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Thank you to all who have shared your condolences about Mike's passing - it is overwhelming. There will be a celebration of life for Mike on August 9 at Dogwood Pavilion in Coquitlam - and a livestream to ensure all who were touched by him may come should they wish. More details later. Sylvia

two days after Vancouver city council voted down their own Villages Plan, west side residents who opposed the plan en masse are complaining that Dunbar (!!) doesn’t have any wine bars, boutiques or gyms — the kind of amenities that require neighbourhood density to support

We are so done with ostriches out here in BC

"A Reuters analysis found the image of the map included ⁠in the presentation contained an artificial intelligence watermark that signals it was made with OpenAI tools. The company did ​not respond to a request for comment."

Hobbes is like, "bees are cool, they know how to chill" "whereas Man is then most troublesome, when he is most at ease: for then it is that he loves to shew his Wisdome, and controule the Actions of them that governe the Common-wealth" That's right! Bees over billionaires. Get 'em Hobbes!

If only I'd known I'd have run right down there for that sweet sousaphone...

This pattern of politicians running against their own bureaucracies as champions of the people was tagged as "the dysfunctional dance of local governance" by Mariana Valverde when she saw it in Toronto in EVERYDAY LAW ON THE STREETS from 2012. Its biggest beneficiary? Rob Ford.

Shes really good at this

Good plans and good positioning by OneCity here, I think. The yes vote on trying to make Villages work by @lucymaloney.bsky.social before the election really differentiates them from the pack in a positive way.

The Vancouver Villages Plan is up for a vote today! It would be a meaningful step in the right direction: low-rise apartments on off-arterial streets; walkable communities. We know it's the right direction for the city. It was prioritized by Ken Sim and ABC. Will they have the courage to pass it?

Great tribute to Michael Coyle (@oplopanax.ca) up at CBC. Surely just a start. He'll be sorely missed. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

B.C. man who devoted nearly three decades to rescuing strangers dies in Squamish | CBC NewsMichael Coyle had worked with Coquitlam SAR for years and helped many other teams in B.C.www.cbc.ca

Can bedtime stories help explain far-right voting patterns? Read about it in "Pedagogy of Fear: Folklore and the Far-Right in Weimar Germany," a new study co-authored by CRWS graduate student @elena-amaya.bsky.social. #voting #folklore #sociology

Pedagogy of Fear: Folklore and the Far-Right in Weimar Germany - Elena Amaya, Robert Braun, 2026This article argues that folklore (orally transmitted group knowledge) shapes far-right voting by inculcating feeling rules that resonate with nativist and auto...journals.sagepub.com

Handy new chart construction from @ourworldindata.org on income/consumption inequality. Here's a simple Common Canadian Comparisons version. ourworldindata.org/grapher/inco...

Incomes across the distribution - World BankAn interactive visualization from Our World in Data.ourworldindata.org

I'm so sorry Sylvia. Mike will be sorely missed by us all.

How much sugar would you like in your Milky Way? 30%? 50%? or 100%? www.cbc.ca/news/science...

This sugar is in raspberries, self-tanner and — scientists discovered — space. Here's why that matters | CBC NewsIt's a sweet discovery that has the science world talking — and may help us better understand the origins of life on Earth.www.cbc.ca

frenemies! frenemies!

All jokes aside, getting people to double up has been very much baked into Metro Vancouver’s Regional Growth Strategy for the past 5 decades. Not voluntary doubling up, which might indeed reduce housing costs, but coerced via under-projecting housing demand and asking munis to under-build housing.

New article in early view at RHE-JILAEH! Together with David González-Agudo and Valentina Ramírez, we reconstruct the cost of housing in Toledo between 1489 and 1810. This is one of the longest such series in existence anywhere in the world. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The cost of housing in the very long run: Toledo, 1489–1810 | Revista de Historia Economica - Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History | Cambridge CoreThe cost of housing in the very long run: Toledo, 1489–1810www.cambridge.org

I agree that the rates are arbitrary, but the underlying logic of tariffs makes perfect sense here. American consumers should pay a little bit extra for every bit of Canadian smoke they inhale. In the end, that should lower the amount flowing across the border in favour of American producers.

"[C]ivilization-ending sin is expressed through the motif of cruelty to strangers, invoked in the film as “Zeus’s law,” the Greek concept of xenia, or hospitality, in which a host has a responsibility to feed and protect a guest, and guests have matching responsibilities to their hosts." Good stuff!