According to an old acquaintance, it's all fun and games until you make the move to a 12ver. I've spent 45 years as a novice guitar player but the sight of that fretboard strikes fear into my very soul.
I had no idea such a thing existed. As the maker of a niche musical instrument myself, I'd guess that there are tens of bass players who would buy such a thing.
Most famously played by Tom Petersen of Cheap Trick (who, if I recall correctly, was the first to play one, having Hamer Guitars build him one) and Jeff Ahment of Pearl Jam (the opening riff of "Jeremy" is a 12-string bass).
beyond that, I can't think of anyone.
kinda surprised Geddy Lee never played one. seems like exactly the thing he'd do... while simultaneously playing Moog Taurus pedals.
speaking of Taurus pedals, when are you getting a set, Jack?
Re: Autoblog: The greatest advantage I got from using Grammarly was learning what the passive voice was and how to use the active voice. My emails went from frustrating grey fluff to readable and actionable.
So many auto journalists' work would be improved just by using the free version of grammarly. One journalist I read this week wrote strenuous link instead of tenuous link. How do these people even get a job writing? They should be made to edit copy before they can write themselves.
i wish most automotive writers would quit using 'would.' john smith won his race in 1960, please; not john would win his race in 1960. is that the past perfect case? too many decades past school to remember; anyway it's automotive writer jargon, like that imbecilic general sports 'on the day' and on the season.'
A habit I'm noticing is the omission of articles, so far it seems contained to podcasts. Examples: "I just drove Panamera" or "have you reviewed Hummer?"
some of that is due to out of control auto correction. my iphone does that to me all the time since my thumb typing is worse than my regular typing which is not great.
Yes! The thing that really pisses me off about apple autocorrect is not that it changes the word I just typed, but that it will go back two or three words, and seemingly at random, change the word into something I neither thought nor meant. If I don’t go back and spend the time actually proofreading, half the time I end up looking like I’m either drunk or retarded. As I know I’m not supposed to use the word retarded anymore, could someone recommend a more acceptable word that gets the same point across?
I proudly own up to the title of "Retard of the Week" after taking full advantage of the two hour snow window here in southern England...to break my leg. 6 to 8 weeks of Not Driving!
The great Farago would harp on the passive voice during his venture in gun blogging. Some dumbass cop or gunowner would shoot himself or a bystander and the papers would write "the gun went off" no it most certainly did not. The operator was pointing the muzzle in an unsafe direction, pulled the trigger, and shot someone.
Nowadays we only have two kinds of reporting on public attacks:
0. WHITE SUPREMACIST WHO LOVED HITLER AND TRUMP MURDERS 4 IN COLD BLOOD AFTER BEING EXPOSED TO JOE ROGAN AND JORDAN PETERSON, HERE'S EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT HIM FROM BIRTH FORWARD
1. "a little truckie-wuckie happened to drive through a group of people celebrating xmas, nothing to see here uwu"
Another sleight of hand they like to pull is calling him and people like him and Tsarneav "domestic terrorists" so it sounds like they are referring to Nazis when they are actually a local chapter of global Islamic terrorism. They might as well call 9/11 domestic terrorism because most of those guys entered the country legally.
And the ensuing "no, you ignorant slut, that was a NEGLIGENT discharge." as we allowed it all to be dragged into politically correct legalish sounding word salad instead of just calling it what it is in plain terminology.
Rather like the recent "lady caught fire on the subway" nonsense.
My favorite thing concerning the passive voice is how Orwell criticizes it in Politics and the English Language, while using it a couple of dozen times in the essay.
Of course, with guns and terrorists, the passive voice is used to obscure the active actors.
Spot the F on, maybe you missed your calling as political writer.
One thing missing in all this Greenland debate is why. Its not about shipping, or following the Chinese ships of Thule Af base.. Its all about some of the, if not the worlds largest rare earths deposits, follow the $.. To your point making sure China gets no leg in there. Quite a change from the Biden snooze fest then.
I recall when Trump proposed this toward the end of his first term to the typical hue and cry and everyone going "WTF!?". About 6 weeks after he was out of office there were some small articles in various papers about Chinese firms negotiating massive deals for access to Greenland's mineral deposits. It's almost like the President of the United States has access to more and higher quality information than almost anyone else... Go figure.
Personally, I love my family and friends from Canada. The entire 51st state thing is silly.
The US does not need a massive welfare state chuck full of new, non-english speakers to add to our current welfare classes. Just slap them up the head, then throw them a bone and beef up the northern border. How about that ironical situation with the World Hockey Juniors tournament. Eh.
Yep, now that I have moved from Michigan to Florida I love the smooth, clean, dry roads and highways. Those massive 200 car pileups on icy highways are just an old nightmare now.
You just have to find a way to enjoy winter. The skiing is great! Yes, it does get very cold, but it's dry, so I find it much more tolerable than the damp cold elsewhere. Also, in Southern Alberta you get chinooks that can warm it up from -15c to 5c for a week.
FedEx is supposed to deliver the remaining two Toyo snow tires today that I bought to replace my worn Blizzaks (to find them this late in the season I had to use two eBay sellers and a tire shop in California). I'm hoping that the 33% savings over getting the Bridgestones won't be a mistake.
yeah trudeau is resigning but the party isnt over yet as an election still needs to be called which will be sometime between march and october if i remember correctly and anything can happen between then
pierre also is soft on immigration as demonstrated with footage of him telling indians that he wants to stop deportations and in his interview with jordan peterson that he wanted to slow down the rate of immigration which is a useless statement when we have more immigrants now that we did during the immigration boom in the early 1920s
sure he wants to cut the red tape to make building houses cheaper but when youve got about a quarter of the whole country a first gen immigrant there are far more important things to solve
Pretty sure someone describes him as Latin in appearance somewhere in the book. I assumed that's why they used the spanish dude with the enormous head in the movie.
Well, it's in the tumble of maybe ten movies that, depending on the context, I call my favorite. There are plenty of technical and aesthetic reasons, or my appreciation of Cormac McCarthy's writing, but that it hews to the ideal to "show not tell" more than anything.
As Steve Sailer wisely reminded us, Trudeau pere was a gifted, impressive and highly energetic man. Yes, his wife was a principled floozy who admired tough-guy commies and travelled to Cuba, so the "Castro's son" speculation isn't entirely implausible; but the elder Trudeau did resemble Castro is his youth, and he at least possessed sufficient vigor to require the woman to convert to Catholicism before marrying him.
In any case, good riddance to Trudeau fils. Total disaster, tyrant, with the added annoyance of bottomless sanctimony. Poilievre recently pointed to an astounding statistic: in Toronto, under current economic conditions, it will take the average young person almost 30 years to accumulate enough capital for even a down payment on a house. Talk about excluding the rising generations from prosperity.
I seem to recall that starting back when the UK agreed to turn Hong Kong back to China. Previously Vancouver was a sleepy city that was nice to visit (and go see a NHL team); after, the high rise condos started shooting up like weeds.
Some folks are now claiming that the CCP has been massively lying about the true size of the Chinese population. That might explain all of the ghost cities in China propped up by credit, but finding now buyers.
"Yi Fuxian, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently claimed that China's population is significantly lower than the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reports. He predicts that China's population, reported to be 1.41 billion, will drop to 330 million by the end of the century."
You think too highly of Trudeau senior. He was the true Marxist who removed Canada from its place as the Switzerland of the Americas, and started it down the path to where we have no ended up. The son just took the policies of his dad and ran with them.
I agree that it's good riddance to bad rubbish, but that mother fucker isn't gone yet. Worse, since he prorogued Parliament until the end of March his power is even more unchecked than before. I'm also fairly certain he'll find some capacity to hang around in so he can keep running his smarmy mouth.
You are correct that the middle class is eroding in Canada. Taxes are out of control, the health car system is broken and immigration to major city centres has to stop. But where isn't it? Oh I know. Japan. New Zealand. Singapore. I wonder why?
As corporations take over everything from where you get groceries, your mode of transportation, cell phone and service to restaurants and hardware stores, the United States looks the same whether you're in Salt Lake City Utah or Syracuse, New York. And if Canada's health care system is broken, there is no country on Earth that spends so much money on it but has the highest rates of cancer, obesity and diabetes than the US.
Then there is Trumps argument that the trade deficit of $41 Billion is subsidizing Canada. How far is his head up his ass or Elon Musks? The US exports $441 Billion worth of goods while importing $482 Billion of goods. How does a country of 40 Million people consume $441 Billion worth of US goods while your massive population of 345 Million people consume only $482 Billion worth of goods? You guys need to pick up the slack.
Do you know why besides the massive population difference why there is a $41 Billion deficit? It is energy, potash and uranium. You want to see food inflation? Put some tariffs on autos and watch potash, oil, gas, and electricity get expensive.
Governments aren't run by politicians anymore. The US isn't a country. It is a business.
Since languages are constantly evolving I'm not sure if you can call any version of a language the "true" version. It's much the same as the difference between British English and Texas English. FWIW, Quebecers speak a dialect that is much closer to the French spoken in France 300 years ago, whereas modern French has evolved in France, but had minimal influence on Quebecois.
I love Quebec. You must learn French if you are an immigrant. If you want to work in the civil service, you have to remove your Burqa or niqab.
You want to teach my kids with that silly headwear on? Nope. You want to pull me over in your police car with a Turbzn on? 'Fraid not. Go back to your homeland. Here we are Catholics and we speak French, not your Asian, African, or South American slang.
Yeah, but are they actually deporting the foreigners or at least cutting the benefits that keep them here or going after the NGOs that brought them here in the first place? The headwear thing is a fig leaf there as in France.
I realize you're pribably joking, but despite the overwhelmingly red electorial map, the US is effectively a one-party leftist nightmare like California if Texas is removed from the equation.
If anything, Texas would be the one flipping the script and buying up Mexico - the Lone Star State's GDP is more than one trillion bones ahead of Mexico's, and about half a trillion ahead of Canada or Russia.
"The American phenomenon of the community-college family that owns a home and a jet-ski on a state job and a Applebee’s general-manager gig just doesn’t seem to exist up there."
I live in the NE corner of Ohio. You can absolutely get a reasonable home here for $199k.
That USED to get you quite a nice place - ie: larger 4 bedroom in a decent neighborhood. It’s slowly getting sillier here with tons of out of state buyers / investors while the average local wages remain somewhat stagnant.
From my limited views this offers you housing and some levels of affordability in life. It doesn’t leave much room for fancy new toys and general inflation. Still, if you can make ‘decent’ money around here you can have a great life and there’s more than plenty that do.
Where do you expect all the people that aren’t prepared to be homeowners, or don’t want to be, to live? Your only choices are to rent an apartment or own a house?
It’s easy to scapegoat landlords, but there will always be people that want to rent a house.
True, but you could argue that the situation we have now is too heavily biased towards institutional owners, who can often make immediate cash offers on homes while "real" owners struggle through the process.
How about tax non-homestead dwellings IF one individual person or entity owns more than 5 of them. I love reading about how terrible landlords are on Threads; I was a landlord back in the mid 2010s because I caught a falling knife in 2008 and was ~$50k underwater. Rented it until I could walk away even. Oh yeah, major tycoon over here.
Very difficult to execute in reality. I could avoid that tax for a one-time $300 expense - file a registration for a new LLC every 5 properties.
Feds have been trying for years to understand true ownership of an LLC. The BOI reporting law keeps getting appealed; latest that I am aware of is reporting is not required until at least March.
I’m also in NE Ohio. My house cost $121k. Still probably worth around $200k. Not fancy but not in a bad area by any means. My wife had a friend visit from the Seattle area. She said it’d be $500k in her town.
She must be way outside Seattle at that price. The 600 sq ft house on a small no view lot I bought in Seattle for $65k in 1986 sold recently for $1.2M.
Whereabouts? Mine was originally $73k. Gutted it, was around $120 renovated @ 12 years ago. Value has since doubled or more. I remember when 200 would’ve been a stretch. I bet I could get closer to 250 -260 for it now.
Sounds good on paper but sucks if you wish to move as you’re now paying more for the next. I want more land, a ranch and a LARGE outbuilding. I can’t do that where I live currently. My immediate solution is to just own less vehicles.
Southwest of Cleveland. Quite near to that indoor bike park Jack has discussed many times.
Yeah, if you’re trading up in house, inflation doesn’t help you much. Sounds like we want all the same things. I have as much garage as I could possibly get on my lot.
Houses in my neighborhood in a near suburb of Detroit range from $250K to about $400 with some exceptions for large footprint homes or small 1950s bungalows. A house that cost $30,000 to build in the mid 1960s is now worth at least 10 times that much, but not really because according to an inflation calculator, 30,000 1965 dollars works out to 300,000 1924 dollars. The houses aren't really worth more, the dollar is worth less.
My house is from 1957. I don’t know what it cost then but houses in my area cost about the same in 1999 as 2015 when I bought. They were a good deal when I was looking. Your area is quite reasonable for a Detroit suburb. Ann Arbor prices are shocking.
Driving on the 405 from LAX to Orange County I saw a billboard advertising a new development "midway between LA and Las Vegas" with prices starting at $60K. A two hour commute just to be able to afford housing sounds crazy but people will do it.
It seems to me a fairly typical example of "spreadsheet thinking", ie over-valuing the measurable (eg ageing population, declining birthrate etc which, in fairness, are going to pose some difficult questions of society) vs the intangible (history, culture, education, ethics etc - which don't count because We Are All The Same) and then extrapolating into the further reaches of fantasy. Methinks it will get a little more complicated than that.
I wonder if ending the abortion industry, ending government funding for misanthropic environmental activities, eliminating regulations meant to contract industries down to four or less major players, ending discrimination against majority populations, and prioritizing growth in sectors that create tangible products would result in a restoration of citizen birthrates?
the notion that population is the be all and end all is part of the problem
decades ago our population was millions fewer but the country overall was a much better place to be and we had no problem competing with the us in a few areas and the populace had a far better standard of living compared to today
adding people (especially those from the third world) was only ever a downside
I think the main driver is the short term political thinking of wanting to make the GDP look good. If you don't import a million new people every year people will more quickly realize just how badly the government screwed up the economy.
self hating whites shouldnt be in positions to influence white countires for obvious reasons but only two are white men with the rest being either brown or a woman
You’ll find the Indian (primarily Punjabi) diaspora is present well outside of major urban centres, they seem to be everywhere in rural BC and Alberta.
In 2003 and 2004 i was working a project in Windsor, Ontario. Once while crossing the border from Detroit, I had an issue with my passport at automobile booth and had to go inside the main building to work it out. I was amazed and bewildered at the mass of "South Asian" humanity jammed into the immigration queue. I could have been in Bangalore had i not known better. I asked the immigration official what they were doing and he simply said "refugees".
I tried to watch 1 video on TFL Truck with that idiot in it. Did not go well. Not a huge fan of Roman's kid either, but he's at least tolerable. That Nathan guy was a hard no go.
Aren’t you banned from Canada?
And yet I might appear there from time to time, it's odd.
the real mystery is how you got a student visa in the first place
Learning to play six string bass?
According to an old acquaintance, it's all fun and games until you make the move to a 12ver. I've spent 45 years as a novice guitar player but the sight of that fretboard strikes fear into my very soul.
Yeah I'll leave that to Tom Petersen.
why? the ladies all say you have the fingers for it...
I had no idea such a thing existed. As the maker of a niche musical instrument myself, I'd guess that there are tens of bass players who would buy such a thing.
Most famously played by Tom Petersen of Cheap Trick (who, if I recall correctly, was the first to play one, having Hamer Guitars build him one) and Jeff Ahment of Pearl Jam (the opening riff of "Jeremy" is a 12-string bass).
beyond that, I can't think of anyone.
kinda surprised Geddy Lee never played one. seems like exactly the thing he'd do... while simultaneously playing Moog Taurus pedals.
speaking of Taurus pedals, when are you getting a set, Jack?
you know what that means
gotta build a double decker harmonicaster now
somehow
Re: Autoblog: The greatest advantage I got from using Grammarly was learning what the passive voice was and how to use the active voice. My emails went from frustrating grey fluff to readable and actionable.
So many auto journalists' work would be improved just by using the free version of grammarly. One journalist I read this week wrote strenuous link instead of tenuous link. How do these people even get a job writing? They should be made to edit copy before they can write themselves.
chat gpt to the rescue
i wish most automotive writers would quit using 'would.' john smith won his race in 1960, please; not john would win his race in 1960. is that the past perfect case? too many decades past school to remember; anyway it's automotive writer jargon, like that imbecilic general sports 'on the day' and on the season.'
A habit I'm noticing is the omission of articles, so far it seems contained to podcasts. Examples: "I just drove Panamera" or "have you reviewed Hummer?"
now thats horrible
I see what you did there
Using a word like “needs” without a gerund afterwards. “Needs updated” makes my skin crawl!
Ah the good old gerund. One of my favorites.
That's fucking correct.
Gerund is a social construct
I'm sorry to report that I have myself witnessed "needs replaced" said out loud as a casual observation.
Were you in Pennsylvania?
Needs must … be followed by a gerund!
The devil needs a ride
Not just articles and prepositions. I think it started with "do you drive stick?".
That depends on your pronouns
some of that is due to out of control auto correction. my iphone does that to me all the time since my thumb typing is worse than my regular typing which is not great.
Yes! The thing that really pisses me off about apple autocorrect is not that it changes the word I just typed, but that it will go back two or three words, and seemingly at random, change the word into something I neither thought nor meant. If I don’t go back and spend the time actually proofreading, half the time I end up looking like I’m either drunk or retarded. As I know I’m not supposed to use the word retarded anymore, could someone recommend a more acceptable word that gets the same point across?
smoothbrained
Mentally deprived.
It drives me up a WALL here as it’s such a PITA to edit something after the fact. I’ll just deal with looking restarted.
Nice.
I proudly own up to the title of "Retard of the Week" after taking full advantage of the two hour snow window here in southern England...to break my leg. 6 to 8 weeks of Not Driving!
You're kidding! Take care of yourself! Sheesh!
Thanks. Keep those posts coming - I am doing a lot of sitting around with my leg up...
The great Farago would harp on the passive voice during his venture in gun blogging. Some dumbass cop or gunowner would shoot himself or a bystander and the papers would write "the gun went off" no it most certainly did not. The operator was pointing the muzzle in an unsafe direction, pulled the trigger, and shot someone.
Nowadays we only have two kinds of reporting on public attacks:
0. WHITE SUPREMACIST WHO LOVED HITLER AND TRUMP MURDERS 4 IN COLD BLOOD AFTER BEING EXPOSED TO JOE ROGAN AND JORDAN PETERSON, HERE'S EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT HIM FROM BIRTH FORWARD
1. "a little truckie-wuckie happened to drive through a group of people celebrating xmas, nothing to see here uwu"
Another sleight of hand they like to pull is calling him and people like him and Tsarneav "domestic terrorists" so it sounds like they are referring to Nazis when they are actually a local chapter of global Islamic terrorism. They might as well call 9/11 domestic terrorism because most of those guys entered the country legally.
And the ensuing "no, you ignorant slut, that was a NEGLIGENT discharge." as we allowed it all to be dragged into politically correct legalish sounding word salad instead of just calling it what it is in plain terminology.
Rather like the recent "lady caught fire on the subway" nonsense.
My favorite thing concerning the passive voice is how Orwell criticizes it in Politics and the English Language, while using it a couple of dozen times in the essay.
Of course, with guns and terrorists, the passive voice is used to obscure the active actors.
What is this grammarly thing? I must look into it!
https://www.grammarly.com/
There's offensive blurb about ai on the homepage, but it's best used as a very advanced spell checker.
Greenland and other Drama
Spot the F on, maybe you missed your calling as political writer.
One thing missing in all this Greenland debate is why. Its not about shipping, or following the Chinese ships of Thule Af base.. Its all about some of the, if not the worlds largest rare earths deposits, follow the $.. To your point making sure China gets no leg in there. Quite a change from the Biden snooze fest then.
That and this: https://spacenews.com/why-the-space-community-should-care-about-arctic-geopolitics/
I think Greenand would make a perfect Penal colony. For all the warm weather uninvited guests the US is currently burdened with. Go home or Greenland.
I’m hoping we move on Iceland next. Women with high cheekbones and all that……
I recall when Trump proposed this toward the end of his first term to the typical hue and cry and everyone going "WTF!?". About 6 weeks after he was out of office there were some small articles in various papers about Chinese firms negotiating massive deals for access to Greenland's mineral deposits. It's almost like the President of the United States has access to more and higher quality information than almost anyone else... Go figure.
Personally, I love my family and friends from Canada. The entire 51st state thing is silly.
The US does not need a massive welfare state chuck full of new, non-english speakers to add to our current welfare classes. Just slap them up the head, then throw them a bone and beef up the northern border. How about that ironical situation with the World Hockey Juniors tournament. Eh.
we love you guys too but our independence is nice
by the way about 75% of the whole canadian population lives within 200km of the american border so if that wall comes down we are moving south too
Please send your masses down. Then I can get a remote job and move to Alberta.
wait why do you want to live in alberta
its cold there
It’s like Texas but with snow machines.
I’ll probably end up hating winter in another 3-4 weeks, but right now I have snow fever.
i think living in canada cured any desire i might have had for cold places
being around snow and poor driving in the snow sucks
Yep, now that I have moved from Michigan to Florida I love the smooth, clean, dry roads and highways. Those massive 200 car pileups on icy highways are just an old nightmare now.
Kelowna is the place to be tbh.
More like 3-4 hours. The novelty runs out very quickly.
You just have to find a way to enjoy winter. The skiing is great! Yes, it does get very cold, but it's dry, so I find it much more tolerable than the damp cold elsewhere. Also, in Southern Alberta you get chinooks that can warm it up from -15c to 5c for a week.
FedEx is supposed to deliver the remaining two Toyo snow tires today that I bought to replace my worn Blizzaks (to find them this late in the season I had to use two eBay sellers and a tire shop in California). I'm hoping that the 33% savings over getting the Bridgestones won't be a mistake.
Well I hope they came, you probably needed them tonight. It took me forever to come home from Somerset. 75 was a mess so we paddled down Telegraph.
Because Alberta's the best.
it probably is
Within Canada, it certainly is.
yeah trudeau is resigning but the party isnt over yet as an election still needs to be called which will be sometime between march and october if i remember correctly and anything can happen between then
pierre also is soft on immigration as demonstrated with footage of him telling indians that he wants to stop deportations and in his interview with jordan peterson that he wanted to slow down the rate of immigration which is a useless statement when we have more immigrants now that we did during the immigration boom in the early 1920s
sure he wants to cut the red tape to make building houses cheaper but when youve got about a quarter of the whole country a first gen immigrant there are far more important things to solve
Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, and so on. It’s like half of the Western world is due for an election in 2025.
UK? Sadly with stuck with Two Tier for a lot longer than that.
Something something 'Louisiana Purchase'.
'Let’s hope Autoblog doesn’t make a habit of this.' HAHAHAHA
Was Anton Russian? I don't remember the book that well, Chigurh is a pretty ambiguous surname...
I'd always assumed he was, but a quick search just set me straight: McCarthy chose the name to be ambiguous.
That's cool, I wasn't trying to correct you, but thought I'd missed something since I favor the film over the book!
Pretty sure someone describes him as Latin in appearance somewhere in the book. I assumed that's why they used the spanish dude with the enormous head in the movie.
A while back I bought a disc of the movie, but after seeing clips it seems like nightmare fuel so I've never even broken the seal.
Well, it's in the tumble of maybe ten movies that, depending on the context, I call my favorite. There are plenty of technical and aesthetic reasons, or my appreciation of Cormac McCarthy's writing, but that it hews to the ideal to "show not tell" more than anything.
Excellent book, excellent movie. IMO, the movie is very true to the book. Love ‘em both!
I figured he was from somewhere in the Baltics.
My guess was the Balkans.
As Steve Sailer wisely reminded us, Trudeau pere was a gifted, impressive and highly energetic man. Yes, his wife was a principled floozy who admired tough-guy commies and travelled to Cuba, so the "Castro's son" speculation isn't entirely implausible; but the elder Trudeau did resemble Castro is his youth, and he at least possessed sufficient vigor to require the woman to convert to Catholicism before marrying him.
In any case, good riddance to Trudeau fils. Total disaster, tyrant, with the added annoyance of bottomless sanctimony. Poilievre recently pointed to an astounding statistic: in Toronto, under current economic conditions, it will take the average young person almost 30 years to accumulate enough capital for even a down payment on a house. Talk about excluding the rising generations from prosperity.
foreign investment in housing is killing us
bc is hit extremely hard by this too
the chinese will pay way more for property and then never live in it
I seem to recall that starting back when the UK agreed to turn Hong Kong back to China. Previously Vancouver was a sleepy city that was nice to visit (and go see a NHL team); after, the high rise condos started shooting up like weeds.
its chinas fault
again
nothing will be resolved
It actually picked up serious momentum with Expo ‘86
Some folks are now claiming that the CCP has been massively lying about the true size of the Chinese population. That might explain all of the ghost cities in China propped up by credit, but finding now buyers.
"Yi Fuxian, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently claimed that China's population is significantly lower than the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reports. He predicts that China's population, reported to be 1.41 billion, will drop to 330 million by the end of the century."
believable seeing as the chinese lie about everything all the time
Can't trust anything out of Madison either
You think too highly of Trudeau senior. He was the true Marxist who removed Canada from its place as the Switzerland of the Americas, and started it down the path to where we have no ended up. The son just took the policies of his dad and ran with them.
Yes, but he was intelligent. His son is an absolute idiot. The Peter Principle made flesh.
I agree that it's good riddance to bad rubbish, but that mother fucker isn't gone yet. Worse, since he prorogued Parliament until the end of March his power is even more unchecked than before. I'm also fairly certain he'll find some capacity to hang around in so he can keep running his smarmy mouth.
You are correct that the middle class is eroding in Canada. Taxes are out of control, the health car system is broken and immigration to major city centres has to stop. But where isn't it? Oh I know. Japan. New Zealand. Singapore. I wonder why?
As corporations take over everything from where you get groceries, your mode of transportation, cell phone and service to restaurants and hardware stores, the United States looks the same whether you're in Salt Lake City Utah or Syracuse, New York. And if Canada's health care system is broken, there is no country on Earth that spends so much money on it but has the highest rates of cancer, obesity and diabetes than the US.
Then there is Trumps argument that the trade deficit of $41 Billion is subsidizing Canada. How far is his head up his ass or Elon Musks? The US exports $441 Billion worth of goods while importing $482 Billion of goods. How does a country of 40 Million people consume $441 Billion worth of US goods while your massive population of 345 Million people consume only $482 Billion worth of goods? You guys need to pick up the slack.
Do you know why besides the massive population difference why there is a $41 Billion deficit? It is energy, potash and uranium. You want to see food inflation? Put some tariffs on autos and watch potash, oil, gas, and electricity get expensive.
Governments aren't run by politicians anymore. The US isn't a country. It is a business.
"The business of America is business.” - Calvin Coolidge, one of the very best presidents, a century ago next week.
We don't need all of Canada, just Alberta.
I'd be satisfied with Whistler Bike Park.
Alberta, BC, Saskatchewan are the only provinces we need.
Most of it is ok. Can we somehow give Quebec back to France?
they dont speak the same language but maybe
But the entertainment value of watching them argue about who’s version of “French” is correct would be worth a lot.
and neither side can understand the other which would add to the amusement
so it's like Britain and the US then?
its worse
which makes it better
More like upper class London vs the Deep South.
Two countries divided by a common language.
I’ve heard that the actual French and the Quebecois generally despise each other.
i think its mostly the french that hate quebecers becuase theyve so thoroughly butchered the language
Since languages are constantly evolving I'm not sure if you can call any version of a language the "true" version. It's much the same as the difference between British English and Texas English. FWIW, Quebecers speak a dialect that is much closer to the French spoken in France 300 years ago, whereas modern French has evolved in France, but had minimal influence on Quebecois.
It seems to me that it's the Quebecois who don't like anyone.
When I was in France the French were laughing because the Qubecois had ARRÈ on their stop signs while in France they say STOP
Madame Arsenault, my high school French teacher who was a Parisienne, insisted that le Quebecois ne parlais pas Français.
I got scolded in my French class once for accidentally using a Quebec accent (saying more like size vs saze for seize (16)).
I never wanted to punch so many people as when I visited Montreal last year and got to witness the Quebecois in person 😅
zut alors!
I love Quebec. You must learn French if you are an immigrant. If you want to work in the civil service, you have to remove your Burqa or niqab.
You want to teach my kids with that silly headwear on? Nope. You want to pull me over in your police car with a Turbzn on? 'Fraid not. Go back to your homeland. Here we are Catholics and we speak French, not your Asian, African, or South American slang.
Yeah, but are they actually deporting the foreigners or at least cutting the benefits that keep them here or going after the NGOs that brought them here in the first place? The headwear thing is a fig leaf there as in France.
Quebec City is the better city to visit within Quebec, there’s nothing like it anywhere else in North America.
I did that, too. We stayed in the Hôtel de Glace (ice hotel) and everything. That part was cool, as was Quebec City. But not Montreal.
Northern Ontario is very pretty, and Windsor is a pleasant place.
Maybe we should sell Texas back to Mexico and annex Canada and Greenland.
I realize you're pribably joking, but despite the overwhelmingly red electorial map, the US is effectively a one-party leftist nightmare like California if Texas is removed from the equation.
If anything, Texas would be the one flipping the script and buying up Mexico - the Lone Star State's GDP is more than one trillion bones ahead of Mexico's, and about half a trillion ahead of Canada or Russia.
Mostly joking yes. But every time I hear a Texan say they should have stayed independent from the US I’m like “fine, we can give you back to Mexico”.
Texas was an independent country between being part of MX and joining the US
yes, I know the full history.
Has there ever been a more lopsided military victory than the Battle of San Jacinto?
Desert Storm?
And Canada is full of 30 million Kamala voters.
man i hope not
our conservatives arent very conservative but still
I don’t think SCCA does anything at UMC other than autocross which will never be my thing.
"The American phenomenon of the community-college family that owns a home and a jet-ski on a state job and a Applebee’s general-manager gig just doesn’t seem to exist up there."
Captain America, this is 2024.
I still see this in Ohio, believe it or not. Having homes available for $199k goes a long way on this
a building you can live in for 199 is a pipe dream here and im in the cheapest part of the country i think
I thought you lived on Vancouver island?
nah
im in onterrible
Ahh…
I thought you lived in Victoria for some reason, a very pretty but not very cheap place.
Is this preponderantly the case? I'm not saying it doesn't happen. Have you crunched the numbers?
Dwelling costs aside, you can't really afford anything else with the start you're referring to in life.
I live in the NE corner of Ohio. You can absolutely get a reasonable home here for $199k.
That USED to get you quite a nice place - ie: larger 4 bedroom in a decent neighborhood. It’s slowly getting sillier here with tons of out of state buyers / investors while the average local wages remain somewhat stagnant.
From my limited views this offers you housing and some levels of affordability in life. It doesn’t leave much room for fancy new toys and general inflation. Still, if you can make ‘decent’ money around here you can have a great life and there’s more than plenty that do.
This is fixable. Ban any and all investor and foreign land and residential home ownership and tax non-homestead owners at 100%.
Vote Henry C, 2028.
Done! My property taxes already doubled last year from all the fun.
Where do you expect all the people that aren’t prepared to be homeowners, or don’t want to be, to live? Your only choices are to rent an apartment or own a house?
It’s easy to scapegoat landlords, but there will always be people that want to rent a house.
True, but you could argue that the situation we have now is too heavily biased towards institutional owners, who can often make immediate cash offers on homes while "real" owners struggle through the process.
How about tax non-homestead dwellings IF one individual person or entity owns more than 5 of them. I love reading about how terrible landlords are on Threads; I was a landlord back in the mid 2010s because I caught a falling knife in 2008 and was ~$50k underwater. Rented it until I could walk away even. Oh yeah, major tycoon over here.
Very difficult to execute in reality. I could avoid that tax for a one-time $300 expense - file a registration for a new LLC every 5 properties.
Feds have been trying for years to understand true ownership of an LLC. The BOI reporting law keeps getting appealed; latest that I am aware of is reporting is not required until at least March.
From your lips to gods ears.
The first state that attempts it might survive to 2050
I’m also in NE Ohio. My house cost $121k. Still probably worth around $200k. Not fancy but not in a bad area by any means. My wife had a friend visit from the Seattle area. She said it’d be $500k in her town.
She must be way outside Seattle at that price. The 600 sq ft house on a small no view lot I bought in Seattle for $65k in 1986 sold recently for $1.2M.
Yeah, it’s more like outside Tacoma. Don’t think that changes the point.
Whereabouts? Mine was originally $73k. Gutted it, was around $120 renovated @ 12 years ago. Value has since doubled or more. I remember when 200 would’ve been a stretch. I bet I could get closer to 250 -260 for it now.
Sounds good on paper but sucks if you wish to move as you’re now paying more for the next. I want more land, a ranch and a LARGE outbuilding. I can’t do that where I live currently. My immediate solution is to just own less vehicles.
Southwest of Cleveland. Quite near to that indoor bike park Jack has discussed many times.
Yeah, if you’re trading up in house, inflation doesn’t help you much. Sounds like we want all the same things. I have as much garage as I could possibly get on my lot.
Houses in my neighborhood in a near suburb of Detroit range from $250K to about $400 with some exceptions for large footprint homes or small 1950s bungalows. A house that cost $30,000 to build in the mid 1960s is now worth at least 10 times that much, but not really because according to an inflation calculator, 30,000 1965 dollars works out to 300,000 1924 dollars. The houses aren't really worth more, the dollar is worth less.
My house is from 1957. I don’t know what it cost then but houses in my area cost about the same in 1999 as 2015 when I bought. They were a good deal when I was looking. Your area is quite reasonable for a Detroit suburb. Ann Arbor prices are shocking.
Driving on the 405 from LAX to Orange County I saw a billboard advertising a new development "midway between LA and Las Vegas" with prices starting at $60K. A two hour commute just to be able to afford housing sounds crazy but people will do it.
Thats 60k down. Those places will be 600k.
"midway between LA and Las Vegas" is NOT a two hour commute from ANYwhere in Kalifornia.
Pack your toothbrush.
Probably $60k for the lot. With no utilities.
And nope, no way you get to downtown LA in two hours from there during the week. Maybe at 4am Sunday morning, IF you drive really fast.
I haven't paid attention and/or have forgotten: what was the original political "justification" for propping the Canadian immigration door wide open?
https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/
reading that tripe infuriated me
all of it is wrong and is only ever going to result in canada being a broke cesspool of third worlders
>senior director formerly a blackrock ceo
haha thats crazy
hang him from his entrails
It seems to me a fairly typical example of "spreadsheet thinking", ie over-valuing the measurable (eg ageing population, declining birthrate etc which, in fairness, are going to pose some difficult questions of society) vs the intangible (history, culture, education, ethics etc - which don't count because We Are All The Same) and then extrapolating into the further reaches of fantasy. Methinks it will get a little more complicated than that.
I wonder if ending the abortion industry, ending government funding for misanthropic environmental activities, eliminating regulations meant to contract industries down to four or less major players, ending discrimination against majority populations, and prioritizing growth in sectors that create tangible products would result in a restoration of citizen birthrates?
it would help quite a lot
would also help to get it out of the heads of young adults that the career is the most important thing becuase it isnt
family and starting a family is
Racecars are actually the most important thing though
Not if you can’t afford to feed/dress/house said offspring.
the notion that population is the be all and end all is part of the problem
decades ago our population was millions fewer but the country overall was a much better place to be and we had no problem competing with the us in a few areas and the populace had a far better standard of living compared to today
adding people (especially those from the third world) was only ever a downside
The reality is that our infrastructure hasn’t been upgraded and built up to support the invasion.
very true
that and there arent nearly enough doctors or nurses or really just people in general
were getting swamped at all angles and the only real solution is to deport so we have time to regroup and breathe
Diminishing returns indeed…
I think the main driver is the short term political thinking of wanting to make the GDP look good. If you don't import a million new people every year people will more quickly realize just how badly the government screwed up the economy.
GDP up, GDP per head down. Not sure how many folk are fooled by that one now.
And just why would they want to increase the population to 100m?? And where?? I can’t see 10m people wanting to move to the NW Territory.
breed out the white canadians that would remember out history and wont accept a lower standard of living and wages
its entirely possible that these people literally just do this because they hate whites
Which is weird because most of the directors of that “charity” are white.
self hating whites shouldnt be in positions to influence white countires for obvious reasons but only two are white men with the rest being either brown or a woman
Are they Christians? Because that is who the authoritarians' real war is with.
wouldnt really matter
as far as i can tell even if youre an atheist they want you dead
That is part of the problem. If you speak Urdu or Bengal and you come to Canada are you going to re-locate to St. John's Newfoundland?
Nah, head to Bramladesh (Brampton) or Mississauga or Surrey, BC.
You’ll find the Indian (primarily Punjabi) diaspora is present well outside of major urban centres, they seem to be everywhere in rural BC and Alberta.
Geez, that’s a depressing read.
Yep. If you are a modern commie you know you can’t grow GDP so you have to depress wages through importing the third world to keep the spice flowing.
cheap labour at any cost via the abuse of student visas and lima and tfw permits
In 2003 and 2004 i was working a project in Windsor, Ontario. Once while crossing the border from Detroit, I had an issue with my passport at automobile booth and had to go inside the main building to work it out. I was amazed and bewildered at the mass of "South Asian" humanity jammed into the immigration queue. I could have been in Bangalore had i not known better. I asked the immigration official what they were doing and he simply said "refugees".
insane that its only gotten far worse in the past 20 years
With six you get eggroll.
maybe the sporty one is the general tao edition or something
Mo Shu Sport. Broken glove box door standard!
I tried to watch 1 video on TFL Truck with that idiot in it. Did not go well. Not a huge fan of Roman's kid either, but he's at least tolerable. That Nathan guy was a hard no go.