Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Zac Trolley

@zactrolley.com

760 followers 860 following 1.8K posts

Engineer, SciFi author, sustainable thinker, part-time community builder. Living the Luddiete lifestyle. Calgary Alberta. 🇨🇦

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · Aug 30

Expanding the oil and gas sector creates jobs in construction, not oil and gas.

And if we are making construction jobs, we might as well build something else.

Max Fawcett @maxfawcett.bsky.social · Aug 29

The number of people needed to produce a barrel of oil has been declining since 2012 -- and no, it isn't Ottawa's fault (it's happening in Texas too).

If we want to create jobs in the future, they have to be jobs *of* the future. #cdnpoli #abpoli

www.nationalobserver.com/2025/08/28/o...

The ‘de-manning’ of Canada’s oilsands sector

Canada's oil and gas industry has been getting less labour-intensive for more than a decade now. When will our elected officials finally acknowledge that — and its obvious implications for the future?

www.nationalobserver.com

3 17 73

Reposted by Zac Trolley

The Marriage Braggart @bombsfall.bsky.social · 4h

If the US can ever vomit this stupid era out we're gonna need widespread all-ages education on basic facts like when you'd see old billboards or MST3k shorts advertising the concept of hand washing or being good. Stop Using Gasoline To Wash Clothes. Springs Are Ubiquitous & Essential To Modern Life

59 440 2.1K

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 2h

Authoritarian bootlickers are wearing criticism of them as a badge of honor.

"Yes, I am cheering on a Big Tech oligarchy! I want you to be mad about it!"

This is a primary school level of discourse.

Sally Jenkins @sallyjenx.bsky.social · 7h

Ratio me. Please. It's a badge of honor. If you don't like a link, go follow some chicken-heart who needs the approval of the thought-police. Caitlin Flanagan of @theatlantic.com is a tremendous writer and this piece is an excellent read. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Don’t Bet Against Bari Weiss

The new editor in chief of CBS News triumphs over her critics.

www.theatlantic.com

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 4h

I'll have to re-read the book to get the context.

But the fact that Don Quixote is a crazy person and thinks he is a knight is hilarious in Roci context

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 5h

When reading Leviathan Wakes, I didn't understand the reference when renaming the Tachi to Rocinante.

I started reading Don Quixote, and I'm loving the joke.

Don Quixote is a hilarious book, and I would recommend you pick it up when you have the chance.

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 6h

Big Tech is trying to convince religious people that they are on the same side.

They are doing this by making up claims about pop culture and hoping the illiterate masses won't know the difference.

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 13h

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 7h

This site is where I got my start. I moved to Linux Mint three years ago on my main computer.

I now have a closet full of used PCs running Ubuntu Server for my own home services.

Actually learning computers and making them work for you is a big middle finger to Big Tech.

Reposted by Zac Trolley

LostArcNZ @lostarcnz.bsky.social · 18h

The solutions proposed for New Zealand's (and virtually every other country's) problems are always like:
"We need to make people work for more years"
"We have to cut back on services, I'm sorry, there is just no other way"
"We have to cut benefits for young people"

never:
"We need to tax the rich"

74 570 2.1K

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 10h

ICE is looking more and more like Hydra every day.

www.404media.co/email/0ba0f6...

ICE to Buy Tool that Tracks Locations of Hundreds of Millions of Phones Every Day

Documents show that ICE has gone back on its decision to not use location data remotely harvested from peoples' phones. The database is updated every day with billions of pieces of location data.

www.404media.co

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 1d

Legends and Lattes is a great book to bridge between heavy material. It's a good story and you have fun the whole time.

Reposted by Zac Trolley

The Serfs (youtube.com/theserfstv) @theserfstv.bsky.social · 1d

Capitalism is awesome because no one can afford groceries and instead of blaming anyone with wealth or power we get mad at people living on the street or trying to move to the country to work

6 100 480

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 1d

I agree.
The problem is that when prices fall, investors stop building. They want to make a profit, and that's not possible in a falling market.

For this to work, we need incentives to build at lower prices. We need homes to be built not for profit, but for living.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

9 condo projects cancelled this year in Toronto, and trend will likely continue | CBC News

At the corner of High Park Ave. and Annette St., a church slated to be transformed into condominiums has been sitting partially complete for several years. The stalled High Park development is just on...

www.cbc.ca

1 2

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 1d

For the past 30 years, Canadian real estate prices have gone up. It's more profitable to hold on to an empty property that won't sell, and wait for the marker prices to rise. They are speculating instead of housing people.

This tactic is currently falling apart.

macleans.ca/longforms/ca...

The Condo Crash - Macleans.ca

For years, low interest rates fuelled a big-city condo-flipping frenzy. Profits got bigger and condos got smaller. Now the bubble has popped, leaving behind thousands of unsellable, unlivable units.

macleans.ca

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 1d

Two things can be true at the same time. All things being equal, adding more supply will lower prices.

I believe that involving large scale investment into real estate changes the scale and requires home prices to climb year after year at a rate higher than inflation.

You believe differently.

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 1d

In Canada, most of the new homes have been built with investors in mind. This comes back to my dislike of VC in real estate. They are building to make a profit, not house people.

They sit empty rather than lowering the price.

Your experience may differ.

www.bnnbloomberg.ca/markets/mark...

Market Outlook: Empty condos pile up in Vancouver, fuelling market concerns

Vancouver’s condo market faces a glut of up to 3,500 unsold units as buyers avoid investor-focused designs and developers offer discounts to clear stock.

www.bnnbloomberg.ca

2 1

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 1d

In Canada, the government is trying to keep prices high, meaning when new homes are built they are priced higher than first time buyers can afford.

To solve this, they are extending the mortgage amortization from 25 to 30 years. This lowers the monthly payments, but costs more in the long run

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 1d

In Canada the government is working to keep the prices high so Boomers can retire using the value of their homes.

Building more homes won't drop prices until we address the economic incentives to drive prices higher.

betterdwelling.com/canadian-hom...

Canadian Home Prices "Need" To Be High To Pay For Retirements: PM - Better Dwelling

Canadian real estate prices have surged in almost every market, with a typical home price doubling in many regions. A median household in major cities like Toronto and Vancouver would need to save ove...

betterdwelling.com

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 1d

That's correct.

We had a lot of speculative investors buying up properties for profit.

We now have a situation where there are a lot of housing units vacant but priced too high for anyone to afford.

It's our experience that private investment doesn't solve the problem.

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 1d

Community is critical.

Building and maintaining community takes a lot of effort. Most people are burnt out with their day job and adding more tasks is a bridge too far.

It's hard not to see this is by design.

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 1d

I think about the threat of homelessness a lot.

As an engineer, we have an ethical duty to protect the public and environment in the infrastructure we built.

But my employer doesn't. And they can fire me and hire someone else with lower standards, and I'll be homeless.

1 1 4

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 1d

I live in Canada.

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 1d

We can disagree on that then.

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 1d

The devil is in the details.

What does the bill do?

How does it make it easier to build houses?

What are the roadblocks that the bill is removing?

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 1d

It's contributing to the ecosystem where a home is viewed as a commodity instead of a necessity.

People are being priced out of life to satisfy shareholder greed.

1 1

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 2d

The situation in the US is at Anne Frank levels.

Sophie Sherry @sophiesherry.bsky.social · 2d

During a military-style raid on a building in Chicago’s South Shore, one resident heard a knock on his door.   It wasn’t the feds — it was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for help.

He let them hide in his unit for the next 3 days.

chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

Neighbor shielded 7-year-old during South Shore federal raid: ‘I didn’t want them to take her’

During the Sept. 30 raid one tenant protected a terrified girl and her mom. Remnants at the complex, including a detailed map of all the units, offer clues to what authorities may have known before th...

chicago.suntimes.com

Zac Trolley @zactrolley.com · 2d

Being offered for rent is the problem.

Workers no longer own anything, and rent everything. Wall Street is aiming to turn the US population into serfs.