Statistics Canada has over the last year shown that tourism to US from Canada is down by a lot and it's not getting better. Hell, as an anecdote, I keep seing ads on TV like: Come to Disneyland! We got rebates for canadians!
I go to Disneyland nearly every weekend and the increase in foreigners is insane. Clearly a lot of people visiting that would have been going to Florida decided on California instead.
As a Floridian who owns a unit in a condotel [1]. The property management company is outright saying that tourism is down affecting income. All of the other owners who were dumb enough to buy them as “investments” are complaining.
We don’t care because we are the only people who live there mostly year round and only leave during spring break and the summer when domestic tourism is high.
Last year we cancelled a planned US vacation, this year we didn't even think about it. Going back to Europe two years in a row. I don't give a fuck about tariff policy of our supposed "friends" but when our "friend" repeatedly threatens our independence and sovereignty, no thanks. Not going to step into the USA for a long time.
I surprised more US folks dont visit Canada, its amazing, much safer, and cheaper for them because of the exchange difference. Im guessing they see prices in CAD ($), and think its more expensive, but not realizing that $1 of theirs buys $1.35 CAD.
It's probably just that it doesn't feel like there's much to "get" there.
If you go south you get sun and beaches. The coastal regions of Canada will be comparable to the coastal regions of New England and the Pacific Northwest, so there's no need to go all the way there if that's the sort of beach you're looking for.
Likewise your outdoors, your cities and restaurants and museums are all going to be about the same as the options available in the US, just further away. It's not really "exotic".
We don't really have the same emigrant relationship with Canada; my grandfather's family spent a couple generations in Canada, but my mother only found out about it after he died. He considered his family to be Irish and to have come from Ireland; that they came to the US via a couple of generations spent in New Brunswick was never a part of the family lore.
So there's no real "visiting the home of my ancestors" sort of feeling you'd otherwise see.
I don't know about "exotic", but for anyone living in the northeast of the US, the easiest way to visit Europe (sort of) is to drive up to Montreal/Quebec.
Or they can go to St Augustine, New Orleans, or mid Manhattan to also get that Euro-Architecture feel (sort of).
Having been to Europe, no comparison.
Nothing prepares you for walking along a city street then “oh fuck, a castle…” and learning that it is now, the city’s government building. Cool… (Stuttgart, you’re awesome)
Museums and public art galleries are notably worse in Canada, honestly.
But, I think there some unique things worth seeing for an American: The old parts of Montreal/Quebec city, and the Alberta Rockies, especially the corridor between Banff and Jasper.
It's not so much what's better as whether it's different enough to attract a significant tourist group from areas with similar attractions nearby.
Like, if you want to see a rain forest or a thousand year old Buddhist temple or a pyramid, there's not really a substitute in the continental US.
But if you've two options, where you can go to the pretty good option domestically or drive past it and continue on to the much better option in another country ... most people will be happy with the closer option, even if there's some small number of people who want the best or have seen all the closer options before and want something different or just whimsically like the idea of going to the further-away one none of their friends have been to.
Spent a delightful weekend in Quebec last month. Beautiful city, great culture, friendly people, best damn duck I have ever eaten in the a resteraunt they must having teleported from southern France
I don't visit Canada for the same reason I don't do a whole lot of touristy stuff here in the US: The travel costs aren't really _that_ much cheaper vs going somewhere more exotic like South America, Europe, Asia, etc, and it feels a bit too much like "home".
Living on the west coast, Vancouver's the easiest to get to -- I love Vancouver (and Victoria), and I've been both places several times, and I've gone to Whistler a handful of times as well, but, again, it's a lot like where I grew up in Seattle.
I really do want to visit Montreal sometime, but I also want to visit Chicago and Memphis and a lot of other "domestic" locations that I somehow never find the time for.
Also, when you grow up in a country you have a lot of local knowledge from culture, friends, television, education, so we just know a lot more about domestic places we haven't (yet) visited. Plus, a substantial number of people don't have passports. We used to be able to visit Canada easily without one, now we cannot.
Montreal is the exception to the rule about Canada not being differentiated enough from the US to encourage tourism. It really is quite different than anywhere in the US, it’s more like going to a funny speaking part of France without having to travel so far. They also mostly speak English, which makes it a bit less exotic but more convenient.
Canada is great. Montreal feels like a stylish and fun European city.
As a film lover, I've been to the Toronto film festival many times, it's an unmatched experience--so many things to see, and watch films with a very engaged festival crowd just makes them better. (In the same way, even if you don't love Star Wars, going on opening weekend, with the most enthusiastic fans, makes the experience better.) And given that nearly half of Toronto's population was born outside of Canada, it makes even New York feel a little parochial.
With a few possible exceptions, Canada isn't really cheaper for US tourists. They get more CAD for their US dollars, but most prices in Canada are scaled up accordingly, so it ends up being pretty much the same or more expensive.
I think there are some parts of Canada worth visiting from the US:
* Montreal - it's a big-ish city, without piss in the subways. Also the restaurant scene is good, and the old town is worth seeing.
* Quebec City - again, the old town is worth seeing. There's not much else in the US/Canada like it.
* Alberta Rockies - The corridor between Banff and Jasper is beautiful. Also, Waterton is decent. It's right across the border from Glacier NP in Montana, but less crowded. And for skiers, the Alberta Rockies also probably had the best snow in North America this past year.
> I surprised more US folks dont visit Canada, its amazing, much safer, and cheaper for them because of the exchange difference.
1. A lot of people can't afford vacations right now
2. For people in the US, socially and culturally, there's not much of a "drive" or desire to visit Canada. I've worked for Canadian companies, etc. I've never once in my entire life heard somebody talk about visiting Canada. It's always someplace warm and tropical or it's Europe or Asia.
Visiting Quebec from the East Coast is great. Driving distance, plus Montreal and Quebec City are both different enough to feel like you’ve gone somewhere different. Plus the people are just really nice.
If you mean North East US, that whole area is a different thing. You guys (US NE + Eastern Canada) are practically neighbors compared to Miami, Houston, or Los Angeles folks :) Also probably more used to the cold!
Quick question about US folks traveling to Canada: are cars with US plates being vandalized in Canada? I was thinking to drive and stay in Vancouver for a few days but I would not want to get a graffiti on my car (or worse)
As long as you don't have a MAGA bumper sticker, I doubt it. Most Canadians have some American friends, so we're usually pretty good at separating "Americans" from "the American government".
Especially in Vancouver, most people should be pretty aware that anyone with Washington/Oregon plates (which I'm guessing is what you have) probably hates Trump more than they do.
In Vancouver specifically, they'd have issues distinguishing your car from any others on the road, because there's lots of foreign (US/Alberta) plates there for some reason (I understand it's some insurance thing). At least, that seemed to be the case when I was there recently.
No, most people recognize a government isn’t reflective of individual people and are kind. If anything you’ll be more likely to be let in on the road if you are in the wrong lane assuming you don’t know where you are going. Having said that I wouldn’t wear/sticker political messaging, namely Trump and MAGA given current realities, but really of any type.
I've never understood why somebody behind me on the road would care at all about what my political views were anyway. I guess I get it during an election, maybe (in a grammar school "inventor contest" which happened to be during the 1980 US presidential election, I invented a bumper sticker sleeve that attaches to your car, so you could swap out political bumper stickers after your candidate lost. I didn't win the contest.) But in the end I don't really understand putting any sort of social signaling of any kind on my cars, though it seems hard to avoid even by just the kind of car you drive.
Closer to topic, I've always thoroughly enjoyed my trips to Canada, and can't imagine why people think "it's just like the US, so why bother" as seems to have been expressed ny some in this thread. I somewhat recently drove up to Roberval, Quebec from my home in New England, and it was absolutely nothing like the US. I find the rural Quebecois very odd, refreshingly direct, and enjoyable to hang out with.
I'd take that election atmosphere and then recognize Canadians are living in a charged environment with cost of living/quality of life/economy changing and uncertainty. Many Canadians see Trump & his with the de facto support he has (in that nothing has been done about it despite posturing) as a threat and root cause of much of it. Not all of that's true or due to him or the US. But it means nobody down there will meaningfully protect Canada with his threats/economic war if they can't even block his domestic chaos. Folks are happy to see other folks and appreciate visitors but they also recognize a threat. Just like in America. So agree why publicize foreign political views.
Perhaps in the white vs black experience lens that most of my US friends seem to see every world conflict through to relate to their own history (wild conversations about Middle Eastern politics there being racial), it's like wearing something racially inflammatory to the wrong neighbourhood. If one's blowing $$,$$$ on bespoke fly in tourism you can probably get away with it with a polite topic change as tourism keeps food on the table, but park a Trump sticker on a residential street I'd be surprised if even in the nicest neighbourhood there isn't some damage to it. Likely from a teenager goofing off with friends in the current environment.
To the second individually most Americans are nice in my experience, if you are seen as a person and not anonymous in the crowd. I've had a family member get a rifle leveled at them for stepping over a property line in the US where clearly they weren't seen as a fellow human... what can I say to that or the normalization of it.
We recently went to Niagara falls on the Canadian side and it was fun. Canadian sales taxes and fees took some of the currency difference, but yes we had a decent deal on a steak dinner in the tourist trap.
So this. A year ago my wife and I did a road trip up into Canada (Kelowna BC region). It was a new experience. I’ve been up into Canadian provinces many times (20+ over the years), but because of the anti Canadian rhetoric that Trump and company were putting out at the time, I was embarrassed and eager for people to not actually know I was from the states. I was hyper aware of the Washington state license plates on our car. I have never felt that way before. Ashamed to be an American. Afraid of the association it implied. Anxious that people would be reductionist, unable to realize that I was not just an American, but a frustrated helpless American.
The Canadian people I met as we travelled were all amazing. I was humbled that they took time to talk. And were less interested in identity than issues. One older gentleman, who saw us pull into the McDonalds with Washington plates approached us in the foyer and wanted to tell me that despite what others might say, I was welcome there. It was on one hand kinda weird and at the same time really touching.
I just saw this recent survey about whether or not people view their fellow citizens as morally good. Canada ranks first, with 92% respondents answering affirmatively.
It's not hard to imagine people like these extending their good will to foreigners, even "hostile" ones.
In contrast, "The United States is the only place we surveyed where more adults (ages 18 and older) describe the morality and ethics of others living in the country as bad (53%) than as good (47%)."
This is true in most scenarios, and the opposite is also true – that Americans are famously friendly, and even though Canadians may not want to visit to make a point, I think even they would agree that most day to day interactions they'd have would be warm and welcoming.
There might be a bit more hockey ribbing for the next few weeks, but I know there's a ton of respect for Canada's team.
At the end of the day, the idea of "My problem is with the government, and not the people" is as old as time.
I am also a Canadian who has decided not to visit the US until further notice, and honestly, I'm sad about it.
In my 20+ years of regularly travelling to the States, I've almost always had great interactions with the people I've met in all parts of the US I've visited, and I've been all over. "Warm and welcoming" is a very good description.
I think you’re all within your right to keep your distance from us. Our disgraceful leadership, even if it doesn’t accurately represent our people, we must suffer under it but no reason for you to do the same. We just hope you’re aware it’s only a few more years and we can begin to heal the whole relationship with more sane leaders that hopefully do see the strength and value in a positive relationship with a northern neighbor.
If not, please send help or accept our political refugees because we will have become permanently screwed if this behavior continues past our current orange phase.
Elections are not good sample of our collective values. The approval rating is quite low and is probably a better measure.
But when it comes to elections, first, somehow “we” get 2 bad choices every time. This last time, I personally feel they were 2 incredibly terrible choices. Then the fumbling from the other side basically assured orange man’s victory. It was a disaster of an election (but sadly appropriate as it seems like every thing we do is a disaster now.)
We also have a low voter turnout. So the result isn’t really complete and probably has some bias.
We also have an electoral college which means the winner can have less than 50% of the popular vote and win.
I could probably go on but I feel the point has been made that election outcomes are not the proxy you think
If "both sides" are equally bad, then both sides equally represent the people, no?
> I could probably go on but I feel the point has been made that election outcomes are not the proxy you think
The purpose of a system is what it does. There are not many grassroots efforts to change the many negatives you listed. Tacit approval - whether through nor voting or not fixing what is broken - does not lessen culpability. The outcome is still accurate representation on the aggregate.
If 4 housemates always have a dirty kitchen, it's a reflection on all of them. It may fall short of their ideals, or they can blame Bob for not doing dishes, not fixing a problem whose root they know is an indictment, not an excuse.
Most Canadians are visiting Hawaii and California, not Arkansas and South Dakota, so the point still stands for the states most people are going to. (Although Florida and Arizona are both pretty popular destinations too, which somewhat contradicts my point)
South Dakota actually has a few decent tourist attractions west river: (Mt Rushmore, Badlands, Crazy Horse).
With its proximity to Canada, and relative cheapness, likely pulls in quite a few tourists from up North.
One additional South Dakota attraction (although lessening interest as of late) is how much hunting/fishing is available, and how much the community is interested in the ‘visiting’ hunter.
Oh, I wasn't aware of that, thanks! I guess I was only thinking of warmer places, since that's where I tend to travel to. I personally live a bit too far north to drive to the US (in a reasonable amount of time), so I completely forgot that the US is close enough for a summer road trip for most Canadians.
Same has been true the 2-3 times I've visited Canada. I don't think that'll change. I remember how things got pretty heated during the run up to the Iraq War. And we hope that the friendship will endure.
Ironically in my experience anyways, this is true more so in parts that are more strongly "Canada should be the 51st state" politically. e.g. the south, where I find day to day interactions with people there are much more friendly than say California.
Washington has more in common with BC than with Alabama or Florida. Except for the Pig War, which was more of a disagreement between neighbors over their fence line.
> Short of voting, protesting and getting into arguments with MAGA people I don't know what else I can effectively do.
Also:
Give money to organizations that are doing the work on your behalf. Lawsuits are still important.
Call or write your reps *frequently*. They use software to automatically tabulate voter positions. (And they look at it--they want to keep their jobs!)
I’ve been making an effort to visit Canada and Europe more instead of domestic US tourism. I used to go to Florida multiple times a year. Not anymore and you know, Canada is such a great place, am there right now on vacation.
So I live in Florida. People leave Canada this time a year because of the weather. If anything, go further south to Central America. Costa Rica and Panama are safe countries.
They leave it because they have probabled lived in a winter climate their entire lives and want a change / have gotten older and it's harder on their bodies.
If you've never experienced a real winter or done neat things like winter sports then visiting Canada in the winter is a great travel experience.
You're getting downvoted, but people should be aware that arguments like this sometimes only reinforce the other party's position in their minds. My recommendation is also not to bother with those debates (unless you're doing it to find deficiencies in your own position).
There are elements of truth to this, but then there's other elements (here) who have said that we somehow owe it to people to argue in good faith with them when they are talking of (the ones I've personally had mentioned): post-birth abortion ("in several Democrat states, abortion is legal up to one month post birth!"), adrenochrome harvesting, etc.
That it was my/our fault such views propagate because we're not "willing to understand their perspectives".
The thing is, their perspectives are a lie. And in many cases, they know they're a lie, they just don't. fucking. care.
So they can go online and whine about being dismissed or criticized, or pat each other on the back for "knowing the truth". There's a subset who, I'm sure, see such things as actual literal truth, and that's a different issue altogether, but not sure it's my responsibility to solve, or that failure to engage on my part makes the current situation "my fault".
> It's not really a choice but a demonstration of intelligence and empathy. Still, if you deliberately decide to remain ignorant, or simply fail to understand the opposition's position even despite your best efforts, it shouldn't surprise you when you also fail to convince people your position is the correct one.
Like huh? It is okay for them to be objectively dishonest, and have zero shred of empathy, curiosity for my position, but refusing to engage on a good faith basis is a failing of mine?
> Once you reach this stage, your commentary pretty much just becomes elaborate whining, which makes a poor impression of yourself and actually pushes people away from your position.
This is literally Idiocracy in the making.
If I make a poor impression on people by repeatedly shutting down their horseshit about doctors performing "abortions" up to a week or a month after birth, or that babies are being harvested in the basement of a pizza parlor for their adrenachrome, and you're more concerned about how I should be "understanding" of that perspective, again, you're also supporting the idiocracy.
No sitting member of Congress has ever been recalled and it’s almost certainly unconstitutional. Article I only outlines one way to remove a sitting representative or senator, and that’s expulsion by a vote of the chamber in which they sit
Congress is one power structure. States and cities are others. 19 states have recall procedures. The fed is much less powerful domestically without state-level support. And pulling down even a couple state reps would send a chilling message to the fed.
For me it's not about politics at all. Just the thought of going through TSA and immigration is enough to discourage me, especially when I can hop on a plane to Spain, Italy or Cyprus and face 0 inconveniences along the way.
> For me it's not about politics at all. Just the thought of going through TSA and immigration is enough to discourage me
The conditions of TSA and the immigration system are...not independent of politics (or even independent of the top tier of most divisive partisan political issues in the current American context.)
Yeah I mentioned it because I have semi-permanent home there. Luckily we left before the war started. I am just getting government SMS with warnings now.
Gah that must suck. I hope you all ride this out without mishap. It's got to be so frustrating, it's like a bunch of gangsters having it out in the street where you live.
The whole social media history and phone searching thing makes me nervous, you're one bad-taste meme about Charlie Kirk and a butt-hurt CBP agent away from a very long and painful detention process.
American here. I have to agree with this sentiment (without getting into the math of our deeply flawed election system).
The administration could not do any of this without the support of Congress, which has not wavered. That support is unwavering because those elected officials are not getting negative feedback from their voters and donors, so they have every expectation that staying this course will work out just great for them.
This administration's actions only continue with the approval of their party who put them and keep them in power.
Congress has received plenty of negative feedback from their voters. The intensity and frequency of Republican voters confronting their representatives over many administration policies (e.g., Medicaid cuts, ACA subsidy cuts, tariffs, Epstein, influence of unelected officials) when those representatives hold in-person town halls has led to representatives greatly reducing in-person town halls, replacing them with tele-town halls so they can cut off people.
It won't be. Even if the house swings to the democrat side it will be a marginal swing only, not a massive change. Who knows if the Senate will even flip at all.
Half of America loves what's happening and the other half doesn't believe the first half loves it.
Agreed but we also have to stop saying "the majority support this" or "half the country supports this" it ain't true and leads people to feel hopeless.
Yet, if we re-did the election today, we'd have the same outcome. People might not support what is happening but they will never "vote for the other guy." I personally know people who disagree with everything that's going on, but they'll still vote (R) next time "because I'm a (R)," as if it's their intrinsic physical trait like hair color.
The special elections that have been happening don't agree with this hypothesis. Dems are currently outperforming Harris by 30+ point margins even in places like Texas
This is a good analysis but I’ll say at least for me, it has been a lesser of two evils scenario. Both parties have some really crazy ideas and platforms. I loathe the two party system for this reason.
Like you will go to an election, and your choices will be
Republican candidate: "I support deporting your family, I will not only not support cleaner energy but will actively work to increase coal usage, and I think your trans cousin should be forced to transition back even if it makes them commit suicide."
Democratic candidate: "I think all of that stuff the Republican candidate said is crazy and wrong. If elected, I will strive to make all your guns illegal, so that eventually Republican-supporting institutions like the police and military, and Republican states, are the only ones with guns."
“I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man’s case that just took place in Florida … to go to court would have taken a long time,” Trump said at a meeting with lawmakers on school safety and gun violence.
“Take the guns first, go through due process second,” Trump said.
Because you presented a dichotomy in which the Democrats are a party intent to "make all your guns illegal", yet that is not their position as a party. Indeed the last Democratic presidential nominee made very clear she owns guns and likes the 2nd amendment.
The opposite is true of Republicans: their party platform is literally "whatever Trump wants", and Trump has actually articulated circumventing the second amendment entirely by "taking guns first".
Moreover, his current administration's stance is that lawfully carrying citizens protected by the 2nd amendment who are obeying the law are at risk for summary execution if his agents feel threatened enough. This makes the 2nd amendment inoperable (no need for a second amendment at all if they can just say they were scared and kill you for having a gun).
If you're going to characterize Democrats as (a lesser) evil, at least be honest about why.
Ah yea sorry, I meant literally my guns, as in the ones I use for service rifle competition. Those guns specifically, like the practical ones, are definitely on the docket. In fact if I moved to my current state today, I wouldn't be able to bring my guns.
Yes they will allow me to have a deer rifle with a 5-10rd capacity.
Nice try, but you went on to say "eventually... police and military, and Republican states, are the only ones with guns."
So you were not talking about your guns, you were talking about all guns. You can amend your position if that's really what it is, but that's not what you said.
Ok I will endeavor to be more precise when I'm talking about modern/practical rifles, and not just like literally any gun at all.
The relevant point is that the line for gun ownership pushed by the Democrats (at least where I am) is way far away from the line for gun ownership pushed by Republicans.
And when stating that line, it strikes me as an odd position to take when I'm also simultaneously being told that Republicans are going to go even farther hard right / authoritarian/ take-over / w/e, while also keeping the fairly pro-Republican police armed to the teeth (again, with modern rifles).
Trump supporting red flag laws or not seems kinda like a distraction. Trump supporters saying they can shoot protestors is exactly what I'm pointing out - if that is what we're scared the future will hold, why push for giving up modern rifles?
Kinda goes against gun rights as being part of his platform at all. At least with the "gun control" laws they still try to maintain some gun rights. Whereas the Republican playbook now is just "oh you shouldn't be allowed to carry unless I think you're a cool person." Like that guy that got shot in MSP. He had a concealed carry permit and he was disarmed. People in Trump's administration were still saying "he shouldn't have had a gun at a protest." Where were they when we saw hundreds if not thousands of guys with AR-15's and plate carriers flanking the BLM protests?
I don't think trump has gun rights as a big part of his platform. I guess they got rid of tax stamp fees but that doesn't really mean anything.
But again, that doesn't really have much to do with what I said?
However minimal Republican support of gun rights may be, they don't have increasing gun control as a major part of their platform like the Democrats do.
Right. I realize Australia is not perfect, and from my visits back there to visit family, I know it's gotten more polarized, but when I moved to the US at 28, in the early 2000s, there was still the prevailing opinion that you could go to the pub, argue all night long with some bloke about politics while drinking beers together and still be mates, while here...
"I'd rather be dead than friends with a liberal", and such tropes.
I am not confident that is as cut and dried as you are putting forth, there have been massive swings in heavily red districts the other way for special elections in the last few months and Republican polling is abysmal.
Right, turning out your people is huge, and it becomes more rather than less important as margins are thinner which is a consequence of trying to gerrymander a thinner majority.
If Republicans turn 2 places they win by 130:100 plus a big city they lose by 100:130 into three they expect to win by 120:110 then if on the day Democrats turn out as usual but about 10% of the Republicans stay home across the board they lose all three 108:110.
My concern in the 2026 cycle is that there just won't be fair elections, and so this doesn't end up mattering.
> if we re-did the election today, we'd have the same outcome
Doubtful. The faithful will always be idiots. But around them are vast seas of folks who change their minds and even switch parties. Between foreign policy, vaccines (weirdly, not being nutter enough) and Noem turning ICE into a pageant show, a lot of Trump voters feel betrayed. It’s why the House flipping is almost a given.
"The majority" I'll grant you, but I'd say 43.4% is close enough to "half" for these purposes. It's only a touch lower than his poll numbers right before the election.
Compare with Kier Starmer, who as of this writing has not sent armed goons into his own cities, wrecked all of his international trade and tourism, alienated his allies, or once again invaded the Middle East. His approval rating is about 20%!
If you had 1000 coins and put them into two piles one of 440 and one of 560 it would be "about half"
But if your argument is that only 154 million people support this government and that's fine because if it was 174 million there'd be a problem, then sure.
Those are MUCH higher than they should be by now. It makes me wonder what the approval rating of a ham sandwich would be, and I would not be surprised if it was higher.
A ham sandwich has some strong qualities. I’m not kidding.
The president would do basically nothing for four years, which would cause some things to move slowly. But it would be a very stable environment. No random tariffs via executive order, no random wars or invasions, no governing via tweet.
Ham sandwich would maybe be one of our better presidents. Top 50%, probably.
There are hard and soft approval ratings. The soft number is the count of how many people will vote for/against in the next election. The hard number is how many want a change today, how many will support recalling thier representatives in order to force change today. In that number, the current administration has widespread support.
I'm not advocating for it, merely observing that that seems to be the way in which the USA prematurely gets rid of politicians that it does not like. It's revolting, the amount of violence in politics and >> what even banana republics get away with and that's on both sides of the aisle so I don't give a rats ass about which side you or anybody else is on.
Plenty of state-level reps can be recalled today. That noone is even trying sends the message that the population is generally OK with waiting until the next election ... an election that will be run/managed/counted by those representatives.
I love the copium. If I have 10 friends and ask all of them where they want to go for dinner and 6 say let’s have Chinese and the other 4 say let’s kill Bob and eat him, I still have a shitty friend group.
Controversial opinion, it's way more than half: 1/3 voted for the orange man, 1/3 didn't bother go to vote because "BoTh SideS ARe thE SamE!" and 1/3 tried to do the right thing.
It’s a large and incorrect assumption, and not mathing, to lump non-voters into supporters, especially when the administration is purging eligible voters.
That’s an assumption, jumping to a conclusion. It is true for some people, since some people say it out loud, but it is not true for everybody, and calling it “unambiguous” is an unsupportable claim.
To the degree some non-voters say they don’t care, that’s still deeply complicated, enough that even taking someone’s word for it is a bad idea. Non-voters in the U.S. are not uniformly distributed, and thus there is evidence suggesting that not caring is already a function of class, race, education, gender, and age, among other things.
If you actually care about voting and about the truth, it does yourself a disservice to jump to a assumed conclusion that all non-voters are saying something unambiguous, that they’re all saying the same thing, that they all have informed choice, that they understand all the tradeoffs and implications, and that they really are fine with any outcome regardless of what they say.
Eligible voters should absolutely be lumped in as implicit supporters. Disenfranchised voters have been made ineligible so should not have been in the statistic.
Rhetorically: why is it "implicitly approve" instead of "implicitly disapprove?"
The only thing you know about them is that they did not vote. Even using your assumption of their beliefs ("both sides are the same"), that position is generally affiliated with disapproval, not approval.
This is extremely lazy and unrigorous reasoning that could be extended dishonestly to any number of things. Oh, you aren't protesting genocides? You must support them then. Oh, you're not helping feed hungry people in poor countries? Guess you support child starvation. Oh, you're not contributing to the Rust ecosystem? ...............
None of those are comparable to the simple and quick act of voting against a treasonous candidate for US president.
This wasn’t a bad candidate vs worse candidate situation, it was someone who supports breaking apart the trust and foundation of the country solely for personal gain versus someone who at least believed in providing a veneer of civility.
signing an online petition is also a quick act, and the same reasoning you’re using would follow. you’re almost getting at what’s wrong with your specific voter argument though - in many, many states, 1 or more of the following can apply:
big states that always vote one way like CA where a non vote is the same as a blue vote
states where voting is such a tedious process that opting out is a reasonable choice, even if it doesnt place a big burden otherwise
states with voter id laws, often large chunks of the eligible population do not have an id
disabled people, people with hardship, etc., felons
It’s really weird logic to lump massive chunks of the general population these things apply to in with the same people that explicitly support this. It also ignores the fact that these elections often come down to a few thousand or fewer votes in a handful of battleground states. Not voting in those places, I would tend to agree more with the gist of your point, but it is no where near a big chunk of the population.
If someone looks at (admittedly shitty) candidates like Harris and decides she's as bad as Trump it means the implicitly approve of Trump. You need a mushy brain to not see that there's shit (Harris) that there's Trump, orders or magnitude worse.
The democrats are complicit in genocide. Trump is attacking allies too, but they’re both criminal. The main difference is “worthy and unworthy” victims.
I don't really know how to respond politely to downplaying genocide. What I can say is that it is becoming accepted that Kamala Harris lost in part because she refused to change genocide policy. If you want to win, you should start taking it seriously.
My swing-state vote was stupendously easy to get. (a) don't commit a genocide (b) give voters something big and material like free healthcare (c) don't cover up COVID and Long COVID
> I don't really know how to respond politely to downplaying genocide.
Sorry. I don't intend to downplay genocide and I don't want to come across that way.
What I'm trying to critique is (so far as I can read it from your post) your inability to see that two things can be the same in one respect - but apparently not notice that one is much bigger than the other.
If it helps, I'm not American and don't have any option to 'win' as far as US politics goes. I think you are right that Kamala Harris was facilitating genocide. But I also think you are wrong to not take into account that Donald Trump is a whole order of magnitude worse.
> My swing-state vote was stupendously easy to get. (a) don't commit a genocide (b) give voters something big and material like free healthcare (c) don't cover up COVID and Long COVID
So they voted for the side committing genocide and who sees free healthcare as an atrocity in itself to everything the US stands for? What did the Dems do to "cover up" COVID? You know versus "It's nothing worse than the flu, it'll be over in two weeks" while privately being aware that neither of those things were true?
I mean, they didn't do that (and I think the DNC, DWS and their ilk have a lot to answer for the current state of affairs), but your "swing state, stupendously easy to get" decided instead to vote for the side that openly doubled down on those things, not really a ringing endorsement for expectations of voters there.
That's before we even get to the general issue of an electoral populace so ignorant of the political landscape that the number one search on Election Day on Google was "Did Biden drop out?"
I voted third party. If the Democrats want my vote, they have to represent something resembling human values.
Look around you, COVID is still everywhere and the scientific literature is pretty dismal. The Democrats lagged about 6 months behind the republicans, now most people believe what was far-right in 2020. It's true fewer people are dying, but most people do just think it's a cold. The democrats shut down reporting, didn't fight for worker protections, and basically were most invested in the economy over health. They also were never clear about the airborne method of transmission and so people ended up believing masks didn't work because they would wear a surgical mask and still got sick. They didn't "follow the science".
Same. We had two month-long trips planned and canceled them both. I realize California is not exactly “enemy territory” or whatever but we’ll spend our money elsewhere.
I mean you say that, but as someone with family in California the issue isn't the general citizenry it's that ICE and border people aren't general citizenry.
If the system decides to screw you over, that your average Cali resident disapproves doesn't stop you being in a holding cell for weeks.
Going through CBP is such a nightmare, even as a US citizen, I also think twice about going on international vacation. I hate entering my own country, every other country is so much easier, a deep sense of dread enters every time I have to go back to the USA because I know I will be fucked with by the border police.
I try not to let them influence my behavior too much, but at the end of the day, getting thrown in immigration jail on false accusations (yes happened to me despite presenting US passport) or detained for 12+ hours (also happened several times) puts constraints on vacation plans.
Really depends where your entry point is. They’ve moved to digital gates which have made actual cbp interactions basically a thing of the past. Last couple times I didn’t even have to take my passport out.
I really hate condascending and arrogant stuff like "Generally speaking people are too stupid to use AI properly at least for awhile". There are plenty of tech illiterate people that are far from being "stupid" and they might not care about or like AI. They just need to send emails to family, share photos and videos and have a video call from time to time. For them, AI is worthless.
But they aren't stupid. You sound like a tech bro.
That's not even the point, though. Those smart-but-not-techy people are not going to grow GDP at the pace that Satya Nadella needs them to in order to keep his KPIs going up and to the right, and he's getting pissed.
So you are happy that our "friend" decided on a whim to wanting to invade our other friend? Despite all of us being part of the same friend group? Despite canadian and danish blood being spilled in Afghanistan right after our "friend" decided to call article 5?
The PCI-Express bus is actually rather slow. Only ~63 GB/s, even with PCIe 5 x16!
PCIe is simply not a bottleneck for gaming. All the textures and models are loaded into the GPU once, when the game loads, then re-used from VRAM for every frame. Otherwise, a scene with a lowly 2 GB of assets would cap out at only ~30 fps.
Which is funny to think about historically. I remember when AGP first came out, and it was advertised as making it so GPUs wouldn't need tons of memory, only enough for the frame buffers, and that they would stream texture data across AGP. Well, the demands for bandwidth couldn't keep up. And now, even if the port itself was fast enough, the system RAM wouldn't be. DDR5-6400 running in dual-channel mode is only ~102 GB/s. On the flip side the RTX 5050, a current-gen budget card, has over 3x that at 320 GB/s, and on the top end, the RTX 5090 is 1.8 TB/s.
> All the textures and models are loaded into the GPU once, when the game loads, then re-used from VRAM for every frame. Otherwise, a scene with a lowly 2 GB of assets would cap out at only ~30 fps.
Ah, not really these days, textures are loaded in/out on demand, at multiple different mipmap levels, same with model geometry and LOD's. There is texture and mesh data frequently being cached in and out during gameplay.
Not arguing with your points around bus speeds, and I suspect you knew the above and were simplyifing anyway.
You are correct that games generally are not PCIe limited. But you are incorrect that games just upload everything ones and be done. Most modern engines are most certainly streaming in and out assets all the time.
Faster M.2 drives are great, but you know what would be even greater? More M.2 drives.
I wish it was possible to put several M.2 drives in a system and RAID them all up, like you can with SATA drives on any above-average motherboard. Even a single lane of PCIe 5.0 would be more than enough for each of those drives, because each drive won't need to work as hard. Less overheating, more redundancy, and cheaper than getting a small number of super fast high capacity drives. Alas, most mobos only seem to hand out lanes in multiples of 4.
Maybe one day we'll have so many PCIe lanes that we can hand them out like candy to a dozen storage devices and have some left to power a decent GPU. Still, it feels wasteful.
> Alas, most mobos only seem to hand out lanes in multiples of 4.
AFAIK, the cpu lanes can't be broken up beyond x4; it's a limitation of the pci-e root complex. The Promontory 21 chipset that is mainstream for AM5 does two more x4 and four choose sata or pci-e x1. I don't think you can bifurcate those x4s, but you might be able to aggregate two or four of the x1s. And you can daisy chain a second Prom21 chipset to net one more x4 and another 4 x1.
Of course, it's pretty typical for a motherboard to use some of those lanes for onboard network and what nots. Nobody sells a bare minimum board with an x16 slot, two cpu based x4 slots, two chipset x4 slots, and four chipset x1 slots and no onboard perhipherals, only the USB from the cpu and chipset. Or if they do, it's not sold in US stores anyway.
If pci-e switches weren't so expensive, you might see boards with more slots behind a switch (which the chipsets kind of are, but...)
The M.2 form factor isn't that conducive to having lots of them, since they're on the board and need large connectors and physical standoffs. They're also a pain in the ass to install because they lie flat, close to the board, so you're likely to have to remove a bunch of shit to get to them. This is why I've never cared about and mostly hated every "tool-less" M.2 latching mechanism cooked up by the motherboard manufacturers: I already have a screwdriver because I needed to remove my GPU and my ethernet card and the stupid motherboard "armor" to even get at the damn slots.
SATA was a cabling nightmare, sure, but cables let you relocate bulk somewhere else in the case, so you can bunch all the connectors up on the board.
Frankly, given that most advertised M.2 speeds are not sustained or even hit most of the time, I could deal with some slower speeds due to cable length if it meant I could mount my SSDs anywhere but underneath my triple slot GPU.
Including ones that have controllers, if your motherboard doesn't have enough lanes or it doesn't support bifurcation. I have a Rocket 7608A, which gives you 8 M.2 slots in a PCIe 5.0 x16 card: https://www.highpoint-tech.com/nvme-raid-aic/gen5/rocket-760...
This. I needed a high speed link between two PCs and bought a mellanox card, cue me surprised that a consumers PCs do not have enough PCIe lanes to handle both a thickboii GPU and a thickboii 200GBe mellanox card...
And even when AMD does move their mainstream desktop processors to a new socket, there's very little reason to expect them to be trying to accommodate multi-GPU setups. SLI and Crossfire are dead, multi-GPU gaming isn't coming back for the foreseeable future, so multi-GPU is more or less a purely workstation/server feature at this point. They're not going to increase the cost of their mainstream platform for the sole purpose of cannibalizing Threadripper sales.
Agreed. To me, it’s like the difference between semi-automatic weapons and automatic weapons. Yes, it’s easier to not have to wiggle your finger on the trigger, but semi-auto is more than enough to be very effective.
It’s very easy to create deceptive imagery persuasion and to astroturf. With or without AI assistance. All you need is a modest amount of money. And with unlimited money and zero accountability thanks to the ‘responsibility laundering’ made possible through PACs… facts no longer matter. Just money, to buy virality, to influence vibes.
I don't know what to tell you if you still believe that political contributions or spending are a determinative factor in politics rather than a trailing indicator (and a poor one at that).
Even in terms of corruption, this is by far the smallest concern and barely worth noting in the scheme of things. Besides the obvious revolving door for lobbying and legal firms, there is so much money at play in the ex post facto bribery industry, between speaking fees and bulk book sales and low interest and forgiven loans that Citizens United might as well be dust in the wind.
No, this is low agency. It wasn't other people that killed democracy. It was our own lack of response to billionaires enshrining money as legitimate political power that killed democracy. Oligarchy and monarchy are the default. Citizens willing to pay the cost of challenging those in power are what is exceptional. It is citizens asserting their own power rather than submitting to unjust power that creates democracy. It is an insistence that law applies to the most rich that creates democracy.
Democracy requires maintenance and responsibility. You can't expect nice things without paying the maintenance cost, and unfortunately, if you challenge power, power answers and it will hurt. If nobody is willing to die for freedom, then everyone will die a slave.
Blaming others rather than looking within fundamentally accepts authoritarianism, it presumes and accepts that others have power over you and that you can do nothing but submit.
Nobody is challenging power. We only have our own selves to blame for our cowardice.
I disagree about what we failed to respond to, but fully agree that this is the fault of the population at large: if you refrain from putting forth your opinion, your opinion by cannot be counted in the democratic process.
The problem with democracy, more generally, appears to be that the population is wildly susceptible to apathy and complacency, meaning we've reduced the voting set to only this who care enough to vote. This turns politics into a game of disagreements between the most extreme voices.
In my opinion, in order for a democracy to work, voting must be compulsory.
Democracy does not work without a culture of responsibility and we no longer have a culture of responsibility.
I am incredibly atheist, but what we are seeing is Christianity, a clear pillar of American culture, malfunctioning on a societal scale. What used to be the major cultural influence on this country has been weaponized for political purposes. There is a quote about how separation of church and state is to protect the state from the church... but now we are coming to understand that that separation exists also to protect the church from the state.
People are very susceptible to politicians lying to them, especially when it's a lie they want to hear or prefer to the truth. Compulsory voting does not address that at all. Education is a hedge on it, but education requires effort, openness, and resources. There is also a media ecosystem which acts as a sort of central nervous system for a country, which is how a country understands itself.
Culture and institutions (such as church/media/academia/police training, etc.) are the foundation of societies operations, and government is largely a manifestation of prevailing culture. Authoritarian governments are a manifestation of a culture that promotes self interest and lack of empathy, rather than one that promotes loving they neighbor and treating others as you wish to be treated.
And yet, in 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, we have highest percentage Voting Eligible Population turning out since WWII, and in two of the last three elections, the candidate who spent less won.
So at least at presidential level, there is neither apathy, complacency, or the ability to buy elections.
I don't think it's quite this reductive. Turnout in 2020 is estimated at 65%, which is not quite two-thirds of the population. 2024 was slightly lower at 63%.
That's still missing a significant fraction of the population. Sure, you could make the argument that 2/3s is probably pretty representative, but I'm not sure I'd agree. I think there's good reason to believe that a voter who shows up is inherently not representative of a voter who does not. When elections are decided by such small margins in many places, that unrepresented third can easily change the outcome.
Maybe they truly don't care, and perhaps they should be given the option to vote as such, if they're required to vote.
I also don't think presidential elections are actually very meaningful when it comes to national politics (or politics in general!), but I feel like my opinion on that is changing given the current administration's efforts to maximize presidential power and their success in doing so.
That is entirely unsubstantiated. There is no reasonable way to measure this and any measurements taken are inherently political.
I am amenable to the idea of that being true for official spending, but unless the twitter purchase, for example, were tabulated, or spending on our American "pravda" (Truth social which was clearly influenced by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda), I would be extremely suspicious of those numbers.
> so at least at presidential level, there is neither apathy, complacency, or the ability to buy elections.
Again, I completely disagree, and so does Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, who argues that it is extremely hard to win a primary without fundraising, and fundraising is structurally an election where money counts as votes, and therefore nearly all candidates who make it to the primary have already been filtered through by those with money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g
It's hard for people to accept it because it raises new questions about the reaction to adopt.
If it's true then you know you should resist or you're complicit. A lot ot of 20/30/40 something Americans are going to have very difficult conversations with the new generations in 30+ years.
>If it's true then you know you should resist or you're complicit.
Resist how exactly? Protest? We're already protesting. They're barely being covered in the news. Armed resistance? Yeah that's gonna work out so well against a militarized police state.
Look through history, from the fall of rome to wwII, and those that came out best during those crises had the good sense to flee to somewhere better.
Educating yourself on resistance. Reading books about it. Talk to neighbors. Buy weapons and ammo. Be ready.
Have difficult conversations with yourself about what you're ready to do. Have the same conversations with your partner. With your family, friends, neighbors who you know are also against this.
Yeah, no. I'm getting my passport today. I've started looking at what's required to get a skilled work visa.
My personal line is when the admin starts imprisoning and renditioning people that don't agree with them, and we basically heard a congressional committee make approving comments about that this week. If it starts happening, well, time for me to cash out and move abroad.
The problem is that this kind of thing can follow you around if you never push back.
I left Russia 20 years ago for very similar reasons. I didn't think I'd be facing the same choice in US, yet here we are.
There's a difference, though. In Russia, liberals are something like 10% of the population - the groupthink is really authoritarian overall, so there was no realistic hope of fighting back in any meaningful, non-symbolic sense. But I don't think that's the case for US. The majority of people here don't want to live in an authoritarian dictatorship. Their problem is that they don't (yet?) understand that the traditional arsenal of legitimate political tools available to citizens of established democracies - things like voting or peaceful protests - becomes ineffective once authoritarians become sufficiently entrenched, and so you have to move on to other means of resistance.
If 'legitimate political tools' are no longer viable, then I'm heading to the nearest border with a bitcoin wallet memorized. From my read of history, once a democracy falls it's often down for the count, replaced by an endless string of strong men. Russia isn't going democratic when putin dies, for example
Well given that the country has a penchant for altering history such that “you did not see/hear what you actually heard and saw with your own eyes”, there are not going to be any difficult conversations. Civil war was for “state rights” while quietly omitting the slaves part.
Even today when the impact of tariffs are clear people rattle off everything to cover their bases - It will bring back jobs. It will create negotiation leverage for US. (If it did and China ate some of those tariffs what jobs are coming back to the US). These same people will deny their role in the mess they are creating.
That's exactly right. The problem with the public broadcasters is not that they are regime media, it's that they are not. Put another way, the problem is that they tell the truth. Fox News, on the other hand, is very much regime media, and constantly peddles lies. Therefore, Trump is not attacking them.
This particular move is part of the broader campaign to destroy the independent media, which as you pointed out, is textbook fascism.
As a canuk, I was anxious a little bit when orange man kept blathering about annexing Canada, but now seeing how uttery incompetent this administration is, my anxiety died down.
Unfortunately, incompetents can still do plenty of harm with sufficient power at their hands. Russian invasion of Ukraine is a good example, and the power disparity was smaller there than between US and Canada.
sadly they haven't replaced all the competent people yet, so I'm afraid they can still do a lot of damage. but thankfully they're working their way through the list.
Edit, didn't realise it was this bad:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/260223/dq260...
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