The director of safety in the Montreal metro has a novel theory: the brutalist architecture and the claustrophobia of the underground setting may be partly to blame for passengers’ sense of unease if anything feels amiss.
Updates from October, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Shots were fired again overnight at the Achtarout bakery in Ahuntsic. It was the wee hours, but three people were working there. Luckily no one was injured.
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Kate
I notice that CTV is responding to Elon Musk’s newest vandalism of his Twitter toy – the removal of headlines from posted news – by adding click on the image below to read more to every tweet. Good idea.
I’ve been channeling this blog’s content to Twitter for a long time, but that time may be coming to an end. Readers, do you use Twitter? Are you thinking of abandoning it for something else?
Your alternative to Twitter?
- Mastodon (44%, 18 Votes)
- Bluesky (27%, 11 Votes)
- Threads (20%, 8 Votes)
- Facebook (10%, 4 Votes)
Total Voters: 41
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Kevin
I am on Bluesky and have several invite codes for anyone who wants ’em
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EmilyG
I’m on all of those platforms. I think I tend to use Threads more than Mastodon and Bluesky, though I only use Threads on my phone (it doesn’t seem to work well on a computer.)
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bert
I read your blog via the RSS feed, but would be happy to see it on Mastodon as well. I will not be bothering with new commercial social media like Bluesky or Threads. Mastodon has minor issues, but it isn’t owned by a billionaire.
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maggie rose
I have a Mastodon account, but honestly never use it. Despite Musk’s dreadful antics, I still get a lot of info from Twitter that would take some manoeuvring to find on Mastodon.
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Daniel
Twitter is a garbage fire. I’m on Mastodon. It’s not perfect but it’s vastly better than Twitter at this point.
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Kate
Bert, I have a Mastodon account for the blog, and I experimented with a plugin that automatically writes each post to a Mastodon entry.
The problem was that each time I posted, a lot of bots dogpiled on the blog, making it inaccessible for several minutes. I don’t find that acceptable.
I could simply post news story links to the Mastodon account, without linking back here – that’s what I do for the environmental sideblog I’ve been doing on Twitter and Mastodon, and now on Bluesky as well. But I’m not sure simply posting news stories like that is interesting or useful. I can give it a try.
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anton
LinkeDing
(I kid?)
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Chris
My alternative to twitter is blogs. Like this one. Thank you for existing! But +1 for RSS. And +1 for Mastodon as least horrible.
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Ian
I quit Twitter not long after it became X, and quit Meta about a year ago, both mostly over privacy concerns.
I’m liking Mastodon – the fediverse model is very appealing to me as a return to the old independent internet, before we were all monetized.
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Blork
I haven’t used Twitter in years. In fact I’m turning away from pretty much all social media as it sinks more and more into a cesspool of polarization and non-critical thinking. Even my presence on FB is minimal; just to fire the occasional funny post at some friends and family. The extent to which all forms of social media seem to be an endless race to the bottom has sworn me off it. And endless scrolling has ill effects on people’s mental health and mental stamina.
Screw that. I prefer to read things created and/or curated by intelligent people, so I’m all over magazines, newsletters, and a handful of blogs. And books! The only time I look at comments (this blog notwithstanding) is when I feel I need a reminder of just how unthinking most of humanity is. Or at least most of the part of humanity that spends too much time on social media.
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CE
Of all the social media platforms, I find Twitter to be the worst and have largely avoided it. I often found that if I clicked a link to Twitter, I’d fall down a rabbit hole of awful comment threads that would leave me feeling either enraged or hopeless. Thankfully, since Musk has taken over, it’s not possible to see the comments without an account and increasingly less and less content is visible to me so I’ve been finding myself very much welcoming his vision for the platform. My hope is that he continues with his changes until it has become completely irrelevant.
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walkerp
I should have quit Twitter long ago on ethical grounds. The only reason I am still on is because I only use it on a computer via browser using the Control Panel for Twitter extension. This makes your feed chronological and strips all algorithmic bullshit so you only see the tweets of people you follow in the order they were sent.
Thanks to this extension, Twitter remains a functional and sometimes entertaining place to follow the good people who post with honest intention and mostly good cheer on subjects that interest me. Those people are slowly going away though, so probably only a matter of time.
If/when I leave I probably won’t be going to any other social media, just hope blogs (like this one) will suffice.
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Kevin
CE
Indeed, making Twitter irrelevant is part of his plan – such as it is – to increase the amount of distrust in society. -
Daisy
I’ve never been a Twitter user, so I don’t need an alternative to it. Nor have I ever had an account with any of the options in your poll. I do read a lot of Substacks though.
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Kate
I’m finding most of the people I’ve followed on Twitter for personal interest reasons (friends and associates, graphic designers, other cultural commentators) are moving toward Bluesky. Migrating that side of my social media life seems pretty clear.
But moving news interests and the blog feed isn’t so simple.
I should have included “Other” and “None” on the poll above!
Kevin, why do you think Musk wants to increase the amount of distrust in society? Is it that he’s just chaos incarnate and wants to burn everything to the ground? Or does he see more profit in it?
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CE
I think Twitter before Musk was doing a pretty good job on its own at sowing distrust in society.
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Ian
To be fair I mostly used Twitter for international news, tech, art, and graphic design stuff so I managed to evade most of the toxicity. It took me well over a year to get my feed carefully curated enough to be useful.
The mastodon fediverse is a bit trickier to navigate becaue of all the instances but in the last 6 months I’ve managed to massage my feed into something useful.
That said, I do miss out on a lot of community organizing and protests as most of those are still organized through X and Meta – but hopefully that will change as people move away from those platforms. THAT I do believe Musk has been actively trying to disrupt – especially his involvement in the Ukraine where he is openly supporting Russia.
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qatzelok
On the subject of comments, the comments sections of both CBC and Rad-Can seem to be broken today.
Can anyone else access them today? I never comment there, but I enjoy reading the Rad-Can comments.
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Kevin
Kate
I will try to be concise, but I acknowledge I am painting in broad strokes.First, a lot of the very rich Silicon Valley crowd are libertarians who believe the internet is going to make governments obsolete, and are devotees of the Sovereign Individual treatise. (It’s a book written by the father of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the pro-Brexit anti-taxes British MP.) These folks have gone so far as to take out citizenship in out of the way places and buy huge tracts of land with the idea they will escape when civilization collapses. Link: https://amp.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-valley-billionaires-are-prepping-for-the-apocalypse-in-new-zealand
Second, these same tech people hate reporters for a variety of reasons and so have tried to and in some cases succeeded in shutting them down. Look up how Peter Thiel attacked Gawker, and also this piece: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/tech-vs-journalism-silicon-valley-reporters.html
Third, Twitter was known for two kinds of power users: politicians and journalists. Musk has a habit of lying to politicians and insulting them. He dislikes reporters who have pointed out his lies or the failed timelines for his company’s products. So, by buying Twitter, he suddenly was able to control both of these groups and gradually make the place worse. He is following a game plan posted on a blog run by a former Trump staffer. Link 3: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/was-elon-musks-strategy-twitter-rcna118490
That’s as brief as I can make it.
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dhomas
I quit all Social Media a number of years ago, with the exception of LinkedIn (I need it for work). I use the RSS feed to read this blog, which is very important to me because, as mentioned, no social media. I’ve started paying attention to Reddit a little, but I love the format here, where it’s all so concise and precise. Only Montreal, only links to news articles from generally trustworthy news sources, with a little editorial and a decent and intimate community. So first, I’d like to thank Kate for the work she puts in here.
If I had to choose an alternative to X-Twitter, I’d probably throw in with Mastodon as it fits with my view of how the internet should work. But since I didn’t really use Twitter, I never really found a use case relevant to me for Mastodon, either.
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Kate
Thanks for the explanations, Kevin.
dhomas, you’re very welcome.
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Kate
The Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM) is promising a strategy for the homeless, pushed to it as suburbs as well as the city are dealing with tent encampments and other reminders. But the report is not actually due till December 2024.
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Kate
Ricochet’s Ethan Cox goes along with the city’s first Airbnb enforcement squad, the first in North America.
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Orr
This is a great story.
I’d vote any politician who promised to make a law making the penalty for illegal airbnbs confiscation and thereafter renting out the units to the low income demographic at 25% of their annual income.
Use the notwithstanding clause for something useful for a change.
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Kate
If Valérie Plante wanted an argument in favour of sponge parks and roads, she’s got one now. Water is already accumulating in places it’s not wanted, and rain is expected to continue all week.
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CE
The leaves are making it hard for water to drain which is causing a lot of the flooding. I cleared the leaves from a few drains and it was very satisfying to watch all the water rush away into the sewer!
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walkerp
Yes, CE! I’m a fellow drain cleaner, so glad to hear I am not alone. I was out at 11 at night in my pj’s and an umbrella scooping leaves out. Once that sucking whirlpool starts and the big pool drains away, it is so satisfying! Thank you for your service.
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Ian
Considering how many tickets I’ve received for forgetting to move my car on street sweeping day they sure don’t seem to be particularly useful if citizens need to be out in the rain in their pyjamas 😀
I go out with my ice chipper to clear the drains but I salute those of you on leaf patrol.
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DavidH 08:37 on 2023-10-08 Permalink
Needs a breakfast nook. One never feels unsafe near a breakfast nook.
Kate 09:56 on 2023-10-08 Permalink
Thank you for a good laugh this morning.
Ian 10:13 on 2023-10-08 Permalink
Keep it 1970s, install shag rug lined recessed conversation lounges.
maggie rose 11:40 on 2023-10-08 Permalink
Good one, DavidH. Also, infuse the ventilation system with the smell of fresh-baked cinnamon buns. Polishing the concrete to look like marble, and adding some trompe l’oeil images of nature wouldn’t hurt either. Or just bring in some giant plants and ferns. And skylights. OK, it’s a rainy day here.
Orr 17:55 on 2023-10-09 Permalink
Wonder what he thinks about post-modern architecture and its rejection of the idea of absolute meaning and that instead we should embrace randomness and disorder?
The idea that it’s a goal of architecture to respect and serve the building’s occupants and the public not exactly a core belief of po-mo.
Plenty of good examples of architecture downright playing jokes on us instead of serving the public good are not hard to find in 21st century Montreal.