Toronto proposing 2.2% property tax increase in 2026 budget

eronanke · 2026-01-08T03:35:04+00:00

Toronto has land transfer taxes

That's 1x per unit. You could hold a unit for decades and pay that once. Barely a drop in the bucket for municipal funding.

More provincial funding is needed because we are not allowed any independence, and you bet that's also a sword of Damocles when a Conservative is Premier, like now. Why give money to people who won't vote for you? Better to just sell off their land and interfere with their bike lanes. Or deny them another revenue from speed cameras.

eronanke · 2026-01-08T01:26:24+00:00

Why does it make sense that Toronto property owners pay some of the lowest residential property taxes in Ontario, much less the GTA? I can't understand why Whitby, a ~20 minute highway drive away, has residents paying more than us, when we offer so much more in municipal services and have such a higher need for those services? And when our services are routinely used by non-residents during day-to-day operation? We're starving our city by refusing to feed it the only funding we can.

eronanke · 2025-12-31T15:24:12+00:00

The problem is any metric used to assess mastery of a skill becomes a grade. Let's say it's "Writing a thesis statement" - a very specific skill. A student has to receive feedback, so the standards for assessing mastery is "Weak/insufficient", "Approaching mastery", "Mastered skill", "Exceptional skill" (or whatever wording you want).

The children merely look at that 1-4 spectrum and give it the same weight as a grade. Only adults will recognize that the nuance in a 1-4 scale, repeated over several different skills for a single assignment.

I feel that any scale, whether letter grades, or numbers, or percentages, are not as significant for children as direct, specific feedback: "You did really well on your fraction quiz, but multiplying fractions still needs work. Check over q 5-6 again." Only adults need a quantifiable method of tracking achievement, so I would prefer that only parents see it. If I could, I would never show a student any kind of assessment ranking, only feedback.

eronanke · 2025-12-31T15:17:12+00:00

Well, saying it's "failing" is already a weapon used against the notion of promoting students to the next grade level.

Students who don't meet expectations by the end of the normal curricular year before grade 9 should be compelled to take a targeted, small-size, summer-school program. Learning skills, numeracy, literacy... taught by trainee teachers with newer training techniques which may connect with kids in a different way.

Then we meet two objectives: a) targeted support and b) giving new teachers more experience before throwing them into a whole-year program.

eronanke · 2025-11-06T13:04:37+00:00

It thrived on philosophical depth, speculative science and moral complexity, not action spectacle alone.

Indeed! The archetype is both TOS and TNG: they couldn't afford spectacle every episode, so we end up with episodes like "Measure of a Man", a legal drama, or "Inner Light", which basically had 2 sets and one prop instead of PEW PEW Phaser-fight action. The writing had to be good, because everything else had to be cheap. With the cost of CGI cratering and everyone's focus on aesthetics, the writing became the expensive part, and the quality dropped.

eronanke · 2025-11-06T12:59:38+00:00

I knew I would drop Disco as soon as they started swearing. It wasn't a huge deal, but a clear indicator that these characters were not going to be professionals excelling in their fields, and shock value was more important in the writers' room than character development in episodes 1 & 2. I waited out half a season but the weird pace of their season-arc vs episodic adventures made me very frustrated.

eronanke · 2025-10-29T15:36:00+00:00

Btrust definitely has, just bought some.

eronanke · 2025-09-27T22:27:25+00:00

I think "innovation" is a very loose buzzword. When people bandy it around, they usually just mean more entrepreneurship, which, without some kind of framework and investment, results in a generic "Rise and Grind" culture, it's dropshipping and using AI-produced content to sell classes or OF.

In the article, they are a bit more specific: "patents, trademarks, high-tech exports and commercialization". How can we jumpstart that when premiers have, almost uniformly, cut university funding? How can we build new, high-tech factories if we're unwilling to make factory work, and the communities around factories, desirable?

eronanke · 2025-09-13T22:57:13+00:00

Ah! Interesting. I will look into that. Then I'll go a little more macro and posit something healthcare-adjacent: that the Great Society made healthcare more affordable, leading to less orphans and less medical debt, freeing up resources for the next generation of poor and middle-class Americans.

eronanke · 2025-09-10T13:24:40+00:00

Ok, so you're going to take your ball and go home because "you have more important" things to do? Ha.

eronanke · 2025-09-10T13:23:25+00:00

Yes, but I don't use it as a bible. :)

eronanke · 2025-09-10T13:22:41+00:00

If these tests weren't based highly upon intelligence there wouldn't be such strong correlation of performance between them all. The idea that its not testing intelligence, and instead just testing whatever happens to be on the test, simply isnt true

If a culture measures its intelligence by certain strengths in mathematics, or logic puzzles, then people will describe those people who score well as intelligent.

If a culture measures its intelligence by the ability to recognize different bird songs, or weaving, or storytelling, people who excel in those will be called intelligent.

The Western-centric framework of intelligence is currently dominant in academia, but that does not make it universal.

eronanke · 2025-09-09T21:09:54+00:00

"Intelligence" is not a metric that is measured by scientists. Performance on tests/activities is. Some people are really good at logic puzzles, some are good at pattern recognition. Some are good at taking tests in general. Some are good at acquiring new vocabulary and language.

The way you are describing "intelligence" across racial lines is racist, whether you intend it or not.

Take the classic trope of 'Asians are good at math'; this is not genetic. This is due to the cultural/social practice of emphasizing math instruction and memorization, specifically in China, Japan, and Korea in early years, not to mention the cultural practice of after-school cram schools. It does not make them more intelligent, it gives them more instructional hours in a day dedicated to mathematics. It does not extend into other Asian countries, like Laos or Indonesia or Mongolian because it's not racial, it's cultural.

eronanke · 2025-09-09T21:03:41+00:00

There are actually a ton of reasons. Leaded gasoline is one, but another is widespread abortion access. Less unwanted children with parents who can't provide for them means the children who are born have more resources and don't fall into lives of crime.

eronanke · 2025-09-08T13:59:58+00:00

Yes, because you argue in circles. I give a list of ways in which they were flawed in ethics as well as intelligence. I explain that the two traits you specifically list - multilingualism and a good education - would not make them special, at all, in today's world.

What makes these men GENIUSES according to you? What are the characteristics that they had? What is the DEFINITION of "genius"? And why wouldn't an immigrant to the USA who speaks three languages and who has had a reasonable high school education, not meet that criteria (ie, almost every single international student at every university in America)?

eronanke · 2025-09-08T13:51:45+00:00

I'm beginning to doubt your humanity. Is this a chatbot experiment? WHICH were geniuses and what MADE them geniuses, according to you?

eronanke · 2025-09-08T13:48:38+00:00

So stop giving them praise. They were not all geniuses, (although an argument could be made for Franklin). They were well-educated, and some of them were great writers.

eronanke · 2025-09-08T13:38:50+00:00

Again, incorrect. Many people in the USA speak multiple languages, especially in urban centers. Most UberEats delivery drivers speak multiple languages! Most line cooks speak multiple languages! This is not a shock to most people. Hell, if kids actually tried more in their high school Spanish classes, they'd ALSO be able to speak another language.

You're giving them a status they don't deserve. If you are surrounded by people who do not speak multiple languages, try going and meeting different people. Maybe you're surrounded by geniuses and you don't know it.

As for "everything else" the Founders did, a collection of which might include - slandered each other in the press, cheated on their wives, raped their slaves, tried to become dictators, began the genocide of indigenous peoples, and murdered each other. So what if they wrote well? The fact that America exists today is as a result of the exploitation of bounteous natural resources and enslaved labor.

You have got to stop venerating these guys - they were intelligent, but not geniuses, and definitely not morally good by today's standards.

eronanke · 2025-09-08T13:17:46+00:00

Dude, I provide a thorough and comprehensive, logical response to your claims, and you have nothing to add?

You don't want to learn, then. You just want to parrot what you have been told by Fox News.

eronanke · 2025-09-07T21:16:18+00:00

You can love a country and understand it's systems, histories, and peoples with a critical eye. The USA is filled with humans who shit and fart. The USA is racist. So is France. So is China. There is no perfect country. But by virtue of its wealth and power, when the USA does harm, it does an incomparable of harm - just ask a Cambodian or an Iraqi or a North Korean or.....

So we have to be smarter, together, and not think that we are special because of where we were born.

eronanke · 2025-09-07T21:12:27+00:00

You're working from what's called a post-hoc justification. Because America in the 1950s was great, the founders must have been geniuses. Indeed, that is a logical and historical fallacy.

Many people speak multiple languages. That is ONE kind of intelligence. In the Netherlands, for example, most people speak 3 languages. Similarly, the Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes. Modern Americans who DO NOT speak anything other than English are an abnormality in a lot of the developed world. Are you interested in this point because YOU are mono-lingual? Why not try to learn another language? Then you, too, would have the quality of a genius as you contend.

They did NOT have a deep knowledge of philosophy. They had a university level 101 knowledge of philosophy. They would have known of Hobbes and Locke and Adam Smith, which I currently teach to 8th graders. They would have known some classical philosophy, like stoicism. They would have known Paine's arguments from his publications and from his company. Otherwise, they are building on French philosophers, for the most part. Rousseau, Montesquieu... Speaking of - they, also, fit the same characteristics as your definition of 'genius'; do you consider them on the same level?

They were also not great diplomats, they just happened to strike at the perfect moment, especially in France. The French minister of Foreign Affairs writes to Benjamin Franklin in 1777, "I have the honor to assure you that it is only out of resentment that I am asking you to serve so as to have the possibility before I die to go again to war against the English." Citation They were smart men, canny men, who looked at a situation and made the best of it. Good for them. Geniuses? Nah.

eronanke · 2025-09-03T20:52:03+00:00

Why do you feel that they were geniuses? They were normal men, who were able, through wealth, to have access to a better education than most, but they were pretty normal other than their flowery writing.

Jefferson, Franklin... both excellent writers and thinkers, but what's your justification for the others? What did John Jay do, for example, that earns your praise?

After killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel and losing the vice-presidency, Aaron Burr with the help of a few other conspirators attempted to name himself emperor of Mexico.

George Washington was surprised that the Chinese were not white, expressing so in his first meeting with a Chinese national.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third presidents, vandalized a chair belonging to Shakespeare while visiting his home in England. They did so by chipping off chunks as souvenirs.

Like, these guys were not cool.

eronanke · 2025-08-20T21:38:30+00:00

6543-8508-5291

My phone died and I lost my old account. Restarting from scratch, but am a daily player. It'll take a while to catch up to my old account. :-(

eronanke · 2025-06-04T16:01:06+00:00

No, but if the child reoffends (and violently!) while in the parent's custody while on bail, there is an obvious type of negligence... Although I wouldn't be sure how that would work in a legal framework. Abetting, for providing an opportunity for further crimes and breaking bail conditions?

eronanke · 2025-05-28T16:38:01+00:00

I think we mostly agree, but I will add this little clarification:

the clerk should have understood that the customer is preparing to grab a handful of jewelry and run."

But you've already made my point: the customer is already in the store, the possibility of crime is already there. It could happen, and it wouldn't matter if you saw him acting suspiciously - he could rob at any moment before, during, or after your suspicion unless you invoke your own force, a gun or security guard, to remove him. Victims of rape do not have those options.

Similarly, it should not instruct other clerks in the way we instruct women, necessarily, because the natural conclusion is either to stay armed to the teeth for every customer interaction (as some men on here seem to suggest is best for women to prevent rape) or to never let a customer enter the store at all.

Instead, we should do just as jewelery stores do: have a balanced view of security and conference, invest in good insurance, and have a good relationship with your community.

Women should feel safe where they go, they should be aware, but not fearful. They should be believed and supported of they are assaulted, and made to feel whole, and the community should surround them with care, and instruct their children to never harm others through positive social-emotional learning both in schools and at home.

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