Dave Vasilevsky

I'd love to see you write more about ideas that aren't as relevant to the US news cycle! I really appreciate when you talk about other countries, or broader ideas.

The housing shortage isn’t just about homelessness.

It’s also the young person who can’t afford to move out. It’s the couple who can’t get a place big enough to have children. It’s the people stuck with roommates (or even in abusive relationships) because they can’t get a place of their own.

Not to mention the more personal ways it hurts us to limit our mobility. Immigrants who can't come here cuz they'd "use up housing". People who can't afford to live near their families or aging parents. Marginalized folks who can't move to accepting communities.

Yes! And it's a financial problem too. People can't afford to move to places where they have better job offers. People can't make risky but high-potential career choices when rent costs 60% their income. And people end up "investing" far too much in their homes, instead of more productive options.

I haven't heard this before about Ga'ava leadership, is there somewhere I can read more?

Come to ViSaMiPex for GIANT orbs!

Yes, honestly impressive that any country could damage their diplomatic circumstances more than Israel has in the last two years. Guess Iran and the US have something in common!

Also Iran's general diplomatic position, even outside Hezbollah. Russia and Hama are in no position to support Iran. Syria no longer wants to. Europe doesn't feel inclined to push for de-escalation after Iran gave arms to Russia.

Kinda surprised there's no joint anti-Trump + anti-British "no king" rallies here in Quebec

Heh, the wording is definitely awkward. But there are more US citizens living in Canada than in several US states, so it makes sense folks want to protest moves towards authoritarianism.

I agree especially that having the right _kinds_ of in person meetings is important. I got so much more out of less-structured interactions, compared to all-day strategy speeches.

WHAT? Omg how did I not know this?

Thank you for this, I think it will be helpful for other youtubers.

Canadian pundits need to learn this so badly. There's been so much written about our "plunging productivity", and so little analysis of compositional effects.

Wow, this was fun.

This is incredible. This computer science professor makes his students play a game that simulates the risks and repercussions of getting Long COVID, and then he's like, hey anybody want a mask? And: "approximately 95 to 100% of students who’ve played the game now wear masks in his classroom."

Elections fun - 2025 edition – Mountain Doodles Playing with Canadian 2025 federal elections data.

Live version and code, plus some additional graphs and details, on my blog. (This is adapted from @karimdouieb.bsky.social's iconic animation of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.)

Measuring improvements in Canadian standards of living How much has the standard of living of Canadians improved over the last half century or so?

I invite you to read my new Substack paper called "Measuring improvements in Canadian standards of living" at the following URL: philip635.substack.com/p/measuring-...

It feels like even outside of the US people have gotten quieter, and it's not clear to me why.

Popular vote % of election vs students, showing major parties and BQ losing votes, and NDP and Green parties gaining.

I think it's more enlightening to look at the student popular vote. It looks more expected, with students voting for more minor parties, rather than the huge shift to the right that the seat totals suggest.

A table titled “Convicted World Leaders” with columns: Name, Country, Role, Year, Reason, Status, and Consequence. It lists political leaders from various countries who were convicted of crimes ranging from corruption and bribery to abuse of power and attempted coups. Most rows have a red background, signaling convictions with prison time or bans. One row is highlighted in green and features Donald Trump (USA, President), listed as convicted in 2023 for Jan 6, Corruption, Abuse of Power, Documents, Election Interference, with the consequence noted as No formal ban or sentencing/Granted Immunity.

With Yoon removed from office today, by my count that makes 34 democratic leaders convicted since 2010. Only one—Trump—faced no real consequences. Trump's actions weren't uncommon. What was exceptional was how our institutions failed to hold him accountable.

Big assumption that the rest of the world will fragment into trading blocs. Why shouldn't the EU, China, Japan, Mercosur etc just keep trading with each other, and leave the US to attempt autarky on its own?

Has there been an announcement of when the Hugo packet will be made available?

Interesting episode, thanks! I've always been concerned about the costs of lowering immigration too, such as the effect on the age-dependency ratio. How do you think we could approach these tradeoffs?

Get well soon!

That BRT tunnel looks so weird! I imagine the ends must be connected to the BRT stations, not pictured?

Yes! I mean an option for making us less dependent on imported veggies.

Sauvez de l'argent en sauvant des aliments - Marché SecondLife Stop au gaspillage! Achetez des fruits et légumes bio et locaux sauvés à la ferme. Personnalisez avec nos produits d'épicerie à prix réduit.

Second Life is also a good option! second-life.ca

Nitpick: it's the CAQ running Quebec right now. Bizarrely, the Bloc Québécois is only a party at the federal level.

Firefox on macOS: now smaller and quicker to install! – Firefox Nightly News Firefox is typically installed on macOS by downloading a DMG (Disk iMaGe) file, and dragging the Firefox.app into /Applications. These DMG files are compressed to reduce download time. As of ...

Firefox 136 shipped with my new feature: LZMA compression for .dmg downloads

blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2025/01/23/f...