iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Scream it from the rooftops. drjaredwesley.substack.com/p/this-isnt-...

The UCP government is using its constitutional authority to undo a decision reached through local democracy. After years of policy work and public consultations, and after Edmontonians had the chance to weigh in on that policy through a municipal election in which the proponents were returned to office, the Smith government overruled “the people” and their council.

It’s worth noting the political context: Developers wanted greenfield projects but couldn’t win a city election, so they got the province to change the electoral rules to allow them to contribute more money to campaigns and form parties to pursue their ends. They still lost, despite massively outspending the incumbents. In the face of this, the UCP changed the policy anyway. All this despite the fact that the UCP does not have a single Edmontonian in caucus, let alone cabinet.

Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The Oilers have emailed an old account I used with them twice this week trying to sell tickets. One email even offered to book a call. Meanwhile Ticketmaster's showing plenty of empty seats for opening night. Guess a decade of squeezing fans for every penny finally caught up.

Screenshot of Ticketmaster's website showing unsold tickets to the Oilers home opener on September 29, 2026.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

From Elections Alberta on Tuesday. www.elections.ab.ca/resources/me...

A screenshot from the Elections Alberta website.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Now that I’ve opened the envelope, I have questions about the declaration. I have to declare that I’m unable to vote in person? That’s not a requirement anymore. And it contradicts information from Elections Alberta from this week. And, admittedly less important, why is 2 there twice?

A photo of the special ballot declaration received from Elections Alberta. Apparently nobody prof reads these things.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

My mail in ballot arrived today. Hopefully there’s a “fuck off with your stupid referendum” box I can check that counts as no to every question.

Mail in ballot envelope from Elections Alberta.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Walks into the record store. Employee: Hey, is there anything I can help you with? Me: No. Thanks, though. Just browsing, not looking for any — That. I want that.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

My solar panels tell me there wasn’t a cloud in the sky today.

Solar panel power production. A bell shaped curve. No drops from periods of cloud.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

At the last game Quinn crushed a giant pickle. This time, a glass of Clamato. And another pickle. She doesn’t know it yet, but this kid is going to love Caesars.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

And then there's this. Absolutely perfect. No notes.

Looking back, Dreeshen figures no civil engineer worth their salt would base their recommendation to build something “based on theory and ideology.”

Article content
“We listen to civil engineers, not social engineers.”

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

I'd love to see the Minister back this up with examples. Maybe start by clarifying what "proper consultation" looks like. Were they installed without proper consultation, or were they installed in neighbourhoods where some residents opposed them? Those are two very different claims.

“We heard loud and clear from people in both major cities that bike lanes are put into their neighbourhoods without proper consultation, without a good understanding of traffic impacts and what it means to parking. Municipalities are putting in bike lanes with no regard for the people living in these communities,” says Dreeshen

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

There are some terrible sports columnists out there. But Cathal Kelly is in a league all his own.

Screenshot of Cathal Kelly’s post from July 13 titled Forever trailing in Europe’s soccer wake, Canada should just stick to hockey.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Beautiful night for some baseball. Still 20 minutes to first pitch. Might have to get myself a second hotdog. Feels like a three or four hotdog night.

RE/MAX Field on a lovely Saturday evening.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

My home insurance really want me to know there’s a storm.

Screenshot of my phone lock screen with notifications from my insurance through the app, text, and email.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

First day of kindergarten and last day of Grade 6 for Maëlle (right). So much has changed since that first day, but one thing hasn’t: Quinn by her side.

Maëlle (right) on her way to her first day of kindergarten. Quinn on her left.

Maëlle (right) on her way to her last day of Grade 6. Quinn still on her left.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

I’ve got four extra tickets to the Elks/Alouettes game this afternoon. Free to a good home. You’ll have to supply your own rain gear though. Shoot me a message if you’re interested.

Screenshot of the forecast for this afternoon. 15° and 5mm of rain. Lovely conditions for football.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

A sunny Sunday at the ballpark is about as good as it gets.

From left to right: me, Maëlle, and Quinn.

Quinn with her tongue out. Post blue snow cone.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

The Oilers continue to look like a desperate, unserious organization. It’s far from the biggest issue with their decision-making structure, but I had forgotten Katz’s kid has a role with the team. That detail says a lot. oilersnation.com/news/stauffe...

“What happens sometime is we sit, and we go, ‘Well, let’s just wait and see what transpires over the next little while.’ But we’re not going to do that today. I’m not going to BS you. I’m going to tell you exactly the way it is, okay? 100% Mike Babcock is the Edmonton Oilers’ guy. There were several different parties involved with this. At various times, Mike Babcock has not only spoken to Edmonton Oilers’ owner, Daryl Katz, but he has met with the Oilers’ key players. He has met with Harrison Katz. He’s obviously met with Oilers’ President, Jeff Jackson, and Oilers’ General Manager, Stan Bowman.”

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

These came out really well. No pictures after this point, so you’ll just have to imagine them: half covered in a soy ginger sauce, Quinn’s choice, and half in honey mustard, Maëlle’s choice. I tapped out after 24 wings. Had to save some room for beer.

Chicken wings about to come off the grill.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

I now have a pretty good idea of how many wings I can fit on this grill.

Two levels of chicken wings filling almost every square inch of grill space on a Big Green Egg.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Smoked chicken wings to go with Elks season opener tonight? You bet. Thinking about it now, 60 wings might be too much for the four of us, but if I have to eat two dozen or more to finish them off, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Got in a bike ride around Canmore this afternoon with Maëlle and Quinn. Followed by a refreshing flight of sodas for some and beer for others.

Maëlle and Quinn on a bridge over the Bow River. Mountains in the background.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

I grill year-round, but it’s definitely more enjoyable when the weather is nice. Meaning, no snow. Tonight was pork tenderloin and asparagus. I sliced the tenderloin thin and turned it into sliders. One of the few meals both girls ask for on repeat. The sliders, not the asparagus.

Pork tenderloin and asparagus cooking on a charcoal grill.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Delivering my package in a DeLorean, obviously.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

7 km in under an hour, about five minutes faster than usual. Beautiful night for a walk. Still incredibly angry, but at least I’m angry with a personal best.

Strava map of my walk.
7.01 km in 59 minutes 52 seconds.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Now he's got me thinking about the classics.

David Staples not knowing the difference between a sink and a urinal.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

150k minutes might send like a lot, but it works out to just under 105 days. Which is … a lot.

From Spotify, my most listened to artist is the Grateful Dead. 150,555 minutes.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Facebook never disappoints. A Councillor makes a simple post about safety measures near a school and someone immediately complains that “all-way stop” is a woke term.

Enough with the woke terms. What is an all way stop? This isn’t in the highway traffic terminology? The
City needs to stop inventing issues then providing solutions? The so called safe woksters aka unelected body that follows the wishes of the citizens. Their monopoly on these road dictatorships need to end! These aren’t safe they cause more issues especially with ETS bus drivers that continue to fail to yield to oncoming traffic? But yet the safe woksters haven’t addressed these bad drivers?

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Because I kind of hate myself, I thought I'd check out what a buyout of Tristan Jarry would look like. And now I'm wondering if it's bad when 3 of the 12 most popular buyout searches are players on your favourite team.

Popular buyout searches from https://puckpedia.com/

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Next year will only be McDavid’s 12th in the league. No rush. A little more thumb twiddling and the solution should magically appear any day now.

A screen shot: "From a roster perspective, Edmonton needs to solve a problem as old as McDavid’s NHL career: Who is starting in goal?"

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

That didn’t feel like a period where you should give up three goals.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

A win is a win, but that third period was pretty ugly. Actually pretty much everything after the fourth goal was ugly.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Big time flashbacks after than Ducks power play goal. I think I was holding my breath until Draisaitl restored the three goal lead.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

This steady climb makes this look fake.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

I can't help but wonder how many of the over $150k but struggling to meet expenses group that would vote to separate also believe that people with less have it “too easy” or just aren’t working hard enough. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Maybe the Oilers consider coming back to life in the second period.

Expected Goals -All Situations
Oilers 1.01 - Ducks 1.13

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

Looks like I was right. Since the start of the 2022 playoffs, the Oilers have lost 11 games in which they've scored 4 or more goals. The rest of the NHL has 22 losses combined. I do appreciate seeing LA with the second most losses. A result of playing Edmonton over and over and over.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

Ingram was great in the first period and dog shit in the third.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

Definitely not a defensive battle out there tonight.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

Probably hard to play a worse period of hockey.

Expected goals from moneypuck.com. Ugly stuff.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

A birthday present from Team Redhead. Just the glass. Didn’t come with any beer unfortunately. Had to sort that out myself.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Didn’t expect to a post from Kevin Lowe on LinkedIn about Chris Pronger’s version of events but 2026 is just full of surprises.

You may have read Chris Pronger’s recent piece in ‘The Athletic’, and I can’t overstate how disappointed I was after reading it in full.

To his credit, he takes responsibility for making a personal decision in the middle of the night that impacted his family. That part is fair. We’ve all made mistakes, and owning them matters.

But where I take issue is how casually Edmonton is folded into that story as though it were merely an inconvenience tied to what he now describes as a “drunken decision.”

That’s more than disappointing it feels like a convenient rewrite.

As general manager at the time, I handled that situation the way I always tried to: professionally, responsibly, and in good faith. Looking back, hearing how he frames it today, I find myself wishing I had handled it differently.

Quite frankly, I wish I had said no and let him sit out rather than accommodate a decision he now seems so quick to diminish.

What makes this even harder to reconcile is what followed immediately after. The day after the agreement, I received a personal note from his wife expressing how excited they both were about coming to Edmonton. That sentiment doesn’t align with the version of events being portrayed now. Perhaps at the time he was trying to reset the narrative or distance himself from circulating rumours but it stands in stark contrast to what’s being shared today.

And in 2023, the night before Doug Weight’s induction into the Edmonton Oilers Hall of Fame, I had the privilege of joining Doug, Bill Guerin, and their families for a private dinner. Both spoke glowingly about the city of Edmonton and how pivotal it was to their careers and how meaningful it was to their family lives. That has been the experience for the vast majority of players who have come through here.

Edmonton is a first class city with passionate fans and a proud hockey tradition. It is not a punchline, and it is not something to be explained away years later.

It deserves better than that and so do the people who supported him while he was here.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Tuesday night hockey at Rogers Place.

Pregame big screen showing PWHL Takeover Tour at Rogers Place.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Oilers vs Seattle tonight with Maëlle. Pregame drinks and dinner at Campio. Her choice. The hibiscus lemonade is always a hit. A tasty drink that’s also pink, that’s the best case scenario.

Maëlle enjoying a glass of hibiscus lemonade.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

Doing some future meal planning during tonight’s game. We’re going to catch a couple game in July but it’s never too soon to start thinking about ballpark food.

Rocky Mountain sundae
Minty Nanaimo bar chunks, buttery graham cracker crumbs and shredded coconut are piled over vanilla soft serve. (Parents, you'll want to steer clear of section 103, because that's where you'll find this sugar bomb.)

Al pastor dog
This new addition to the hot dog lineup gets piled high with pulled pork, pineapple pico de gallo and ancho chipotle. Delicious? Yes.
Structurally unsound? Also yes. It can be ordered at the Schneider "porch."

Uncrustables French toast
This funnel cake inspired by French toast is the Rogers Centre's biggest home run. Two thin cinnamon-laced pancakes meet to form a soft pocket that's stuffed with raspberry jam, dusted with icing sugar, and cloaked in whipped cream and strawberries.

Returning champ: Cubano sliders
Making a comeback is this Jays-branded bucket of baby brioche buns stuffed with pulled pork, ham, Swiss cheese and dill pickles, then slathered in ballpark mustard.
One hand eats, the other roots.

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

“No matter how good you are, you’re going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are, you’re going to win one-third of your games. It’s the other third that makes the difference.” - Tommy Lasorda This prediction has the Rockies winning exactly one-third of their games.

From The Athletic

2026 MLB season predictions: Forecasting the division races and postseason results

NL West projections
Dodgers 100-62
Giants 85-77
Diamondbacks 83-79
Padres 82-80
Rockies 54-108

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Ryan Batty @ryanbatty.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

I’ve done a few 12+ hour drives, but according to Google this 2023 trip from Edmonton to Buffalo, WY stands as my longest single-day drive.

Google Maps image of the route from Edmonton, AB to Buffalo, WY. 1,394 km.

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