Recent posts

#1

Off the Record / Re: The Miscellaneous Sports T...

Last post by Norgy - Today at 02:04:34 PM

When Uschi Diesl was competing for the DDR, a Norwegian commentator blurted out "And there she is, the border guard, ready to shoot".
 

Uschi is the by-sitter in Swedish radio for Biathlon, she's most excellent. And she's from Bavaria and made her debut in 1990.

My mistake. Norwegian sports commentators aren't the best sources for facts. 

This fact is verified, though: A Norwegian is now the Olympic athlete with the most gold medals. Granted, some are for the relay, and it is in a niche sport, but the field is highly competitive and demanding.

#2

Off the Record / Re: Refractory Gauls, or the F...

Last post by viper37 - Today at 01:31:03 PM

I am with you, Valmy. Computer games, RPGs... Our generation had this same shit going on.

Before ours it was rock music and long hair.

I was driving a tractor, a truck, a forklift, picking rocks, gardening potatoes, lawnmowing, paying for my first computer in 4th grade by installing door knobs in an apartment building, getting in trouble with my ATV and the police, typical stuff we all used to do at that age around here, basically.

It's not about killing people, it's about having more than one activity.

#3

Off the Record / Re: Refractory Gauls, or the F...

Last post by Jacob - Today at 01:30:55 PM

My daughter spends hours a day making the most bizarre surreal videos on her tablet in Roblox every day. I swear to God if this was the 1960s these would be considered pychodelic modern art. I don't know man. I am just happy she is out there making weird shit and being creative. Also in my experience kids move on from tablets and Roblox well before age 11. That shit is for little kids.

I will leave the pearl clutching for others. OH MY GOD!!! MY CHILD IS DOING THINGS COMPLETLY TYPICAL FOR PEOPLE HER AGE!!!111

The pattern seems to always be: kids do a thing. A few kids turn out bad. So therefore the things that all the kids are doing must be responsible...yeah that makes sense. Was there some generation in the past where none of the kids turned out bad?

Having said that Roblox fucking sucks and the company running it is evil so I wont miss it when my daughter ourgrows it.

The problem with Roblox is not "MY CHILD IS DOING THINGS COMPLETELY TYPICAL FOR THEIR AGE!", it's the deliberate nurturing of gambling addictions and the lousy curation of methods for internet strangers to communicate with children unsupervised.

As Tamas says, it's "nothing we didn't do" - but IMO the equivalent is not "listening to heavy metal" but "hanging out at the 7-11 parking lot every day with random groups of  older strangers, some of whom are very free with illicit substances." Sure, lots of kids in my generation did that, and many of them turned out more or less okay - but some bad things went down on occasion too.

If feel you have your daughter's interaction with Roblox controlled under acceptable parameters, that's great. Maybe she's just doing creative things, not being groomed to desire special currency, and only hanging out with non-problematic people (or even better, has developed enough of a filter for online strangers to handle problematic people well).

Personally, I've worked in free-to-play social and mobile games enough to see how Roblox is built from the ground up around the creation of addiction. I have friends who worked at Roblox for a period of time, and what they've shared has done nothing to allay my concerns - seeing child predators as an opportunity, as  Baszucki put it, is not a random weird comment but something fundamental to the entire operation from my perspective.

I stand by my assessment that Roblox is poison, and I'm keeping my kids far away from it.

#4

Off the Record / Re: Refractory Gauls, or the F...

Last post by viper37 - Today at 01:27:20 PM

Adults may need to work, 11-12 years old aren't supposed to be on their tables for this long, or playing Roblox.

My daughter spends hours a day making the most bizarre surreal videos on her tablet in Roblox every day. I swear to God if this was the 1960s these would be considered pychodelic modern art. I don't know man. I am just happy she is out there making weird shit and being creative. Also in my experience kids move on from tablets and Roblox well before age 11. That shit is for little kids.

I will leave the pearl clutching for others. OH MY GOD!!! MY CHILD IS DOING THINGS COMPLETLY TYPICAL FOR PEOPLE HER AGE!!!111

The pattern seems to always be: kids do a thing. A few kids turn out bad. So therefore the things that all the kids are doing must be responsible...yeah that makes sense. Was there some generation in the past where none of the kids turned out bad?

Having said that Roblox fucking sucks and the company running it is evil so I wont miss it when my daughter ourgrows it.

Nephews are 11-12, they're still asking for Roblox gift cards.

Anyway.

The point is not to spend too much time on screens.  There's a place for sports, outdoor activities, even a little chores.

#5

Off the Record / Re: US - Greenland Crisis Thre...

Last post by Valmy - Today at 01:16:00 PM

The US didn't go full out genocide, Russian style, in Vietnam...

And I don't really think they'll do that anywhere. It's just that they are so well equipped and trained and with so much resources that no-one else really can compete. There's no point planning for conflict with the US cause you'll lose whatever you do.

So Canada might as well buy Gripen, cause F-35 won't save them.

What the hell are you talking about? We lose basically all of our wars these days.

[on or after the day on which An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025) comes into force]

#6

Off the Record / Re: [Canada] Canadian Politics...

Last post by Baron von Schtinkenbutt - Today at 10:59:25 AM

I posted the amendments to the act that came into force in December.  Those amendments make it clear that in each case there must be a significant connection with Canada by the parent of the person making the application.

I explained the reason for the legislation in another post and I won't go into detail about that again, but the brief summary is the amendments were made to deal with a constitutional challenge which made the legislation to narrow. Please go up thread and read the detailed reason I gave for that constitutional challenge.

You posted an excerpt.  I was responding to your statements with overviews from Canadian government websites, but I looked up the full text of the bill.  I think the full text of the act makes clear that the "substantial connection" only applies going forward from the date the act comes into force.  The first piece of evidence is the first clause in the except you posted; I missed this clause initially:

(3) Paragraph (1)(b) does not apply to a person born outside Canada on or after the day on which An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025) comes into force

This subsection introduces the "substantial connection" requirement in the form of 1,095 days of residency, and is the only place it is mentioned.  So, it explicitly does not apply to those born before the act comes into force.  Further evidence of legislative intent by Parliament is in the summary of the bill:

This enactment amends the Citizenship Act to, among other things,

(a) ensure that citizenship by descent is conferred on all persons who were born outside Canada before the coming into force of this enactment to a parent who was a citizen;

(b) confer citizenship by descent on persons born outside Canada after the first generation, on or after the coming into force of this enactment, to a parent who is a citizen and who had a substantial connection to Canada before the person's birth;

(c) allow citizenship to be granted under section 5.1 of that Act to all persons born outside Canada who were adopted before the coming into force of this enactment by a parent who was a citizen;

(d) allow citizenship to be granted under section 5.1 of that Act to persons born outside Canada who are adopted on or after the coming into force of this enactment by a parent who is a citizen and who had a substantial connection to Canada before the person's adoption;

(e) restore citizenship to persons who lost their citizenship because they did not make an application to retain it under the former section 8 of that Act or because they made an application under that section that was not approved; and

(f) allow certain persons who become citizens as a result of the coming into force of this enactment to access a simplified process to renounce their citizenship.

The summary bullet pairs a/b and c/d make a distinction between those born before and after the act comes into force, and e indicates part of the objective of this change is to restore the citizenship of those who were unconstitutionally denied it in the past.  I think that is in keeping with the court ruling.  Considering this unconstitutional state is decades old, if the "substantial connection" requirement were allowed to be retroactive, there would be no remedy for those who were forced to break that substantial connection because they were wrongly denied citizenship.

In the bits you quoted from the website, there is a conjunctive "and" which includes the substantial connection requirement.  Please also note the word "likely".  The website is not meant to be a comprehensive description of entitlements.  It's just meant as a public notice that an amendment was made to the act and folks ought to go. Read the act to see all the details.

The conjunctive "and" is applied only to the section that starts, "If you were born outside of Canada on or after December 15, 2025".  It does not apply to the section that starts, "If you were born outside of Canada before December 15, 2025".  Also, while these sites aren't comprehensive, they are intended to be the first place laypeople go to get information about their situation.  If they are misleading about or contradict what the actual legislation says, that's a serious problem.

Lastly, the final paragraph you quoted not only means that there is a break in the "chain" it means that there is no possibility than to establish the requirements of the Canadian parent having had a substantial connection with Canada before the applicant was born.  That's just common sense not support for some implied argument that so long as there is some "chain" linking to some distant ancestor who wants stepped foot in Canada is all that is required to gain Canadian citizenship.

Actually, reading the bill I found that there is some level of chaining explicitly created by the amendments:

(4) Section 3 of the Act is amended by adding the following after subsection (1.4):
Citizen despite death of parent
(1.5) A person who would not become a citizen under one of the paragraphs of subsection (1) for the sole reason that their parent or both their parent and their parent's parent died before the coming into force of An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025) is a citizen under that paragraph if that parent — or both that parent and that parent's parent — but for their death, would have been a citizen as a result of the coming into force of that Act.

That's explicitl legislation implementing the intent expressed by summary bullet e.  That text is fundamentally incompatible with making the "substantial connection" requirement retroactive.

Do you have any idea how many tourists come to Canada and have done so since confederation?

The theory being supported by social media AI and GF is that the descendants of all of those people, no matter how many generations ago that tourists at foot in Canada, are now citizens.

What do tourists have to do with anything?  This is about people who have ancestors that were wrongly denied Canadian citizenship.  Nothing in the amendments makes a tourist any more eligible for citizenship than they were in the past.

Also, I want to be clear here, notwithstanding the couple anecdotes GF posted from Reddit about people actually getting citizenship under this act I'm relying entirely on the text of the bill, two government websites that should be authoritative (ialbeit not comprehensive), and a credible news report on the legislation.  I'm not outsourcing any fact-finding or analysis to Gemini, Reddit, or anywhere else other than credible news reporting on the subject.

#7

Off the Record / Re: TV/Movies Megathread

Last post by Norgy - Today at 10:28:31 AM

I agree. The casting of Dunk is very well done. Dunk is also one of the few Martin characters it's hard to dislike, mainly because he is Hodor with a bit more language.

I read the short stories a few years back, as I am late to the George R. R. Martin bandwagon, and later, when I did something stupid, I muttered "Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall" to myself.

The only downside is that the episodes are over too quickly. 

#8

Gaming HQ / Re: Miscellaneous instances of...

Last post by Norgy - Today at 08:28:18 AM

The new match engine is a "nice try", but the more polished graphics add very little to the overall game, I think.

FM24 is still superior in this old man's opinion.

#9

Off the Record / Re: TV/Movies Megathread

Last post by jimmy olsen - Today at 05:04:40 AM

Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has been incredible

#10

Off the Record / Re: Refractory Gauls, or the F...

Last post by Tamas - Today at 04:58:30 AM

I am with you, Valmy. Computer games, RPGs... Our generation had this same shit going on.

Before ours it was rock music and long hair.