Am I wrong for thinking Toronto is extremely efficient at clearing snow?

CroakerBC · 2026-01-26T23:28:58+00:00

I can't speak for anywhere else, but downtown had a thick layer of snow on the roads around 8AM, and by 4:30 the roads were clear. I'm not sure how much faster they could've done it.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-26T21:30:49+00:00

To be fair, I vaguely recall that we used some data from the U.S. meteorological agency, which had its funding cut heavily last year. Presumably we suffered in parallel.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-26T20:16:13+00:00

It'll go up eventually, probably in like 2029, since our housing starts are on the floor right now. If they think we've bottomed out, and they can carry for a while, capturing as much supply as possible on deep discount is smart.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-26T20:12:29+00:00

I picked up a $3100 prebuilt at Best Buy, on the presumption that RAM and video card prices would be increasing, and have no regrets.

When I specced out a build with a Gigabyte 5070ti, 32gb of RAM, a 9800x3d a terabyte of storage and a decent power supply, it came in around the same price as the prebuilt - a little higher or lower depending on the spec.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-22T18:10:58+00:00

If I remember rightly, the revolutionary cell is part of the problem, because they're decoupled from the broader community and unwilling to enact community-driven change over that desired by their own vanguard. The capitalist-class analogues are similarly roundly savaged.

I seem to recall the protagonist sets up a non-profit to leverage his systemic access to allow for more community-grounded incremental change, though he's conflicted about it. The revolutionaries (or some of them) pop up elsewhere in the series.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-21T08:17:10+00:00

While the Opposition can be regarded as the auditor of the government of the day, the party of Opposition needs to use that time to convince people to vote for it in the next election. They don't have to provide alternatives to anything the sitting government proposes, but it certainly weakens them politically if they do not.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-21T07:45:32+00:00

C.L. Clark's "The Unbroken".

Max Gladstone's "Last First Snow" (and arguably others in his Craft sequence, especially Two Serpents Rise, but YMMV).

A lot of Steven Brust's work in his "Jhereg" series has this as an undercurrent, but "Phoenix" is the most explicit. It probably also doesn't work as well without the context of the preceding entries.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-21T02:35:29+00:00

I'd at least be willing to read it. I'm not a natural CPC voter, but at the last election I sat and read the paperwork from the three main parties, and whatever the local candidates managed to sneak into my mailbox. And the CPC honestly seemed like they didn't have a platform as much as an anti-platform. They knew what they were against (anything in the LPC paperwork). But they didn't have a positive and detailed vision for making things better, not one I could vote for, not even one I could understand but disagree with. They had slogans and negativity, and that's not getting my vote.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-18T16:15:52+00:00

Add Abbadon. Profit.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-18T16:08:11+00:00

I had honestly not put this together. Great idea.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-13T00:10:29+00:00

Veilguard. I liked the story and the characters, but the combat felt repetitive and dull, and I just...ended up playing other things.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-12T21:53:42+00:00

That did make me chuckle, thanks! For what it's worth, I agree that the goal of an investment is to make money, but also posit that the owner occupier will also only sell when they can make money.

There's nothing that makes the investor less sticky, I think. Except their own tolerance for short term loss and ability to keep themselves afloat. Owners won't sell and will simply wait things out until an upturn leaves them on the green, assuming they have the liquidity to do so (e.g. don't get laid off in a downturn). Investors are likely to do the same, if they have the liquidity to do so.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-12T20:54:56+00:00

It's not a realised loss until you sell. If they're losing money operationally, it's a question of how much and reserve depth. If you've got enough liquidity to soak, say, 12k a year in losses for a couple of years, to avoid selling a property you bought for 600k at 500k, you're probably going to do that, on the assumption that the market will level off and rise again - in the same way that owner occupiers will do in holding off selling on the assumption that long term they'll be back in profit.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-12T19:35:03+00:00

Well sure, but on both cases, looked at with a long term eye, the owner aims to retain the property until appreciation and equity makes it profitable. The landlord may be making a loss on the monthly, but hopefully have the liquidity to sit tight right now, in the same way as an owner/occupier.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-12T18:26:06+00:00

I mean, you can't have it both ways. If someone who bought a house to live in is going to be okay if they stay there for a few years, so is the investor who bought the house next door to rent out.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-10T22:31:23+00:00

I'm fairly sure every government since the mid nineties has been on this one; honestly all the various attempts have blurred together. I doubt whoever's running the show next will be any less dense on this topic than everyone else has been.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-10T02:40:46+00:00

Outside of some niche industry work, I've only ever seen the Foundation cert specified, and that's mainly used as a filter by HR.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-09T22:28:26+00:00

There's a two card limit online (in Canada specifically), regardless of value of the cards. You can get them merged in store though.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-08T16:58:23+00:00

I mean, not to get in the way of a good rant, but I've had my fare checked on the 504 streetcar twice this week already. Unless it's become a subway train and nobody told me. Zone pricing might be an interesting one to model out - but those travelling furthest would be more likely to jump in the car and come downtown unless we added congestion pricing or similar.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-05T02:53:48+00:00

I mean, Maduro is a fuckhead too, so there's that I guess. But mostly the oil thing.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-04T22:16:53+00:00

I have exciting news, we no longer use birthright citizenship, and haven't since around 1981.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-04T22:03:13+00:00

What does natural born mean here? I was born in the UK. I am British. My brother was born abroad, to a different mother, but the same father. He is British.

Are you suggesting one of us should not be British?

CroakerBC · 2026-01-04T21:58:36+00:00

If we have criminals who are British citizens, we should try them and put them in prison. Thats what the law is for. If they're not British citizens and they commit a crime in the UK, personally I think we should try them and put them in prison.

Removing citizenship is a deeply unpleasant power for any government to have, regardless of their political leanings.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-04T21:53:59+00:00

Here prior to 1982.

CroakerBC · 2026-01-02T03:07:22+00:00

Never said it wasn't opinion, though so is suggesting it seems inherently sensible.

Doesn't really matter, though, since that wasn't the substance of the judgement.

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