I don’t know what the February 4 blue collar strike will consist of, if the workers still have to deliver snow removal, road repairs, arena inspections, cleaning of public spaces, traffic sign and street light repairs, operations related to water mains and sewers, drinking water production and waste water treatment. Confusingly, this piece also says the union “represents some 5,5000 employees.”
Updates from January, 2026 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Le Devoir has a piece on the history of public art in Quebec and its evolution from religious and memorial statuary to the more abstract and decorative pieces we expect today. Quebec’s policy that construction budgets must include 1% for art has been a good one for the urban landscape, so the news that the culture ministry proposes an “update” this year doesn’t bode well.
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Kate
La Presse looked into the story of Nazi symbols worn at a gym with further discussion of the burden of proof needed to declare wearing hate symbols to be a hate crime.
The line “never lose your smile” was not recognized by anyone in the story as a Nazi slogan. You’ll find a lot of sites, including Amazon, selling patches with a skull and those words. But the Anti‑Defamation League lists it on this page as a Nazi slogan.
jeather
The point of a dogwhistle is that other people won’t recognize them, so when they get too popular new ones pop up. The skull is better known, though again I think it only really hit the big time when that Democratic politician was found to have it as a tattoo.
Kate
I was reminded of this, which would’ve been made between 2006 and 2010.
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Kate
Some passengers have reported waits of 20 minutes for the REM elevators at Édouard‑Montpetit, although Pulsar, which operates the REM, says waits are only about 2 minutes. Despite this minimization of the problem, Pulsar is talking about automating the elevator controls, but can the source of delays really be that passengers don’t press the button quickly enough? Isn’t it actually that there aren’t enough elevators to meet peak usage? The writers here note that many classes at UdeM start at 8:30 am, causing a crush at the elevators between 8 and 8:20 in the morning.
Maybe they could prevail on the university to stagger the start of morning classes?
Ephraim
What’s the point of buttons if there are no intermediate stops. Or are there?
I’ve seen, when there are banks of elevators that need to go to different floors, where you push a button and it will tell you to go to elevator A, B, C, or D. And then it only stops at the needed floors and skips the rest. Programmed for efficiency that way. With a special button for the handicapped, to make sure that it keeps room for their wheelchair.
But if there is only floor 0 and floor -1, just put in one button and assume.
Nicholas
A friend described the problem they saw one day. Let’s say that all 5 elevators are at the bottom, and you push the down button at the top. Then one elevator will come up. But that is true if there is one person waiting or 100. So in the latter case then one elevator arrives, 15 people get in, then the door closes, then someone pushes the button before it starts moving so the door opens again, then it closes and starts moving and then the button is pushed and again just one elevator comes. If there is no train coming then no one is going up, so it could be a while until the next elevator going up is brought by someone going up on it. If it takes 30 seconds to come up and load and close, then you only get two elevators per minute, or 30 people per minute. (My numbers could be way off, I haven’t used these yet, but the idea is right.)
In many big office buildings they are automated a bit, such that in the morning if an elevator has dropped off its last passenger it’ll go to the lobby even if it’s not needed or there’s already an elevator there, because they know there are a ton of people going up. In the afternoon they do the same, storing some elevators on 10, some on 20, etc. This is a much simpler operation, with two floors, but a long distance between them. Obviously if they could use a camera to look live at waiting passengers (and even looking at train arrival times, knowing that a rush will come 30 seconds after the REM or blue line come), they could dispatch elevators based on that, but even just having a human do counts for a week and then adjusting the algorithm based on averages should be good enough.
Kate
You just know they’re going to bring AI into it somehow.
Thanks for the explanations, Nicholas.
bob
Office building elevators are an entirely different problem because there are many stops. Here, there should be no buttons, and the elevators should just go up and down all day, full or not. Basically, a vertical metro with two stops.
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