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johndalerural.bsky.social
John Dale
@johndalerural.bsky.social
41 followers 21 following 120 posts
PhD Student, Rural Studies MSc, Rural Planning & Development Maritimer in exile and darling child of @longestballot.bsky.social. Proportional Representation Advocate and former Independent Candidate for a whole lot of places.
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Reposted by John Dale
fairvote.ca
Fair Vote Canada 🗳️🍁 @fairvote.ca · 1d
The results of the public consultation by BC’s Democratic and Electoral Reform Committee are in, and the feedback the committee received was overwhelmingly for proportional representation. Time for action!

www.fairvote.ca/07/10/2025/9...
93% of submissions to the BC Democratic and Electoral Reform Committee committee called for proportional representation
www.fairvote.ca
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johndalerural.bsky.social
John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 3d
A couple w's got removed! Full URL: www.ipolitics.ca/2025/10/05/c...
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John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 6d
Good luck! I am sure you'll have proactive points.
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John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 6d
tim horton subway next thank u
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John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 6d
I'm not sure if this really 'adds' to your comment, but foreign credential recognition and barriers to settlement are huge parts of that. Immigrants are also 1.5x more likely to be entrepreneurs in Canada, which might partially be birthed from that. too.
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johndalerural.bsky.social
John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 8d
"proportional representation advocacy is partisan" is not a take I thought I'd ever live to hear, and yet here we are. We definitely have conservative leaning people on a ballot of 200 independent candidates lol. Watching the mental gymnastics made me wince.
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Reposted by John Dale
baddestmamajama.bsky.social
Jessica Ellis @baddestmamajama.bsky.social · 9d
Kind people want a just world. Nice people want a calm world. These are fundamentally incompatible positions in an unjust system, and results in the latter trying to stomp down any fuss over getting to the former.
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John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 9d
I feel like the chance of a potential job or opportunity dying because I speak 5 degrees more casually with people I know is low and probably a decent filter for a healthy work environment anyway.
johndalerural.bsky.social
John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 9d
I can't really bring myself to use LinkedIn beyond the bare minimum. I can wear a professional hat with my colleagues without hesitation, but the platform feels like a whole different corporate arena.

Everything from meetings to symposia and workshops in my network feels comparatively human.
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Reposted by John Dale
ashleighweeden.bsky.social
S. Ashleigh Weeden, PhD @ashleighweeden.bsky.social · 9d
Have been told point blank PM Carney’s only agenda for rural Canada is resource extraction/development - but even progressive circles have gotten pretty disembodied and disconnected from material realities beyond Blood Street - place-based dynamics are (at best) theoretical or beside the point.
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John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 14d
So glad I found this-- cackling.
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Reposted by John Dale
fudgeb0t.bsky.social
Julie @fudgeb0t.bsky.social · 20d
Perfect to measure your children's height year after year ! "You can have a cellphone when you reach John Dale, and not a candidate before!"
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johndalerural.bsky.social
John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 16d
Honestly with the state of Guelph driving culture I think I'd be a little nervous using the turnbox!
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Reposted by John Dale
ashleighweeden.bsky.social
S. Ashleigh Weeden, PhD @ashleighweeden.bsky.social · 17d
Speaking of “doing something”, I’ll be delivering the opening keynote at the CRRF Conference in Brandon, MB on Tuesday on the subject “Countryside at the Crossroads: Understanding Place, Power, and Policy for the Future of Rural Canada”

crrf2025.org/wp-content/u...
Screen shot of page 8 from the conference program linked in the post, highlighting my keynote for the 2025 CRRF conference in Brandon, MB
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John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 17d
I saw the program schedule IMMEDIATELY after my reply and thread lol. Super excited-- good luck!!! Ten minutes until I set off.
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John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 17d
We can't even get public housing apparently without it being a sloppy AI-fueled 'public-private partnership' these days, so my hopes aren't exceptionally high in meaningful strides in data policy and related tech coming from the top: thewalrus.ca/the-tech-eli... and betakit.com/minister-of-...
Canada’s Tech Bros Have a Plan for the Country. Too Bad a Chatbot Wrote It | The Walrus
It’s ambitious, visionary, and almost entirely indistinguishable from Silicon Valley clichés
thewalrus.ca
johndalerural.bsky.social
John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 17d
Okay, I'm done. This was like the bsky equivalent of raising your hand at a conference presentation and going "its not exactly a question, but. . ." 😵

I think a lot of us have been feeling the weight of all these things recently, and it doesn't feel like an end is in sight!
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John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 17d
Our field is relatively small… maybe there’s the space for some sort of low-input member-based co-op, self-hosted servers and maybe some auxiliary data ethics resources or something of the sort.
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John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 17d
Its much more difficult in my professional life, though. I am more or less ‘forced’ into interacting with big tech platforms and products, and being around stuff I do NOT anywhere near my work, like AI.
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John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 17d
moving towards a ‘dumb phone’ when most working traditional flip phones in Canada are set to be bricked with the elimination of 3G despite 4G LTE capability, changing operating systems to a Linux distro, employing open-source software alternatives when possible, joining the web revival movement, etc
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John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 17d
Also the whole ‘dead internet theory’ that people have been talking about as of late. I’m trying to develop a general ethos around how I use tech, and its difficult to make the switch. Deleting social media apps off my phone,
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John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 17d
I’m certainly no full-blown Luddite, but on a personal level, this whole system is exhausting (not that I could even understand it in its totality in the first place). I think the lack of decentralized, locally-controlled data infrastructure is also contributing to the ‘enshittification’ of the web.
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John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 17d
If it can’t bump out a meaningful high school essay, I certainly don’t trust it to appropriately represent the humanity and social nuances embedded in data, which only gets worse the second you’re dealing with the local, the marginal, etc.
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John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 17d
Its depressing, especially in qualitative research circles. We distinguish a lot of subversive qualitative research methods as focused on understanding, rather than explaining business. AI simply cannot do that.
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John Dale @johndalerural.bsky.social · 17d
And then there’s the fact that even if we magically built a robust policy network that enabled data sovereignty, or if people managed to take it into their own hands through self-organization, that doesn’t necessarily translate to stopping the sloppy employment of questionable LLMs.
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