Gender studies does a far better job of explaining the Trump administration than traditional political science, or economics for that matter

the food safety stuff is another reminder that a large, huge, gigantic part of being a republican is going “lmao why are we spending money to prevent horrifying disasters from happening if they never happen 🤪”

This guy lives *on the subway line* by the way. Guaranteed he's never used it, since he's provided a car and driver on the taxpayer's dime If you were wondering why there's never any funding for transit in Ontario, that's why. These guys get driven everywhere and stay in hotels whenever they want

The insane thing about this is that if you were to take this chart back to March and make investments based on the chart, you would have *lost* so much money

"why does Toronto never do popular things" discourse summed up. The people who have 100% of the govt's attention are... Not regular ppl The '000s of people's lives who are improved by ped streets aren't important, the 8 people of the RA and BIA are And this is a *left wing* mayor

Blue states are more self-sufficient than red states, so Republicans can get away with this ratfucking because blue states prevent it from becoming a massive disaster. Dems cant get away with this becuase pulling $$ from red states would cause the state to collapse Largely true in Canada as well

It's actually so funny that *this* is the guy the CPC decided to go all in on This is your king? The guy who blew a million point lead? The career politician who has literally never had a private sector job? The Temu Republican party "warrior culture" guy? Carney is gonna be pm for a decade

I don’t know why people take rural people at their word that they want to work, that they want jobs in their area, my experience is that a lot of them want to coast and that’s why they live where they do.

Finally heard, in real life, "prediction markets result in more accurate odds because of insider trading" as a reason to participate in those markets and maybe I'm the idiot here but if I don't have insider info... Am I not just giving money to the people who do Why would I do that lmao

I'm not so worked up about the world cup not making economic sense to do. You don't throw a party hoping to make money The actual issue is just how much of the billion taxpayer dollars spent went to the fucking police www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Yonge Street regularly has over 10x more pedestrians than cars, even in the rain. Yet cars get 2x more space. This video faces west at Yonge/Edward, and only captures the west sidewalk, and peds still out number cars. YongeTOmorrow with wider sidewalks & more dedicated pedestrian space is overdue.

Sure would be a good time for Canada to go all in on solar/wind and gobble up some of this $121 billy but I guess we're just going to spend our time trying to subsidize a couple billion dollar pipeline into existence to please a bunch of separatists in Alberta

Did he actually think there was a sustainable way to build a walled garden around linear algebra lmfao

Having a family member in a wheelchair makes it extremely obvious how bad-faith the people who say "we need car lanes to help disabled people" are They don't care about disabilities, they just want to use them as a cudgel to get another car lane. Most disabled people want to use their car *less*

Car collision deaths are a policy choice

"I run the protection program"

Basically every political decision is a trolley problem, and our politicians nearly universally don't pull the lever "I'll only pull the lever if there's no one on the other track" isn't a workable worldview, so we just keep letting 5 people die instead of 1 over and over again

The Ford government quadrupling down on gas cars is going to be a top 1 economic boondoggle of all time for the province, which will subsequently be immediately forgotten (see: sale of the 407)

"the house that our elected leader lives in" should be the most slam dunk "this obviously needs to be paid for with tax revenue" of all time, but every politician has poisoned the well so badly on this that using tax dollars to fund government infra is now impossible www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

You wanted house prices to go down, what do you think that meant?

Traffic incidents injure vastly more people in Toronto than any other type of crime, so if you're wondering why the cops get to hold the city hostage over massive budget increases each year, the answer is: who knows!

Canadian voters think everything is the federal govts fault, so the federal govt rewards bad behaviour of the provinces Municipalities do the same thing, but way worse Cut sustainable funding sources, increase DCs 100x, get bailed out by province (& feds) www.tvo.org/article/anal...

The fact that our city councillors *constantly* participate while driving a car is insane Doing it once should be disqualifing for office, complete disregard for the safety of constituents. Doing it while talking ABOUT ROAD SAFETY would be too on the nose for a satire film

Matlow speaking sense.. “There’s no reason you’d need more police at a pedestrian street than any other street,” he said. “They’re safer, because there are fewer cars.”

See the thing about Iran's position in all this is that it's in their best interest to rope-a-dope the Americans along with constant headlines of "a deal is close", such that prices stay lower and the world runs their reserves down quicker This gives them *way more* leverage

The misanthropes won, and bad municipal law in Ontario and BC thwarted federal immigration policy. Don't know how we have a dynamic country when national ambition needs to get the 23rd vote on Toronto City Council.

portrayal of MSG as if it's some frightening chemical is usually a pretty big tipoff that they're not on the level, amongst many other things.

"The purpose of a system is what it does. Not what it says it does. What it actually does" venat.substack.com/p/the-purpos...

Much to say about this article but I'll start with the claims that kids don't or can't live in "skyscrapers" (the building under discussion is 15 storeys) when the census data show that such neighbourhoods have way more kids than nearby low-rise. (left: land use, right: kids/km^2)

It's incredible that the entire panic over "ultra-processed foods" is based on the results of just *five* RCTs, four of which were less than three weeks long. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

i'm fine with people choosing bicycles as a primary mode of transportation. in fact, there are lots of benefits to doing so. all i'd ask is that they run a gas generator or something for a couple hours a day to fulfill their commitment to the carbon footprint

The thing about rural Ontarian voters is that their revealed preference is that they absolutely love when Doug Ford takes their money and spends it in Toronto I say we give them what they voted for and take more of their money (in reality, give them less of our money, we don't get any of theirs)

trump as the woke degrowther sparking a massive global green transition via an implicit carbon tax is never not going to be funny to me

The Ontario electorate is so fucking dumb. Elected a guy with -51% approval and he's got another FOUR YEARS on his term

The only acceptable conclusion of this is that provincial meddling is exactly what the city wanted. They now have a convenient scapegoat for their failures "Sure we may have taken 11 years to design a 100m section of road, but we were JUST about to implement it, and now we can't becuase of Ford"

Vote for someone who believes in things, not someone who blows whichever way the wind does

I sometimes think about travelling to places, and then I try to book a private room at a hostel in Montreal and it's $700 for a weekend, plus another $200 for a round-trip train ticket. And then I think what I could do in Toronto for a weekend with a budget of $900 and I stop thinking about travel.

Queens Quay at Little Norway, where police tackle cyclists for not stopping.

Toronto is a city that is chomping at the bit for festivals and events. There should be multiple events shutting down areas of the city to cars every single weekend, but the worst people you've ever met would rather drive to the grocery store 32 seconds faster than allow 2M+ people to have fun

The argument that we (looking back) never pushed back enough on is "who uses the Pythagorean theorem at their job?" Even if we assume that the point of school is to learn job skills, the point of learning is to strengthen your ability to learn. Athletes lift weights to get better at their sport

Prospective investors at my firm have been asking how we've been using AI automation to improve our efficiency, for their "due diligence" It turns out, they aren't asking as a question about how efficient we are, they're actually asking bc they are looking for ideas on how to use AI themselves

We did it to ourselves, we did And that's what really hurts Us and no one else We do it to ourselves We do it to ourselves My @thestar.com column on the possible closure of Sneaky Dees. One councillor said it was the province’s fault. It isn’t Doug Ford here. It’s Toronto.

When real estate agents think it’s too dangerous to take the TTC but hundreds of school children take it everyday with no issue

I cannot stress enough that Doug Ford's government has sat in the legislature for THRITY DAYS so far this year, and that number will be unchanged by Halloween. 10 months, 30 days of work The contempt I feel towards Ford voters is unreal, shouldn't even be trusted to tie their own shoes

After taking an extended 14 week winter break, Doug Ford is taking an extended 21 week summer break, which takes them nearly to Halloween before they are back in session It's all gravy trains/planes/and automobiles. Getting paid to work ~30% of the year www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

the one thing these people cannot countenance is being Accurately Described. all of this is happening because the internet provided a means for people to Accurately Describe them to their faces. and they lost their fucking minds

The thing about homeless shelters are that the ROI is actually off the charts good, and is so obviously the case that one can only assume that anyone who is against shelters just wants homeless people to die www.tvo.org/article/anal...

The thing about the world cup is that we are 0% prepared for it here in Toronto There was a concert and charity bike ride last weekend and the city was fully gridlocked. Drivers already completely ignore the Bathurst TTC lane. It's going to be a disaster

The councillors blaming the province every time a development gets approved (in this case Bravo) need to have some self respect. No one made you designate the Downtown growth area. Acknowledge that growth needs to happen somewhere, there are trade offs and this is what you picked. Be adults.

The thing about athletes is that a top 0.01% athlete on enough drugs to kill an elephant is still nowhere near as good as a top 0.00001% athlete The people at the top of the top are incredible genetic freaks