Rejoice, Winamp users, the CBC MP3 streams are back! Many thanks to commenter AJNorth for finding a list of still-working MP3 URLs, and GitHub user canuckken for providing the Wikipedia page with radio station call letters.
Once more, here’s the playlists with all the stream URLs on Codeberg, and see the original blog post for more details.
Another update on the CBC radio stream URLs: as various people have kindly let me know, the MP3 links are down, probably for good. The M3U8 links still work, and most modern apps and devices should be able to handle them. However, I’m afraid legacy users are out of luck. Update, July 30: the MP3 links are back!
I’ve also moved the repo to Codeberg; however, the changes should be automatically mirrored on Github.
For more details, see the main blog post.
It’s that time of year again: the CBC has changed the streaming URLs for Radio 1 and CBC Music, so I’ve updated the gist. Ici Première, Ici Musique, and the MP3 version are unaffected. For more information about why and how to use these, see the original post.
I’ve updated my post on CBC Radio stream URLs after someone found links to MP3 versions of the streams. I’ve put together a second playlist which will work for older applications like Winamp that don’t support HLS. Yes, there are multiple people out there still using Winamp. I guess it really does whip the llama’s ass.
Summer spidering season is well underway, and I’m no longer turning over pinecones in search of spiders. But I just stumbled across this 2016 blog post by Rod Crawford (of Seattle, WA’s Burke Museum) about Laurel Ramseyer’s research! Since 2008 she’s been sampling fallen pinecones for spiders—apparently a niche unexplored till now. This turned up the first record of the jumping spider Pseudoeuophrys lanigera in North America and has also proved useful for tracking the range of the crab spider Ozyptila praticola.
In 2015, Ramseyer and Crawford wrote a paper summarizing their findings about the pinecone-dwelling spiders of Washington State. A lot of mesh-web weavers (family Dictynidae), ground spiders (Gnaphosidae), sheet-web weavers and dwarf spiders (Linyphiidae), and cobweb spiders (Theridiidae). A lot different from all the running crab spiders (Philodromus) in my lakeside pinecones. They also mention finding a lot of Euryopis, a spider I’ve failed to find at all in my area despite seeing their distinctive tufty egg sacs all the time. Maybe that’s where I should be looking.
Time to do some reading and up my pinecone game…
Okay, so. Top bureaucrats who have stepped down this term:
A number of city councillors have also announced they’re not running for re-election:
I mean, like…does anyone get the sense they’re not running to something so much as running from something? 🤔🤔🤔
One possibility is that, after years of budget cuts and “kicking the can down the road”, the City has run out of road. And if MLTT revenue flattens or falls, which it’s bound to do eventually, we’d be well and truly fucked. As successive City Managers have said, there is no “gravy” left at City Hall. Serious cuts would have to involve mass layoffs, and the unions representing City staff would fight back. It could get unpleasant.
Or they’ve all realized that, deep down, Toronto is a potential NYC with ambitions of becoming, like…Akron, Ohio, and any forward-thinking bureaucrat or politician can make a bigger impact elsewhere.
Or some oracle has revealed to the elect that a massive sinkhole is going to swallow up Hellmouth is going to open up under City Hall some time in the next four years, but she’s not quite sure when, and everyone’s just decided to play it safe.
Or it could just be coincidence. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m just being a bit paranoid, right?
So, some of the people who give me money are running for City Council in the upcoming election. Someone asked me about this yesterday and I’ve thought about it a bit, and I think it would be inappropriate for candidates to keep donating to me during the election period. (And obviously afterwards as well, if they win.)
I’ll be going through Patreon and Paypal to check who is running and message them individually, but this is just a heads up.
I’m grateful for everyone’s support, and wish candidates luck in the campaign ahead!
You often hear very tiresome people saying “I’m a social liberal and a fiscal conservative” as if it meant anything. In reality neither “social” nor “fiscal” issues are useful in telling left from right—especially not at City Hall, where “fiscal conservatives” have consistently championed pouring billions of dollars into an ever-shrinking subway plan. And saying that a “real progressive” wouldn’t be racist or sexist is as laughable as saying that “real Christians” aren’t homophobic, “real feminists” aren’t transphobic, etc., as well-intended as it is.
Nevertheless, I do think there is a way to meaningfully distinguish right- and left-wing politics. This is the framework I use when I talk about the political spectrum at City Hall. (That is, when I’m not talking in D&D terms.) Continue reading Sidebar: Right Vs. Left
Feeling rather hopeless lately and I’m not really sure why I’m writing this, except to bear witness, and because I don’t think it’s helpful to only report far-right rallies, you know?
As a council-watcher, I live by the City Council & committee meeting schedule. You can download the schedule, but it’s not live—you need to check the web version or follow the City Clerk on Twitter to make sure a meeting hasn’t been cancelled or rescheduled.
To make things easier for myself (and hopefully others), I’ve imported the schedule into Google Calendar and am updating it manually as necessary. You can add it to your own calendar for timely notifications!
