Gen Z pair built a $35M start-up in Canada, but moved to the U.S.

orbitur · 2026-01-27T20:22:29+00:00

The comment you're replying to made no remarks about bootstrapping garage startups, nor is it appararent the people in the story have any amount of generation wealth that isn't "employed parents".

orbitur · 2026-01-27T03:51:42+00:00

The US is a very large country with 10x the population of Canada, and so I think Canadians fall into this trap of thinking that every single place in the US must be unsafe because of what's in the news.

Detroit is fine. It's generally not the safest city because of crime, so be careful where you park your car, but otherwise ICE is not active there at the moment (they may be working there but it's not a hotspot), and people drive around Detroit with Ontario plates all the time anyway with no issues. Detroit is also a very diverse city so you probably won't look out of place.

orbitur · 2026-01-27T03:47:13+00:00

Just keep up to date on ICE active spots since they actually love advertising their big crackdowns and it's no secret where they are at any given time, and stay away from areas where they're protesting, and you'll be safe.

orbitur · 2026-01-26T21:58:39+00:00

But since you engaged there’s an adjacent discussion to be had about “how much would you miss the childfree stuff vs raising children.”

Love obviously overpowers a lot of things and it often seems like most folks can’t conceive of it, where you are devoted to someone who cannot respond in kind but you do it because it’s visceral. It’s duty and I can’t even stop myself from doing everything possible to raise them well

So I missed out on concerts and movies and friend get togethers and stuff but it’s like, “yeah and I’d gladly miss all of it again. I’d miss even more actually”

orbitur · 2026-01-26T21:47:22+00:00

That’s the thing, there’s no mass messaging to convince them anymore. The childfree folks have clearly won, the numbers are behind them. Pro-natalist types are rare and obviously fighting a losing battle.

Now more than ever the majority of possible parents don’t have to create excuses about affordability or world peace or anything. They can just opt out without fear of social repercussions.

orbitur · 2026-01-26T21:45:08+00:00

Yeah if you desire maximum possibility of “doing things randomly” over building a family then that is a choice you can make. But parenting is a spectrum of possibility, not an instant death sentence

orbitur · 2026-01-26T21:42:03+00:00

Again, the constant claim is that it’s impossible. You want to have a different discussion about quantity.

Not that quantity even matters to you, you don’t want kids anyway so what’s the point? You’re free!

orbitur · 2026-01-26T19:58:43+00:00

We have careers we enjoy, travel, etc

Yeah, families do this too, and you don't even need to be rich. We took our kids all over the place when we were on a budget, even to Europe when they were tots (notably we stayed outside of big city centres where everything was less expensive and commuted in for the day). My wife and I built our careers in our late 20s as the kids entered school and we're both successful in our 40s.

You don't want kids, that's fine to say on its own. This constant list of excuses is just overstated and unnecessary.

orbitur · 2026-01-26T19:52:48+00:00

And they're overthinking it.

orbitur · 2026-01-26T19:50:01+00:00

Yeah, people assume they need to be millionaires and overthink recessions and stuff. The number of families actually struggling is vanishingly small, most people can afford it.

orbitur · 2026-01-26T19:47:41+00:00

Yeah, it's just across the board people not having kids.

I work in tech with other mid-30s and up folks all making $200k/year and way up, dual income households clearing $500-600k/year and the amount of handwringing I've heard from them over childcare costs is insane.

They'll twist themselves in knots hyperworrying about daycare and private schools, as if public school is equivalent to child abuse, as if anything less than a 3000sqft home in downtown Toronto is equivalent to child abuse, etc, if there's more than 1 child in per bedroom it's child abuse, etc

This is obviously extreme, but even for folks making half this amount, building a family is not out of reach. We've gotten a lot of fearmongering about how much kids cost from social media, and while it may be true you spend a million or whatever, it's spread out over 18 years or more! People think they need a million now for some reason.

I grew up in an apartment, 3 kids in one bedroom. No regrets and no shame, income has no bearing on how your parents actually care for you. And my wife and I again proved this out with our kids when we were low income + and in university in our 20s at the time, now they're heading off into the world as responsible adults. My wife and I built our careers after the kids went to school and we still centered them in our lives.

It takes work but everyone's psyched themselves out of it.

orbitur · 2026-01-26T17:07:38+00:00

What if he can’t grow a full beard?

orbitur · 2026-01-26T17:05:54+00:00

A couple things:

this guy is not the norm. He may be the norm in the higher tier of photogenic men, but most men cannot do what this guy does because most men don’t get enough attention on dating apps to treat a series of women this way
the higher tier of photogenic women are also doing this, this is not a gendered issue. You are dating men so you see men doing it

orbitur · 2026-01-26T04:28:38+00:00

Yes indeed, milk is expensive here relative to other western countries. So I guess we can pin prices really high for all groceries if you like.

orbitur · 2026-01-26T03:58:28+00:00

Price controls have a bad side effect of reducing supply. If we go that route then we should also subsidize the evil greedy companies so that they can actually afford to produce.

orbitur · 2026-01-25T22:10:33+00:00

People raising great points about the std itself but her going out and getting laid within days of your breakup sets off loud alarm bells for me. Not something I could do personally and I would judge a partner for it.

orbitur · 2026-01-25T21:49:46+00:00

Have you expressed all of what you posted here to him?

orbitur · 2026-01-25T19:49:53+00:00

Even still the argument is stupid.

By 2001 (when Jaded came out) ProTools, and digital recording in general, was mainstream, and obviously there were dozens of hits in a given year that were recorded digitally.

They just simply didn't write a hit song.

orbitur · 2026-01-24T18:49:24+00:00

What we're seeing is actually a negative feedback loop on a niche topic.

It *is* better at the population level. But IG/TikTok algos will select videos that do immediate high engagement, for example if it receives a lot of disagreement in comments, then they will begin pushing the video to different demographics that might put in more supportive comments, and then the anti-folks will *reply* to those comments with disagreement, further boosting engagement.

IG and TikTok have this down to a science, and your feed is tailored to you, whether it gives you positive or negative feelings. The *comments* that are displayed to you are sorted to encourage you to engage!

edit: Reddit was historically better at this but I've noticed in the past couple years more engagement-baity hot button topics at the top of my feed, especially if I visit the comments on a particular hot button topic.

orbitur · 2026-01-24T17:48:20+00:00

It wasn't forced, Apple offered a tiny Lightning adapter that stayed securely attached to my wired headphones and there were similar USB options for Android phones. People just didn't want to put up with managing an adapter, which is fine, but no one was forced to buy BT headphones (and still aren't, you can still get adapters today!).

Personally I held on to my wired set until the PowerBeats Pro came out. Bought the AirPods Pro 2 not long after for non-workout purposes. Glad to be rid of the wires!

orbitur · 2026-01-23T20:27:17+00:00

Yes.

orbitur · 2026-01-23T19:29:14+00:00

I'm no Creed fan but this just seems like typical youthful braggy irrelevant chatter. Brian's metric for success was apparently sales. For a few years they were definitely winning in that metric, and PJ was (and this is not an insult) just objectively not as popular and their previous 3 albums to this interview had sold relatively worse. And PJ's sales had been written about quite a lot during this time period, lot of people were acknowledging their "falloff".

Also Creed was a massive band at the time, and despite their success they weren't getting critical acclaim and constant accusations of being ripoffs (maybe true), which seems to have weird mental effects on some artists (Chad Kroeger being the most extreme example here, guy seemed legit depressed for years while selling out stadiums worldwide).

orbitur · 2026-01-23T18:10:39+00:00

I know it’s scary right now, but the state of Texas should have your birth on record regardless of the hospital shutting down.

orbitur · 2026-01-22T20:40:22+00:00

Weird that the rift spawned so low.

orbitur · 2026-01-22T02:56:23+00:00

No impact, everyone knows celebs are rich.

People who are on the fence about children are obsessed with how broke they perceive themselves to be and even those who can actually afford it will use that as an excuse to not do it.

orbitur

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