Has anyone worked with a lead generation service you actually like and would recommend? For finding software development consulting client leads, specifically.

https://bsky.app/profile/tomflood.bsky.social/post/3mxewawk44s2s

an organizing win: direct action in Toronto prevented bike lanes from starting to be removed last night!!! There's a new challenge hopefully heading to the Supreme Court of Canada to prevent the bike lanes from being removed, but that didn't happen in time to stop the removal trucks from coming in. But lots of people showing up on bikes to stand in the way did!!
https://bsky.app/profile/tomflood.bsky.social/post/3mxsaazoou22x

#BikeTooter #onpoli

Keyword stuffing, a probably ineffective dark pattern for search engine optimization, was invented by a mother trying to intercept a toddler meltdown by beginning a fantastical story about the mamas riding their bikes on top of a big truck in a construction site, going ding ding while the big trucks went honk honk and the kids yelled “go bikes, go!” as a bus drove past and grandma waved from inside.

(It worked, on the baby at least.)
#parenting

Kids today will never believe this, but it used to be an important user interface design consideration that buttons for controlling stuff (like a media player, or paging through a series of photos) not cover up the stuff that the buttons control.

Imagine: videos, where the play and pause buttons were not on covering up the playing video content for any amount of time. “See next photo” buttons that didn’t overlap any part of the current photo you are looking at.

We can have it all again some day, I believe.

The bar to become a Registered Canadian Immigration Consultant, which is required if you want to formally (or paid, at all) help people with their Canadian immigration & visa applications and you're not already licensed to practice law in Canada, is *really* high!

I looked into it a while back because I have a pretty in-depth knowledge of Canadian immigration pathways and application processes, having managed my family's Express Entry process and being pretty detail-oriented and willing to read like, most pages on the public facing portions of IRCC's website.

The *only* way to qualify for the Entry to Practice exam required to become an RCIC is to have already held the previous version of this credential prior to 2020, or to first complete a Graduate Diploma program from one of two possible institutions (English at Queen Mary University, or French at Université de Montreal). Queen's program requires 12 months of full time study and $17k in tuition (not OSAP student aid eligible!)

There is no "I know all the material already, can I take the test about immigration law and ethical standards without the diploma first?" option, period.

Is the bar for becoming Immigration Minister for all Canada lower??

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/singh-case-refugee-board-c-12-lena-diab-9.7371340

I am quite confident when I looked at the courses/prospective student info on this, major cases in Charter law and federal legislation around immigration and refugeeship are covered in the program...

#onpoli #canpoli

I feel weird sometimes seeing the “this is all because tech workers didn’t unionize” type comments because, well, some of us did!

The tech union I was part of won voluntary recognition, and was the able to negotiate better severance when most of us got laid off shortly after (very predictably, which had helped build support for the union-forming efforts, in fact, as we knew it was likely coming).

At a tech nonprofit where I once worked, but after I left, workers successfully organized to demand the CEO step down or be removed for bad behavior towards employees. Others I know worked on efforts like Tech Won’t Build It and resistance internally in companies big and small re: working with the military industrial complex. Others were legally prohibited from unionizing in their roles in government service, and yet made incredible contributions to their field before getting DOGEd, and after, in raising the alarms or trying to continue protecting the American people.

It’s easy to piss on tech workers as privileged babies who deserve what’s happening in their chosen field. Maybe too easy! And takes the pressure off who’s really at fault, who’s calling the shots now, and who still has power to change the course of the future. (That last one’s all of us, but disdain and defeatism about what’s already happened won’t get us there.)

Anyone have experience fully opting out of “appropriate use of technology” in OCDSB, in the lower grades?

My junior kindergartener does not actually need to start learning digital citizenship this year; there is plenty of time for them to learn that after they’ve learned the more traditional tenets of good community membership and good classmateship. I would be thrilled if they simply didn’t touch an ipad or computer all year! Is that an option? I keep getting reminded to accept the Appropriate Use of Technology agreement but there’s no option I see on it for “no thanks”.

#ottawa #parenting

There's a lot of audacious lies out there but I think one of the boldest I've ever heard was told to me in person this week, with a straight face, from a small person who nonetheless, knows I know better:

paraphrasing, it goes:
"My little brother peed my pants."

#parenting

Do I know anyone, or friends of friends, who have an ecommerce site with Shopify that you'd love to move off of Shopify to some other platform, but hasn't been able to justify spending the time/cost?
I'm looking to prove out a strategy of using LLM coding tools to quickly, and completely/accurately, move business setups from Shopify to something less fash-y. With human expertise/oversight guiding the process.

But as much as I hate them, holistically, emphatically, I know it is possible to get quality code *much* faster and more cost-effectively than it ever has been in the past, if you have experienced software devs doing the execution. ("Quality" here means I read every line of LLM-generated code I commit myself, and revise til I get something meeting my own standards for design quality. I have reviewed lots of LLM-generated code where the author clearly has not done that. An experienced developer can tell when that's what's happening.)

I've already got the unavoidable LLM subscription for work; let me at least use it to help you, as an e-commerce business, stop giving your money to alt-right-aligned Shopify month after month and switch to a platform you feel less gross about, while you keep running your business.

I need some existing Shopify-users who are willing to try out the process with us (me via my employer, a software consulting agency whose primary selling point is "we don't bullshit our clients").

Biking home alone after dropping the kids off for the day always feels so weird.

Did anyone else see that garbage truck?? Does anyone else care that's a school bus?? Why am I the only person yelling "tunnel!" to hear the echo as we ride through this underpass?!

#BikeTooter #CargoBikes

kids & I were immediately besieged by mosquitoes when we arrived at the apple orchard; maybe we'll get west nile! Thanks, climate change, pushing West Nile Virus-infected mosquitoes further north and for longer breeding seasons. Thanks, politicians, for doubling down on fossil fuels! The disease-ridden mosquitoes and other pests will certainly appreciate it.

Today in Doug Ford's Ontario, in Mark Sutcliffe's Ottawa: delayed on our way to the orchard to stop to offer help at the major intersection we cross every day, where a person on a bike had just been hit by someone driving a car.

A friend from the neighbourhood couldn't go along with us this morning because by mid-morning, she was still at the children's hospital with her kindergartner, having waited overnight to receive prophylactic meds after her kid picked up a dirty needle while playing yesterday evening and gotten poked. CHEO of course only can staff one doctor overnight in the Emergency Department, thanks to intentional underfunding from the province.

Even if you're one of the lucky ones who are surviving austerity, you're not going to get as much time picking apples in the sun on a beautiful fall day as you otherwise would.

#onpoli #ottawa

some pretty bleak numbers here: Canada's wealthiest demographic receives the largest proportion of government assistance.

> "It’s not just that they typically have no dependents, live in paid-off homes and carry little debt, though all of that helps. Their well-being is also untethered from Canada’s anemic wage growth. People 55 and older make up less than one-third of the population but, as of 2023, they owned 49 per cent of the country’s real estate by value, 62 per cent of bank deposits, 72 per cent of mutual funds and other investments and 75 per cent of stocks. The value of all those assets has soared."

> "Many do not feel rich. They consider themselves middle class, because they own the things middle-class Canadians once took for granted: a home, a car, perhaps a cottage or a boat. But those once-ordinary markers of stability are now available only to a privileged minority."

https://macleans.ca/longforms/the-great-generational-rip-off
#Canada

articles like this one like to claim AI and device use are an absolute must in public school classrooms because of the accessibility improvements provided by things like text-to-speech. I am not disputing people with reading or visual disabilities may benefit from those!

but a lot of kids don't have reading or visual processing disabilities, and those are the kids that are being described in all those other articles, about how university students and recent college grads seem not to have the ability to sustain attention on long texts, or to comprehend complex texts they are supposed to read.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/back-to-school-techlash-9.7327303

wow I hate this!

hey kids, don't worry about learning to proofread, edit, and revise your own writing while you are in HIGH SCHOOL. Gemini (a paid product controlled by an ad company) can do that for you!

Don't bother brainstorming ideas for a project - that's a thing of the past now that LLMs can "think".

Creatively translating information for a class into song or illustration? Sounds like a drag, the LLM can do it.

Yay learning!

https://www.ocdsb.ca/news-events/news/post/new-ai-resources-for-students

#ontario #ottawa #noai #parenting

On the one hand, I wish the toddler would stop kicking the base station of the new automatic vacuum while grunting “robot! robot! robot!”

On the other hand, kid’s got a point.

The weird looks I get at local markets that are clearly not really tourist events, where I might be wearing a shirt from some local group, and being clearly not a child… and squinting at coins from my wallet to sort out the toonies vs the loonies….

Immigrant problems in the digital wallet age: are these coins on the dresser the pretend ones from that pirate show? European ones that got dumped out of a pocket from a decade ago? Or the kind we use here, where I’ve been living for two years…?

https://mombian.com/2026/09/14/lgbtq-parenting-roundup-almost-fall-edition/

I always enjoy these link/news roundups re queer parenting & family stuff from Mombian, which also has a very good and highly filterable/searchable database of queer kids (& parenting nonfiction) books.
#queer #parenting