Friends, we can all agree that the municipal budget is the most exciting part of the year. But don’t get distracted—there’s a regular City Council meeting this month, too. On the agenda: Uber, fireworks, Toronto Hydro, subways, animal control, and even some good old-fashioned Rob Ford drama.
Let’s check it out, and understand the agenda better than those 15 councillors who never raise their hand in class.
You’ve probably heard it’s over 95,000 households long—and growing. But there’s a lot more to know about the social housing waitlist, and we’ll explain.
Prepare to be depressed.
A few months ago I got a new computer that has hardware with little Linux support, and so while waiting for someone to make a sound driver, I’ve been using Windows 10. I tried a lot of text editors, even building Gedit from source, before settling on Notepad++.
Notepad++ has built-in syntax highlighting for a lot of languages, but not Markdown. You can make your own “user-defined language”, and several people have created ones for Markdown, but I wasn’t really satisfied with any of them. So I made my own, which you can check out on Github. Due to the limitations of user-defined languages, some Markdown features can’t be implemented (e. g., asterisks as bullets, three spaces to create code blocks, etc.), but it should be good enough for everyday use. Please try it out, and adapt it for your own use!
This userscript is a replacement for my Firefox port of Zoe Quinn’s Ferengizer extension; too lazy to redo the extension so here you go.
Hello again, everyone! It’s the most wonderful time of the year—that’s right, municipal budget time. But amid our festivities, the everyday business of City Council must go on. Here’s a peek at what’s on this month’s City Council agenda.
Tuning in to City Council for the first time—or even watching in person? You may feel lost and confused. Once you understand how council procedure works, you may still feel lost and confused, but at least you’ll know what’s going on.
Hello again, everyone! It’s so nice to be back. On this month’s agenda: the poverty reduction strategy, hookah lounges, Old City Hall, and probably the first use of “selfie” in council history.
First things first: I hate elections. Suddenly people you could have a normal, genuine conversation with start saying nothing but party talking points. You have to pretend to take debates and campaign promises and interviews seriously, as if they could tell you anything about how the candidate will actually govern in real life. And you can just speculate about any old bullshit that comes into your head and pass it off as serious political analysis. It’s insultingly easy to be an expert on things that haven’t happened yet.
So this is my caveat: 100% of this post is my completely unfounded opinion and by spending energy writing it all I have done is bring the universe infinitesimally closer to heat death. Continue reading On the Campaign Trail in Lake Wobegon
City Council returns after its summer break, and there’s a lot to cover on the agenda. Read about Toronto’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis; taxi clusterfuck; Gardiner clusterfuck; new shelter standards; and more. Did I miss something? Let me know. Continue reading The Cheat Sheet: September 30 City Council
