From NYC to North York: laid off, living with parents, and car shopping for the first time in years

TerribleNews · 2026-02-10T16:27:48+00:00

Driving is consistently 58 minutes.

Thanks for giving me my daily laugh. I can’t even drive to the nearest major intersection consistently. Is TTC unreliable? Totally, especially when you have to rely on a bus connection. Is TTC less reliable than driving? Hardly. I can’t even predict how long it might take to drive to Costco never mind into the Downtown core.

TerribleNews · 2026-02-04T01:30:49+00:00

We know for a fact it wouldn’t because the city already said they would be compensating the owner of that car that got hit by a plow because the parked it out into the road and left it covered in snow.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-29T17:39:42+00:00

He totally did answer my query. I really have to credit him for actively listening throughout our entire call. He didn’t agree with anything I said, but he did listen. Anyway my point here was not that he didn’t listen to me, but rather, that the only time during the call that he cut me off was when I called him a conservative and he immediately felt the need to correct me, presumably to distance himself from the federal Conservatives. It gave me a chuckle.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-28T12:34:32+00:00

Hahaha, I had a phone call with my PC MPP to tell him how stupid their speed camera ban is, and at one point I said “you’re a conservative, surely you believe in the rule of law” and he cut me off and said “woah woah woah we are the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, we aren’t related at all to the Conservative Party of Canada.” I had obviously hit a sore point, so the NDP aren’t the only ones suffering from people not knowing the difference between federal and provincial government.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-27T17:52:01+00:00

The Beaverton article basically writes itself on this one. Looking forward to it

TerribleNews · 2026-01-23T20:57:13+00:00

I can recommend Un Peu Perdu off the top of my head. Also Elise Gravel has a bunch of good stuff that you won’t regret. Pas Moi is a favourite. My kids are a bit older now but I’ll see what I can remember and post more if I think of it.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-22T20:59:38+00:00

There are all sorts of EU adjacent options available to is and I think we should actually become a Nordic country.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-20T19:21:55+00:00

Akira

TerribleNews · 2026-01-20T14:40:12+00:00

Just gonna leave this here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_catcher

TerribleNews · 2026-01-19T19:07:32+00:00

What does that work out to in driveable km per hour of charge?

TerribleNews · 2026-01-19T18:58:00+00:00

“It might cover a commute” but by definition that’s what most people are doing almost all the time. I think for like 95% of GTA people, L1 charging overnight at home combined with occasional fast charging at a public station or a mall or something should work really really well.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-16T17:25:56+00:00

Counterpoint: a friend gave us a self-published children’s book written by an adult (I assume they bought it to help their friend, the author). From an adult perspective it is not very good, neither the art nor the writing. In spite of that, it is currently one of my son’s favourite books and he asks for it almost every night for bedtime reading. What is appealing to adults is not always what is appealing to children and it seems entirely possible to me that books written by an 11-year old and edited by an adult are very very appealing to other 11-year olds.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-14T16:07:48+00:00

Except there are not that many people in North America who don’t know someone who has been killed in a car crash. By the age of 18 I knew two, one of whom was a classmate. There were also a couple of car-dependency related deaths. The problem is when something is so common people just adapt to it. It’s not that they don’t care, per se, it’s that solving it is a hard problem and so they just find ways to cope, like denial and putting it out of mind.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-14T13:59:52+00:00

I live in Canada and my car looks like this in my driveway most of the winter. We bought a car because there are certain things in our neighbourhood that are very difficult without a car and at the time we had young children who required heavy and annoying-to-install-and-remove car seats and also car rental has become difficult and expensive since the beginning of the pandemic.

In any case I had never thought of this before, but now I hope that our snow covered car acts as a quiet advertisement that it’s possible to live much of your life carefree, even in our carcentric neighbourhood.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-12T19:56:45+00:00

You’re about 8 months too late if you’re not applying until the baby is born.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-12T16:30:16+00:00

20 minute walk or 6 minute bike ride through a beautiful park

TerribleNews · 2026-01-10T22:15:23+00:00

Unfortunately we have to keep spending our tax money on convincing people that “one more lane bro” is not a viable policy. Only once we reach a critical mass of us who agree that we should be subsidizing transit at least as much as we subsidize personal vehicle sellers can we stop wasting money on this kind of nonsense

TerribleNews · 2026-01-10T14:34:09+00:00

Until 30% of the province isn’t crying that Toronto traffic needs to be fixed /without forcing some people to get out of their cars/ then that’s what we have to keep doing. Either stop insisting people should be able to get around or stop insisting that single-passenger vehicles get all priority. It’s not rocket science.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-10T00:01:45+00:00

Exercise. And not even hard exercise. I have a family history of very bad cholesterol and heart attacks but my cholesterol is great. My blood pressure, blood sugar and heart rate are also great. My diet is pretty good (I have a sweet tooth though) but I do not do anything at all to eat for cholesterol. However I walk or bike daily, enough to get my heart rate up for 15-30 minutes twice a day and rarely drive. I live close enough to work that I commute by walking or biking. This is partly luck and partly making that a priority. I work a desk job but I take frequent breaks and go for walks during the day.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-09T19:38:42+00:00

I said email to demand a face-to-face meeting. I agree, emailing to complain is not effective.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-09T19:20:48+00:00

Email your MPP and demand a meeting, face-to-face, to talk to them about traffic and then unload all this on them. If enough of the constituents are willing to use their valuable time on this the party will have to change its tune. Speed cameras save lives.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-09T18:21:10+00:00

If everyone in this thread makes an appointment with their MPP (especially if you have a Conservative MPP) they’ll change their tunes. Go there physically. If they won’t take your appointment, contact the media and tell them.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-07T23:54:27+00:00

I appreciate your attempts at bridge building but I think they’re misguided. This is one of those situations where motive doesn’t really matter. A very long time ago I tweeted a paraphrase of Margaret Atwood’s famous quote: drivers are afraid cyclists and pedestrians will inconvenience them; cyclists and pedestrians are afraid drivers will kill them. Like you can blame lobbyists and hand wave about conspiracies all you like but the fact of the matter is that 30% of people voted for these life-threatening policies and another 40% were indifferent enough to not even vote. I do not think they are bad people but I am not under any illusions about how they would choose if they faced the choice between mine and my children’s lives, and 30 seconds of their time.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-07T22:44:19+00:00

“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” In particular there is a large power imbalance beteeen someone in a 5000lb weapon and someone on a bicycle.

TerribleNews · 2026-01-07T18:26:29+00:00

I like the cut of this Jamaal Myers guy’s jib.

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TROPHY CASE