@melkuo
Account based inCanada
About this account
- Account based in
- Canada
- Connected via
- Canada App Store
Account-level information from X, not a live location or the device used for a specific post.
melody retweeted
This is exactly right:
My takeaway from the NHJ discourse is that America continues to be unreasonably polarized between people who think the only thing that matters is the other students and the only thing that matters is funding.
Managing the school is important!
slowboring.com/p/why-i-send-…
melody retweeted
NEW: Torontonians and TTC enthusiasts love to argue about platform edge doors. So I analyzed 12 years’ worth of subway delay data to see where they’re needed most
torontotoday.ca/local/transp…
The replies to this are insane, but also further entrench this belief that travel is just to/from Union, when we should really be thinking about and building for a bigger network
People in your replies are pointing towards average incomes, but this hides that we push for affordable housing to be interspersed with market housing.
So you should actually be looking at where the affordable housing and low-income people are, and indeed, it's largely downtown.
toronto.ca/city-government/d…
censusmapper.ca/maps/3350?in…
What do you need for a prosperous Canada?
You need exceptional people creating valuable things, capital that's willing to back them, the permission and infrastructure to build them, access to large markets to scale them, and enough competition so that resources continually move from mediocre to great outcomes.
The announcements of late makes progress in some of these areas in very exciting ways:
* Capital – Productivity Mega Deduction, banks' hundred billion dollar investments
* Access to large markets – EU, promising progress on interprovincial trade barriers
* Infrastructure – major clean energy investments, ports, terminals and rails as part of Major Projects Office, Alto High Speed Rail (although I'm losing hope if we'll be able to get this one done...)
And here are the areas where I'd like to see more:
- Exceptional People: We need to retain more of our most highly productive people. They are leaving today ("brain drain"). All of the above is for nothing if we don't have the people who will build great things.
- Value (or Commercialization/IP): It's no secret that Canada does amazing at producing research and early stage ideas, but we do a horrible job at commercializing. I don't have a strong thesis for what needs to be done here admittedly.
* Permission – The Major Projects Office has been an okay start for certain one-off projects, but I'd like to see more broad-based structural reform to make it easier to build and get approvals.
Overall, I am very optimistic and excited. Things are moving in a very positive direction. A couple more missing ingredients and we will be able to make the best cake in the world.
melody retweeted
Latest video, on the fundamental problems with economic modelling, and how the Bank of Canada got "Transitory Inflation" so wrong
melody retweeted
Fantastic piece from @Chris_arnade on what tolerating anti-social behavior does to our public spaces:
"It’s a primary reason why we shy away from dense walkable spaces and instead move towards suburban sprawl.
People in the U.S. don’t respect, trust, or want to be around other random citizens, out of fear and disgust.
Japanese/European style urbanism—density, fantastic public transport, mixed-use zoning, that so many American tourists admire—can't happen here because there is a fine line between vibrant streets and squalid ones, and that line is public trust.
The U.S. is on the wrong side of it.
Simply put, nobody wants to be accosted by a stranger, no matter how infrequent, and until that risk is close to nil, people will continue edging towards isolated living.
It is why we “can’t have nice things” because we have to construct our infrastructure to be asshole-proof, and so we don’t build anything or build with a fortress mentality, stripping our public spaces down to the austere and utilitarian, emptying them of anything that can be vandalized."
Chris Arnade's blog continues to be one of the very best: walkingtheworld.substack.com. (You can also follow him: @chris_arnade.)
This whole debate is like the parable of the blind men and the elephant where if you’re in the Grand Hall you’d be like this is a grand and monumental structure, but if you’re at the York St underpass you’d be like no this is an ass
I’m at Union Station all the time. Are you?
It is not unsafe.
There is already a significant presence of City and TTC security and Metrolinx special constables.
Manufacturing a crisis around one of Toronto’s safest and most important gateways doesn’t make anyone safer. It scares people away from transit and undermines confidence in our city.
A mayor should be Toronto’s biggest champion. You cannot lead a city you are constantly talking down.
P.S. I’ve spent time in cities around the world with a heavy police presence. It does not make people feel safer - it signals that there is something to fear.
Back at the studio, our recycling was cans-only because I thought all plastic recycling was fake. Great to know I am fully vindicated.
Throwing rubbish in a landfill is (usually) better for the environment than recycling it. With few exceptions, recycling ends up emitting more CO2 and costing more money, while landfills are cheap and secure.
- Recycling mid-tier plastics (like plastic bottles or butter tubs) costs thousands of dollars per ton of CO2 saved. It's cheaper to do direct air CO2 capture than that! And there is no shortage of plastic, nor any problem with sequestering it in the ground once we're done with it.
- Modern landfills are extraordinarily secure and are *much* more than just big piles of trash. They capture 75%–95% of methane gas. Groundwater contamination is doesn't really happen with landfills built since 1990. A study of 31 landfills built since 1988 in NY found no adverse effect at all on local groundwater quality.
- The crusade against single-use plastics has driven us to products that use far more materials and energy and would need to be used an absurd number of times to actually be an improvement. A steel straw needs to be used 150 times to be worth using. A ceramic mug needs to be used 1,000 times to beat a polystyrene cup. A cotton bag needs to be reused 173 times to beat single-use.
- Some things ARE worth recycling. Recycling metal saves a huge amount of energy and material – recycling aluminium saves 95% of the energy spent on making fresh stuff. So we do a lot of it already: about 30% of steel worldwide is recycled.
Modern, well-run landfills cause minimal environmental damage. We have plenty of space for them – less than 0.01% of the US is used for landfill and only about 0.02% of Germany. We can even build on top of old landfills, so the land area is not spent permanently.
New in @WorksInProgMag, @robertwiblin and @chalmermagne on why it's usually best to just bury your trash. worksinprogress.co/issue/jus…
melody retweeted
september always feels like the start of something new to me, even more so than january
melody retweeted
Underrated problem. For the competent and organized its merely annoying, among the less capable and organized it probably gets a bunch of people killed each year.
> Clinic asks for medical records
> I reach out to previous clinic
> Sign up for their medical portal so they can securely share files with me
> Email the results to the new clinic
Absolutely insane that we don't have a universal medical record system. I should be able to just give you my health card and you know everything you need to know about me.
Instead I have to play middleman and share medical information in the most caveman unsecure ways.
> Clinic asks for medical records
> I reach out to previous clinic
> Sign up for their medical portal so they can securely share files with me
> Email the results to the new clinic
Absolutely insane that we don't have a universal medical record system. I should be able to just give you my health card and you know everything you need to know about me.
Instead I have to play middleman and share medical information in the most caveman unsecure ways.
Great report from @GenSqueeze. Here it is as an image.
I think we need to be pushing for Option 5 (aligning it with Childcare Benefits). Biggest savings and still supported by the majority of people.
No reason why we can't get this done!
Although this is a drastic change, it would only reduce 2025 OAS spending by 14%! You would need to go bolder to bring spending down! assets.nationbuilder.com/gen…
Maybe but this should be lower down the list.
The first thing that we should do, on a matter of principle, is to align OAS requirements with Child Benefits. Both based on family income, not individual. Both same clawback thresholds.
We would see massive savings from this alone.
