progressdeveloper

I think being a vet could be a pretty great job, so I briefly checked it out. Interestingly, it seems like it is really tough - not because of the difficulty of the program per se, but because there are only 5 vet schools in Canada, and they are very selective. Sounds like a policy failure. According to Gemini, to get in to a program, you are looking at: - an undergrad degree - 85% - 90% GPA - hundreds to thousands of hours of experience in a clinic and with "large animals" - a bunch of interviews potentially putting you at the mercy of your ability to bullshit - after that, 4 years in vet school at $20k / year Sounds worth it, though: "Canada is currently facing a massive shortage of veterinarians, meaning you are virtually guaranteed a high-paying job immediately upon graduation." I wonder if that is for the pet market or more like James Herriott type work? Fun fact: many vet clinics in North America, including mine, are owned by Mars, the chocolate bar company. T...

Ben came up with this question. These sorts of issues of balancing privacy and personal rights with public safety etc. are always interesting to me. Scenario: you are unconscious on the sidewalk. Someone calls 911. Paramedic goes thru your pockets to find your ID. In so doing, he finds "something" (illegal drugs, a gun, whatever). Can what he found be used against you? Short answer: YES. You can think of it the same as if you were walking past a police station and happened to drop a bag of meth. Cops could absolutely nail you for that. It would NOT be OK if the paramedic were going thru your pockets on the request of a cop, or against your regained-consciousness wishes, or under otherwise "non-medically required" circumstances. I wonder what protocols the paramedic folk have for going thru someone's wallet. Hopefully they are robust. --- Now you can extend this question to MD's. Suppose you go to your MD with some weird injury which causes him/her to realize...

The most interesting Economist articles are often buried deep and relatively short. One that caught my attention this week is a California ballot initiative to apply a one-time 5% tax on the wealth  (not income) of anyone who has more than $1B. Superficially, I like this idea: I have no problem, in principle, with taxing the shit out of billionaires and, broadly speaking, I don't buy that it would destroy incentive to create new businesses etc. Specifically, though: - a one-time tax sounds like a terrible idea, period. - fixating on a specific number is populist nonsense - doing it in CA only doesn't make a lot of sense. Doing it across the US makes a lot more sense. I expect many more people would move from CA to TX than would move from US to Europe - it does not solve the major problem of valuing assets - it seems unfair to tax paper gains that might disappear, without a mechanism to recover the tax paid (although - I am also onboard, to some extent, with "boo-fuckin...

I am enraged but also genuinely curious about this: I googled for a while and I could find almost nothing about what this guy actually said. It was all just vague accusations of hateful speech, which is obviously open to interpretation. That's what I'm curious about. Let's see some quotes! That said: there is no doubt that Barry Neufeld did a lot more than "express the view that there are only two biological genders". That's what I find enraging about this tweet. So, f*** John Cleese for implying that BC is a left-wing hellscape. That said: surely you should be allowed to express such opinions, assuming they don't cross a line into "hate speech", in the same way that no matter how pro-immigration you are, opining that someone else questioning immigration quotas is automatically a xenophobic racist is way offside. That said, it's easy to believe that Barry Neufeld is an asshole. Maybe JC is cancelling because he doesn't want to come to a p...

Ben and I have been playing "which countries/cities start with the letter ...", which comes from our mutual interest in GeoGrid, which is a Wordle type daily game thing based on that type of question. Behold, the miracle of AI: The fun part is that in this response from Gemini, many of the entries including A B D do not add up: the list of D's actually has 9 items in it, not 10, and so on. I'm sure it knows how to drive a car, though.

Sometimes I think my admiration for The Economist, and how much I depend on it for my world view, is going up at about the same pace as the number of things they say that I disagree with or have trouble believing. Last week they had one of the most interesting articles I have ever read about inequality. The TLDR is that while it's beyond debate that pre-tax inequality has risen sharply in the last two decades or so, after tax inequality has barely budged. In other words, governments have done a decent job of tax and subsidies. They had all kinds of statistics and graphs supporting this belief. Here's one: This is showing that spending by the 1% is actually less than spending by the lowest 50%, since the late 1990's. Well, that's great and all, but it kind of glosses over the fact that rich people still spend around 18x more than poor people, on average, or, that spending is just one part of the picture. Graphing income would, presumably, look much less favorable. The ac...

We went to see Brent Butt, of Corner Gas fame, at Just for Laughs Vancouver last night. This is the third time we have done so. 10/10 would recommend. He's hilarious, and, crucially, 99.99% family-friendly, a critical factor with my spouse. Also, tickets were fairly cheap, around $40 I think. --- The countdown to Australia has begun. Our flight leaves a week today at 10 PM on Sunday night, arriving in Sydney around 9 AM on Tuesday. A friend sent me this video explaining what looks like the bonkers technique for executing a right turn (equivalent to our left turn) there. AFAIK, it's just in Melbourne, which makes it even more of a WTF. https://share.google/0uK9slcyY3DJhfoi8

I may very well live to regret this, but I am feeling so good about running these days, I decided to take it one notch higher: The Calgary marathon is May 24, three weeks after the YVR one, and I'm going to give it a go, given I can get there relatively cheaply and quickly. My first choice would have been Ottawa, but it is full up. All other major Canadian cities have marathons, too, but their dates are not as appealing. I met this older guy in Haida Gwaii who had done 11, and I have this vague idea that that would be worthy goal. If all goes well, at the end of 2026, I'll be halfway there ;)

We watched Jerry Maguire last night. That is absolutely a top-10 favorite movie of mine; it is so full of poignant moments and good lines ("I love him for the man he wants to be and I love him for the man he almost is!", "It's not show friends, it's show business", "You had me at hello", "You complete me", "Show me the money", etc). With that said, I will criticize two things: 1. The scene where Jerry's gravy train client ("Cush") betrays him, the Dad was lying to him the whole time, makes little sense. How did the Dad and Cush think that was going to end? 2. The "message" is confused. At first it seems like it's going to be about the evils of being overly money obsessed. But then it kind of flips around. And then back again. Should we worship money or not? I don't have a strong opinion about Tom Cruise but I think he was perfectly cast and did a great job here. We went to see this movie in a real...

I went on a monster run this morning, somewhat unexpectedly: I kinda planned to do 20k but it was going so well that I did an extra lap and hit 31, at an almost unbelievable (well, for me) pace. One of the nice things about running is all that time to let the mind wander. (On shorter runs, I listen to podcasts, but for longer ones, usually music). Today I got thinking about Chariots of Fire. I think I liked this movie, but it was so long ago and I was such a different person then! Anyway, this line from it has always resonated, even though back then, I was by no means a runner (started in my late 20's, I guess): When I run, I can feel his pleasure. It's spoken by, IIRC, character's name was Eric Liddell, a real person, who was motivated by religious faith. I, obviously, am hugely NOT motivated by religious faith, but even so, I think it's a lovely line, and I think I kinda know what he meant. -- As far as I know not from the movie, but this is also an Eric Liddell quote...

I saw a post yesterday, one of those that would make anyone with even moderately progressive tendencies (like me) scream. It was ranting against public health care and was written in a sarcastic style, sort of like this: "Of course I want to pay for health care for people who smoke! Or drink excessively! Or get HIV from unprotected sex! Or overdose from taking heroin all the time! Or break all their legs riding their bike recklessly! Or shoves weird things up their butts! Or..." [list goes on of expensive health care situations that are, arguably, the "fault" of the victim). I have no problem writing this kind of thing off completely. But it did get me to wondering. My health care system aware sister once asserted that some huge % of health care costs are incurred in the last few months of life (and therefore, things like charging for routine doctor's visits and ER encounters wouldn't move the needle). But that doesn't take into account the "irresp...

We randomly watched this movie on Crave, we had seen the trailer ages ago: This movie confirms my building belief that Olivia Colman movies are reliably good. Rufus Sewell from The Diplomat is also a secondary character. Honestly, from the trailer and from growing up in a world full of Hollywood slop, I kept waiting for the twist, possibly ending in a literal gunfight. In the event, there is no twist. It is what it appears from the first frame. But it's still quite poignant and worth the time. --- Incidentally, I listened to Olivia Colman on Good Hang (Amy Pohler's podcast, recommended by The Economist) which cemented my belief that, even with a very likeable guest, Good Hang is just awful. Not as bad as Michelle Obama. That was even worse.

 We went to this movie, my spouse chose it and I went in not even knowing the title: Incredible movie. I can't stop thinking about it. Baffled that it seems to have got ho-hum reviews. One small detail: it had three sex scenes in it, of a sort, all of which were incredibly sad in their own way. They also did a great job of making Germany, or at least Germans, sympathetic in a subtle sort of way. Anyway, the whole movie was deeply tragic. But hugely recommended. I don't particularly like or dislike Ralph Fiennes, but I made a mental note to give The English Patient another try one of these days. We went to see it at The Park on Cambie, which is one of the very few old-school (and therefore relatively huge, single-screen) theatres left in Vancouver. The heating was broken and it was uncomfortably chilly in there. Plus, the seating was noticeably less inclined than in modern theatres - had it been full, which it was not, this could have been a real problem.

My camping-hiking friend Dave is on a multi-week group bike tour through Cambodia and Vietnam and has been sending out daily emails, which I really enjoy reading. That kind of thing tends to be a bit "Yay Me", but if you know Dave, you'd know that they seem very honest, even ... guileless ??? Is that the right word? Anyway, it looks super, super fun, and I am low-level envious. But it made me think: 1. Dave is almost the only person I know with whom I might possibly do such a thing; I'd love to do it with Sam, but I'm not sure Vietnam is really his bag. Doing it solo (or even with someone like Dave) would be maritally problematic. Therefore, I am unlikely to ever do a trip like this. I would not 100% rule out doing the Camino by bike with Sam or Ben, but I would 55% rule it out. They are busy people and it's probably way too boring for them. 2. I am going to Australia in 3 weeks and, that will quite possibly be my last trip to the southern hemisphere; I still ...

Needless to say, hard disagree: That said, Ben had a great question. Do the countries that currently have nukes build them themselves, or, eg. does China / Russia etc. sell them to NK / Pakistan etc. and USA to Israel / UK / France ? The short answer is, everyone builds them themselves. The longer answer is, some including Israel, Pakistan, India developed them with the assistance of other countries, at times unintentional (Canada helped India by giving them a reactor intended for power generation). But they all now have domestic production. The UK builds its own warheads, but leases the missiles from the US; an arrangement that is presumably much shakier than it was prior to January 2025, now that is possible to imagine a scenario in which the US will have its own missiles pointed back at them.

Costa Rica has a new president, and it's a she; for whatever reason, contrary to their reputation for machismo, Latin American countries seem to have above average representation of women presidents. At one point, Argentina, Chile, Brazil and CR all did. At the moment, Mexico, Japan, CR and Italy do. Yes,  I know Japan and Italy aren't in Latin America, but let's give them an honorable mention. And yes, I'm sure there are a few other female presidents out there. France will almost certainly get one in 2027, and Germany might in their next elections (which must be 2029-ish). Like most of LA, CR has a multi-round voting system whereby to win, someone has to get a minimum threshold of votes (usually 50% but in CR's case, only 40%). Otherwise, some fraction of the low performers are chopped and the election is run again, typically 2-4 weeks later. Obviously not an expert but between a) our FPTP system b) LA's multi-round system and c) the PR system that we have repe...

One of my pet peeves: I try to not think the worst of people and spread cynicism, but these sorts of things seem very likely to be brazen attempts to get people to fund an adventurous but costly trip. If you want to row across that Atlantic, go for it, but don't expect me to donate money to it. If you want to ask me for money for brain cancer, go for it, but don't give me some story about rowing across the Atlantic depending on it.