SkepticalButOpenMinded

joined 1 year ago

There is a theory that Democrats now have the majority of high propensity voters, such as high education voters. A decade ago it was the reverse, and Republicans would win most special elections and midterms.

But that’s not what you wrote. You claimed that it doesn’t show new information because you can see the favicon and title. It does show new information.

[–] SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

When I shop online, I have many tabs from the same site open. The tab title is the store name + the item name, so the item name never fits. A bunch of identical ebay icons is way worse than this.

It’s not objectively better or worse. Some people will prefer it and some people won’t.

[–] SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca 13 points 8 months ago

Does Canada need to maintain relevance in Europe? Asia? Africa has the fastest growing and youngest population in the world — the region will no doubt play a key role in global commerce in the next century. Why is it justified to ignore Africa but not other parts of the world?

[–] SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

“We need tons of parking lots until we get walkable cities” gets things totally backwards. Walkable cities are impossible because of the stupid amount of parking lots we have.

The dilemma you pose of “parking vs walkable cities” isn’t even real: we massively overbuild parking lots so we can stand to get rid of most of them. I’ve been to SK many times. Strip mall parking lots are half empty even during the busiest times of day. It’s insane. You could build housing on tons of that land without ever causing parking lots to fill up.

Here in Vancouver, there are almost no strip mall parking lots and the absolute number of cars is higher than anywhere in SK, and yet, there’s STILL too much parking. There’s almost always parking within a block or two of any store outside of the downtown core. The distance you walk probably isn’t that different from across those huge parking lots.

Honestly, we can go on a massive parking diet and, because we overbuild parking so much, there won’t even be any downside for drivers.

I bet it’s a little of both. I think every successive generation in the US has become more socially isolated. Car culture, suburban sprawl, internet culture, lack of “third places”, etc. I’m reminded of the sociology book Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam. It starts with the observation that more Americans go bowling than ever, but memberships to bowling leagues has fallen. Americans are still bowling, but they’re bowling alone.

[–] SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca 19 points 9 months ago

That’s actually even more depressing. The legal minimum wage is so low that it’s not even lifting up the wages of the most modest jobs in the lowest COL areas. It functionally doesn’t exist.

Yes, the lack of civic knowledge is sometimes frightening. I’m not one to say “both sides!”, but in this case, I see it on both the left and right: people who don’t seem to understand that most major bills in the US pass through compromise. This is true even when one party has a majority, because the US has some of the weakest party discipline of any system (eg people can vote against their party).

You are acccusing them of invoking a thing that only you invoked and when you’re called out on it, you accuse everyone else of “mental gymnastics”?

[–] SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca 15 points 9 months ago

I agree with your sensible degree of caution, given the context. It’s good media literacy.

[–] SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca 3 points 9 months ago (5 children)

I did a quick search for this but nothing came up. Do you have a link to an article?

Cars are the number one killer of children in Canada. We tolerate a disgusting amount of preventable traffic accidents in Canada, but comparing that to killing children by shooting them or putting them into deadly chokeholds is nonsensical.

 

This is a really great long form article about the efforts to upzone New Zealand, one of the only countries going through an even worse housing crisis than Canada. There's a lot to learn here about the political challenges of implementing good urban planning strategy.

 

That's the benchmark price in Vancouver. Let's say one has $300k for a downpayment. What does the household income, pre-tax, have to be to afford that home?

I know there are online calculators, but I'm not sure how accurate they are, and I figure this group will be more knowledgeable.

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