession in the US. Definition of recession is negative economic growth (shrinkage) for two consecutive quarters, so it won't be confirmed until September. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was a major contributor to the Great Depression. Will the US suffer a major recession, or go into full depression? Yet to be seen.

#15 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-07-11 18:56:00

Tyler Bucket calls himself a typical American. He reacts to various videos about Canada and Canadian culture. This is more political than his usual content. Here he reacts to a letter that Trump wrote to Canadian Prime Minister Carney. Trump posted on Truth Social. Again, click image for video.
hq720.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEhCK4FEIIDSFryq4qpAxMIARUAAAAAGAElAADIQj0AgKJD&rs=AOn4CLAR6UZNi_Mtok44rTSW3pwsBTdjZQ

#16 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-07-11 18:50:44

YouTube: Ronald Reagan on tariffs. Click image for video.
hq720.jpg?sqp=-oaymwE7CK4FEIIDSFryq4qpAy0IARUAAAAAGAElAADIQj0AgKJD8AEB-AG2CIACgA-KAgwIABABGGUgTyhKMA8=&rs=AOn4CLBsywXcIUNnFB-9maL37TKf0obzYA

#17 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-07-11 13:41:49

kbd512,
I'm sorry you don't understand anything outside the lower 48 states of the US. Many Americans have that problem. The US has demanded ever increasing economic integration with Canada, and it has hurt many Canadian industries. But overall it has been beneficial to Canada's economy, because those business that survive can sell into the US. Trade has had greater benefits than harm. But now Trump wants to take away all the benefits.

Trade is always beneficial. In the middle ages, Venice was a single city-state located in a swamp at the northern end of the Adriatic Sea. They did extensive trade, and became rich because of that trade. They didn't have large farms or agricultural products to export, didn't have ores or metals, didn't have much of anything to export. All they had was trade. But they became very wealthy. That's what trade can do.

Modern industry depends on scale. Large scale allows for expensive equipment that has high up-front cost, but low operating cost and low per-unit cost. It's called "economies of scale"; large volume drives prices down. Large volumes only work if there are customers to buy that product. The US has a large market, but it's nothing compared to the rest of the planet. The US has a population of 342,092,585 while the world has a population of 8,129,256,264 as of this minute, and according to the website of the US Census Bureau. 342 million might sound large, but it's small compared to 8 billion. Even if you refuse to trade with Russia and its allies, but do continue trade with China and India, that reduces potential trade population by 143.8 million for Russia + 9.178 for Belarus + 90.6 million for Iran = 162.578 million. Russia's population today might be a little smaller due to the war and due to young men leaving to avoid the war, but it's still over 140 million. That leaves the remaining world population still close to 8 billion. Reducing your market from the world to just the US will drastically damage the US economy. You will become poor.

You claimed Canada should become "self sufficient", which means Canada would cut itself off from the rest of the world. Canada won't do that. Canada is not a vassal state of the US, Canada has been a trading partner, an equal and peer. Population of the US is 9 times Canada (not 10 times), so the US is bigger, but Canada has been a modern industrial economy for as long as industry existed. But Canada will not pay tribute to the US.

Canada is working to increase trade with other countries. As I said before, 80% of all aluminum used in North America comes from Quebec. The largest aluminum smelter is Alcoa, which has several facilities that together produce 43% of all aluminum in Quebec, and that company is 100% American owned. The second largest producer makes 27%, and Alcoa owns 75% of them. Together Alcoa controls 70% of aluminum production in Quebec. Their response to Trump's tariffs is to sell their product overseas, not to the US. Let me emphasize this point: an American company will not sell their product to the US, because of Trump's tariffs.

Canada is negotiating trade to other countries. It already has a trade agreement with Europe, and is working to increase that trade. Canada can also trade with Australia, sell oil to China, and others.

Canada has sold the vast majority of its oil to the US, at well below world market price. The US has made great profit from Canada, at Canadian expense. Halting import of Canadian oil will increase the price of gasoline at the pump. Just adding a tariff will do the same. American oil refineries are built for heavy oil, not the light oil from fracking. That's because American oil used to be heavy, but that heavy oil mostly ran out. Converting American refineries to process light oil from fracking will cost billions. That cost will be passed on to the consumer, again increasing the price of oil at the pump. And even if the US does that, total amount of oil the US produces is still not quite enough to fulfill US market demand. If you don't import oil from Canada, you'll have to get it from somewhere else. At a higher price.

Softwood lumber: The US tried to halt all Canadian softwood lumber when George W. Bush was president. They discovered the US cannot produce enough lumber to satisfy the US market. The US just doesn't have enough forests left. Forests have been cut down to clear farmland, for cities, suburbs, shopping malls, factories, other uses. Look at a map of forests in the US over time. The US has significant forests in the early 1980s, but today it's much smaller. When George W. Bush was president, blocking Canadian lumber just meant lumber had to be imported from Europe. At higher prices, plus cost of shipping across the Atlantic.

Trump is cutting the US off. But by offending military allies, and trade partners. The US will soon be isolated, weak, and poor. Putin has convinced Trump to do this, because Putin wants Russia to be the sole superpower in the world. The world must make trade deals that benefit Russia, even if that trade does not include Russia. Putin wants to militarily conquer and annex all of eastern Europe, either conquer or control central Europe, conquer and annex the Caucasus, conquer and annex central Asia. Even though none of those countries want Russia to rule them. This will be massive war. To do this, the US must stay out of the way. And the US must become an insignificant nobody for Russia to establish a worldwide hegemony. Putin has tricked Trump into doing what's necessary to do it. Trump is beginning to wake up to Putin's bullshit, but it's too slow.

You think Russia is the great saviour to protect the US from wokeism? Think again. The average working person in Russia earns $14,500 per year. They have 13% income tax, but low tax won't compensate for being poor. Working individuals in Moscow live in a small apartment. Only rich executives can afford a house. Corporate owned or government owned farms have running water and central heat, but private farms don't. They have a hand pump in the yard for water, and an outhouse. They have wood burning or coal burning stove for heat. This is what you want America to become? I'm not defending wokeism, I'm saying Russia is not your saviour.

So trade and tariffs. Negotiating with Trump is irrelevant because it doesn't matter what agreement you come to, Trump will abrogate the deal and make some new demand the very next day.

#18 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-07-10 17:10:49

Trump is at it again. This time he threatens a 200% tariff for any pharmaceuticals that do not move manufacturing to the US. Australia exports $2 billion to the US each year, one of their top 5 exports. But in Canada, pharmaceutical manufacture crosses the border 2 or 3 times before reaching patients. In 2018, Canadians spent $725 per year for insulin, while Americans spent $3,490, according to the Mayo Clinic. There is no way Canada can let the US dictate terms. If Trump really wants to do this, then Canada will have to find other partners to make pharmaceuticals, and American drugs can get more expensive.

Australia is making a big harry deal. Canada's new Prime Minister is quietly negotiating, creating carve-outs for Canada. But mostly it means Canadian manufacturers must find alternate partners, not US partners. We won't move anything to the US. Again, at the price US charges, there's no way.

Details: Canada has shorter patent periods for pharmaceuticals. That means generic copies can be made sooner. Part of the NAFTA negotiation was to force Canada to increase the patent period, but Canada never did increase it as much as the US. In Canada, it's illegal for a drug manufacturer to give kick-backs to pharmacists, and that is strictly enforced. One scheme is name-brand drug companies demand generic drugs removed off store shelves, and give kick-backs for sale of name-brand drugs. The large pharmacist company can get a fine, the salesman can be jailed, and the pharmacist can lose his license for years. These are the drug price regulations that I'm aware of. Canada's healthcare system does not subsidize drugs, instead prices are kept reasonable.

2015 comparison of drug prices in Canada to other countries. Again, the point is we can't let the US dictate.
img1-eng.jpg

::Edit:: Many Americans have imported pharmaceuticals from Canada to get reasonable prices. There are entire online pharmacies in Canada that do nothing but mail-order into the US. With US prices being 3.5 times the Canadian price, a 200% tariff will hurt Americans a lot, but in many cases the Canadian drugs will still be cheaper.

#19 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-07-10 11:02:20

I don't know nut'in more 'bout nuclear weapons than I posted. That it.

Reactors as of Mar 4, 2022. Zaporizhzhia has been been occupied by Russians and shut down. Coolant water was from the reservoir that drained when the dam was blown. Obviously which areas are occupied by Russian troops has changed. But it shows where the reactors are. There was one nuclear power plant under construction in Crimea before the invasion in 2014, but obviously the invasion halted construction. Ukraine is having trouble generating enough electricity to power homes, apartments, businesses, etc. Most of Ukraine's thermal power plants (coal burning) have been destroyed.
26991.jpeg

#20 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-07-10 10:02:49

Calliban,
I don't know if I should say this on the internet, but those with technical nuclear knowledge already know it. You don't need enriched uranium to make a bomb. A bomb can be made with pure plutonium. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was uranium, but the one dropped on Nagasaki was plutonium. Spent fuel rods from a reactor contain plutonium. Low enriched uranium is mostly U-238, which will not fission. But if an atom of U-238 is hit by a moderated neutron, it will absorb it to become U-239. That decays in two steps over days to become Pu-239. That is fissile, and can be separated. Some of the Pu-239 will be split (consumed) in the reactor, but it can be done. A commercial power reactor isn't as efficient as a military breader reactor, but again it can be done. Ukrainian nuclear engineers are very knowledgeable, and Ukrainians in general have proven themselves to be very resourceful during this war.

#21 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-07-09 21:31:41

And if Russia drops a tactical nuke on Ukraine?

#22 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-07-09 18:32:48

Ps. Yuri said Ukraine would develop their own nuke. He didn't say anything about giving them one. Ukraine is a lot more capable than most Americans realize. Russia is a lot less. One reason this war is happening is Putin wants Ukraine's resources and skills back. But he doesn't understand killing them all means he won't get their skills. roll

#23 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-07-09 18:21:37

When Biden was President the rule was if Russia ever used a nuke of any sort, then the US military would assassinate Putin. They wouldn't give weapons to Ukraine, the US would do it themselves. And they wouldn't attack Russia or the Russian military, just Putin personally. Probably with a Hellfire missile launched from a UAV to take out his motorcade.

Trump is all over the place, God knows what he would do.

#24 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2025-07-08 18:55:24

Yesterday Trump said he would impose tariffs on numerous countries, but not Canada. Today he said he would impose a 50% tariff on copper from Canada. If you want me to create excuses for Trump, tell him to stop trying to destroy the Canadian economy.

#25 Re: Meta New Mars » RobertDyck Postings » 2025-07-07 19:12:33

Really? You label it click bait? Did you watch the video? Video of Gwynne Shotwell saying that is kind of decisive.

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