Friendly Robot Records

@ZaidJilani Environmental pollution pulled down the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers

Guns, fried food, and less access to doctors

@tolstoybb @TheStalwart He has the same initials as Allen Iverson

That's the ticker for physical Brent, btw

@GoodAtBingo @MikePMoffatt The provincial majority is just an aggregate of each municipality. It’s not a winning political coalition. Homeownership is about social status for most, and people think they should be favoured for moving up the ladder.

@FrRobotRecs @MikePMoffatt Yes this is the mistake we're making - objecting to development in our neighbourhood then wondering why our children can't buy property in the neighbourhood. This is a power granted to municipalities by the provinces, and can be amended as necessary

If folks in Toronto think school closures are bad now, just wait a few years. The population of kids in the City is collapsing. Just like in the US, kids don't live in communities where they're priced out.

@GoodAtBingo @MikePMoffatt Ability to exclude is at the core of private property and jurisdiction. It If the municipality can’t exclude it doesn’t have much legal ground to stand on. Most people want more exclusive property, not less.

@FrRobotRecs @MikePMoffatt To some extent, yes. We allow current property owners to exclude future property owners, and we give this power to municipal governments

@GoodAtBingo @MikePMoffatt So democracy is to blame?

@MikePMoffatt I know it sounds daft but municipal zoning authority is ruining society. When we can vote for no new development, we do. And it ruins family formation

@magicmanace @MikePMoffatt What not to do? Majority are very pleased with the status quo and the continued preservation of the character of neighbourhood

@MikePMoffatt From Affordability to Asset Class: The Financialization of Urban Housing and Its Demographic Consequences Someone eventually is going to write a phd thesis on what happened to Canada and what not to do. Nobody in government has the stomach to make the charges necessary we need.

@buccocapital Dead wrong. China will win the AI race because of the lack of welfarism in Chinese society. AI is going to make most kids poorer whether you like it or not. Implying the government should do something breeds contempt for AI, progress, and work in general.

I’ll be writing about this in much more detail next week. Subscribe here to get the post educatedguesser.substack.com/?showWelcome=t…

The vibes are turning against Dario. I expect this to accelerate until he changes his messaging Why? Because AI broke the social contract of the internet. For the last 20 years, people shared their data with tech companies as part of a *symbiotic* relationship. The services got better. Traffic went to your site. Network effects made transactions liquid and simple. AI broke that contract. AI sucked in the collective IP of civilization and paid out nothing for the inputs. And now Dario goes on TV every day to tell us he is going to break the economy and our children will be poor. But he did that. It’s economic gaslighting. Dario is the embodiment of the “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this” meme and people are not going to sit there and take it AI needs a better, more inclusive message. I expect he will realize this eventually. The question is whether he will realize it before it’s too late.

@JamesonCanada @SabrinaMaddeaux @nationalpost There’s certainly some wage suppression but job creation wouldn’t have fallen off a cliff if there were lots of businesses that could pay higher wages. Issues with red tape choke growth a incentivized businesses that throw bodies at the economy rather than creating more value

@FrRobotRecs @SabrinaMaddeaux @nationalpost Those jobs don’t pay enough to allow people to afford a family because we bring in immigrants

Brain drain is an existential issue, but it can’t be solved by putting up walls and shackling young people to flagpoles. It can only be solved by restoring the opportunities, quality of life and optimism about the future Canada once offered. Read my latest for @nationalpost

@JamesonCanada @SabrinaMaddeaux @nationalpost Because Canada isn’t competitive in high value services so we need to focus on low value. Those jobs don’t pay enough to allow people to afford a family so we need to bring in immigrants. High productivity jobs require skills Canadian workers don’t have

@SabrinaMaddeaux @nationalpost Maybe stop bringing in so many low skill low wage workers from foreign countries to compete with them for jobs? Why the fuck is every single worker in the call centre at a major bank an African immigrant

@conorsen Doubly true going to tax the childless W2 savers into oblivion to pay for more child tax credits

Being a parent of elementary school kids gives you an appreciation for the time value of money. $8,000 saved rather than spent on a family trip will be worth a lot of money in 30 years, but my kids won’t be these ages in 30 years.

@hissgoescobra He’s using the liquidity drain from the tax calendar to wreak havoc. Running back the Covid crash, broke on Feb exp. Recovered in March

These trades are all traceable, usually, which leads to either 1 of 2 disturbing conclusions, given that it’s clearly illegal: (1) these trades are going to Trump or other people he’ll pardon, or (2) somehow they’ve figured a way through crypto or otherwise to hide identities.

@KelseyTuoc Could turn this on historic texts and see who was being ghost written for

I think that people should probably assume that text of any significant length which they wrote will be reliably possible to attribute to them, some time very soon.

I have a bunch of secret AI benchmarks I only reveal when they fall, and today one did. I give the AI 1000 words written by me and never published, and ask them who the author is. They generally give flattering wrong answers (see ChatGPT, below:)

@tolstoybb @milesFF007F I was banned from the Toronto thread on Reddit for comparing it to Chicago as a Great Lakes hub

@NullTensor2 @ZackOftheTrades @AnnaEconomist Is the donkey brained TV game show host the leader offering a moratorium on Uranium enrichment?

@FrRobotRecs @ZackOftheTrades @AnnaEconomist US is losing badly cuz it’s run by reality tv stars.

I participated in a panel on world economic outlook in one of the banks during this week’s bank fund meetings. One controversial and most interesting debate that was discussed on the sidelines is: Has the closure of the Strait of Hormuz revealed that US does have some choke points in her cards that can be played against the other great powers, ie China. For so long it has been one-sided. The conflict reveals helium, natural gas, oil and petrochemicals can be US leverage. The debate is whether this should be seen as a “leverage”, or is it just a “counter” that is unsustainable.

@NullTensor2 @ZackOftheTrades @AnnaEconomist US is winning this war hands down and asserting its dominance over ever economy worldwide while demonstrating a willingness to injure even its own Allies to achieve foreign policy goals

@ZackOftheTrades @AnnaEconomist I hope both of you are just paid shills. Cuz you can't possibly be this moronic.

@Bluebelle449 @acoyne The CPC has always put more emphasis on candidates that are good at finding donors, selling memberships, etc. so I can’t say Im surprised when the salespeople that they elect take a better compensation package when the Libs open the cheque book for infra spending.

@acoyne Andrew, those results reflect the apathy of Conservatives because of the latest floor crossing spectacle, nothing else.

Man those Conservative byelection numbers. 18 per cent in Scarborough Southwest. 12 per cent in University-Rosedale. 3 per cent (!) in Terrebonne. Man.

@tolstoybb @TheStalwart Opportunity cost of joy will be too high, sorry kiddo

This kind of development is really depressing to me. All kinds of weird little colleges in the Northeast are closing. Nobody wants to double major in literature and kombucha-making anymore. Everyone just wants to work for Jane Street or an AI lab.

@32a80064 @MikePMoffatt Without being permanent it’s going to help clear inventory but won’t effect long term supply or demand. Bigger help to executives sitting on unsold units than anyone else

@FrRobotRecs @MikePMoffatt Why is it "welfare" for even a small group of young buyers to still have to pay higher housing taxes, just slightly less extortionate, than previous generations? Crabs in a bucket mentality. I agree it would be better for it to be permanent though.

New piece at the Globe, on how the combination of enhanced HST rebates and 50% development charges will lower the price of new homes by 15-20%, and why the savings will be passed along to buyers. Read here: theglobeandmail.com/investing/pers…

@Rory_Johnston SNDK > Strait

Is the Strait of Hormuz still closed?