@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

mpjgregoire

@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca

ingénieur, tory canadien, citoyen du Grand Montréal

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

How important is equality?

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@evan To quote Harry Frankfurt, “If everyone had enough, it would be of no moral consequence whether some had more than others.”

mpjgregoire, to bluesky
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@mick
Does have any policy about bridging posts to ? I'm inclined to make my account available there.

See https://fosstodon.org/@WetHat/112406647160038626

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@mick Actually, you don't need to answer that. I see that Evan, Boris and Tim are already bridging, so I suppose there's no issue.

mpjgregoire, (edited ) to random
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

As I've written in the past, I used to dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand, but I've become more open to them in the last ten years. One of theories that I think has some truth in it is the idea that are often not really spontaneous: in many cases there are hidden parties initiating or encouraging them.

1/4

mpjgregoire, (edited )
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

When I lived in Vancouver in 2000, I would sometimes walk by posters on poles alerting people to a protest against the "oil for food" sanctions regime that had been imposed upon Iraq. I wondered at the time, why that issue? Of all the suffering in the world, why was that of Iraqis drawing particular attention?

2/4

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

I think that there was probably some seed money from the government of Iraq behind it. I don't doubt that most activists genuinely cared about Iraqis, but I think someone with an expense account to pay for posters or pizzas could easily aim the general concern of people inclined to protest about the world towards a preferred goal.

I don't think most protesters are insincere. I don't think that all protests are "manufactured". But I think we should ask Why this? Why now? Cui bono?

3/4

mpjgregoire, (edited )
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

I should probably add that the the current protests about the Gaza War are more likely to be largely spontaneous than many other protests: we all know that the Israel-Palestine conflict is of great interest to many members of the public. By contrast, the suffering in Yemen or South Sudan doesn't get as much attention.

4/4

mpjgregoire, to politics
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

It's always interesting when someone whose politics you think you know supports something unexpected: the NRA member who opposes capital punishment, the socialist who favours free trade, the pro-life feminist. How often are beliefs only found in a set because of a historical coalition, not any deeper principle? Do you hold any beliefs at variance with your political in-group?

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@laimis Personally, I have some uncommon political opinions, but mostly they're what one would imagine for a Canadian Catholic tory. Perhaps my most unusual position among that group is my strong preference for free/libre software.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@bluGill @laimis
I think some useful lessons can be drawn from the Canadian experience with immigration policy.

Immigrants can integrate well into their new home, and even high levels of immigration can enjoy wide public support, but the necessary precondition is that immigration must be in accordance with a system established by law. If the public feels immigration is mostly uncontrolled, then they turn against it.

mpjgregoire, to France
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

"Obesity rate by country from 1990 to today, for selected countries. Time to study what France is doing right!"

https://twitter.com/randal_olson/status/1787575253033721906

w7voa, to random
@w7voa@journa.host avatar

IDF confirms its 401st Armored Brigade captured the Gazan side of Rafah Crossing on the Egyptian border this morning. Israel is now in control of all above-ground crossings into Gaza. https://www.timesofisrael.com/daily-briefing-may-7-day-214-has-the-idf-crossed-the-rubicon-into-rafah/

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@w7voa Didn't Israel already control all crossings into the Gaza Strip? Who was restricting the truckloads of supply if not Israel?

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@TiconderogaNo1
Strange that Egypt isn't blamed for hungry Palestinians then.

@w7voa

tilde, to random
@tilde@infosec.town avatar

"We abolished the inheritance of political power; why, then, should we not abolish the inheritance of economic power, too?"

insidestory.org.au/the-case-for-banning-billionaires/

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@tilde My principal political power is that of a citizen of Canada, an inheritance from my parents. Is there something wrong with hereditary citizenship?

normative, to random

A reminder that for the first couple centuries of our history, counting the ballots after an election routinely took weeks. As with total presidential immunity, the idea that ballot counting has to all be done on election night is a bizarre and completely novel fabrication. Nobody should dignify this nonsense by pretending to take it seriously.

RE: https://www.threads.net/@gtconway3dg/post/C6mnU0iJR08

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@normative Why did it take so long? We use paper ballots and hand counting in Canada, but we have the results of our elections by the next day.

maxboot, to random

The National Students for Justice in Palestine website approvingly quotes Mao Zedong and Vladimir Lenin, denounces “bourgeois democracy” and showers praise on the fundamentalist Houthis (“Yemeni comrades stopping commerce in the Red Sea”). It feels like something that could have been written by a propaganda ministry in Pyongyang or Caracas. https://wapo.st/3wpzOrU

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@maxboot No enemies to the Left.

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

"Media coverage of the Democratic Convention 2024 is going to be mostly focused on the huge antiwar protests outside."

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@evan Political conventions in the US have been mostly boring since the primary process made them a dead letter. Where's the conflict? Where's the surprise? You can't really blame the media for covering what goes on outside.

There's still time though for President Biden to step aside and release his delegates. Now that would be exciting...

peribotsarah, to random
@peribotsarah@babka.social avatar

Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" - in Yiddish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH1fERC_504

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@peribotsarah Lovely.

evan, to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

All human beings have value and deserve basic human rights.

We must work proactively to identify and correct systems that prevent people from exercising their rights.

This isn't complicated and it shouldn't be controversial.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@evan I'm also not sure what "wokisme" is supposed to mean in France.

FWIW, here's an essay from an American leftist in which he tries to express how wokism differs from previous approaches to leftist politics: https://web.archive.org/web/20230404013504/https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/of-course-you-know-what-woke-means

"[W]hether you think this is an accurate portrayal of the kind of politics that became dominant in progressive circles in the last 10-12 years, something happened. Something changed."

Of course campus protests as such are not new to US politics.

avi, to random
@avi@cosocial.ca avatar

A mnemonic for my kids to pronounce Euler correctly: “You learned it wrong; I learned it right.”

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@avi The Edmonton Eulers. There, easy to remember.

mpjgregoire, to random
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

I hope the Leafs win.

serge, to random
@serge@babka.social avatar

With the campus attacks on Jews going essentially unreported by "polite company", allows them to call these protests peaceful, which then provides moral justification for them to continue.

The existence of Jews who are being physically assaulted, who are blocked from accessing their dorms or classes, who are terrorized with threats of violence and murder, all of this is so easily dismissed to allow for the label of peaceful protest. In fact, they might argue it's the presence of Jews who make it non-peaceful.

It's a modern day interpretation of a "First They Ignore You, Then They Laugh at You' that feels very 1930s Germany.

First They Marginalize You. Then They Ignore You. Then They Exterminate You.

We're fighting for nothing less than our lives.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@serge When it comes to protests, they're so amorphous that it's easy to see what you expect to see in them. My media feed points out antisemitic incidents, but if I were just following the Toronto Star (let's say), I probably wouldn't hear about such incidents, or if I did they would point to the presence of Jews among the protesters to say that antisemitism is merely a fringe element — in certain protests that may even be true.

clacke, to random

"Voting isn’t marriage - it’s public transport. You are not waiting for “the one” who is absolutely perfect."

With this metric, is even marriage like marriage? Do people believe there is exactly one person out of seven billion that is your soulmate and you have to find them?

Tangent from:

mstdn.social/users/sandlapper3… @sandlapper37

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@clacke I gave this sort of thing a fair amount of thought back in my early 30s. This essay was good, as I recall: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/03/marry-him/306651/

Dr. Johnson also had some wisdom on the idea of "The One":
Boswell: "Pray, Sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty women in the world, with any one of whom a man may be as happy, as with any one woman in particular?" Johnson: "Ay, Sir, fifty thousand."


mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@clacke The Life of Samuel Johnson is widely considered the greatest of English biographies -- it really is very good, giving you an idea not just what he did, but what it would have been like to know him. And he was a very interesting fellow, with failings, quirks, and much wisdom, literary and otherwise.

Having read the biography myself, I don't think he regarded women as replaceable temptresses at all. Here, read the words of Nekayah in Rasselas: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/652/pg652-images.html

sandlapper37, to random
@sandlapper37@mstdn.social avatar
mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@sandlapper37
Marriage shouldn't be about waiting for "the one" who is absolutely perfect either. No one's absolutely perfect, neither are you. If you want to get married and have kids, find someone you think you'll be generally happy with and whom you think will be generally happy with you and choose to love that person as much as you can.

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