Pot-addled hillbilly big in Singapore

In the early days of this blog I often had monthly views getting close to the 10k mark. Then algorithms came along, and it's been a never-ending downward spiral ever since. Apparently I spout a lot of unacceptable opinions that run afoul of the algos. So what the fuck goes on in Singapore? I've been upwards of a thousand looks per day for almost a week now, and a few days over 2k. I'm over 15k on the month and it's only half over! That's by a wide margin the best numbers this blog has seen. What gives? I don't want to annoy ya with my paranoia, but I figure it's probably the RCMP using a Singapore-based server to go through the blog with a fine-tooth comb and build a case to deport me back to Germany. But that's just a theory. Just in case it turns out to be true, I should go over to the Deutsche Welle site and tuck into some German language lessons, since I've been an English speaker for well over fifty years.

Doing the Woke Watusi right

On page B7 of today's Globe and Mail there is a full page advert placed by one of Canada's lesser known business schools, Goodman at Brock University. "Congratulations to the Goodman School of Business Class of 2023." And congrats to Brock's ad agency for doing the Woke Watusi right! The ad provides no names with pictures of any grads, but instead has a generic photo of a highly diverse (3 women 1 guy, at least 3 of the four "grads" are non-white) group of supposed graduates. That's a damned fine look in the Age of Woke; here at the Goodman School of Business we're 75% female and 75% BIPOC! Meanwhile, on B5 we find a full page ad from Ivey Business School at Western, rated by Bloomberg as the top business school in all of Canada. The folks at Ivey want to brag up Canada's top entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, they chose to provide names and photos of their Class of 2023 top entrepreneurs, and talk about an epic diversity fail! 41 photos. 10 women and 31 dudes, one of whom is non-white. Over 75% male and 97.5% white isn't a good look at all! Western obviously remains mired in institutionalized systemic racism!

Urban planning destroys cities

I know I'm going contra the prevailing wisdom here, but it seems to me that city planners and the entire urban planning cult have succeeded in totally fucking up what might have been a lot of fine cities, had they been allowed to grow organically. Instead, we turned things over to a new crew of university-educated experts. That was the fatal mistake. The highwater mark in the Canadian context was when U of T brought in planning guru Richard Florida. Here was a world class urban planning theorist deigning to bless us with his insights! Oh, he's had some great theories about how the new creative classes will blah blah blah, but the fact is Toronto's livability quotient has done nothing but go downhill since he arrived. I think what cities need to flourish is a little less planning. There are signs we may be shifting in that direction. Many jurisdictions are loosening zoning bylaws. You'll soon be able to put up a sixplex on a lot previously zoned as single family. Everybody except the immediate neighbours agrees that's a good thing. Here's another policy I'd like to see implemented. In the post-war period when suburbs took off, you had 900 sq ft homes built on 50' lots. Over the years, lots got smaller and houses got bigger. Now we're building 3000 sq ft Mcmansions on 30 foot lots. In between we built a lot of houses that are simply too large for young families and too expensive to buy. A four-bed four-bath Mcmansion from 1990 could relatively easily become four housing units. As an added bonus, because such a policy change would greatly reduce the capital required to become a landlord, entrepreneurs from marginalized communities would soon be joining the ranks of real estate millionaires! That fact should get the diveristy-equity-inclusion crowd behind this idea. After all, we're just recycling history. Once upon a time, prosperous merchants built large brick homes close to the commercial core of their towns. When the town grew too hectic the prosperous merchants moved to the countyside, and their city homes were subdivided into apartments. Look at the Kensington Market neighbourhood for example. That's repeated in cities all over the land. We've adapted to housing crises before, we'll handle them again. Just leave the urban planners out of the equation.

Trudeau flees to Ukraine in desperate bid to escape stench of "Chinese interference" fiasco

While Trudeau pal David Johnston was busy falling on his sword and walking away from his "special rapporteur" role, Justin was nowhere to be seen... Oh look! There he is... in Ukraine! Alas, Churchill-Mandela Zelensky seems to have bigger fish to fry, as he apparently didn't have time for a photo-op with Fluffy. We know this because otherwise CBC would have prominently featured such evidence of the close brotherly bond between the two dynamic leaders. Zelly is no doubt deep in a bunker, surrounded by battlefield maps, plotting every move in the most-anticipated counter-offensive in the history of warfare. Judging by the many images of destroyed Leopard tanks floating around the internet, the counter-offensive seems to be off to a slow start. This is bad news not just for Ukraine, but for the entire democratic world. It was just a few days ago that the main editorial in The Globe and Mail reminded us that we in the freedom-loving Nations of Virtue, owe an immense debt of gratitude to the selfless Ukrainian troops giving their lives so that we may continue to live free. Unfortunately, Zelensky can't run this war on gratitude alone; he needs weapons, weapons, weapons, and preferably also some ammo to go with them. Under the circumstances, you can see why he might be too busy for a guy who brings nothing but best wishes and a pat on the back, and is clearly using this Kiyv jaunt to burnish his cred back home.

Economists reveal politicians are morons

Ian McGugan has a long-overdue piece in the Globe today about Canada's disasterous immigration policy. Apparently some professors sporting Doctor Phils from prestigeous schools now say what I've been saying for over a decade; that continuously ramping up immigration without investing in the health care and educational infrastructure, let alone the housing to accomodate them, will not end well. Our housing crisis keeps getting worse. The health care system is on the verge of collapse. Too many high school graduates have grade school math skills but outrageously optomistic expectations about what society owes them. Canada's "strategy" going forward is to double down on failed policies. Keep bringing in unskilled labour to do the "dirty jobs" Canadians refuse to do. According to the article 60% of immigrants fall into that category. There's a reason Canadians don't want to do certain jobs. If you're going to live in abject poverty anyway, why bother? You can live in poverty without working! At the same time, those jobs look different if you're a Somali who's spent the last five years living ten to a 10x12 tent in a refugee camp in Kenya. Alas, looking to illiterate fruit pickers and chicken catchers to boost our economy seems a frightfully moronic policy. So, are our politicians morons? Or are they deliberately destroying our country?

Canada sees the rise of mall cities

That's the headline for a story in the real estate section of today's Globe & Mail. Apparently mall owners are developing the space over their malls for condos. What a concept! In the mid-80's I used to have occassional meetings with Joey Wolfond at his office in the basement of the Willow West Mall. That was Guelph's first enclosed shopping mall, and it had been developed by Joey's grampa, Joe Wolfond. Joey and I were close to the same age, and he was an amicable converstionalist. We ostensibly met to discuss the sale of a nearby strip mall his family owned, but our conversations veered all over the map, from caribbean cruises to fast cars to his grampa, who I had the pleasure of knowing ever since my gas jockey days at John's Supertest in my teens. Occasionally the discussion turned to real estate, and I remember debating the pros and cons of adding apartments in the space above the mall. The Willow West Mall had a huge parking lot, that never came near full capacity except for the week before Christmas. Why couldn't you put twelve stories of rentals overtop the mall? You already own the mall, so it's basically a free building site. Joey told me why they couldn't. Zoning. Bylaws. Rules. Regulations. That was forty years ago. Today it's newsworthy that mall owners are building out residential over their properties.

When the world is going down the shitter, it's more important than ever to count your blessings

Gotta say things are looking bleak. The Ukraine shit-show has a good chance of turning us all into radioactive dust. The AI wave that is all the rage has it's creators warning their Frankenstein could make humans extinct. Focus your lens on the local picture and there's more folks than ever living their lives and voiding their bowels on the street. Literally. It's ugly times we live in. My personal secret to maintaining sanity is to appreciate the small stuff. Time with friends. Meals with family. Paying it forward at Timmies... and being mindfull of what good fortune permits you all of the above. I was blessed with a grandchild recently, and must raise a toast to the youngsters who are brave enough to take a chance on reproduction in these perilous times. But day in and day out, the blessing I used to take for granted is hanging out with my dog, and I've learned to pay attention to how much he adds to the quality of my life. He has no concerns re Ukraine, artificial intelligence, American exceptionalism, the climate crisis, the housing crisis, racism, fascism, sexism, feminism, capitalism, communism... a simple companion for complicated times. All I have to do is feed him and he rewards me with unconditional love. That's a blessing.