iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Gabriele Svelto @gabrielesvelto.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 18h

I double-checked this on a couple of Xitter stat sites and it's true. Average views of the main AfD account dropped 90% and average engagement dropped by 60%. This is commercial social media for you: bots, damn bots and Russian bots.

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 9h

Orphan Black was the first set in Canada, but not made specifically for the Canadian market TV show I noticed. I wonder what earlier ones there were.

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Seth Klein @sethdklein.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Vancouver friends! Second day of advance voting is today. In my newsletter today, I explain why Vancouver’s historic climate leadership hangs in the balance in this municipal election. And, for those curious, I share how I'm casting my ballot: sethdklein.substack.com/p/vancouvers...

sethdklein.substack.com

Vancouver’s historic climate leadership hangs in the balance in this municipal election

If incumbent mayor Ken Sim and his ABC party are re-elected this month, virtually everything won on climate to-date will be toast. My election advice...

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It's a good time to visit. The exchange rate more than makes up for the extra smugness

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Rebecca Bollwitt @miss604.com · 07/10/2026

If you’re in America and would like a copy of our book FREECOUVER, it’s available on bookshop.org during their Anti-Prime Day. And it’s only $10.21 USD! Plan your next trip to Vancouver with our 101 free things to do 📚

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

This is why neoliberals since the Washington Consensus have understood that free trade is economically good, not just because of comparative advantage, but also because it improves the political economy by removing one avenue for clientelism, forcing companies to instead make better products.

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Stewart Prest @stewartprest.ca · 05/10/2026

New piece up at @thewalrus.ca, looking at the "T-word". What should Canada do about Canadians looking to America for help in trying to break up the country? thewalrus.ca/is-it-treaso...

thewalrus.ca

Is It Treason to Ask America to Help Break Up Canada? | The Walrus

The growing relationship between Alberta separatists and US political actors demands a response

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GRIDS Vancouver @grids.reillywood.com · 24/03/2026

reminder that Stephanie Smith's online handle "spkr118" refers to the time she spoke out against Christine Boyle's motion to zone for more social housing. hooooo boy

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Movement: Metro Vancouver Transit Riders @movementyvr.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

How are Vancouver City Councillors doing on transit-related issues? You may have heard of our Transit Hero Pledge 🦸‍♀️ (check out our website, the candidates who've signed on have finally been posted 👀), but we've also cooked up this report card for incumbent Vancouver political parties!

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Steve Lafleur @stevelafleur.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

What the "don't build towers" people are actually saying is "move to Alberta," even if they don't know it.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The lowest-trust societies in Europe are also more or less the whitest, and the only reason it's more or less is that some low-trust Eastern European states have Roma minorities. We're talking 95% white for the low-trust basket case economies, 80% white for the high-trust frontier ones.

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Vision Zero Vancouver @visionzerovancouver.ca · 02/10/2026

Francisco (Cisco) was an immigrant from Peru who moved to Canada to build 'a better life and future' here. He leaves behind a husband and many grieving family members and friends. Friends are fundraising to cover the costs of repatriating his remains to Peru: www.gofundme.com/f/bringing-c...

gofundme.com

Donate to Bringing Cisco Home: Support for His Family, organized by Alexa Vidal

Help Us Bring Cisco Home to Peru ❤️ With heavy hearts, we are asking for y… Alexa Vidal needs your support for Bringing Cisco Home: Support for His Family

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Chert @chert.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

please help… my son…

photo of a forklift w/ a pallet jack sitting on its forks like it was an adult carrying a child across its arms

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ellen teapot 🇨🇦🏳️‍⚧️ @ellenteapot.ca · 01/10/2026

Well, that’s fine in a big city like Saskatoon, but I don’t know about a sleepy village like Burnaby Heights

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DT Cochrane @dtcochrane.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

When the federal government says, “We can’t afford it” they actually mean, “We don’t want to do it.” Anything we can physically do—like put everyone in a home—we can afford.

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Chad Leddy @chadleddy.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I feel like the trivial complaints of affluent NIMBY homeowners get more coverage than the stories of people literally left homeless by the housing crisis generations of restrictive zoning rules have created

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Alex Bozikovic @alexbozikovic.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

An elderly couple doesn't like the new housing going up next door. So what? This is not news. They'll suffer minor inconvenience. But no one is forcing them to move. And they have the freedom to sell their big multimillion-dollar house and live comfortably elsewhere.

cbc.ca

Toronto needs more homes. These neighbours say they're paying the price | CBC News

An elderly downtown couple says they’re shocked and upset that the city has approved a duplex next door to their three-story Victorian home that they say will tower metres above their chimney and rend...

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Michael Andersen @andersem.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Some WSJ headline writer is apparently tired of tenants winning, but the reporting is fine: Haddox’s new place didn’t require months of paperwork or administrative bottlenecks. She applied and moved within a week. “This was way easier because the market had gone down.” www.wsj.com/real-estate/...

wsj.com

Portland Real Estate Is Such a Mess That All Housing Is Affordable Housing

Rarely has the Oregon city seen such a narrow price gap between market-rate and affordable units.

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Kathryn @kmsheps.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Man, @onecityvan.bsky.social is just heads and shoulders above the rest when it comes to housing in Vancouver. Credible, innovative and focussed on buidling a welcoming city where everyone belongs.

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Colleen @cbailey6.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Many said that we had to cut immigration so governments could "catch up" on housing. I tried to explain, based on my experience in housing advocacy, why I thought that was unlikely. Immigrants were just a scapegoat for governments who didn't prioritize new homes. I wish that I had been proven wrong.

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Abundant Housing Vancouver @ahvancouver.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Why hasn't Shaughnessy developed into an urban area for tens of thousands of renters like Vancouver's first elite, mansion district: the West End? Walking tour Oct. 3rd!

eventbrite.com

The YIMBYs go to Shaughnessy (birthday edition)

Let's walk around Shaughnessy and imagine a better city. Hedges for a few, or apartments on quiet streets for many?

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

There must be a tipping point where it seems like singling people out if they don't get any title at all.

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

There's going to be a heat pump mounted there to distribute air to the whole unit?

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

And now is the tough part where you have to sit down and decide which way you're voting

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California YIMBY @cayimby.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

GGWash: Zoning doesn't decide if housing is "affordable" - funding does, and that can happen anytime, even after a building opens. So opposing market-rate housing to "save room" for subsidized housing is incoherent: you can't subsidize a building that never gets built. ggwash.org/view/104401/...

ggwash.org

Want more subsidized housing? Start by building any housing

Most subsidized or “affordable” housing in America was not initially built as such. It makes little sense to oppose new homes because they are not subsidized from the very start; those homes very…

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

In provinces' defence, they have to deal with the exact same thing from municipal governments all the time.

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GRIDS Vancouver @grids.reillywood.com · 20/09/2026

This is good but let's go further: the province governs the city, the city literally bans hotels near BC Children's Hospital, please fix that!

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Zoomer Antimillenarian @surcomplicated.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

What I really fucking love about Hot Fuzz is that it is a rare piece of artwork that unapologetically defends liberal modernity. A representative of the impartial, uniform rule of law & depersonalized state beings justice to a lawless, backward community run by a wretched clique of local grandees.

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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

New literature review on housing ladder spillovers: When rich tech workers move in, low-end rents go up. So does it follow that adding high-end homes would reduce them? Yes. Changes at the top of the ladder can propagate down and affect prices at the bottom. 1/

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Peter Waldkirch 華彼德 @pwaldkirch.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Hey turns out I was right about the off-arterial part of the Streamlining Rental Policy. (There were only 7 applications, one of which was in December 2023; the policy is effectively dead.)

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Sometimes the "adjustment" might be as little as explaining to those who didn't get involved earlier why it was done the way it was. It might have been because of feedback from someone else in the original consultation. Making the rationales easy to find might help too, tradeoffs are often opaque.

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I think one of the (repeated) lessons here is that more consultation ≠ more buy-in. We'd be better off if planners put in temporary measures they think are best & then adapted quickly to complaints rather than doing half year cycles of consultation & adjustments.

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Great explanation, with a demonstration, in this video

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Climate Justice Victoria @climatejusticeyyj.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

A super El Nino on top of the Pacific Ocean being hotter than we have ever seen it? Yup. More climate disasters brought to you by fossil fuels. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Oix... #bcpoli #cdnpoli

youtube.com

I’ve tracked El Niño for years. I’ve never seen this before

YouTube video by CBC News

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Danny Oleksiuk @dannyoleksiuk.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I'll be at the @ahvancouver.bsky.social booth at car free day on Main Street from 1-5 today. Maybe see you there.

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John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 08/09/2026

2) England is a rare exception. During the 2010s many other countries (including the other 3 UK nations) changed tack, experimenting with ideas like transferrable skills instead of focusing on tried-and-tested disciplines and methods. It looks like those experiments have failed.

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Going to be a tight race. I saw 50% Ken Sim, 50% Muhammad Ahmad signs on a bike ride the other day.

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Henry Grabar @henrygrabar.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

an extra year of permitting time for multifamily is associated with a 39-percent increase in median rent -- relationship is just as strong as with prior measures of land use regulation

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Andrew Lewis FC @andrewlewisfc.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Doug Ford banned speed cameras so people could speed dangerously without financial consequences, regardless of the safety consequences. Doug Ford achieved his goal. There will be many stories like this.

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Toronto Star @thestar.com · 10/09/2026

The family of a teenager injured by a car outside his Toronto school is suing, alleging the removal of a nearby speed camera contributed to the crash. According to the statement of claim, the 15-year-old suffered a traumatic brain injury, skull fractures and ongoing cognitive effects.

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Frank Chiachiere @fchi.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Cities with long permitting times for new housing tend to have higher housing costs, per new paper: "permitting duration is positively associated with housing prices and negatively associated with production." evansoltas.com/papers/Durat...

chart showing project duration for single- and multi-family housing in select US cities. Seattle is among the slowest.

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Maybe not yet but if more retailers join...

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

TIL Canada Post is trying to build an Amazon marketplace competitor. canadashops.ca

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

(but in fairness to them we shouldn't take any of these platforms too literally)

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I would say Vote Vancouver's platform is more specific & worse. The details say they don't take the housing shortage seriously. www.votevancouver.ca/housing www.votevancouver.ca/housing

votevancouver.ca

Housing Platform — Vote Vancouver

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

At this point acknowledging that Vancouver needs to grow with a full range of housing puts Fry pretty close to the top of what parties have put out there. It's also about the most vague thing out there, and he hasn't squared it with his record.

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

You could fund solar in the US or Okanagan and import it

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Personally, we hedged our bets on a recent renewal, 25% variable, 75% 5-year fixed (at about 34 bps more than the variable). So far the variable has been a better deal but that could change fast. 2/2

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Owen @oweninvan.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The popularity of 3-4 year mortgages over the last 3 years really shows people are trying to time interest rates. For the big cohort who did it earliest it's worked out so far I guess, but you have to wonder when the 5-year was already at ~3%. www.canadianmortgage... 1/2

https://www.canadianmortgagetrends.com/2026/09/shift-to-variable-shorter-term-mortgages-raises-borrowers-rate-exposure-cmhc/

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