"On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?'"

Part of the first page of the April 20, 1836 act passed by the Parliament of Upper Canada incorporating the City of Toronto and Lake Huron Rail Road Company.

Apr 20, 1836: the Parliament of Upper Canada passes an act incorporating the City of Toronto and Lake Huron Rail Road Company. This was just three months before Canada’s first steam-powered railway, the Champlain & St. Lawrence Rail Road, opened near Montreal that July. 1/3

An institutional form that worked for Canada 50 years ago but doesn't work today--we can do something new! We don't collect POGG Points® by keeping Canada Post in stasis

My guess of what exactly is going on here with flows of supporters. Maybe there's some weird regional stuff going on but I think blue/orange is negligible.

In basically every aspect, not just this situation, the greatest weakness of any american administration is the time problem.

It's like it was written by a particularly didactic Victorian author moralizing to schoolchildren.

That government, more than most, seems like such a cautionary tale

There's a reason why a good chunk of the best detective stories and film noir involve surprisingly active parts with insurance companies

Enter yongeTOmorrow, a project started in 2019 to transform Yonge between College and Queen Streets. Back then I stopped by an open house run by city staff where there was promise and excitement as Toronto might catch up to other cities that have created generous pedestrian realms like Montreal and Calgary have in previously car-dominated areas, let alone similar developments in Europe, Asia or elsewhere. However, the project was delayed during the pandemic so we scuttled and squeezed along Yonge for another half decade. The original yongeTOmorrow environmental assessment included a number of bold options such as car-free, "pedestrian priority" areas, and a somewhat less bold alternative that would have narrowed Yonge to one driving lane. Now the "approved design features" will just increase sidewalk widths but preserve two driving lanes. This is a disappointment, squandering a rare opportunity to do something other cities are doing, ones Toronto competes with for talent, capital, tourists and even bragging rights. It's dismal. If Toronto can't pull off a proper pedestrianization on Yonge, where data shows intersections at College and Dundas streets have dramatically more pedestrians than vehicles, it shames itself in front of peer cities. Are we that provincial?

There are dramatically more pedestrians than vehicles on Yonge yet Toronto resists so hard.

Regulate AirBnB by all means. But the other side is that not enough hotels are being permitted to be built, where tourists want to stay. There genuinely is demand for short-stay rooms that are not able to be met by traditional options.

Nodes, Edges, and the Historian’s Craft: Knowledge Graphs as Research Notes How moving from Word docs to network graphs transformed my research workflow and how LLMs made it possible.

Knowledge graphs are transforming my research methodology. Claude Code allows me to build knowledge graphs as I take notes from primary sources.

open.substack.com/pub/computat...

i wish all the farmer reps coming out to say no to high speed rail realize they're saying yes to more car-dependent urban sprawl, new highways, and greenfield airports that eat even more farmland *and* cause ridiculous amounts of pollution and ecological damage.

y'know, the primary threat to farms.

That’s stupid thing to say. I was clearly mad from the start of this thread. I didn’t suddenly get mad when your dumb ass showed up.

Toronto's system is big enough to serve both markets but I don't think Ottawa has that luxury, and there's not enough tourism for that to be the primary revenue source, so...

I think Menard is right that having residents as the target market, rather than tourists, will probably make the long term viability difference

Hey Canadians, this is a huge issue. This mine will pump out millions of gallons of sulphuric acid that will flow into Quetico Park, Rainy River, right up to Lake Winnipeg. It's 40km from the border. It could be Sudbury all over again for Canadian lakes. And our governments are doing nothing. read:

LNG Canada exceeds estimated 2024 global record for burned gas | The Narwhal LNG Canada in Kitimat, B.C., burned more gas in 2025 than any other liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility on record in 2024

B.C. loves to say it has the cleanest natural gas in the world, but the truth is — well, more like the complete opposite of that.

a real banger of an investigation at @thenarwhal.ca today by @writermjs.bsky.social & Wil Crisp. thenarwhal.ca/lng-canada-b...

Metrolinx ‘blocked’ key tasks, then fired partners for missing deadlines: report Internal emails and minutes hint at what a source called 'pure chaos' behind the scenes

Sources working on the project say Metrolinx simply stopped talking to them.

Leaked C-suite minutes, premier's office emails, and sources with first-hand knowledge flesh out a picture of what one former employee called "pure chaos."

#onpoli

www.thetrillium.ca/news/municip...

At a certain point here in Toronto we need to be asking ourselves why Edmonton is producing more than 10x as many multiplex units as us per year. (It's zoning and DCs/taxes).

The Many Faces of Claude · eriskii.net Analyzing 3,371 kaomoji from 700+ conversations. What faces does Claude make and why?

I have my Claude start every message with a kaomoji. I wondered, what did each of those faces mean? What faces had my Claude used the most? Now I know, and I want everyone else to know too, so they can better understand *their* Claudes! Includes cool graphs and quantified wetness.

Do you support the Beltline Gap Connections project? The City of Toronto will be hosting a Phase 3 open house for Growing Marlee-Glencairn on Thursday April 30 (4 - 8:30 PM) at 70 Ridge Hill Drive. Please attend to show your support. #BikeTO #WalkTO #TOpoli #VisionZero www.toronto.ca/city-governm...

Great job by Ross here, setting out why the gas tax cut is ill-considered.

I like his final point that it is a sign of freedom and a free society to have prices fluctuate. Societies with stagnant prices that never move are not the kind of places you'd want to live.

One of the busiest parks in Toronto and as usual, it looks like trash. Staff destroying the landscapes they’re supposed to care for by driving full-size pickups through them. Incoherent design. Poor construction. Ugly fixtures. Somebody should lose their job over this.

Are americans, generally, aware or unaware of what "responsible government" is?

My gut is saying that awareness of what that means is low, but I don't have anything to back that up.

Alternative policies *could* include increasing quotas for importing EVs (whether from China or other countries), along with eliminating the tariffs on EVs. Probably would cost less while reducing long-run dependency!

Canadians, worth comparing these numbers, from a country with 2/3 our population, to the 49k quota in place this year

If you are wondering, "Is this movie good? Should I watch it? Is it worth the time?" the answer is "Yes."

"We keep a king in a box. It's a nice box, with plenty of food and water. Once a year, we let the king out of the box to deliver a speech, which we write for him, in a flat monotone. Then it's back into the box. This is very important"

Fighting the good fight

The point is that the spending is counterproductive and other policies would be a better use of the money. Why shouldn't we critique our government?