Oh that’s easy: sell it at an outrageous price in upscale North American restaurants as authentic “pain Francais”.

The language of love

Yeah it’s always been bilingual of course, but the relationships between the two communities seemed a lot more tense than they are now.

Think of it back then as Belgium today between the French-speaking and Dutch-speaking regions, if you know anything about that country: sure it’s multiingual - mostly in the Dutch-speaking north and German-speaking east - but be careful in what language you open your trap in which part of the country because you might find yourself very poorly received, to say the least.

I felt that in Canada in the beginning of the naughties when I visited Montreal: I wasn’t well received when I spoke English (sadly with a North American accent) and I wasn’t received any better when I switched to French with a French accent 🙂

The Trudeau bit I watched earlier carried no such stupid undertone, which felt great.

I’m 55. And sorry about misspelling Trudeau, I’m not Canadian 🙂

But I do know a few things about Canada because I happened to live in France during the second Quebec referendum - and France was all abuzz with this, like it mattered to the French for some reason - and also I lived in Toronto from 2002 to 2004.

I’m still mildly interested in Canadian affairs because I really enjoyed my time there (and almost relocated there too) and now that Canada’s troublesome southern neighbor is being aggressive and stupid again, I’m paying closer attention. Hence my watching the entire Trudeau intervention earlier today.

Stowaway.

It’s never too late to do good.

You know, for all his faults, I watched Trudeaux’ press conference where he announced the counter-tariffs. I almost never watch Canadian news, but I did this once. And I was really pleasantly surprised to hear him and the journalists switch from English to French and back to English seamlessly and without drama.

I’m old enough to remember when the two linguistic communities were almost at each other’s throats, and the Quebec referendum and all that. Today’s Trudeaux performance seemed peaceful and natural.

If that can happen, other things can happen too. If Trump catalyzes good things in Canada, then Trump will have done something good in his life, against all odds.

I love this; that’s the spirit! Make something good out of Trump’s depressing world view.

Double the price of electricity sold to the US, see how long it takes Trump to roll over.

Canada holds large swathes of the US by the balls, particularly in the winter.

Trump said he wanted to make Canada a US state, and he told Canadians they wouldn’t have to suffer tariffs if they were a state.

So… Can you guess?

it might shut down the auto industry, leave some border cities in ruins, result in shortages of many important industrial inputs and surpluses of others on both sides of the border, tank the Canadian dollar, cause a sudden jump in consumer prices, wreck the American economy, and consequently crash the world economy, leading to a dramatic realignment of world power and the start of some kind of new era the shape of which we can only guess at.

So… Eggs are not affected.

Pfffew! I knew Trump knew what he’s doing.

I can totally see how this is going to lower the price of eggs.

I don’t think Israeli and Arab academics ever had any problem with one another - or academics from any other country for that matter. It’s the guillible and the uneducated, the hawkish politicos who excite them, and law enforcement and military types who want to go at other peoples’ throats.

I think the electricity isn’t quite flowing all the way up her brainstem…

The problem for the rest of us is, everything he says also stinks.

I’m the same age and I’ve been retired for 25 years 🙂

I have a job I really enjoy that I do a few hours a day, for the money sure, but also for fun. And then I enjoy a lot of extra hours doing the things I want.

It’s like retirement but with a few hours of fun stuff I gotta do every day, sure, but it’s still fun. When I retire for real, I just won’t do the few hours of fun no more.

I can tell you exactly what I do, because 25 years ago, I chose to forgo promotions at work and prioritize free time and quality of life over money:

I spend time with my family.
I do the things I want while I’m still young (or rather, while I was still young 🙂).
Generally leading a good life free of stress and drama.

You were given only one life. You have a finite set of hours on this dirtball, and the countdown is running. Every extra hour you give to your employer in exchange for money is an hour you don’t spend with your loved ones, and you can’t buy it back. Retirement age is too late to enjoy your life.

Nobody goes to their graves thinking they should have worked more.

Your name isn’t private information.

What if I don’t want to give it to Microsoft?

Your photo doesn’t have to be included in M365, and isn’t by default in any organization I’ve worked with.

My company mandates that we put our mugs on Teams so “people know who they’re talking to”.

Your personal address also isn’t in your work profile on M365, that’s usually in an HR system somewhere, not kept in Active Directory. Your salary is the same, it’s not stored in your M365 profile, and neither is your sick days. This simply isn’t normal M365 functionality.

When the fucking secretary puts all that stuff in an Excel file, and everybody’s photos - and company photos - in a sharepoint, and the accountant does the payroll in M365, it is.

Microsoft also doesn’t just have access to this information the way you think they do. They can’t just log in with an admin account and check your current status on teams, or read your e-mails, or anything like that.

That’s right: nobody logs in with an admin account: all that data you feed Microsoft is processed automatically.

You don’t really think they take your money and honestly host your data and provides services without raping your and your company’s information every which way do you? Big Data’s entire business model is exploiting other people’s data.

Microsoft’s gig is really clever: they force people who otherwise would never give any information to Microsoft to do so by selling their employers services that are cheaper than on-prem, and in turn, their employers force the employees to share their information with Microsoft on pain of getting the sack.

My identify, my photo, my address are mine. I never wanted to share any of that with Microsoft. Thanks to my employer, I have to.

Likewise, I don’t want to Microsoft to know my salary, or how many sick days I take due to my disability. Thanks to my employer, Microsoft knows all about me, and I don’t want Microsoft to know anything about me.

The work data I produce at work belongs to my employer. If my employer is foolish enough to share it with Microsoft, it’s their problem - although arguably, if that ever jeopardizes my company’s ability to win contracts on the markets it operates in because Microsoft has insider knowledge and undercuts it, and my company does less well as a result, then it becomes my problem. But I’m forced to share my personal data because my employer decided without my consent to share it with Microsoft.

Because it’s run by Microsoft, which is now a Big Data player. They use Teams to “monetize” your company’s data and train their AI on it without your company’s consent. They use Teams to collect data on employees who don’t have a choice because they need a job to put food on the table, like real name, photo and phone number.

If you don’t want to give any data to Microsoft, too bad: your employer forces it on you. Don’t like it? Your only option is to resign. That’s the most egregious aspect of Teams - and Office 365, and all business-oriented Microsoft data honeypots: they use employers to collect data on employees who don’t have any say about it.

I would create a machine that can create anything of course.