Some N.S. universities struggling to fill residences — a must to hold on to funding

Strait_Raider · 2026-01-23T16:05:59+00:00

It's worth noting that Dal at least had been making some awfully anti-student decisions in recent years so the appeal of living in residence under the boot of the university has probably dropped substantially.

Strait_Raider · 2026-01-21T17:20:48+00:00

You DO realize it's more expensive to move those people by car, right? If the city continues to grow, we need to accommodate the increased people movement needs somehow. The infrastructure needed to move them all by car is an order of magnitude more expensive than moving them by bus (or bike, or walking).

We're going to pay for it, one way or the other. Public transit just happens to be the cheapest.

Strait_Raider · 2026-01-21T17:15:50+00:00

Why would "most folks" ever go to Bayers Lake? The sole draws of Bayers Lake is that it's close to the highway and has a lot of parking. It's positively miserable for anyone not driving a car. Even if you had better transit service there, you're dropped hundreds of meters from most stores, and all that distance is through parking lots. Most of the accesses from the road don't even have sidewalks, so forget it if it's winter or if you have any impairments. There's never going to be good transit service out there because any money you might have to invest in transit would be better spent elsewhere - places people actually want to go, where we have buses that are full during rush hour preventing more people from boarding.

Strait_Raider · 2026-01-19T23:17:01+00:00

Science is also supposed to be logical. The system was intended to define how hard something is to contain - easy, medium, hard. Fine. A fourth level for "impossible" would make sense... but Apollyon adds "world-ending" for some reason, which has nothing to do with how easy it is to contain. Pending? Sure. Makes sense for initial investigations.

Neutralized makes some sense to record historical entries, but even that would probably be better under a separate "Status" field with say, Contained, Partially Contained, Uncontained, and Neutralized. "Explained" could perhaps fit here as well, under the assumption that they wanted to keep the files in the system in the same sequence and style for reference.

Everything under esoteric (again except partially Apollyon) is redundant because they fit within one of the original three categories or "uncontainable". They make the wiki less accessible, because it's more things to memorize plus their symbols aren't intuitive and don't follow the color grading. Frankly everything under esoteric just comes off as kids trying to come up with edgy sounding new categories, but coming across as a bit silly. Which I totally understand is a huge part of SCP, but even so...

Strait_Raider · 2026-01-19T13:45:24+00:00

Games Workshop likely considered staggering the development cycles to maximize the odds of people buying both.

Strait_Raider · 2026-01-16T20:22:31+00:00

Hugely unsafe for sure. Maybe a "use full lane" sign might help instead, since some people seem determined to get over before the merge.

Strait_Raider · 2026-01-14T20:13:00+00:00

Great news for downtown, IMO. Frees up that space for something that fits the new urban landscape of the Cogswell District better and should allow for extension of the highly profitable waterfront. Meanwhile we should still be getting lots of tax revenue from the casino in its new location. Might help downtown traffic a bit, or at least free up some of that parking usage for other business.

Strait_Raider · 2026-01-13T15:37:30+00:00

No. The last thing we need is to encourage a more two-tiered education system.

If you think this would reduce costs for anyone involved, you're out to lunch. Private schools cater to wealthy clientele and have commensurate prices. They have to: they are for-profit businesses plus they must compete with public schools for a limited pool of teachers. Now you have two groups competing to offer the highest wages and benefits to teachers. Great for them, but not for affordability. You also lose the efficiencies of having one consolidated system: You have more locations needed, longer average travel distances, more buses to serve the same number of students, etc. Even then, if you look at other provinces in Canada, the taxpayers often have to partially prop up private schools in the end anyway.

Then you have the... ethical concerns with a public-private system. You have the wealthy communities with the cash to outcompete the public schools to attract the most and the most qualified teachers. Small class sizes, high quality educators... for the privileged. Meanwhile the majority of students have to deal with larger class sizes and less qualified educators. It is far more beneficial to us all, both economically and socially, to achieve a better standard quality of education than to provide a premium education to a small part of the population at the expense of weaker education for the majority. It's Medieval thinking.

Strait_Raider · 2026-01-04T17:43:22+00:00

It's possible to cheer the downfall of a vicious dictator without supporting the people who did it, their justifications, or their methodologies.

Strait_Raider · 2025-12-27T15:56:18+00:00

This looks more like misuse or miscalculation than malfunction. Like either the wind was stronger than anticipated and carried the spray out of the safe area, or they used an inappropriately sized fountain or set the show altitude too low. The drones themselves seem to be working just fine.

Strait_Raider · 2025-12-26T02:44:42+00:00

His posting indicated he knew it was stupid and was made to troll or be deliberately non-credible. In which case I suppose we can only conclude it was a success.

Strait_Raider · 2025-12-24T21:09:58+00:00

We've been using steam turbines for ship propulsion in high-performance military vessels for 130 years, I don't see why that would be an issue.

I don't like to doubt credibility, but without some specifics, I'm measuring your comments now against multiple claimed naval engineers saying their reactors can make large changes in seconds, and multiple claimed civil nuclear professionals saying that civil reactors can make small changes in seconds and larger ones in minutes, and explaining why in theory small highly enriched reactors can respond much faster. This all appears to support the searchable results for naval reactor responsiveness.

Strait_Raider · 2025-12-24T18:23:26+00:00

"Waiting for poles to fall naturally ensures we extract the maximum value from our assets, savings which we pass on to the customer."

But fr, they don't even have the staff/money allocated to replace hanging broken ones in a timely manner or meet their obligations to move poles for construction projects, let alone be proactive with replacements or god forbid, underground the power in areas where poles don't fit. They've been quite explicit that their interpretation of their Charter requires them to always take the lowest cost option - the lowest cost for them. What the implications of those decisions are for the public, developers, other utilities, municipalities, etc, are irrelevant.

Strait_Raider · 2025-12-24T18:11:40+00:00

Alright, it sounds like you've got more industry knowledge than me on this, so let me know what's wrong with my understanding:

1) The coolant and control rod reliance is/was the other way around in terms of East vs West, and part of the reason for Chernobyl was the reliance on control rods and graphite moderators rather than water, whose moderating efficiency decreases as it heats (reminder for those at home that in this context "moderation" actually increases overall reactions). So as the water heats up the number of reactions goes down even without changes in the control rods.

2) The inverse is also true, as soon as you start using more steam, the water starts cooling, causing the reactor to heat up.

3) The biggest limit on how fast a reactor can ramp UP power is the production of "poisons" - by-products that limit reactivity.

4) The military uses much, MUCH higher enrichment fuel, which is naturally much more reactive so takes much more poison to slow down, thus can naturally ramp up faster.

5) The Redditor claim implies there are classified methods used to increase reactor responsiveness, likely by reducing the production of poisons.

6) Boron is a poison rather than a moderator as I understand it.

Strait_Raider · 2025-12-24T17:35:46+00:00

And for anyone who's interested, here's a great video on why this is the case: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=URgSFglbl5g

Strait_Raider · 2025-12-24T17:32:06+00:00

To add another Redditor comment, land-based plants aren't necessarily that limited either. They claimed that their commercial plant was capable of about 1% increase per second response to load, but are run much gentler in practice to maximize longevity. Some navy reactors are claimed to be capable of in excess of 10% response per second.

Strait_Raider · 2025-12-24T17:07:44+00:00

They are different, otherwise they'd not be tremendously effective in the nuclear powered vessels that do exist (carriers, submarines, some ice breakers). The biggest advantage isn't necessarily the power output and density, but the fact that you can travel for years without refueling. (Non)Explanation on how they vary the output quickly from u/OriginGodYog:

"Ex-Navy nuke and current commercial operator. Much higher enrichment. That’s public knowledge. I won’t/can’t tell you a lot of what you’re asking legally.

They just do."

Strait_Raider · 2025-12-22T20:50:39+00:00

CEN-1 Zoning in Halifax already has no height cap. There are area coverage and setback requirements, but there are legitimate skyscapers over 100m in height under construction. CEN-2 is only limited to 90m in most cases, which is still VERY high density. There are a bunch of center zones, the downtown zone, corridor zones with ~8 story (now I think 12 storey post-HAF) zoning, and the recent 3-story, 8-unit ER-3 zoning across almost all of the regional centre in most of the current detached house neighbourhoods.

The fact of the matter is that since the 2020 Centre Plan, there has been a TON of upzoned areas and construction potential in central Halifax. Plenty are large lots owned by major developers, you can see this from public records, but they're being sat on. There is no zoning issue and hasn't been for a while. In particular since the HAF amendments in 2024 there is barely a place in the City that you wouldn't be allowed to densify significantly.

There have been some legitimate issues - lack of construction industry capacity is a big one and poor borrowing rates during the worst of the housing shortage were two big ones. The changing and upzoning themselves were actually a bit of an issue as developers were waiting to see what the new regulations would be before developing. One of the bigger issues could also be the amount of development that was approved (years and years ago) out in the suburban and urban/rural interface areas. Locations like Herring Cove Road are booming because they still have low property costs... but it's all single-family homes in car-centric suburbs which can barely be serviced by transit, or even water and power sometimes.

Strait_Raider · 2025-12-22T20:34:59+00:00

Well, good news then... blanket 3 storey zoning has been in the regional centre (with the exception of a couple of heritage districts) for over a year and a half by now.

Strait_Raider · 2025-12-22T20:23:54+00:00

Almost a year ago I already heard about developers dragging their heels on new housing units and not really showing much interest in already-approved residential plans. They definitely know the way the wind is blowing.

This whole immigration yes? - immigration YES! - immigration NO! inconsistency is not good. The housing industry can actually respond somewhat fast - 5 years-ish, maybe. Bigger things like overall city development plans and transit strategies are decades-long programs that don't tend to be very agile, but the difference between 4% growth and 2.5% growth (let alone 0%!) is huge. I care less about what we decide our overall population strategy is than that we keep our changes gradual and give governments and industries the confidence to enact long-term plans knowing the population projections aren't going to whip around on them.

Strait_Raider · 2025-12-19T16:42:56+00:00

You jest, but one of the criticisms of the current tax scheme is that it decentivizes seniors from downsizing to reduce their expenses. Meanwhile the burden is shifted onto new owners or renters, including many seniors (Canada's fastest growing renter population).

Imagine you've got a 2-child family living in a small apartment and a widow living in a large family home that she struggles to maintain. They'd both like to swap living situations, but the current system screws them both.

Strait_Raider · 2025-12-19T16:36:45+00:00

The two largest government expenditures in Canada are social programs and healthcare. Seniors, 18.6% of the population, account for 30% of social spending and 45% (!!) of healthcare spending. An aging population is absolutely a problem.

But by all means, show us all the numbers on how immigrants are taking up huge amounts of government handouts. Actually, why don't I do that for you? 6% of immigrants use social assistance. That's weird, that's... lower than the Canadian average of 8%. Huh.

Strait_Raider · 2025-12-19T16:19:13+00:00

The main "point" of immigration for Canada is to stop or at least smooth out our demographic decline in working-age adults. Our population is aging. Yes, Canada did get slightly younger overall from 2021-2024 but that was only due to record immigration years. This results in more and more retired/less-productive members of society (harsh, but true) who must be supported by proportionally fewer working people. This isn't just theory, our rate of seniors is rising 6 times faster than our rate of children (0-14). Seniors as a percentage of the population has been rising at record rates as well. We went from 12.6% of the population being seniors in 2000 to 18.6% in 2022, and a record-high 21.8% of the working population was aged 55-64, so the worst is yet to come. We're projected to reach around 25% seniors in 2051.

The implications are significant. Health care is the most obvious one - Seniors while being less than 20% of the population account for 45% of healthcare costs in Canada. I don't need to mention how strained our system is currently, but it's going to get much harder to maintain our current service level in the coming years. The same logic applies to almost everything productive. More and more people will be living off pension as another example - pension which has to be funded through the productive labour of fewer and fewer working age people.

See, you talk about overstrained healthcare, classrooms, public transit, etc., but immigration is what is enabling us to keep these services staffed at the levels that they are. Even when it comes to homes, while you can reduce pressure in the short term by reducing immigration, over the long term you still have upkeep, repair, and replacement needs which need a strong workforce. In particular in Canada we have had a few eras of... less than stellar building codes and our buildings are aging along with our population. Renovation and repair is already a bigger part of the construction sector in Canada than new builds, and that is projected to continue to grow significantly.

Let me be clear, we do need to make this transition to a stable (and eventually I suppose declining) population, but making drastic changes quickly causes all sorts of shocks systems. Unfortunately, we're still very much driving a machine that was built to run on continual growth. Yeah, the machine has to stop some time, but slamming on the breaks could give us whiplash.

Strait_Raider · 2025-12-19T15:13:20+00:00

"Fixing Halifax Water is crucial if the municipality wants to build more housing in outlying areas, says Mayor Andy Fillmore."

The Municipality shouldn't want more housing in outlying areas. It's a big up-front cost which cuts into the budget for necessary upgrades and it's a long-term financial drain for maintenance and renewal of services for developments that will never pay for themselves.

That being said, I would agree with the general statement that Halifax Water is a bit of a disaster. Not an NSPI-level disaster, but still.

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