RichardGibbons

I don't think this is quite accurate, according to this. In particular: 9. Construction standards. The Sen̓áḵw development will be constructed in accordance with the BC Building Code, with standards specific to fire safety to align to the City of Vancouver’s standards That implies to me that they aren't necessarily in compliance with city standards (except sustainability, water, and sewer, in different clauses.) e.g. I remember a few years back, the city passed standards for door handles. That said, I agree with you that the major advantage is their speed and ability to create super-high density quickly. Trying to get that approved in Vancouver could literally take decades (e.g. look at the process for the Safeway near the Commercial-Broadway Skytrain station. Senakw might actually become the most dense area outside the downtown peninsula. (I think it's more dense than Oakridge will be, but that's only my guess.)

It's different than other public/private partnerships in that it avoids all the municipal red-tape: As the project is being built on reserve, the First Nation is technically not required to follow City regulations, policies, and standards, nor does it need to follow the City’s development application process and seek the City’s approval. However, the agreement stipulates the First Nation has offered to provide “direct public contributions or commitments to practices aligned with City policies.” At one point, I had some hope that this could actually fix Vancouver's housing crises. Essentially, I thought they should be able to get a flywheel going: Build housing cheaper than everyone else because they don't have to deal with massive municipal costs Make extraordinarily large profits Buy more land with profits Go to 1. It doesn't quite work, though because reserves are actually owned by the Crown, not tribes, so they can't just integrate a bunch of newly-purchased land into their reserves.

Yep, Canada learned this back in January 2025.

+1. I wonder how many people in the audience were genuinely offended by the joke, and how many were simply concerned about the consequences they'd face for not appearing offended. A censorship trend on reddit recently has been to ask people to explain why a joke is funny, in an attempt to shame them into never saying "inappropriate" jokes. I'm so ready for this particular pendulum to swing back.

I immediately thought, Obama, Clinton, Bush Sr, maybe Bush Jr. But then saw the qualification and realized that we were talking about a set of two.

Cubs is reminiscent of Tom Parsons in 1984. The diversity of humanity is endlessly fascinating.

Darn, I really want to add a poll to this thread asking who everyone would prefer to run the country for this four-year term: DJT, Kamala, or a pile of literal dogshit. But I don't think it's possible. I have a feeling I know what the most popular response would be.

I think there's no doubt that this is good for US oil. Pretty well any time the price of a commodity product you have available to sell skyrockets, it's good for you.

Okay, cool! Thanks for enlightening me.

Paying disproportionately for everyone else's benefit is a form of power that they have decided to relinquish, hence reducing USA's power. So you're certainly right about that one--nice example. On the others, it's worth noting that we're talking about power, not things that get you horny about Trump. Crime and border security are orthogonal. GDP is unclear--so much heavy lifting is done by AI right now. It's unclear whether there's even a return to capitalism, because it more looks the opposite (government interference in business). Military strength is certainly down (using up weapons and can't even beat Iran, or even protect shipping in a tiny area like the Strait of Hormuz! It's kind of insane. I thought USA's military was supposed to be strong.) Zeal only actually matters to this conversation if it increases power; for the last year, it's done the opposite. So yeah. But the biggest deal is the loss of allies. Deals are happening in the world, and people are making plans, and for the first time in 80 years, USA has been relegated to the kiddie table. (e.g. under Biden, Trump 1, Obama, both Bushes, and Clinton, the most powerful western democracies would've signed onto the "Board of Peace". Now it's a punch line.)

Ability to influence and impact the rest of the world in a way that is beneficial for the USA.

Come on, this isn't a fair bet at all. It's already substantially weaker since he took over, and the trend is clearly weaker.

I think the other thing people are missing was that Trump was going to war regardless. He just wanted to blow stuff up, and until recently, it looked more likely that he'd go after an ally. So, Trump deserves kudos for changing his mind, and going after a nation that's actually a threat. With him determined to blow things up, there aren't many choices of target that would've been better than Iran. I think it shows growth.

Funny that Google's on all these lists. I own shares of Google, but actually switched away from Google search to DuckDuckGo about a year ago after this. My reasoning is that my model of reality is based, to a significant degree, on the Internet. With those image generation results, it's pretty clear that Google was deliberately inserting ideological bias into its results. Essentially, it wanted to feed me a distorted view of reality to suit its own biases. That they were doing that was quite obvious with those pictures, but they could quite easily do it in an effectively undetectable way throughout their business. So, to attempt to maintain an accurate model of reality, I switched. I'd guess, for me, duckduckgo is sufficient for about 98% of searches. It fails me frequently on images and constantly on maps (which is Apple maps). For me, I think the $10K answer would be Windows--I could switch, but the effort isn't worth $10K, ditching both Visa/MC, and that's probably about it. (That said, Windows itself could actually make me switch away, if future versions of the OS destroy it to an extent that barriers to switching fall, and they've certainly been trending in that direction.)

It is pretty interesting that they allow you to bet with such a narrow spread because you actually don't need that much of an edge for it to be profitable. I've started paper sports betting on Polymarket to see if I potentially have an edge, and I've actually won 13 straight bets, at average odds where the market says I have a 47% chance to win. So far, with 118 fake bets, I've risked 57.71 and won 68. Gemini indicates that's significant, but I'm not that convinced when it comes right after 13 straight wins. It feels like extrapolating stock market results in 1999 based on 5-year returns.

Darn. I had no idea he was born in the 40s. I thought we had another few decades.

Damn, I wish I had such a person. My whole household has been obsessing for the past 18 months about locating good butter.

Yes, but isn't it strange that after the pandemic, the deficit normalized at the $50B range, rather than, say, $0 or even a high number like $10B? In fact, we would have been way, way ahead if we had simply stabilized at the pre-Trudeau record high deficit.

Yeah, if I were writing it, I wouldn't include it. But if I did write it, it would be because the man loves his wife so much that he wants to truly understand the entirety of her life, and he wants to be able to support and protect her for the entirety of her existence. Now I'm curious how it's handled, and actually have to read it. LOL.

I think that this is absolutely true, but I also think this doesn't matter because existence as a human is governed by feelings. Cypher's figured it out in this scene from The Matrix.

Thanks for the suggestion. I got a few pages into that one, but put it down because when I read somewhere that the man visits the wife several times when she's a girl. Just thinking about that icked me out, but, if it were executed well, it might be fine, and it does seem relevant to what I'm writing. So, I'll put that back on the list.

First, some provisos. I've only been reading romances for a bit over a year (and interspersed with non-romances that people recommend), so I'd guess I've probably only read about 75-100 romance novels. It's also worth noting that I'm generally not the target demographic for this genre, and my criteria for a good romance novel might not match others'. The things that matter to me include: I like there to be some complexity beyond the complications of the romance The reasons why the characters fall in love need to be obvious, and they need to be reasons that wouldn't apply to any random person chucked into that situation. It often works if one character's trauma is soothed by the other's quirks. The characters need to be real enough that so that I want to cry when they're hurt. For me, it's not really about self-insertion, but it is a bit about me falling in love, just slightly, with the characters. Like, how is the romance even plausible if you don't love the character just a bit yourself? With that massive proviso, I'd say my three-ish favourites are: The Happy Ever After Playlist (Jimenez): This is the second book of a series. The main character of this book was the side character in the first one. But at the end of the first, her boyfriend--clearly the love of her life--dies in an accident. This book picks up a year later, when she's trying to feign normalcy while still being completely broken inside. Polaris Rising (Mihalik): It's a sci fi future where planets are colonized and spaceships flying all over the place. Major and lesser houses (families) are battling each other for influence. The daughter of one of the major houses has been trying to get away from it, living her own colourful life, when she gets abducted by mercenaries, likely to be sold to a rival house. This is 100% competency porn--almost every character is amazing at all things they do. That's usually a problem, but in this one, it just works for me (maybe because it was justified--her childhood was all about her family forging her into the tool they needed her to be.) Harrow Faire Series (Kingsley): Might not be fair to include this, because it's a very non-traditional romance, isn't just one book, and is completely insane. The setting is a parasitic magical fair powered by devouring tiny parts of people's identities (e.g. their favourite colour. Afterward, the person no longer has a favourite colour.) The female protagonist is a visitor to the fair. The male protagonist is a short-tempered irreverent and unrepentant psychopath with extremely bloody magical abilities who wants to force the soul of the woman into a carved puppet for his show. The romance actually works, though the first book isn't that romantic. It's like nothing else I've ever read. Failure to Match (Parsi): I feel kind of bad including two fantastical romances, so I'll add this one as well. It's a traditional contemporary romance executed well. He's a billionaire using a matchmaking service to find a wife while she's the matchmaker. He's a jerk, so they hate each other. It's neatly woven together and the sex scenes are hot. (It's also worth noting that, for women, most romance novels are the exact same thing as porn is for men. Same book with a different cover. Maybe that's already obvious to everyone, but I didn't know that when I started this journey.)

Funny--I read the thread and Sanjeev keeps posting the exact thing I'm about to post, up to and including "@Parsad is saying that because he's a centrist and, here, he almost exclusively pushes back against extremism." Here's the picture of Canada's deficits. About 10 years of surpluses, and I think it would've been close to 20 if not for the 2008 crisis. The only issue is that Trudeau came along and had an excuse to blow everything up. What we really need is for deficit spending outside of recessions or war to be a third rail for the electorate. Or, make it equivalent to a failed confidence vote. Or at least force the party leader to stand up in parliament and say, "I, and my party, have run a deficit during prosperous times. This ought to make it clear to the electorate that we are missing the most basic level wisdom required to run a country, and we recommend that you vote us out of power during the next election."

I haven't actually read the prequel--didn't realize it existed. So I guess I'll add it to my list.

I've read most of the books on your list, and enjoyed them. My favourite book is Simmons' Hyperion Cantos. It's unusual in that the first book is a sci-fi take on Canterbury Tales. It certainly won't be to everyone's liking, particularly considering each sub-story has its own writing style and genre, and the first 'book' really doesn't have a self-contained ending. But I love the density of ideas. Lately I've been reading romance books, because I am in the process of writing a book that's half-romance, but don't feel like I know the genre well enough. My favourite of those is The Happy Ever After Playlist by Jimenez. I liked it because it hit the romance beats in a complex way, with emotional depth. It is the second in a trilogy, but that doesn't matter so much for romance because they typically start with different characters in the same friend-group for every book. I've also been reading Dungeon Crawler Carl. It's lit-RPG, complete candy-floss, and a super-easy read (from me, this is a compliment, not an insult. Not everything needs to be sophisticated.) The characters are entertaining, as are the problems they encounter and the solutions they come up with.