Matt Middleton

Trying out a new colour-based social site. Same name, different channel.

NEW: An exhaustive review of roughly 200 flights in Doug Ford’s calendars reveal he essentially stopped flying commercial in late 2025, switching almost entirely to private flights. Opposition blasted him during question period, but Ford insists he’s better than former premiers

@fuckyouiquit He's probably right. Double nothing is still nothing.

We should test his theory. Lets double his taxes.

@fuckyouiquit He's panicking. Good.

Then why are your employees pissing in bottles Jeff? If you gave a single shit about people you'd stop treating the people who make you insanely rich worse than cattle. Your actions speak louder than your bullshit words ever could.

Meta will layoff 8000 of its workforce starting tomorrow morning. Their net income over the last 12 months was $70,587,000,000. They could give every single one of their 79,000 workers a $440,000 bonus and still sock away over $35,827,000,000 in pure profit.

Premier Ford skipped question period today, one day after government documents revealed Ontario taxpayers covered nearly $200K in expenses tied to the purchase & resale of his $28.9M private jet. The opposition is now demanding he repay the money. #onpoli

NEW: The Ford government tried to quietly close the public feedback period on its new education bill, changing the deadline to submit comments from May 13 to May 4 without notice. They reversed course after we asked why they were limiting public input: thetrillium.ca/insider-news/e…

NEW: Government-supervised school board mistakenly distributes email identifying teachers at risk of layoffs, raising serious privacy concerns & prompting Ontario's privacy watchdog to look into the incident. My first official byline with @Thetrilliumca: thetrillium.ca/insider-news/e…

@straczynski By any chance, do you know if this will be released on CD? Been trying to get my hands on physical media of the art I really care about.

News! Christopher Franke has just released a ton of Babylon 5 soundtracks on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Pandora and others: six large volumes and smaller, six episodic soundtracks. Available yea unto this very moment.

@greggrunberg Japan. Went in 2012, blew my mind, haven't managed to go back yet.

If you could take one trip this year, guilt free, no “I’ll do it someday” where would it be? Drop it in the comments. I’m reading every single one!

@straczynski Thank you for writing this. My eldest is an artist, has been since she was very little. We do our best to encourage her to pursue her art wherever it leads her. She's not old enough for a "career" as such, but we've told her that we have her back no matter what.

Just sharing a few random thoughts in the middle of the night.... jmichaelstraczynski.substack.com/p/everyone-you…

@RobMcLeod9 @politics_w_sami You're forgetting all the jobs that will be created in developing the industrial base for this project. Further, if this project is successful, those jobs will likely become much more long-term, as the high-speed rail system gets expanded across the country.

@politics_w_sami I can't agree to this waste of money. The government should be using this money to develop industries that create actual jobs, not a regional tourism option. If you compare resource development vs tourism, this rail system is just a waste of money you buy urban votes.

I lived in France for six years as a child, where high-speed trains are a common way to travel. Riding them was a great experience! They made it easy to move quickly between major cities without the stress of traffic or the discomfort of long car rides. One reason many Canadians don’t use trains today is that they aren’t fast enough, introducing high-speed rail could help address that issue.

@barua_ashish @fuckyouiquit They also ignore that the things that almost all the things that went down on that chart are manufactured goods, not services. Also, perhaps with the exception of cars, these are mostly manufactured overseas in facilities that pay their employees squat.

@startupvon @fuckyouiquit Such as?

You're so close but you're not getting it. Most of that wealth isn't real, it's on paper that's why you can lose half and be fine - taxing unrealized gains is anti economics and would have disastrous downstream effects, that are clear to see if any thought is taken. If you run a startup worth 5 billions per say, and you own 20% of that your net worth is technically a billion dollars but you don't actually have that money, and are likely upper middle class at best, with low 6-7 figures in liquid or easily accessible wealth. If you were taxed 2% of your wealth you'd have to pay 20 million dollars that you don't have, you would literally be losing money to run a business that creates jobs, gdp, and hopefully drives innovation. Ignoring the fact that these same principles exist for even higher net worth individuals than in my example and would eventually be applied to those with even lower thresholds. Why would anyone ever start a business if you knew you'd be penalized for being successful? In the UK you get taxed disproportionately more past the 100k income range, in such a way that if you made 90-95k, and took enough overtime to make say 110k, you'd make significantly less than if you just stayed below that threshold, so people deliberately work less to keep their take home pay, and we've seen the result. You apply those same principles to something as important as business creation and you'd crumble the economy and any innovation. There are far, far better ways to tax billionaires if people took any time to actually understand basic economics.

Billionaire loses half his money and is still just fine. But we can’t tax them 2%. They can’t possibly afford that.

@straczynski My wife got me the Blu-ray set when it came out, and we did a (slow) rewatch. First time she saw it, she wasn't super into it, but this time she understood why I love it so much. We were both in tears at the end, as I always am. Thank you for writing an amazing story.

Time flies, dunnit?

@SatoshiChela @GestaltU Absolutely! Also, even supposed "losers" still provide valuable data that can point to more viable options.

@GestaltU We love citing big public R&D wins (Google, GPS, mRNA). But economics reminds us: we only see the winners. The unseen cost is what wasn’t tried or funded. Public research isn’t about picking winners—it’s about exploring possibility space under uncertainty.

Fun fact: The 1998 paper that introduced Google and PageRank to the world ends with this acknowledgment: "Supported by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement IRI-9411306. Funding also provided by DARPA and NASA." Sergey Brin was on an NSF Graduate Fellowship. Larry Page was a PhD student on the grant. Google—now worth $2 trillion—exists because American taxpayers funded "the Stanford Integrated Digital Library Project." Not a startup garage myth. A government grant. Every time someone says public research funding "picks winners and losers" or "crowds out private innovation," remember: the most dominant technology company of the 21st century was incubated entirely with public money, inside a public university, by researchers on federal fellowships and grants. The private sector didn't see it coming. VCs passed. The government funded it anyway—not because it would become Google, but because fundamental research into information retrieval seemed worth understanding. That's the point. You can't predict which grants will change the world. You fund the science and let researchers explore. The internet (DARPA). GPS (DoD). Touchscreens (CIA/NSF). mRNA vaccines (NIH). Google (NSF/DARPA/NASA). Public investment in basic research isn't wasteful spending. It's the seed corn of the entire modern economy.

@straczynski Thank you for always being honest, and as open as possible (understanding that sometimes things have to be kept under one's hat in the moment). Sorry you have to keep reiterating these points for the 💩 disturbers.

--decades is in a searchable database at jmsnews.com, tens of thousands of posts, making me accountable for every word I say. It confirms that in all that time, I've always, *always* been straightforward with what's happening with the show, up or down, win or lose.

I actually discussed this quite a while ago, over a year, I think. I've always been frank with the fans whether it's good or bad. The short answer is no, at least not in this form. The problem we ran into was three-fold: first, it's rare when network A picks up a show from--

@jamiljivani @ABDanielleSmith Who is paying for this?

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: Restore the North is going nationwide in 2026. Special guest @ABDanielleSmith will be joining us to kick things off in Calgary. RSVP: restorethenorth.ca/campustour

@adhdessentials Congratulations! I was one grading away from shodan in Aikido when my youngest was born. I appreciate hearing your story. Been on hiatus from practice since 2021, and sometimes it feels like I might never get back. Helps to hear that things can change ☺️

When my sons were born, I set a goal to earn my black belt and write a book by the time they turned five. Stuff got in the way and now they’re sixteen. That said, I earned the black belt two weeks ago and the book comes out in September. Keep moving forward.

@andrewaperez @MarkJCarney I think you're right. My guess is, the NDP will provide just enough votes to pass it, without fully supporting it. Once they get a new leader in the house, it's anyone's guess.

If the opposition parties allow @MarkJCarney's budget to be defeated in a make-or-break budget vote on Monday, they're likely to be in for a rude awakening electorally. Why? Because if the budget fails to pass, Canada will be plunged into a general federal (Christmas) election with voting day likely taking place the week of Boxing Day. A mere 6.5 months after last spring's election, it would be hard to find a single Canadian yearning for a holiday election. Moreover, in this moment, the federal NDP are leaderless and broke; meanwhile, Poilievre's Conservatives are in disarray and in the midst of a prolonged funk. Poilievre himself trails Mark Carney by a staggering 20 points as it relates to "Preferred PM" and the Liberals generally remain in majority gov't territory in recent public opinion polls. My bet is that @MarkJCarney's gov't *won't* be defeated come Monday evening. The opposition can crow all they want over the budget, but it's ultimately a fiscal plan that is broadly popular among Canadians because it balances prudence with strategic investments in our economy that will lead to a more prosperous country. #cdnpoli #Budget2025