You mean mixing businesses and residential units in the same walkable neighborhood like we’ve done for thousands of years? That would never work! We must maximize commuting distances in order to reduce traffic and commuting times.

Some people can’t afford to leave their jobs for extended amounts of time. The sort of people who can’t afford formula, for example.

I rode in all weather for years

Same. And that includes snow and ice, for those at the back that think that riding a bike in winter is only possible in LA. If people can walk in that weather, people can ride a bike even more easily as the exercise keeps you warmer.

Violence against elected officials is not compatible with democracy. To those cheering at this act of violence: you are as violent and authoritarian as the people you loathe. Shame on you.

I saw the effects of a real estate bubble in Spain 25 years ago, whose effects still ripple today. It started with young people feeling squeezed out of the housing market, staying with their parents for longer and either having child’s late or not at all. Then came the lines at the food banks.

This appears to be where we are today in Canada.

Next, foreclosures and a major recession. It is hard to overstate how painful this was to watch even as a bystander, you will see why in a moment. In most cases it goes smoothly and simply contributes to raising rent prices. In other cases, the police would get involved to evacuate people from their (former) homes. Tightly-knit communities would rally around the home that was being foreclosed to stop the police and delay the inevitable.

Sometimes the people whose home was being foreclosed, especially older people, would jump out of their windows to their death as the police were entering. This happened dozens of times, to the point where you become numb to the horror.

Sooner or later extremist political parties emerge and gain popularity, both extreme left, extreme right and regionalist. They offer “obvious” populist solutions to the crisis, from wealth redistribution to clamping down on immigration and a return to “traditional values”. The status quo parties may form temporary coalitions with the extremists in order to form a government.

Once they reach power and and are still unable to solve the underlying economic crisis with their “obvious” solutions, citizens become disillusioned and revert to the former status quo parties.

Nothing lasts forever, and over time the economy starts to limp forward again. It can take a decade or more – see what happened in Spain and Japan at different points of the last forty years. The lasting result is a long period where few babies are born while the remaining population continues to age as usual, placing public pensions in a tight spot unless immigration is increased. The country’s infrastructure, education and healthcare will have seen better times.

Will things unfold somewhat differently in Canada? Without a doubt. But history tends to rhyme, and what I’ve described above is hardly unique to one country.

Children steamrollers do not belong in cities.

Edit: Can you think of a better backronym for SUVs? Street Unsafe Vehicle? Super Unsafe Vision? Severely Unsafe Vehicle? Striking Unsuspecting Vulnerables?

lol how to identify a dude on the Internet

Is that the best argument you can put forth against what I’m saying? I can give you some more ammunition: I’m queer, disabled, atheist, an immigrant and vote green. Or perhaps those are collectives that you don’t feel comfortable discriminating openly.

For example, a “women’s only” group may be for a group of women who are healing from a sexually violent relationship, so they really don’t want to see men there.

“Maybe that whites-only parenting group could be healing from some trauma caused by POC and they don’t really want to see POC there.”

Do you see the problem? A POC causing you trauma is not a good reason to reject POC people in general, and a man causing you trauma isn’t a good reason to reject men in general either.

A group dedicated to victims of domestic violence could easily encompass both men and women who have suffered from it, whether the perpetrators were men or women. Cis & trans, it bears saying.

A person who has a blanket phobia of people of a particular gender or ethnicity needs therapy to address their sexism/racism. “I don’t feel safe around men” has the exact same energy as “I don’t feel safe around black people”.

Yes, racially exclusive associations are gross. Same with events that exclude attendance based on sex/gender. We are all people.

Okay, people will rip the holy book of the week instead. You may not have a good reason to do it, but others should be free to do so.

I do not approve of burning holy books, but I think it should be legal.

What people shouldn’t do and what should be banned are different things. I don’t want to live in a place where what is not mandatory is banned. There has to be some room for freedom of expression, even for people expressing ideas we dislike.

Burning a symbol to upset people is a shitty thing to do, but it should not be illegal.

Assaulting people, whether they burned a symbol you like or not, is a shitty thing to do that should remain illegal.

And yes, some people in my country have burned symbols that represent people like me recently. Nobody from my community assaulted the people who did it in response. Just the way it should be.

Anyone found to have recently obtained Russian citizenship but who hadn’t registered with the local conscription office was reportedly either issued with draft notices on the spot or taken to the military authorities directly.

Is it really anyone, or does conscription only apply to men, as per usual? This double standard is so prevalent that it’s not even reported accurately.

“The bill will make it punishable, for example, for people of the same sex to kiss in public. It will only aim at actions in a public place or with the intention of spreading in a wider circle,” Hummelgaard said

I agree with Hummelgaard. Those “protests” are used to create hatred. Even though it is also for me not comprehensible how people can be so sensitive about this, we all know the reaction it provokes. And even though we don’t agree and comprehend those feelings, we can still respect those feelings and just not senselessly create disruption. And hey… You can still kiss as many people of the same sex in private as you want.

This isn’t an exaggeration: a few weeks ago in Ottawa we had anti-LGBT protests where rainbow flags were burned down – guess who was there? And while many of us were offended and appalled, nobody was threatened or beheaded in response, and we didn’t have politicians trying to pass a new law forbidding the burning of rainbow flags either.

The whole point of this is that in Europe we have fought for centuries in order to establish liberal democracies where freedom of speech and the separation of church and state are enshrined. We must not appease extremists who achieve change with threats of violence. There is a name for that.

In a democracy the act of burning a book, or a flag, is a canary in the coal mine: you know there is trouble when it dies.

The message is simple: we don’t threaten people who have different ideas.

Governments should not be allowed to burn books.

Private citizens should be allowed to burn any books they own.

Neither governments nor private citizens should be allowed to harm or threaten people who burn their own damn books.

Example: you can purchase a dozen copies of “On The Origin of Species”, burn them, and I will very happily not threaten to behead you. Easy.

Don’t be lazy and DRIVE

For the briefest of moments I felt a spark of blinding hot rage in my heart. Now I am left with the lingering feeling of wanting to smash my head against a rock.

Thank you for that experience.