The Toronto mayoral election, all things considered, was par for the course. The real election action will be in the next one. Assuming this is Chow’s last term, she and ProgressTO will probably want to pass the torch to Layton. Or will Nate Erskine-Smith try to take it? Or will Nate try to duke it out with Josh Matlow for the centre? We surely won’t see all three of them run. Will the right try to field a candidate on top of this? Will Bradford give another go at it? Or will we see a new candidate be fostered? The next election will be more interesting, but critically the players in it will be cultivated starting now.

My quest to understand Canada has taken me to a far and distant place

Toronto has required utility companies to permanently restore sidewalks they dig up since 2018. Yet the Auditor General found only 12% of permits are inspected annually, and 62% of sampled deficiencies weren’t re-inspected. Set firm deadlines, fine violators, and ban repeat-offending contractors. It’s not rocket science.

If I were mayor of Toronto, you would never see asphalt paved over interlocks ever again

Relish the final moments where engraved phrases and fonts in the real world are slop-free

I can’t be closing my AI slop device and step out into the real world only to see the most godawful AI signs, somebody please contain this

The Official Flexport Timeline of Global Trade (Print it as a poster and put on your child's wall)

Prior to You Can See Everything, were you/are you:

Mel, absolutely people earning more should be getting more points! I wish that was the policy but it's not, it's easy to misinterpret. They are using the applicant’s self-declared occupation (the NOC code, based on the job duties in an employment reference letter) and granting more points if they have a job offer or experience in one of the 218 high-wage occupations out of 500+. So a marketing manager, dentist, or engineer earning $20 an hour gets the exact same points as one earning $200k a year. An electrician making $120k gets no extra points because that NOC isn’t on the high-wage list, but an industrial electrician (different NOC with a higher statistical median) earning $60k does. It’s the occupation that grants the extra points, not the person’s actual earnings. And many of those 218 occupations have pretty subjective requirements. Officers evaluate the duties listed in the reference letter when assessing the occupational claim, not the wage. That puts all the genuineness assessment of the experience on the officer. It’s much harder to prosecute this type of fraud or “title inflation” (misrepresenting past job duties) than it is to check hard numbers like a Notice of Assessment, T4, payroll records, or bank deposits. I wish they had implemented it based on the applicant’s actual earnings. It was a lazy implementation because the current Express Entry portal has no field for wage or earnings data. Focusing on higher-earning immigrants is a good direction, but they are stretching it by using the historical median of the declared occupation as a stand-in for the individual’s contribution.

You Can See Everything is magnificent. Absolutely exhilarating throughout. Bravo @nathanfielder.

This is good stuff. Electricity should be cheap because it is abundant, not because we are subsidizing consumption.

This is good stuff

If I were to write a piece about my experiences trying to change the country, what would you want to know?

Stouffville GO is down to 28% of its weekend train service because they wouldn’t let anyone take any vacation during FIFA and now they’re in an operational hole as they let people catch up. FIFA in Toronto was confirmed 4 years ago.

This! The more cities I visit, the more I realize that we are underperforming here. We have no tree-lined major streets. Trees get planted with no follow-up care. Weather and urban environments are not an excuse.

No Toronto mayoral candidate has put out a treemaxxing platform yet. Trees are great. Everyone loves trees. I need like 1 million more trees in this city by the end of the next term.

Many won't want to admit it, but there are certain cities that are more conducive to finding love

To quiet the mind, you make loud the body

At least in Ontario, maybe it's because there's literally no room to host people. All we build is condos and they are shrinking in size.

"𝐻𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑚𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑛 ℎ𝑖𝑠, 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑎 𝑔𝑙𝑎𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑚𝑒, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑚𝑒 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠." Today I'm releasing Virgil, an AI guide to the world's most famous museums. Virgil is the sequel to the Living Museum, as seen below. askvirgil.app