brianpeiris

joined 2 years ago
 

The Pickering robotics teams is representing Canada at the FIRST Lego League Worlds tournament in South Africa. They qualified at the Ontario provincials and are raising funds for their trip to Worlds.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/705-cn-pickering-team-canada-goes-to-south-africa-worlds

 

This isn't about Canada specifically, but it feels like required knowledge given our proximity to the US

 

Basel Adra has been documenting the expulsion and decimation of his community in the small mountain village of Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank since childhood. Adra’s early memories as a child are plagued with images of Israeli soldiers raiding his home, witnessing his father Nasser, a Palestinian activist, being arrested, and the ongoing Israeli military occupation and settler aggression. By picking up his camera, Adra continually speaks truth to power as he tirelessly documents his reality: impending forced removals, bulldozers destroying homes, and the violence that inevitably follows. The film takes place prior to October 7, 2023, when attention to the region was in shorter supply.
During Adra’s fight to preserve his mountain village community, he forms an unexpected friendship and alliance with Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, who joins his resistance efforts. It is clear this bond is not one grounded in equity, with Adra living under occupation and Abraham’s freedom of movement. Yet the relationship that develops between the two — showing deep care, humanity, and above all how solidarity can break down barriers, even during occupation — is at the heart of this piece.
Made under extreme duress and unimaginable production hardships, this film comes from a Palestinian-Israeli activist collective formed of Adra, Abraham, Rachel Szor, and Hamdan Ballal. For its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, No Other Land earned the top documentary jury and audience prizes in the prestigious Panorama section. This film would stand out in any year, but now it feels even more urgent.

11
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by brianpeiris@lemmy.ca to c/toronto@lemmy.ca
 

Imagine Cinemas' Carlton location is a small theatre that usually screens movies that are offbeat, indie, classics, anime, and documentaries, in addition to the latest releases. The company is local to Ontario and family-owned. They have $5 deals on movies regularly, especially when they're showing classics.

I'm a regular there and at their Market Square location too. This week I watched "Lucy: The Stolen Lives of Elephants", an excellent documentary about the plight of elephants in zoos, and a hope for their future in sanctuaries. The Canadian filmmakers are hosting Q&A's at all the 6:50PM showings this week (another thing that Carlton often does).

To be clear, I'm not affiliated with them. I'm just a movie lover :)

https://imaginecinemas.com/cinema/carlton/

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/40849390

The latest article from SourcedPress details how Palestinian civilians, children, mothers, have been systematically starved of food and aid, now going on 1.5 years. SourcedPress articles are dense by design. More than 80% of the article is backed by supporting documents, fact-checked by at least four verifiers. You can see the citations, source material, and fact-checking notes inline, as you read. You get transparent access to all the effort behind the journalism.

34
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by brianpeiris@lemmy.ca to c/buycanadian@lemmy.ca
 

Buy Beaver was created by a couple of entrepreneurs based in Montreal. It's a free app and they're currently just supporting the project with donations.

 

Didn't expect to see Ryan Donais there, but the man himself was checking in on the housed, and I got to shake his hand. Keep it up Ryan!

[–] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I hope it works too, but IMO it's not just a matter of this one protest or just Bill 212. Doug Ford has been using these tactics in many other areas and it will take a concerted, persistent effort to bring attention to them and generally fight against this style of conservatism. I'm in it for the long run because the US has shown us what's in store if we don't protest at all.

[–] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm using :Rg in the mapping, which calls ripgrep via fzf.vim, so it searches across all files in a project and gives me a preview of all the results.

[–] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 24 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I've had enough of the talking heads. I'm just going to check in on the AP News results map occasionally. Fortunately I have a few days off, so I'm going to distract myself otherwise.

https://apnews.com/projects/election-results-2024/

[–] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm using :Rg here, which calls ripgrep to perform a search across all files in a directory. So it's not just a search within a single buffer.

[–] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Seems like a good time to remind people of this excellent (enraging) visualization:
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

[–] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 7 points 8 months ago

Thanks for calling that out. I'm sure it's a complex problem, especially for remote reserves. I just found out about this organisation who seem to be actively tackling part of the problem https://waterfirst.ngo/

[–] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 24 points 9 months ago

I would absolutely love to stop following American news, and that will happen when I don't have to worry about Trumpf infecting world politics.

[–] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 10 points 10 months ago

The author is Elsa Lam -- The editor of the Canadian Architect magazine, PhD, Fellow with the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, Honorary member of the Ontario Association of Architects. She knows her stuff!

[–] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's only a 12 minute video, so I'd recommend watching it, but here's my (kinda long) summary if you prefer reading:

  • The Ontario government abruptly shutdown the Ontario Science Centre on July 21st
  • They claim that engineering reports about the centre's roof require the shutdown (actually the reports do not require a complete shutdown and only call for repairs [* see my additions below])
  • The closing has been controversial. Many call it a calculated political move
  • The situation is intertwined with the government's plans for Ontario Place
  • The Ontario Place plans display symptoms of corruption, where the government seems to have given a portion of the land to Therme Spa without a good business justification, without public consultation, and without an environmental assessment. The government then passed a law to exempt itself from environmental assessments.
  • Doug Ford has connections to execs at Therme, who have connections to Ford's previous companies and staff.
  • The government plans to move Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place, but it seems this move is being used to justify an expensive parking lot attached to the new science centre, but which will actually serve Therme's contract.
  • The Science Centre's roof issues have been known and ignored for years.
  • The roof is made of a type of concrete that is also used in hundreds of buildings in Ontario, including schools -- there has been no call to shut those down.
  • The engineering reports say that the roof can be repaired by closing off those areas alone.
  • The original architects say the shutdown is unnecessary and have offered their services for free.
  • Multiple private donors have offered millions in funds to repair the roof
  • The government's estimates for repairs are extremely inflated, so moving the centre to Ontario Place is not actually cheaper.
  • The government's estimates for building a new centre at Ontario Place are significantly underestimated.
  • The government's business case for moving the centre focuses on the value of the land, not the educational and cultural value of the centre
  • The land will be even more valuable when the transit lines open at that location (which were meant to serve the science center)
  • The government's business case suggests building housing at that location.
  • The video then switches to spectulation about the motivations:
    • The science centre is owned by the province, but the land is leased by the city with the requirement that it only be used for a science centre
    • The government is painting a picture aimed to justify the shutdown.
    • They declare the building dilapidated and unsafe, which lessens the public's perception of the centre
    • They are attempting to dump the cost of the centre onto the city, knowing the city cannot afford it
    • Without repairs, the government could just wait for the roof to be further compromised with snowfall, fulfilling the government's justification
    • The government could then renegotiate the lease and use the land for housing, perhaps given to contractors who were promised land in the government's failed Greenbelt initiative
    • The whole situation reeks of backroom deals and corruption
    • Although the Ontario Place plans may have some positive benefits in the end, it does not justify the process and motivation for abruptly and permanently shutting down the Ontario Science Centre. Doug Ford has learned from his failed Greenbelt plans and is apparently attempting to force his agenda once again.

* An extensive analysis by an expert architect at Canadian Architect Magazine has also verified that the shutdown is not a safety requirement, and that the government's claimed repair costs are vastly overblown (https://www.canadianarchitect.com/the-true-cost-of-repairing-the-ontario-science-centre-is-much-much-less-than-what-infrastructure-ontario-has-been-saying-and-the-proof-is-in-its-own-documents/)

[–] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the response! I think Pixelfed would be a great addition, since it will probably be popular. I'm not so sure about BookWyrm. Its network is fairly healthy, and it's usually used as an alternative to Amazon's Goodreads, but it maybe one that is worth surveying the community about.

Looking forward to Fedecan's future!

[–] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Glad to hear it. A Grafana dashboard sounds cool!

[–] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 6 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone involved in formalizing this. Really helps to know that lemmy.ca will be support and stable for a while to come. I really also love the census you did. Would love to see that continue. I've signed up to support monthly through GitHub.

I'm going to brain-dump some suggestions that come to mind for the future:

  • I really like how OpenCollective.com makes it easy to see the incoming and outgoing transactions for a fund. You've setup up a bunch of payment options already, so I don't want to add to that burden, but it would be cool to see a similar kind of reporting for Fedecan -- it doesn't have to be super sophisticated, heck even a CSV transaction log would do. It would be useful for transparency, but also so that the community can ensure Fedecan's expenses are comfortably paid for.
  • My dream is that the Fediverse provides viable alternatives to big tech's social platforms, and the first thing that comes to mind is how Facebook and its various services are the default for so many people. Facebook' Social Graph, Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, Facebook Marketplace and Instagram come to mind. If Fedecan can work towards providing a stable alternative to even one of those, it would be an effort worth supporting.
  • Currently the only other Fediverse services I use are Mastodon through social.coop, and BookWyrm through Bookrastinaing. I'd love to see Fedecan build or support essential services like that.
  • This is leaving the Fediverse scope, but I recently learned about an initiative from India where they're tackling monopolies like Uber by building services that don't take commission. NammaYatri.in is one example. They use the Beckn protocol and India's ONDC stack. In the very long term, I wonder if Fedecan could support those kinds of initiatives, to setup alternatives with healthier incentives baked in.
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