I’m a big fan of The North East ;)

Manitoba should invade down that highway – see how the rest of Canada feels when the Riel Rebellion …

Ah nevermind, let bygones be bygones.

Or logging, or farming. There’s a bunch of reasons to have low population density road networks.

Saw (or rather heard) a few at a football game recently. They’re still here, but at least it isn’t a stadium full.

Instead we use cowbells like God and nature intended ;)

At this latitude?

Epic answer haha. My other half grew up in a Soviet apartment block, so I get stories from her about that on occasion. Mostly about not owning any of it except their contents. Definitely a “poor but housed” situation – don’t look behind the curtains. I’m not sure it’s a good idea either. During the collapse of the Soviet Union when the power and heat shut off, they were burning furniture in there – but I guess that’s a testament too a solid construction haha.

Anyway, fun reply! :)

Was in Regina for the weekend (I’m a Bomber fan, don’t hate me) and had a nice time! We were looking up real estate and comparing against Winnipeg and it seemed similar ish. But that doesn’t tell us about the rental market which sometimes has weird emergent phenomena.

If you were benevolent dictator of Canadastan, how would you fix it?

Yeah, and the east coast, excluding Halifax.

Prairie cities, except Calgary, doing alright too.

Danger. Danger. Must pet danger.

Our cat will slink to the farthest corner of the house. It will be hours before she emerges. The vacuum ran for 8 seconds.

Nice perspective.

What would you consider to be a contribution of value? Posting? Comments? Moderating? Installing a server rack in your closer for nightly backups? What would you suggest a minimum contribution for continued use should be?

Our city made it illegal for scrap dealers to accept catalytic converters, and suddenly theft vanished entirely. Weird.

Me too! Our cat is the perfect child, most of the time. Except when she pukes on the bed.

Conclusion, based on some random scrolling around in the maps.

The rural north is fucked. But we already knew this. You could make the same map for teachers, nurses, postal workers…

In the bigger cities, it’s a bimodal distribution – the newest neighbourhoods (where sprawl is occurring) lag behind, but also the older poorer neighbourhoods. So it isn’t just socioeconomics, but also about sprawl.

Just imagine lugging the groceries up those steps

Was playing slo-pitch (beer league rec baseball), pitching. The other team was short one player, so when the missing player came up to bat, there would be an automatic out.

It’s bottom of the last inning and we’re tied, two outs. Batter in the box and “automatic out” is on deck. My shortstop says: “if you walk this batter, they cannot win.” I decline, and throw decent pitches - our thirdbaselady makes a perfect line drive catch to preserve the tie. Walking off the field, I say the the shortstop.

“I couldn’t do it. If I walk the batter, then after the game when I go touch myself – I wouldn’t have enjoyed it.” The bench dies laughing.

Daaad, get off the interent.

I actually tried to work out the economics of it based on the rate we were paying ($200/night) in a place that was clearly worth at least half a million.

$200 per night. Assuming they only get occupancy on the weekends, and use some weekends for themselves. Then you could reasonably presume they can get maybe 150 rental-days in a year. More likely to be 100. Let’s use 100 because it maths easy.

That’s $20000/yr. If you were only paying for your place with short term rentals at that pace, and interest wasn’t a thing, it would take 25 years to break even. If you include interest at a trivial 4%, then you’re looking at a 40 year mortgage.

And that’s not including all the cleaning, repairs, etc.

So if you’re using the place as an income stream, yeah, that ain’t happening. Not unless it’s in a high-demand location that you can charge a lot more for.

Unless you’re looking at it like a retirement-home-in-waiting or something.

There is (or was) once a pretty nice industry of “cabin resorts” – basically a facility with a bunch of cabins for rent. They are functionally hotels, and subject to all the regulations. Now you rent a VRBO and show up and there’s rotten food in the microwave and you have no recourse.

Yes, this actually happened to us. Yes I have pictures. You can’t smell it in the picture.

When modern billboards became a thing, many cities or similar jurisdictions passed laws limiting their proliferation, in order to ensure you didn’t end up in a billboard filled dome.

In Canada, at least, you can register your address as a “no admail” destination, and you’ll stop getting those flyers entirely. It doesn’t stop certain protected classes of ads, in particular ads for prospective politicians during an election campaign, or mail that is personally addressed to you (even if it is an ad). But does shut it almost completely down. This would be the legal equivalent of installing a real-world ad-blocker.