The Off Topic Topic

[HVC]

George Santos sentenced to 7 years.

Trump pardon coming soon? Though these were probably state charges.

Shame. If his dad had some real-estate holdings Santos would have made a great future republican president.

[Josquius]

How the mighty have fallen.

https://www.itv.com/news/2025-04-26/father-ted-co-creator-graham-linehan-charged-with-harassment-and-criminal-damage

It's JK Rowling who gets the most attention for deciding to devote her life to transphobia but I always loved Linehans work.
Such a shame he burned it all with hate.
Thinking about it John Cleese and Michael Cain in their old age have also been rather out there (on different issues).
More expected but I also learned the other week the guy who wrote Hyperion is a far right lunatic.  One of his most recent novels written during Obama was an absolutely unhinged sounding dystopia about various Trumpy conspiracies coming to pass.

There's a thread idea. Biggest disappointment for you in work you enjoy being created by gits.

[crazy canuck]

Fun fact, who has the most advanced and most respected fire departments in the world. It's Sweden.

Why? In that country firefighters take their academic training as university courses.  That means that there is a branch of academia devoted to developing fire fighting tech, at essentially government expense. Other countries like Australia come a close second, because they quickly adopt the tech and techniques developed by the Swedes.

Here in Canada we are slower to adapt to the new tech and techniques mainly because of funding bottlenecks.

[Jacob]

That's a cool fact.

[Jacob]

Article on the impact of removing fluoride from the drinking water in Juneau and Calgary: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fluoride-drinking-water-dental-health

Spoiler: dental decay among children has gone up significantly.

[Razgovory]

How the mighty have fallen.

https://www.itv.com/news/2025-04-26/father-ted-co-creator-graham-linehan-charged-with-harassment-and-criminal-damage

It's JK Rowling who gets the most attention for deciding to devote her life to transphobia but I always loved Linehans work.
Such a shame he burned it all with hate.
Thinking about it John Cleese and Michael Cain in their old age have also been rather out there (on different issues).
More expected but I also learned the other week the guy who wrote Hyperion is a far right lunatic.  One of his most recent novels written during Obama was an absolutely unhinged sounding dystopia about various Trumpy conspiracies coming to pass.

There's a thread idea. Biggest disappointment for you in work you enjoy being created by gits.

John Keats is a far right lunatic?  Also he's still alive?

[crazy canuck]

Article on the impact of removing fluoride from the drinking water in Juneau and Calgary: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fluoride-drinking-water-dental-health

Spoiler: dental decay among children has gone up significantly.

I know the person from the University of Calgary who worked to convince Calgary to reintroduce it there, and she is trying to get it into BC drinking water. The problem is the cost overruns that have been incurred here in the recent water projects.

[Jacob]

Oh shit, Vancouver water is not fluoridated.

I didn't realize until this very moment.

[HVC]

Linked to the old hippie "know your body" anti doctor stance*, or historical budget thing rather than current budget problems?

[Sheilbh]

There's a thread idea. Biggest disappointment for you in work you enjoy being created by gits.

I like Eric Gill's work

Oh shit, Vancouver water is not fluoridated.

I didn't realize until this very moment.

Adding fluoride to water is really unusual in Europe too - it's very much not the norm. Some areas do it but the vast majority don't.

I think it's one of those polarised issues in the US (maybe North America) where people have weirdly strong views because it's part of a bundle of issues.

[crazy canuck]

Oh shit, Vancouver water is not fluoridated.

I didn't realize until this very moment.

Yeah, I had the same reaction when she told me. For some reason I just assumed it was

[Grey Fox]

Oh shit, Vancouver water is not fluoridated.

I didn't realize until this very moment.

It's kind of hard on a city's water infrastructure. If you already have overruns issues the tight purses will be on the same side has the conspiracy nuts. Quite the slope to overcome.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

It's kind of hard on a city's water infrastructure. If you already have overruns issues the tight purses will be on the same side has the conspiracy nuts. Quite the slope to overcome.

What I imagine makes it worse is that the city has to pay the cost of fluoridation, but is insulated from the cost of kids' worsening dental health.

[crazy canuck]

It's kind of hard on a city's water infrastructure. If you already have overruns issues the tight purses will be on the same side has the conspiracy nuts. Quite the slope to overcome.

What I imagine makes it worse is that the city has to pay the cost of fluoridation, but is insulated from the cost of kids' worsening dental health.

good point, but it might also be a good pitch to the Feds to chip in for the cost now that we have a partial dental care program funded by that level of government.

You have just given me a good pitch line!  Many thanks.

[Josquius]

It's funny, old school cyberpunk had this image of the future tech that was the  Internet as this dangerous place where you logged in at your peril and most stuff still took place in the flesh.

For some decades this seemed to be one of those silly wrong future predictions.

But with AI taking over it does seem to be increasingly true afterall.

I wonder if we will see a reversal with the kids growing up today seeing the Internet as a thoroughly lame thing and wanting to spend more time in reality.  The de-car-ificafion of our civilization will help in this of course.

There's a thread idea. Biggest disappointment for you in work you enjoy being created by gits.

I like Eric Gill's work

Yes, very good one.
Easy enough to dodge his art but in typography to avoid anything he did would be like avoiding Bill Gates in computers.