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> Like forcing people out of their job for refusing a vaccine?

Before vaccination was politicized in the US (bizarrely, I must say, through mechanisms that I find absolutely baffling), many jobs had mandatory vaccinations. Most healthcare setting have mandatory yearly flu vaccinations, for instance. The military has a whole plethora of mandatory vaccinations, including some pretty crazy ones. And of course schools, daycare, etc have forced vaccinations.

Suddenly it's a big issue. Ask yourself why.

And for what it's worth, I've been against mandates since omicron made it evident that they were no longer useful. I have zero tolerance for these protests, though, and would like to see them absolutely stomped.

There are a couple of rather large exaggerations in your post.

It wasn't the "entire CN rail network" (instead it was the Eastern Canada segment, comprising maybe 15% of CN's network). They don't claim that rail carries three times more than trucks do, but instead simply note that one rail car carries as much as three trucks.

And the blockade lasted approximately 2-3 weeks. Not sure what you mean by "after almost a year".

But let's be clear -- most of Canada was enraged about that. It was hugely expensive to Trudeau politically, and was a tenterhooks [edit - thank you fennec] situation because of the aboriginal file. Yet most of Canada absolutely wanted a stronger response and it hurt Trudeau in the election.

I honestly don't get these "but the rail blockade" or "but some BLM protest in some US city" responses.

You claimed that the survey showed that they "support" the protests. The question asked only if people "sympathize" with the "frustration" of the convoy. That is a very low barrier, easy yes, given that a strong majority of Canada is tired of mandates. Indeed, the question went so far as adding "may not support the protest" to specifically delimit.

Canadians are very against this protest. If they simply parked some trucks and hung some signs, whatever. Once they were blasting horns 24/7, and then when that didn't work (given that the overwhelming majority of "truckers" are not with their cause and continued working) blocking international borders, the Canadian public turned dramatically against this petulant outrage. Having a bunch of Americans cheering it on, financing it, and even trying to join in has made it a cause that most Canadians find outright treasonous now.

"Using government power intended for things like war"

This isn't the war measures act. It is a response specifically targeted to situations like this.

"I hope the response is a protest escalation"

That's neat. I hope that every protester that misused a privilege of their CDL lose their truck license, lose insurance, have their bank accounts locked, and face enormous fines. I guess we have differing hopes.

Sign petitions. Make a new political party. Lobby. Do a campaign. But if you try to force your political will through force -- which parking large trucks throughout cities and on border crossings is -- you have crossed a line and need to be reigned in.

"Not my country"

Oh gosh, what a surprise...

And then, of course, a comparison with completely irrelevant other events that most of us also found reprehensible.

I hate when the protests appear on HN because it makes me realize how terrible "right wing" so many on here are (not conservative -- I'm conservative -- but rather a particularly...stupid and angry version that now parades as right wing in the US), and how absolutely reprehensible opinions are. A sort of "look someone previously in a different country and a completely different event tore stuff down so let them go wild in another country to own the libs". Just garbage takes that should be embarrassing to the speaker.

"Last poll I saw (Ipsos) said 1 out of 3 Canadians support the protest"

That grossly misrepresented poll asked only if respondents sympathize with their cause. If you agree that mandates need to go. Note that when asked directly, 60-70% of Canada are over mandates, and just being asked to show sympathy already lost 50% of those people.

But this doesn't mean that those people support this protest. Indeed, in subsequent polls, over 60% of the country wants the protesters jailed.

It arises when supporting a group is all that matters, and one's "values" morph and twist into whatever is optimal to support the tribe at any given moment. It yields a lot of meaningless words.

This happens all over the political spectrum. It happens in technology discussions. It happens in, as another post said, sports commentary.

Without values it's just loads of angry spittle.

"Far left"? I'm a conservative. Most normal conservatives are vigorously against these protests, for exactly the same reason that we were against railway blockades, and against violence and mayhem that occurred under the umbrella of BLM protests. I am simply in awe that so many of the same people that were viciously against BLM protests are supporters of this protest.

Regardless, the literal stated goal of the organizers of this convoy was that the convoy would not leave until the government resign en masse and that the governor general basically decree this protest group the government. That is a textbook insurrection. This memorandum was replaced on February 8th because it was so fantastically treasonous that as it gained wider attention it became unpalatable.

So yes, when people say insurrection, they are absolutely correct. It isn't the "far left" pointing out that fact.

Just as it isn't the "far left" who point out that two of the primary organizers are a long time white supremacist, and the other is a literal separatist who has long petitioned that Western Canada should join the US.

I don't think whataboutism is productive. Nor did I "cheer on" anything: It sucks when people are exploited by incompetent actors.

We've repeatedly watched as "the mainstream restricts us so we'll do our own thing" sites are built with absolutely rudimentary security faults. They're rushed, have a very eager and non-discretionary userbase that is chomping at the bit. They usually have compromised motivations.

And then they fall. It has become sadly predictable.

Alternately, yet another right wing "alternative" site had poor security practices and got exploited. They had S3 buckets full of customer data sitting open for some time, and they stayed accessible days after it was widely known.

I didn't say these people don't have trucks or employment driving trucks. Clearly they do. But that the misrepresentation that they represent truckers, instead of just being some small subsection that have trucks, is misleading.

Again, all logistics are happening like normal through this whole event. Cross border traffic (despite vaccine mandates on both sides) at normal levels. National traffic at normal levels.

You can take virtually any field and find some subsection with these sorts of "beliefs". Coders against mandates. If someone smeared all coders because some subsection of HN stood honking horns at parliament, wouldn't that embarrass you?

"Any chance your friends are just conforming"

In another post you claimed "seems to be siding with the government because the intent of the protest has been declared wrong-think by the PM"

Do you really think this? Do you really just caricaturize people who think differently from you in some easy "but they don't really think that" bin? In another you declared it "boomers".

Most of Canada is strongly over mandates. I'm over mandates, and many public agencies have made clear that things are going back to normal. Omicron changed everything. But we don't identify with an *ignorant* group primarily funded by and cheered on by Americans. It is, at its essence, almost traitorous.

And again let me say that I lean conservative. BLM protests that get out of hand? SEND IN THE POLICE. Rail blockades that go on for days? SEND IN THE POLICE. If I were in Seattle, the whole CHAZ/CHOP thing would be completely unacceptable. Amazingly I am also fully and completely against some of the most profoundly ignorant people this country hosts, financed by foreigners, terrorizing a city 24/7 (and yes, while you have "seen on Twitter" that the honking stops at 10 -- 105db incessant honking -- it actually happens throughout the day, along with fireworks and loud music), and the only victims are the citizens of Ottawa and Canada.

Maybe everyone who thinks differently from you is just a boomer conforming and eagerly consuming what the PM declares "wrong-think". Or maybe your perspective of the world is completely broken.

Everyone referred to the Seattle occupation as an occupation. They literally called it the "Capital Hill Occupied Protest". A simple Google search finds endless pages of media reports calling it an occupation.

"So wait...

Just to be clear"

The intro to an always disingenuous comment.

"If so, wow."

Yet more.

Protests throughout time have been at hardship and discomfort of the participants. When your "protest" are sleeper cabs (in vehicles regulated through monopoly by the government, which seems like an easy lever) and hotel rooms, now with saunas and food prep rooms, funded by the American right, and your "protest" is laying on horns 24/7, there is zero legitimacy there.

Canada had railway blockades in early 2020 that were groups of people literally sitting in the cold for days on end on railway tracks. And the interesting paradox is that the Canadian "right" were demanding that the police go full stormtrooper on them. Now this same group is cheering on parking a transport truck in the middle of the road and blasting horns around the clock. Bizarre times.

Every truck union and federation has denounced the protests. Despite the protests, everything is operating logistically completely normally.

It isn't "truckers". Some participants brought trucks because they a) have sleeping facilities, b) have big loud horns, c) take a lot of space and are hard to remove. That doesn't make it a trucker protest anymore than someone riding a bicycle there would make it a bicycle protest.

Do you think if the relatively tiny sponsorship didn't happen, the civil rights movement wouldn't have happened? I specifically talked to protests needing sponsorship, and in the case of the current occupation the bloated GFM -- funded by the far-right in the US who have achieved such a bucolic utopia of governance they now want to export it -- spurred on the participation. It legitimized it. This was nothing before everyone was chomping at the bit to get their slice of a big pie.

"How do you think people were fed? Where did they sleep?"

They literally slept in fields and went days with negligible food. In Ottawa protesters are sleeping in hotels and in $600,000 sleeper cabs running 24/7 and are eating like kings. They have built various facilities including a sauna. They are treating it like a fun vacation. What a shocking contrast.

All of this makes the other reply to you simply incredible.

"And as the other response mentioned, demonstrations were in fact funded in the past"

You think this is a retort. Amazing.

"Getting all defensive and outraged is one way to avoid an answer"

Demanding an answer out of someone, especially when they've spoken directly to the topic repeatedly, and then announcing an imagined, projected hypocrisy, is an unbelievably ignorant, boorish tactic. I might just say a troll tactic. Did you learn this from Tucker Carlson? It has absolutely no place on HN.

Is this what your rhetoric is reduced to? Demanding that people answer for invented, imaginary hypocrisy? I didn't "dodge" a completely stupid, manufactured question because I have literally no onus to answer it.

GFM shouldn't be used to sponsor *ANY* protest. I've said that REPEATEDLY, and consistently. A protest that needs sponsorship is not a legitimate protest.

It's hypocritical because of something you imagined?

Why would a sit-in, or any similar event, EVER need sponsorship? When has it ever needed sponsorship?

The things the PM says "in person" are widely reported on. You alluded to them multiple times in hopes of portraying your claim correct, but the single bit of proof you've provided shows absolutely nothing of the sort.

So we agree, GFM should have nothing to do with any occupation, right? You agree with this, correct?

You think that I'm some sort of partisan in this -- perhaps a projection -- and you caught me in hypocrisy. But you didn't. Financing protests is an incredibly dangerous game.

I was against BLM justified violence and looting, as well as the various "free" zones.

I was against the railway blockades in Canada (due to complex aboriginal issues)

I am against the trucker occupations and criminal harassment of the citizens of Ottawa and other jurisdictions (and I think they should be layered with so many fines their trucks become the property of the state).

I'm remarkably consistent on this. Law and order is good. Democracy is good.

It is literally, by every definition, an occupation.

People came in and brought homes with them (sleeper cabs, RVs, etc). Now they have set up permanent structures such as kitchens and other facilities (today they brought in a sauna), and have been stating repeatedly that they are in for the long haul.

There is a reason that's called an occupation. A protest is normally a discomfort for the protester. Enduring the elements. Going without. But waving a flag and chanting slogans that convey a message. Here we have a bunch of people in transport trucks blasting their horn 24/7.

No, he didn't. A unanimous declaration by members of parliament (incredibly rare) denounced events happening in the shroud of the protests. And they are really happening!

If someone denounces looting at a BLM protest -- also something that happened -- does that mean every BLM protester is a looter? That is absurd.

This sort of discussion never goes well, but using GoFundMe to finance occupations, especially across national borders, is an incredibly dangerous game.

If a GoFundMe to harrass and harangue Ron DeSantis -- to effectively sponsor people to park outside his home and blast horns, among other things -- would he be okay with that? How about if Canadians paid millions for people to park on US interstates? Is that okay?

This is entirely outside of the mission of GoFundMe. And it's interesting how exactly the same group of people lamenting the paying of bail for BLM protesters are falling in line with rights for this trucker group to harass and occupy Canadian cities.

For most users it isn't a bad deal at all. It's a 33% price savings over straight monthly, and I suspect many/most users have subscriptions much longer than a year.

This all seems a bit overwrought. Like the root post, I cannot fathom who would go through a purchase process that included the phrase "Annual plan, billed monthly" and not clue in. Or that that drop down includes a separate straight monthly plan at a significant price premium (50% higher). To give even more of a hint, a separate "you have until this date to cancel without a penalty" disclaimer gives another clue.

On the scale of dark patterns, this one is pretty eh. It clearly could be clearer for people who seem to just click straight through stuff, but I suspect a lot of the people chose the cheaper per month annual plan thinking they were hacking the system, and then discovered that it wasn't all upside.

The trials would have had to have tested every participant daily to qualify protection against infection. However it was most certainly presumed, and the entire narrative around the vaccine push was achieving herd immunity: when enough people were unlikely to shed viruses in any likely transmissive volume because of achieved immunity (whether via vaccine or previous infection), transmission would trickle to an almost halt and life would return to normal. This wouldn't require 100% coverage, nor a 100% effective vaccine (no vaccine has ever been 100% effective, or so-called "sterilizing") to accomplish.

There is a bit of rewriting now that is happening that is a bit disturbing and seems like gaslighting. A notion that the vaccine never sought to prevent infection (and thus viral transmission). That is obviously and easily proven as completely wrong.

But then protection faded maybe quicker than expected, and variants broke expectations and some protections. It sucks, but it's where we're at. The vaccines still have the enormous benefit of reducing case severity, but they certainly did fail in some of the goals.

Sidenote: If you are infected and thus replicating SARS-CoV-2 viruses, you have COVID-19 even if entirely asymptomatic. As with the prior points, this is trivial to verify. The "COVID-19 is only severe cases" claim is a part of the prior bit of gaslighting where we're redefining everything to somehow make early proclamations (e.g. "prevents covid-19") fit the unfortunate situation today.

Cheers!

> Rather than competing by improving their existing puzzles and/or creating new ones, they're just buying out the competition.

The purchase of the game, for apparently "low seven digits", is going to spur tens of thousands of programmers to try to build the next Wordle. To try to capture some of that magic. That's how it works. There is absolutely nothing sad about this. And really the social magic of Wordle is retreating, so it's not like you were going to be anxiously playing your daily Wordle in six months.

NYT basically bought some hype and legitimacy. They seem flush with cash right now (didn't TFG say they were failed or something?), and seem to be massively overpaying for lots of things. They want to make people think of their games, so there you have it. Congrats to Wardle.

Free. No ads. Accessible to everyone. Convenient build-in share functionality and a common experience (as you mentioned the common daily word). And of course a clean, technically excellent implementation.

If it had a single barrier (install an app, create an account, click through ads, etc), it would have been yet another of countless word games. It was a brilliant confluence for a momentary explosion in popularity.

All along, though, people were yipping about the grand benevolence and moral supremacy of this version versus clones (when the app itself was, as you mentioned, not that derived from an existing game, even aping the coloring), and that all looks pretty silly now that the creator quite rightly managed a pretty lucrative "exit" for a trivial work. And I applaud them for it, and respect the brilliant choices made to get there.

Wordle is basically the 2022 Flappy Bird. It isn't particularly fun or challenging, but there's a weird social experience behind it. That fades fast, and I would say is already fading rapidly. If he got a lucrative exit strategy, good for him (though it makes all of the moralizing around clones pretty nonsensical).

It's an exaggeration. But among people who actually drink wine -- the subject of this discussion -- I suspect the overwhelming majority understand the varieties, and maybe even have a presumptive preference. People who don't drink wine aren't really pertinent.

I agree with you to a point. Infrequent wine drinkers who want a casual option generally prefer a lighter, sweeter or more fruity wine. These people truly didn't like cabernet (too bitter for many), but they wanted to be "with it" and merlot was the hotness, so it became a go to. As the article I linked above mentioned, for these people pinot noir was always a better choice, but the hotness of merlot (at the time pinot was oft considered a dessert wine) made it socially less of a norm. Sideways, and people just generally discovering that there were other options, made it an easier social choice for many, and pinot noir was on fire.

As an aside, while I absolutely agree that most wine snobbiness is absolute horseshit (there is loads of it throughout the discussion in various other threads), that study on wine "experts" who couldn't tell the difference between red and wine is just terrible nonsense. It was some students who were recruited and smelled wines, given the visual cues of color.