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My Freedom Story

An open letter to my Canadian elected officials,

When the covid-19 vaccines became available in early 2021 I was one of the first ones to line up in downtown Calgary to get a shot. I generally do not have reactions to medicine so I felt I was in a very low risk category personally of an adverse event and could help reduce the risk of overwhelming our health care system by participating in the experiment. I did this of my own free will. My wife has had many strange reactions to medicine and did not feel comfortable getting inoculated due to the risk of an adverse event. I respected and supported her in that, having witnessed many of the reactions. Both of our decisions regarding the vaccines were valid and had to be evaluated based on our individual health and experience, which is not how they are being presented to us by our government health authorities. Instead they are being presented as a one size fits all, safe and effective for everyone. When the restrictions on our freedoms came into effect, she felt compelled to take the risk so that she could be included in society and have freedom of movement. Immediately after getting the shot, her face went numb. It should be understandable that she is not willing to get a second shot, but both the pharmacist and a call to AHS downplayed the adverse event. She is now excluded from much of society, is not able to travel by plane, and cannot visit her Dad in his care home.

I am asking you to help protect our freedom to say no to medicine that has harmed our loved ones.

I have 3 healthy boys aged 14-20. They are in an age group that has no significant risk from covid-19. They are also precisely in the higher risk group of myocarditis and pericarditis as outlined on the Canadian government website regarding the safety and adverse events of the current covid-19 vaccines.

myocarditis

source: COVID-19: Vaccine safety and side effects - Canada.ca - 29 Jan 2022

Because of this we have chosen not to give them the current vaccines and are continuing to focus on other preventative measures like fresh air, an active lifestyle, healthy eating, and vitamin D supplements. Yet our children are subject to government advertising encouraging them to ask their parents to get them vaccinated. Canada has strict rules around advertising drugs which this violates, and this advertising undermines our role as a parent.

I am asking you to help protect our freedom to say no to medicine that carries a risk for our children.

In Sept 2021, I was censored and banned from participating in discussions on cbc.ca. I was commenting on an article about Ivermectin, which did not bring forward all of the research and information that was currently available. I was simply discussing information with others that was on topic.

censored

When we censor some ideas, we are causing others to be amplified that you did not intend. Without all comments being allowed, the thread on the article ended up being filled with insults and dehumanizing statements implying that a segment of the Canadian population are idiots.

dehumanizing

source: Ivermectin: Questions and answers about the anti-parasitic drug - CBC.ca - 02 Sep 2021

When we allow ideas and information to be cancelled because of how it may affect a policy or narrative, we are taking a big risk. We need both liberal and conservative ideas in order to progress without chaos. We need the free flow of all ideas and information to collectively determine the best way forward.

I am asking you to help protect our freedom to discuss ideas without being censored, cancelled, or banned from conversation.

My wife has a yoga fitness class business that was shut down by the restrictions implemented in 2020. When the restrictions were eased in 2021, she began to start back up. This meant planning sessions months in advance, booking a studio and taking registrations. When various forms of restrictions began again, and mandates were introduced, it became impossible for her to plan anything more than a week in advance, effectively shutting down her business again. In one case, we were told only days before our children were supposed to go back to school that their schools were being shut down.

I am asking you to help protect our freedom from living in constant fear that our plans will be disrupted by government restrictions and mandates.

As a family we recently attended an event at a children's camp. Upon arrival we were asked to show our vaccine cards, and having none, we were provided with red wristbands. Those that had vaccine cards were given green wrist bands. This labelling and the resulting segregation that it caused is a direct result of government policies.

I am asking you to help protect our freedom from being labelled and segregated.

I am asking for an end to all restrictions and mandates, that these measures will not be used in this way again, and a stop to all censorship. Please understand that I will only vote for an elected official in the future that is committed to this, and I will be encouraging others to do the same.

Respectfully,

Andrew Baerg - Resident of Calgary (Ward 3), Alberta (Calgary North East), Canada (Calgary Skyview)

posted at 2022-02-12T19:21:37 by baerg

Xmonad is my DE

Remember Enlightenment? Beautiful backgrounds and transparent terminals so you could admire the backgrounds while coding.

Now I consistently cover the background with a tiling window manager and I don't even have a transparent terminal because it doesn't support compositing...

I probably get more done.

I just upgraded my System76 laptop and decided to try out Pop!_OS. I couldn't bind <Super> 1 through 9 to switching workspaces, so I bailed on it pretty quick. I tried i3 on Manjaro but it binds workspaces to additional monitors.

Turns out I'm addicted to Xmonad.

But Xmonad is just a window manager and none of the distros bundle it with a full desktop environment - which makes sense, it's for the minimalist. But you still want your Fn keys to work (brightness, volume, media), a way to control network connections, and of course a way to open your browser of choice!

So, I'm sharing my Xmonad desktop environment. A collection of configs and scripts (and sounds) - there's even a script to change the background, which I rarely see.

posted at 2020-08-13T04:55:43 by baerg

ic5+plack+nginx

I have been successfully running Interchange 5 using a stack of Plack + Nginx in production since February, 2016 on a busy site, yoursole.com

Here are the relevant config snippets:

app.psgi:

use Plack::Builder;
use Plack::App::WrapCGI;

builder {

  # restart interchange
  my $ic = `/path/to/interchange/bin/interchange -r`;
  if (!$ic) {
    print "ERROR: failed to restart interchange\n";
  }
  else {
    print $ic . "\n";
  }

  # Mount paths
  mount "/catalog" => Plack::App::WrapCGI->new( script => "/path/to/interchange/bin/catalog", execute => 1 )->to_app;
};

plackup command:

plackup -s Starman --workers=5 -p 5001 -a /path/to/app.psgi -D

nginx:

proxy_pass http://localhost:5001/catalog;

posted at 2016-06-23T05:58:50 by baerg