These sorts of stories were popular when I was young (70s, 80s).
I like poetry, photography, languages (esp Japanese), and religion (esp Japanese). And movies (esp Japanese). And Bob Dylan. Epilepsy parent.
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These sorts of stories were popular when I was young (70s, 80s).
I always remember that Don Davies opposed density and building housing in Vancouver. Basically the litmus test for a truly progressive politician.
Joseph McNeil, one of four North Carolina college students whose occupation of a racially segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter 65 years ago helped spark nonviolent civil rights sit-in protests across the South, died, his university said. He was 83. https://cnn.it/3JOhsqT
A smoky start to September. #photography
Would a letter to council, addressed to the JB liaison, help? As a professional writer who writes for pay, I generally don't bother writing letters to the editor. But I would if it helped...
I also love transit. So great to be able to take the bus direct to Willows, or (god help me) Wal-Mart.
I live in James Bay. I don't need a car to do most errands. The main obstacle to driving in JB are events from May to Oct, and that is just a fact of life. How can I indicate support for the new approach to parking to council?
I broadly support the changes to parking (although I agree with @burgundavia.bsky.social that we shouldn't really be defensive about removing it). I really really... really resented JBNA rep being quoted in the TC about council wanting to ban cars. No idea who that person is. Never ever asked me!
It's easy to check out the other side by going on FB. For example, this Langford RCMP post about new "elephant's feet" crosswalks has the usual vitriol aimed at cyclists (like my school-aged kids), but also "15 minute cities" crap. Do I want to engage with that? No. www.facebook.com/WestShoreRCM...
An arrogant over-cooked hot dog
Victoria reminds of Japan in a few ways...
Happily,
As a P.S., covid actually helped out my son. Got out of an in-person learning environment he disliked intensely. Worked side-by-side with me on the basics, including writing. Went on to middle school that fall and has thrived ever since!
Even though multilingual families, esp in LML, are at least a plurality. As an aside, I observed this cultural (and racial?) supremacy when working Vancouver in prov govt. Not a lot of non-white leadership!
My main point here is that neither French immersion teachers nor a school district that promoted French Immersion had any sort of grasp of bilingual language acquisition, especially when the home language isn't English. Did not compute. Which I think indicates a sort of unspoken chauvinism in BC.
...Referred to district psychologist (GP also referred us to a private educational psychologist and a peds neurologist). District wrote a 50-page report that said "huh???" Other specialists reported no neurodivergence. Assessment? "His home language is Japanese, and so English may be a bit delayed."
Younger son was in French Immersion (because older son was in it and thrived). Was not good at French, and generally ostracized by successive teachers, starting Gr 1. Transferred to English in Grade 2. English speech delay. Japanese fine at home. Stopped talking at school.../
Trying to explain why international trade is good to an American: okay so imagine a burger (yes this is a real ad on the Canadian embassy in DC)
A long time ago I lived on a canal in Japan. Left the screen open and awoke to a bat flying in circles above my head. Poor thing...
The same view, basically, from the top of the cliff.
I did not realize I was commenting on your original post!!!!
Thanks for your service. It's bananas in BC, at least: trustees receive basically a stipend, the work in never-ending, and they are faced by not only board staff but also by ministry staff, all with comparatively unlimited capacity.
It's disheartening because several trustees, including the chair, had worked hard to oppose nonsensical, punitive cuts proposed by a now-departed supertintendent & vp finance. Then they got elected. I think they could've been more politically astute here. But the trustees were parents, after all.
Eby fired our school board here in Victoria.
I used to work in BC govt for BC Innovation Council (2007-2010). At the time, unis in BC were almost baronial in power. The main complaint was "we're funding useless pure research." After that, uni IP commercialization was considered deliberately inefficient.
My sense is that federal and provincial govts for various reasons really hate postsecondary.
This is a totally racist campaign by first the Trudeau govt, and then the Carney govt, and then supported by Eby. It's one thing to talk about "chattel slavery" (which seems to be hyperbole), and quite another to blame foreign guestworkers for housing and healthcare problems (Eby's files btw).
Brings to mind that Eby led the fight against "foreign real estate investors" by going through the property records and identifying "foreign buyers" according to whether or not the owners had Chinese-sounding names. WTF is with this guy???
Regularly reminded these days that the Liberal govt was polling in the Mariana Trench last December, and a lot of the people in government at that time, including Freeland, are back in cabinet today.
It's just so transparently political. It's also toxic behaviour.
This is why the fed transport minister regularly attacks BC Ferries for going overseas ("China") to buy new ships, "instead of using Canadian steel." Meanwhile, Freeland has no intention of giving $$$ to BCF. There is no capacity in Canada to build ships anyway! Vibes! www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
The Beachcombers - Canadian comedy drama with ill-suited action adventure-suggesting theme music about rival loggers trying to outwit each other for maximum log-acquisition, as relentlessly shown by ITV in a mid-morning slot. timworthington.org/2017/09/08/l...
It’s me
Based on a Booth Tarkington book, The Magnificent Ambersons was wrenched from Welles by the studio and recut, deleting about 40 minutes and changing the ending. Welles' lost footage was destroyed. Criterion Channel sometimes has it in rotation: www.criterion.com/current/post...
Anyway, this is a positive development. I worked on a public health communications project around vaccines until the end of last year (ran out of runway), and, needless to say, people on the team are feeling discouraged atm. So, good news here, at least!
Will the absence of Lay’s Flamin’ Hot Dill Pickle Potato Chips in Europe mark the moment its citizens notice how far their continent has fallen behind?
The Swimming Pool, an installation by Argentinian artist Leondro Erich at 21 Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa. www.kanazawa21.jp/data_list.ph... #photography
Basically the United States is turning into Canada, a parochial, decentralized federal system with powerful state-level autonomy. Except the federal government has lots and lots of guns.
From today's jobs report, Canada's unemployment rate rises to 7.1% (up 0.5 points this year). Alberta has seen a notable increase to 8.4% (the highest since 2017, excl. covid). More from StatCan here: www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-qu... #cdnecon #cdnpoli
Even if you don't want it all, maybe watch the last five minutes. www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIAh...
This story is WILD. Trump sent Seal Team 6 into North Korea to plant a listening device. The entire thing went sideways within minutes of landing when they noticed a fishing boat near the beach. They killed everyone on board, sunk the bodies to cover their tracks, and fled. Congress was never told.
Matsuyama, looking northwards on Hon-machi. The prefectural office is the domed building on the left. Above it, just out of sight, is the castle. Dogo Onsen is to the northwest, out of sight as well. maps.app.goo.gl/VUmdbTgCsqJG...
quickly mapped out estimates of what % of children are driven to school in the greater toronto/hamilton area check out more related maps from this data here: schoolofcities.github.io/transportati...
Yeah I was thinking that it's not because execs etc have a hard time reading. It's more that they don't want to read (for various reasons). The end result is that you have these extremely weak use cases based on their needs and prerogatives, like "summarize emails", "write emails", etc.
Thirty years ago I used to drive a Chevy Astro work truck for my father. Held all sorts of tools including pipe wrenches and a RIGID pipe thread machine, with a roof rack for gas pipe. About half the size of an F-150.
Thanks for demonstrating that I am not insane! I just wonder if this schtick will work a year from now? We've seen a sort of more serious politics develop in C of V over the past 15 years, but I just wonder if energetic, progressive councillors are tired? Not seeing a lot of energy in the community.
I belong to a local pedestrian advocacy group, mostly median-age 70 and very Victoria. It does not compete when I call "light trucks" fascist.
Happy when council considers renters. There are a lot of us!
Would like to see Canadian cities get more serious about protecting pedestrian space as truck attacks become normalized.
My wife's childhood home in Tsuruga is filled with stuffed animals and other dolls. It's not something you just throw away. They have to be, in effect, exorcized. Most major local shrines offer this service. You can ship dolls for disposal, too. There's a shrine in Kanazawa, 安江住吉神社, that does this.
"Please say she's running for mayor."
Can't decide if she's setting herself up here for a 2026 mayoral run, or is just rallying the troops for another council run.
With all due respect, the councillor in question here seems to be the laziest, most amateur of the bunch. It seems like a hobby.
Living in James Bay, the only way to win the game is not to play, particularly on weekends during major events season, which starts with the Victoria Day Parade and ends with the TC 10K. I had to go to RJH yesterday afternoon and decided to drive. I should have just biked. Way too many cars now.
I think this is the "ICBC scam" that's in the papers right now.
While there's sexism and racism too, what gets me is that classism is never acknowledged. It's like socioeconomic class doesn't exist in Canada. Everyone owns a home, or will own a home one day. Everyone drives a car
Cars are expensive!
Basically there is no consensus that a) climate change is real and that driving a car contributes to it and b) the time of cheap in EVs in Canada has passed. If you live in City of Victoria, it's possible to walk, bike, or take transit. And, in fact, a lot of residents are already doing this!
Ah yes, I do do that as well (asking by name, too)
But council doesn't have a say, really. That's the problem. There's also the economic framing, where $120M (extrapolated) is presented as a Big Number, when it's actually just a small part of Greater Victoria's $25B economy.
As you know, there is a coordinated effort between Gardiner and JBNA to challenge OCP changes, and also changes to parking. In the TC story the other day, a JBNA rep (who I've never heard of and certainly did not have a chance to vote for) complained that "cars are being pushed out of James Bay).
Clout is a helluva drug
TIL from this helpful spam text that Canada has a public credit dishonesty list
In this particular case, GVHA once upon a time tried to force out the lone City of Victoria council rep on its board. But it's a quasi-federal organization, with no direct (muni or provincial) oversight. Ralmax Group is the Decider, actually.
It's more of a structural problem, I think. If Chretien and Martin hadn't essentially privatized the ports and had instead committed to funding them, we wouldn't need market-driven solutions like this. I do think politics is working well in City of Victoria given the trajectory of the past 15 years.
I eventually started doing project with PhDs. PhDs read everything.
The fundamental problem here is that GVHA manages the harbour and is self-funded. And its board has traditionally been dominated by tourism operators and tourism-related businesses like Wilsons. John Wilson of course is now the CEO of the Chamber. It's a clash of political wills.
"Take steps to protect yourself, including building new highways, pipelines, LNG terminals, and bulk coal ports."
🥴 I'm good, lol.
The Japan takes were so dumb! "Bloomberg publishes this guy???"
He DM'ed me on Twitter when I was still the Japan news editor of a news site, asking me for info. We became friendly. When he made weird claims about Japan and I conversationally corrected him, he went on this weird countdown, "5 chances left before I block you... now 4... now 3..." (I blocked him).
My wife's first language is not English. A few years ago she got a corporate tech job that requires tons of writing. So, I've helped her learn this. Anyways, I think the "read & write emails" use case, which I don't need, is popular because senior product leadership doesn't either of these things.
The #1 rule when communicating by email with leadership, key stakeholders, or decision makers is to make the ask in the first sentence, and keep it very short. Will literally not read more than a paragraph.
I think more than anything else AI feels like a miracle to people with questionable literacy because it can read and write for you, and a lot of us who are highly literate underestimate how many of our society's leaders, esp in business, struggle with literacy.
It's also not unlikely that Russia would jam the GPS of a plane carrying the EU president.
Screens are NOT addictive, some uses of them can be. Studies have been done about screen based education and some show positive results. Switching sitting at a desk in class to in front of a computer is pretty 1 for 1 and can create more time for outdoor activity. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
The Politico story doesn’t really explain what exactly happened… although the Baltics is mentioned (where GPS blocking is a real threat) and Bulgaria, which is nowhere near the Baltics. Although I guess is near the war.
I saw a prominent political commentator here on Bluesky (can't remember who) describe this as "an attempted political assassination by Russia."
> “There may still be many unidentified flying objects from other countries that we have not yet been able to detect technologically,” a senior Defense Ministry official said.
Trotsky was born a 100 years too early. He would have been great on Bluesky and Twitter. But we also must admit that there’s an equal chance he would behave been a shitposter, a waffles / pancakes guy, or simply take the Matty arc.
What is your question?
However, if Japan had a mandatory MMR regimen he would never have contracted the mumps.
However, he was back at school on the Friday. Few other students in his grade were there. Most kids were off school for about 10-14 days. Mumps is excruciatingly painful. Poor guys. What alleviated my son's symptoms was that he had been vaccinated. He was due for a booster in the fall.
My son, who was 11 at the time (can't remember), contracted mumps. Along with the entire sixth grade. My son was sick for about 4 days. For about a day or so he could barely eat, and he actually lost about 1 kg. This is a very serious thing when you're at an age when you're supposed to be growing.
Japan is also vaccine-hesitant, due to the fact that an indigenously developed MMR vaccine was apparently responsible for a number of deaths in the 1990s. Since then, MMR is not mandatory in Japan. As a result, every winter many elementary schools, including ours, have mumps outbreaks.
...He hadn't had time to get the booster, but was still somewhat protected by the pertussis shot from infancy. Of course, if people just vaccinated their kids against it, he would have been protected until he got the booster. 2) In the 2010s, until covid, we lived part of the year in Japan...
A couple of experiences with vaccines: 1) There's a region near Vancouver that is vaccine-hesitant and is a reservoir for pertussis, which can flare up every winter. The booster is at age 12. Just before getting getting the booster, our friend's son got pertussis. He was sick for two months.
ok we all miss a few
Rewatched Crumb the other day for the first time in over 25 years. The alienation and strange fetishes around women seemed merely "weird" back then, but Crumb shows just how far back incel culture -- which is entirely normal now -- stretches, to at least the 50s.
There's nothing wrong with that (other than turning public spaces into mediated private space). I am a little annoyed here because these people who disparage my community and yet have no real connection to it (they hate my town) have an outsize voice when my elected council makes decisions.
I guess every comedy troupe needs their own John Cleese
The TFW discourse right now is terrible for many reasons, one of them being because it turns every Filipino- and Indo-Canadian into The Other.
...This troll doesn't live here, has no connection to downtown, and insults my community. And also pesters and badgers councillors when he has no right to do so. Don't like Victoria? Don't come here and STFU about my town.
Besides the moronic misuse of "able-ism" (not everyone can drive or even afford a car FFS), "Want to hang around downtown, then go for it" is esp obnoxious. My sons live downtown. Play concerts in Centennial Square. We go shopping on Fisgard. Go to movies the Odeon. We live here. OTOH...
I would definitely ride it (I have never ridden the SF trollies, but I have taken the streetcar up Market). I have a friend in Lisbon and the dream is to visit that city and walk up to the Nossa Senhora do Monte viewpoint. So, yeah. Terrible.
☹️
Holy shit. My parents will be in Lisbon next week, and I'm sure they would have ridden on this.
Ha! It all seems so futile.