observantTrapezium

It's something I started noticing recently in some standup and improv shows in Toronto, not sure if it's a new trend, or it just more noticeable now. Here are some examples I remember:

• Jokingly asking audience for their social security number. This happened in two different shows
• "I've been on dating apps for a presidential term"
• I heard zip code being mentioned in one act
• A performer shouting "fuck ICE". This was not even part of any joke, just a political statement. While I sympathize, of all the scourges of the US this one is really domestic in nature and I don't get the point bringing it up in front of a Canadian audience (unless it's part of your set)
• And not to mention using their units of measurement, which is unfortunately commonplace (thanks a lot Brian Mulroney)

Other than the "fuck ICE" performer who said about themselves that they are Turkish (which I took to mean Turkish-Canadian, but maybe I'm wrong), the others were Canadian-born. In all cases these were young people who I don't believe do comedy professionally.

I have nothing against American comedy, but this low key pretense that Canada is part of the US irks me.

Despite disabling most of Mozilla's telemetry and other phone-home functionality (such as captive portal), I found that a fresh LibreWolf profile makes quite a few connections on first startup (see list below), and some repeating every startup. One in particular is persistent: that is to push.services.mozilla.com and can be disabled by setting the dom.push.enabled configuration to false (I personally don't need push notifications in the browser; you can also set a custom URL).

What is particularly annoying is that some of these domains, related to "remote settings", are essentially hard-coded and cannot be disabled by changing configuration parameters. I now block these three in my /etc/hosts file.

firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com
firefox-settings-attachments.cdn.mozilla.net
content-signature-2.cdn.mozilla.net

Helpfully Mozilla lists domain to allow so you can find more domains to potentially block.

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Here is the list of domains LibreWolf connected to at startup of a fresh profile. Some are understandable, some less so.

addons.mozilla.org
firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com
firefox-settings-attachments.cdn.mozilla.net
content-signature-2.cdn.mozilla.net
services.addons.mozilla.org
gitlab.com
push.services.mozilla.com
ublockorigin.github.io
malware-filter.gitlab.io
raw.githubusercontent.com
pgl.yoyo.org
curbengh.github.io
malware-filter.pages.dev
cdn.statically.io
versioncheck-bg.addons.mozilla.org
cdn.jsdelivr.net
ublockorigin.pages.dev
publicsuffix.org
codeberg.org

I discovered a puddle in my washroom that led me to find a leak in the drain pipe. Looks like a plastic piece called the cam assembly that controls the pop up sink plug eroded away. I removed it and ordered a replacement, but in the meantime I have a hole in the side of the drain pipe. The only temporary solution I could think of using things I already had at home was to take the wax casing of a Babybel cheese piece, smoosh it into a ball and press it into the hole like putty. It's been working amazingly well (there's a bowl underneath as a failsafe and it's completely dry).

Could somebody just confirm whether I got it right? Whatever I contributed to my RRSP between Jan 1 and March 4 of 2025, and was declared in the 2024 tax returns, counted towards 2024. If my Notice of Assessment for 2024 says

Your available RRSP contribution room for 2025: $10,000

then it actually means I can contribute that much from March of 2025 until March of 2026 (whatever I contributed in the beginning of 2025 is a done deal).

In the spirit of rapprochement with Europe and reorientation away from the United States, it's time to complete the Metrication process in Canada that was stopped prematurely by the Mulroney government.

In these 32 ridings the PC candidate won thanks to vote splitting. Results are as of this morning and may have changed slightly.

Thanks to all spoiler candidates listed below /s

26 spoiler candidates are New Democrats, 11 are Green, and 5 are Liberal. Only one NDP candidate, Natasha Doyle-Merrick, had the decency to step down in Eglinton-Lawrence, but that election was still spoiled by Green candidate Leah Tysoe 😡

First past the post 👎👎👎

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York South-Weston: election spoiled by Faisal Hassan (NDP); Daniel Di Giorgio (Liberal) would have won by 7957 votes (25%)

Hamilton Mountain: election spoiled by Kojo Damptey (NDP); Dawn Danko (Liberal) would have won by 8021 votes (21%)

Peterborough-Kawartha: election spoiled by Jen Deck (NDP); Adam Hopkins (Liberal) would have won by 7232 votes (13%)

Sault Ste. Marie: election spoiled by Gurwinder Dusanjh (Liberal); Lisa Vezeau-Allen (NDP) would have won by 2920 votes (10%)

Burlington: election spoiled by Megan Beauchemin (NDP); Andrea Grebenc (Liberal) would have won by 4447 votes (8%)

Hamilton East-Stoney Creek: election spoiled by Zaigham Butt (NDP); Heino Doessing (Liberal) would have won by 2784 votes (7%)

Kitchener South-Hespeler: election spoiled by Jeff Donkersgoed (NDP) and Jessica Riley (Green); Ismail Mohamed (Liberal) would have won by 2653 votes (7%)

Scarborough Centre: election spoiled by Sonali Chakraborti (NDP); Mazhar Shafiq (Liberal) would have won by 2104 votes (7%)

Kitchener-Conestoga: election spoiled by Jodi Szimanski (NDP); Joe Gowing (Liberal) would have won by 2636 votes (6%)

Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound: election spoiled by Joel Loughead (Green) and James Harris (NDP); Selwyn Hicks (Liberal) would have won by 2591 votes (6%)

Wellington-Halton Hills: election spoiled by Bronwynne Wilton (Green) and Simone Kent (NDP); Alex Hilson (Liberal) would have won by 3061 votes (6%)

Bay of Quinte: election spoiled by Amanda Robertson (NDP); David O'Neil (Liberal) would have won by 2629 votes (6%)

Mississauga-Erin Mills: election spoiled by Mubashir Rizvi (NDP); Qasir Dar (Liberal) would have won by 2067 votes (6%)

Thunder Bay-Atikokan: election spoiled by Stephen Margarit (Liberal); Judith Monteith-Farrell (NDP) would have won by 1436 votes (5%)

Willowdale: election spoiled by Boris Ivanov (NDP); Paul Saguil (Liberal) would have won by 1192 votes (4%)

Eglinton-Lawrence: election spoiled by Leah Tysoe (Green); Vince Gasparro (Liberal) would have won by 1223 votes (3%)

Milton: election spoiled by Katherine Cirlincione (NDP) and Susan Doyle (Green); Kristina Tesser Derksen (Liberal) would have won by 993 votes (2%)

Cambridge: election spoiled by Marjorie Knight (NDP); Rob Deutschmann (Liberal) would have won by 999 votes (2%)

Whitby: election spoiled by Jamie Nye (NDP) and Steven Toman (Green); Roger Gordon (Liberal) would have won by 1130 votes (2%)

Mississauga East-Cooksville: election spoiled by Alex Venuto (NDP); Bonnie Crombie (Liberal) would have won by 649 votes (2%)

Perth-Wellington: election spoiled by Jason Davis (NDP) and Ian Morton (Green); Ashley Fox (Liberal) would have won by 674 votes (2%)

Pickering-Uxbridge: election spoiled by Khalid Ahmed (NDP) and Mini Batra (Green); Ibrahim Daniyal (Liberal) would have won by 692 votes (2%)

Brantford-Brant: election spoiled by Ron Fox (Liberal) and Karleigh Csordas (Green); Harvey Bischof (NDP) would have won by 764 votes (1%)

Parry Sound-Muskoka: election spoiled by David Innes (Liberal); Matt Richter (Green) would have won by 451 votes (1%)

Mississauga-Lakeshore: election spoiled by Spencer Ki (NDP); Elizabeth Mendes (Liberal) would have won by 350 votes (1%)

Newmarket-Aurora: election spoiled by Denis Heng (NDP); Chris Ballard (Liberal) would have won by 329 votes (1%)

Mississauga Centre: election spoiled by Waseem Ahmed (NDP); Sumira Malik (Liberal) would have won by 216 votes (1%)

Etobicoke Centre: election spoiled by Giulia Volpe (NDP) and Brian Morris (Green); John Campbell (Liberal) would have won by 258 votes (1%)

Mississauga-Streetsville: election spoiled by Shoaib Khawar (NDP); Jill Promoli (Liberal) would have won by 183 votes

Scarborough-Rouge Park: election spoiled by Hibah Sidat (NDP) and Victoria Jewt (Green); Morris Beckford (Liberal) would have won by 115 votes

Algoma-Manitoulin: election spoiled by Reg Niganobe (Liberal); David Timeriski (NDP) would have won by 94 votes

Oakville: election spoiled by Diane Downey (NDP); Alison Gohel (Liberal) would have won by 2 votes

There are apparently underground passages connecting the hospitals on University Avenue and all the way to Queen's Park TTC station. I couldn't find a map or even many references to its existence. This Instagram post is the most I could find, but it's unclear if it's open to the public, or how to get there.

Anybody here has experience with it?

Inuvik, NWT, with a 2021 census population of 3,137 is the fifth largest settlement in Northern Canada (north of the 60th parallel). At "only" 68°22′ north, it doesn't even quite make it to Wikipedia's list of northernmost settlements. But that is the most populated town in Canada whose antipodal point lies within the continent of Antarctica. The antipodal point is the point you would get to if you could drill directly down through the centre of the Earth and come out the other side (also, it is the most distant point on the surface of the Earth, which is always approx. 20,000 km from the original point). Yellowknife and Iqaluit, the capitals of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, respectively, have antipodal points that lie at sea close to the Antarctic mainland, within a few hundred kilometres from shore.

I found that interesting because while Inuvik is certainly cold most of the time, it's still surrounded by a lush boreal forest and the warmest couple of months of summer are fairly pleasant. I've personally never been, but a friend of a friend lived there for years and still goes there. The antipodal point though is a white desert. About 300 km from that point, on the much milder coast (the antipodal point itself is more than 2000 metres above sea level), one finds Dumont d'Urville Base, a a French scientific station, which is completely barren of vegetation and is barely above freezing during summer (at least they have penguins).

The reasons for the difference in climate are many, but the Antarctic Circumpolar Current is probably mainly to blame, together with the high elevation of the surface and high albedo of the ice.

I don't seem to understand something regarding how interest is paid on a mortgage. Say the loan is for $100,000 at a 5% rate for 10 years, paid monthly.

I would think that on the first month, the interest I have to pay $100,000 × (0.05 ÷ 12) = $416.67. However the mortgage calculator says that the first payment is actually $412.39. While it's not a huge difference, it's a difference nonetheless and I can't really figure out where it comes from.

My intuition is that it's somehow related to the fact that interest is compounded daily, but when I take r = 0.05 ÷ 365 and N = 365 × 10 payments (keeping leap years in mind for later), and calculate the first 30 days, I get $409.70, and the first 31 days give $423.32. I guess that the "actual" number is some kind of weighted average since the calculator doesn't ask at which month your loan starts.

So where is this $412.39 coming from? In reality when paying a mortgage, do you see the interest fluctuating as it decreases, depending on the number of days every month?

I recommend watching the whole interview, it's hilarious.