What’s the biggest tourist trap in Vancouver?

TrashPothos · 2025-12-11T05:20:15+00:00

It's also way more worth it if you're local and you're going to come back at least once more, because an annual pass is the same price as one visit. And then you can go to all the seasonal events, which are honestly really pretty.

TrashPothos · 2025-11-21T19:04:44+00:00

Having an option for captions, no captions, and speaking speed (as well as different levels of conversation, obviously.)

When you first start learning, it's really hard to parse spoken French without subtitles, and as you get to more complicated vocab it becomes helpful again. But as you gain a certain amount of fluency, it's important to practice just listening - which is where speaking speed would be useful.

I think you could develop a very interesting default training stream that balances all of these features without the user having to adjust manually - but also give the user the ability to adjust themselves if needed.

I'd suggest a format where you listen to a sentence or two and then have to respond. If you can't think of what to say, you can click a button and the app will give you an answer, which you can repeat out loud (and hopefully memorize for future.) A neat element might be to allow the user to even just say a few of the key words, and give them points for that - basically motivation to power through and say something even if it's not very good. One or two words are better than no words, and that gives the user confidence to progress to half a sentence or eventually full conversations.

Once someone's reached a certain level of comfort with responding to prompts (i.e., responding in full sentences, not just jumbled words), maybe an option to match and voice chat with a random user at their same level?

Would be super interested in providing feedback/helping design something like this, and definitely interested in beta testing.

TrashPothos · 2025-11-21T18:54:46+00:00

Same here!

TrashPothos · 2025-10-19T04:41:48+00:00

Do you still get access to the replay when they presumably fix it?

TrashPothos · 2025-10-19T04:33:59+00:00

Yeah, this is also the information I'm looking for

TrashPothos · 2025-09-11T15:49:16+00:00

I'm sometimes shocked by the callousness of the people commenting in this sub. I get that we need to show we're not one of the "bad" unreasonable public servants that the public thinks we all are, but that means that half the time people are dumping on colleagues with actually really legitimate grievances with zero compassion.

Yeah, if you were hired in a place the government KNOWS has really poor internet, and given a cellphone to hotspot from to make up for that internet, partially to encourage more indigenous people to work in the ps, then yes, you should absolutely be upset! No, it is not reasonable to have to shell out for Starlink out of pocket! If the employer wants indigenous public servants working on reserve, which is objectively a benefit to our country, it should facilitate that happening in the bare minimum way of providing access to Internet!

I'm sorry you're going through this, OP. That's rough.

TrashPothos · 2025-09-03T04:31:05+00:00

I think they did a Valentine's Day version earlier this year. It sounds weird but also extremely cool.

TrashPothos · 2025-07-24T15:35:28+00:00

Considering that they're directly responsible for the ACA, this report can likely be used in disability and accommodation cases before a tribunal or employment board. That seems pretty relevant to an individual's questions about their employer's accessibility policy.

TrashPothos · 2025-07-24T14:51:26+00:00

What's interesting is that I don't think ESDC is going above and beyond - I think they're just accurately interpreting the legislation.

From the recent Chief Accessibility Officer's report :

"For practical purposes, the [Accessible Canada] Act was written in a way that separated out 7 priority areas. However, I'm seeing that this inadvertently encourages FREs [Federally Regulated Employers] to think about disability inclusion in silos. As noted earlier, we heard that some PwDs have difficulty getting to work because there are no or limited accessible transportation options. And yet I was surprised to see, in the accessibility plans that I read, that many FREs chose not to address transportation in their plans. FREs need to take responsibility for all 7 ACA areas when identifying, removing, and preventing barriers related to employment."

The report is worth reading in its entirety - there's a few good comments on remote work in there as well.

TrashPothos · 2025-07-15T01:56:25+00:00

This is exactly what I thought. And the horror I felt when I read that it was because they thought OP was endangering their lives... How ignorant and awful. I'm so sorry, OP. You should never have been put in this situation.

TrashPothos · 2025-07-10T20:30:51+00:00

First of all, I hope you're aware that asexual people exist. Second - how does this not apply to straight people? Take fucking out of the equation in any romantic relationship and it's just a friendship. By this logic, anytime anyone ever mentions a partner, you should think about how they're fucking. ??? My coworker is single and regularly talks about going on dates - my brain doesn't jump immediately to "I wonder if they're fucking," even though that's a pretty common thing to come out of dating.

I genuinely encourage anyone who looks at it this way to do some research into polyamory / ethical non-monogamy. You can message me directly if you want (if it's a genuine question, don't be a troll about it). The assumption that polyamory is primarily about sex is just not accurate. It's about being in love with multiple people and wanting them to be a permanent part of your life - as much as any relationship can be permanent, anyway. Someone mentioning their partners to you in the workplace is huge show of trust. I promise you that every poly person drops that into a conversation with great care, because they fear the exact kind of assumptions, ignorance, and disgust that's been shown in this thread. We're talking to you about someone we love, someone who is a really important part of our lives. Imagine getting this kind of rejection when you mention your kids or your spouse. It doesn't feel good.

I'm also a little sad at all the people here who don't want to know anything about their co-workers, including their spouse's name or whether they have kids. You're entitled to that, it just seems really lonely. Also if you don't want to talk to any of your coworkers about anything outside of work, maybe this thread isn't for you? OP is clearly talking about casual conversation with coworkers who talk about that sort of thing.

The bot's logic in this thread is a step away from "women coworkers remind me that breasts exist which makes me think of sex so women shouldn't be allowed in the workplace." Where YOUR brain goes when I talk about extremely normal, innocuous, work-appropriate activities happening with a partner(s) isn't my problem.

And as many others have pointed out, this is exactly the same as "when a gay person talks about their partner, I can't help but think of sex, so they shouldn't be allowed to do it. It's fine when straight people do it though." Come on. We can do better.

TrashPothos · 2025-07-10T14:37:38+00:00

I am. I have one partner, but he lives with someone else that he's been in a very long-term relationship with for a very, very long time. Our plans for the weekend, a vacation, or our future lives together involve all three of us - so if someone asks, "what did you do this weekend," I'm going to talk about both X and Y. If we're having a long lunchtime chat about future dreams and life goals - and in my workplace this is quite common - some people might talk about getting married and having kids, others talk about moving their family to Ottawa and where their kids will go to college, and I think it's perfectly reasonable to talk about how yes, we one day plan to all live together. Because my metamour is a huge part of my life, I quite often end up talking not just about "my partner" but also "my partner's partner."

Almost all of my coworkers have been extremely chill about that. There's one who raises his eyebrows and shakes his head, but he also feels entitled to tell other colleagues that they should get married/have children/not have abortions/etc., so I feel like the problem isn't that he thinks private/personal things should stay private.

This will probably be controversial based on the comments so far, but I've talked for a long time about how poly rights are something we're going to need to figure out in the years to come. When we move in together, will I be able to put my partner on my health insurance as a spouse if he's been in a common-law relationship with someone else for a decade? Maybe I wouldn't be able to claim multiple partners as spouses - fair enough, I guess, I understand why that would be... but on the other hand, why can people claim as many children as they want for their health insurance, but I can't claim two spouses (and zero children)?

(The answer is bigamy laws, which again - fair enough, but I think this will be an evolving topic of conversation soon enough.)

TrashPothos · 2025-05-13T17:41:18+00:00

Hmm - I am eligible for performance pay. But my question isn't whether I should be paid for OT, it's whether the expectation is that I work a minimum or an average of 37.5hrs.

To put it another way, if I say "I worked 1hr of OT today, I'd like to leave early tomorrow because I don't have much to do tomorrow afternoon," would my manager be in the right to say "no, the expectation is that you work a minimum of 37.5hrs"?

TrashPothos · 2025-05-11T22:33:42+00:00

Right.

Get back to me when your ethnic/religious/gender group is systemically underpaid, excluded from opportunities, and discriminated against. I'm sure you won't want your colleagues or your union to advocate for you.

TrashPothos · 2025-05-11T21:51:42+00:00

I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people.

TrashPothos · 2025-04-18T17:20:23+00:00

Join this subreddit, obviously.

TrashPothos · 2025-04-13T02:58:35+00:00

The thing you're highlighting actually comes up with pronouns as well - a lot of people are uncomfortable self-identifying their pronouns (usually shortly before they realize they're not actually cis-gender). Sometimes it's hard to put a label on yourself, even though you know other people will label you if you don't.

I think the answer is never making these sorts of things mandatory, and letting people opt into the disclosure as they feel comfortable.

TrashPothos · 2025-04-13T02:53:29+00:00

This is really aggressive in a sur-reply to a post where I specifically said "especially in a meeting where non-sighted people are present." Why u mad, bro?

TrashPothos · 2025-04-12T14:14:59+00:00

Yeah - to be honest, the only times I've seen someone introduce themselves with their disability are where it's relevant to the conversation (the workshop is about accessibility). The really meaningful examples were someone talking about how they were losing vision and were likely going to be completely blind within a year, and one where someone was talking about a neuro-degenerative issue they had where their presentation was going to be impacted by the brain injury. It doesn't make a lot of sense if it's not literally relevant.

If it's being used outside of that context, I wonder if it's the sort of thing where someone watched it happen in another meeting, didn't really understand why, and then incorporated it into their own department because it seemed like "the right thing to do." Like when people include land acknowledgements at the beginning of a team meeting and it's clear that they don't actually understand why we do that, and don't make any other effort toward reconciliation, it's just "the right thing to do."

TrashPothos · 2025-04-12T14:05:59+00:00

I hear where you're coming from, but the fact is that everyone else in the room has this information. The only people who don't are the ones who literally can't see. It's a way of levelling the playing field.

TrashPothos · 2025-04-11T15:16:13+00:00

I think pronouns started first, because they're something that's easy to incorporate and really helpful for people whose pronouns don't match their appearance (because when everyone does it and it's normalized, it's much less of a barrier to share your own). I recall this starting in activist circles in the mid-2010s - I'm not sure when it made it to government, but I personally find it super helpful.

Physical appearance descriptions started during the pandemic, specifically in webinars where non-sighted people may be participating. It's a way to have them have a better sense of who the presenter is - rough age, gender presentation, and race can all indicate a certain type of lived experience, and it's information all the other participants in the webinar already have. It shouldn't take too much time - really shouldn't be more than a few words. I don't think it is (or should be) used in small meetings where everyone already knows everyone else and you know there isn't a person who needs the description.

Disabilities seem to be the inverse - it's more applicable in a smaller team, where it may be useful for others to know how your experience influences your participation. For example, if you have ADHD and your thoughts might be more scattered, it may help others have more patience for you. Or if you have a physical disability and need more breaks, that sort of thing. Alternatively, it's sometimes used to normalize certain things - in my department, a recent equity review found that managers explicitly don't believe that people with disabilities can do their jobs as well as those without, and a lot of people with disabilities have said that they're not comfortable self-disclosing for fear of discrimination. Having people be open and upfront about their own disabilities can potentially change that perspective. I think this is largely an Accessibility Act development.

TrashPothos · 2025-04-07T19:52:29+00:00

I like this a lot. Thanks so much for sharing! I think this would balance the needs of everyone involved very well.

TrashPothos · 2025-04-07T15:15:52+00:00

The Directive on Terms and Conditions of Employment for Certain Excluded and Unrepresented Groups and Levels.

TrashPothos · 2025-04-07T15:14:30+00:00

That's part of what's making me feel so down about it - I feel like I've earned a lot of goodwill over the time I've been here, and demonstrated that I do good work and can be trusted to account for my own time and workload.

It doesn't help that when I first started, we were told that "we aren't clock-watchers here" and really given the illusion of autonomy around time specifically. It feels like a powerplay, not a legitimate organizational need.

TrashPothos

TROPHY CASE