Incredible Halloween omen in the distance outside my back door

Not the same survey or identical question, but I have a feeling Canada is *even worse* on this.

Ok so apparently it's NOT fine if I tune into the game 10 minutes after it starts

ICE has now sent at least 72 people to prisons in African countries where they have no ties. Via two ICE flights to Rwanda, two to Eswatini, three to Ghana and one to S. Sudan. Some had US convictions but had finished their sentences. None have convictions in the places where they're now jailed.

Proposed changes from the Ontario government would drastically reduce protection for tenants. This is appalling and would put some folks in serious danger in this era of very low vacancy, skyrocketing rental rates, and rent decontrol. Nearly 40% of Ottawa residents are renters.

Downey is pictured here with Tony Irwin, the head of landlord lobby group FRPO

Security of tenure is the backbone of all other tenant protections. Rent control, eviction rules, habitability requirements - all are rendered almost meaningless without it, because all a landlord would have to do is wait for the current lease term to end and refuse to renew.

Doug Ford is about to make Ontario's housing crisis even worse by ensuring that renters with leases will live in constant fear of being forced out so that landlord can demand higher rent. Many will be forced into homelessness.

This is class warfare

All renters in Ontario should be very, very worried about this and begin mobilizing to oppose it immediately. This will effectively end all rent control and allow landlords to evict tenants at will.

This would be catastrophic to the household finances of every renter, dramatically increase homelessness for seniors & fixed income, all to boost landlord profits. Would destroy any slim chance of saving towards home ownership. Landed gentry pulling the ladder up & devastating ON society & economy.

This is insane and it’s basically going to evict a bunch people who have lived in places for decades whose whole lives are planned around their rent controlled apt. Just because lobbyists and corporate landlords have more sway than people with this government.

Ford just put every renter in Ontario into an even more precarious position. This is a clear and present danger to the 1.7 million renters in Ontario.

???

This satisfies part (1) of the order, but does not even take a shot at parts (2) and (3). The order:

If they are making mistakes THIS big (or... intentionally casting the net this illegally wide), imagine how many immigrants who have less reason to be certain about their status are receiving notices like this.

My thoughts on today's development in the Abrego Garcia case. Every minute of delay is a minute too many. www.techdirt.com/2025/04/11/c...

The Trump DOJ just basically flipped Judge Xinis the bird. So look folks, we've been in a Constitutional crisis, but this is what it looks like on steroids: the Trump DOJ saying fck you to a federal court judge. Not going to end well.

UPDATE: Abrego Garcia’s lawyers are asking the Trump administration to facilitate his release *tonight* and to send a plane to bring him back. They’re also asking Judge Xinis for an emergency hearing tomorrow.

Reminder from 2020 of what all the "Cancel Culture" grifters, who are almost unanimously silent as ICE continues to kidnap people, were angling for: A police state.

it's been years upon years of labored "campus culture" op-eds from salaried writers hectoring students about free speech, and now the state is kidnapping students for their speech in broad daylight

If you're scooping up students off the street for writing op-eds, you're secret police, and should be treated accordingly.

"push back"

Yeah but journalists should have been assuming cops are lying for decades, and instead have mostly treated them as an authoritative source of presumed truth. So I'm not holding my breath.

the fact that people are being disappeared in the name of ""preventing antisemitism"" by a christian nationalist administration is making me nauseated and horrified in ways i cant even begin to explain

Unless this era results in profound and lasting change - whether that's irreversible collapse, or transformative counterrevolution - then in ten years it'll just feel like another bullet point on the list of American horrors, another piece of grim trivia, another Historical Crime

Cancel Culture Comes to Portland, July 23, 2020

City council budget sessions are so cool. You write a budget, then you spend nine hours listening to every variation of "but could we collect less tax, and spend less money, while also increasing services?" followed by every variation of "for the last time, no"

I miss writing and hosting bar trivia. I really need to find a new bar to replace the one that closed. Preferably also a 3 minute walk from my house like that one was.

fwiw Toronto City Council just did its (small) part by excluding Tesla from our ZEV taxi grant program. No attempt at a smokescreen reason or anything either - it was presented straight up as a "fuck Elon Musk" decision.

Okay folks, this morning we launched our Kickstarter campaign for our new *amazing* card game, One Billion Users. You can back it here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/mma...

There's literally no evidence whatsoever that advertisers are increasing their spend on ExTwitter in response to a Trump win, and that's not remotely what the report in AdWeek says - and yet this idea is spreading like wildfire among both gloating Musk fans AND gloating Musk critics.

Cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to announce that @benwhitelaw.bsky.social and I are teaming up to launch a new podcast all about the world of online speech. Subscribe now so you don't miss our first episode, coming very soon... www.ctrlaltspeech.com

It's that time again - over at Techdirt we've announced the winners of the sixth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1928! www.techdirt.com/2024/02/29/a... 1/