🇨🇦 tunetardis

  • 4 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • I think it was in the late 90s when a vicious ice storm took out power lines everywhere and the whole downtown core was plunged into darkness for the better part of a month. Fortunately, out where we lived in the suburbs, the power mostly ran underground and was restored pretty quick.

    But then my wife got a panicked call from a distant relative who said she couldn’t reach her daughter studying at the university and could we look in on her? So we found her and offered her the guest bedroom for as long as she needed it.

    At first, it seemed to be working out? Then it began to emerge that she was some sort of evangelical Christian who was frustrated that we were not eager to convert. I sort of thought taking in a refugee was a fairly Christian thing to do, but whatever.

    Eventually, she demanded I take her back to the dorm. I told her downtown is still dark and cold, but she said “I don’t care. You guys are so boring!” So I carefully drove her back around downed trees and power lines and dropped her off.

    I felt pretty bad about it and we prayed she’d be ok. A couple of weeks later, the relative called again and thanked us so much for taking care of her daughter and that we went way beyond the call despite how things turned out.


  • This makes me think of my late grandfather. He had been a civil engineer for the US Navy who spent several years working in the Panama Canal Zone. He told me this story of a senator showing up one day with cost-cutting on his mind. He focused on one line in the budget: mosquito control. “Mosquitoes? There are no mosquitoes here! What a colossal waste of money!” The whole area became pretty much unliveable within a year of his returning to Washington.





  • Living in Ontario Canada, I immediately think of things our premier Doug Ford has done or is trying to do. Right out of the gate, he tore down a wind farm near me that was 90% complete and had to pay millions in legal fees for breaking the contract on the taxpayer’s dime. More recently, he’s on a rampage to tear out bike lane infrastructure and build some giant tunnel under an already huge highway to expand its capacity.




  • I do agree with you that summer is overrated. I don’t hate it per se, but feel it not up to the hype. There are things I dread about the summer. The bugs (particularly ticks with their lyme disease which seem to be everywhere now), the allergies, the heat waves with their oppressive humidity and crappy air quality, the anxiety-inducing state of my yard, and in general, just becoming a sweaty mess after performing even the most minor of errands.

    It’s not all bad though. I appreciate the longer daylight hours, the improved fresh produce, the better motor control when not having to wear heavy clothing, and not slipping all over the place on the ice.

    I guess I feel every season has its pros and cons, yet somehow summer in popular culture enjoys this vaunted reputation above all the others which may be undeserved?







  • Digital services tend to be an area where the US enjoys huge trade surpluses. If that pandora’s box is opened, it’s going to be really bad for the tech giants when retaliatory steps are inevitably taken. I thought this was why Trump was trying to keep the tariff war focused on material goods?

    I know in Canada, FB stopped serving news when they refused to contribute to a government fund to help the struggling domestic journalism industry which they were scraping content from with reckless abandon. Personally, I’m happy to see one less stifling algorithm-fed echo chamber. It’s like a breath of fresh air.