Month: December 2013

In an op-ed for The Guardian titled Sadly, Rob Ford epitomises what Canada has become, Matthew Hays writes:

Each time Ford appears in the media, it’s another eerie reminder of what we’ve become: crude, swaggering, bungling, irrational and mendacious. We’ve reached that staggering moment in a brilliant horror film when our protagonist realises the truth: Rob Ford is the New Canada. He is us.

In the article, he points out that Toronto’s mayor and Canada control-freak war-on-science-declaring prime minister are two sides of the same coin. As a reminder of how buddy-buddy they were prior to the various scandals, here’s the short version video that the Tories tried to suppress, in which Rob ford introduces his “new fishing partner” Stephen Harper at his private barbecue:

Here’s the long version:

I have a hypothesis that for every Rob Ford situation, there’s an appropriate Family Guy graphic. For the recent television interview that Lord Conrad Black conducted with our Peter Griffin-esque mayor, there’s this one:

It was, to borrow a phrase from the Globe and Mail, “the death of decency”. Featuring a rich ex-convict fawning over and lobbing softball interview questions a rich likely-future-convict, it sank to unexpected depths when the mayor insinuated that Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale was a pedophile:

“The worst one was Daniel Dale in my backyard taking pictures,” said Ford, “I have little kids. When a guy’s taking pictures of little kids, I don’t want to say the word, but you start thinking, you know, what’s this guy all about?”

Ford continued, saying he “caught” Dale “on the bricks, over my fence, taking pictures. . . . He had cinder blocks that he had to step on to get over the fence.”

A desperate grasp made by a desperate man for whom nothing is too low anymore.

The Star says that Dale was not in Ford’s backyard, not taking photos of the mayor’s children, and not looking over any fence. In fact, Dale was on public parkland near the mayor’s home — working on a story that Ford was hoping to purchase some parkland for his property — when he was accosted by the mayor. Given that what the Star has been saying about the mayor has proven to be true and what the mayor has said about himself has proven to be — ahem — at variance with the truth, I’m more inclined to believe the Star.

Daniel Dale is suing both Ford and Vision TV — the channel that aired the interview — for libel. I hope he wins.

And how much of a Rob Ford love-in was that interview? This much:

Not to be outdone by his brother, Councillor Doug Ford (who often imagines himself to be Toronto’s co-mayor), borrowed a trick from third world politics and handed out $20 bills to people at a Toronto Community Housing complex:

HoHoTO, the holiday charity party that Toronto’s Twitter scene built is back! Back in 2008, a group of Toronto-based friends in the tech, social media, and marketing industries started chatting over Twitter about doing something for the city’s hungry for the holidays (a refreshing change from some attitudes in Silicon Valley). Conversation turned to action, and in a matter of days, The Mod Club was booked, sponsors were lined up, the event was announced, and HoHoTO was born! The party was well-attended, turned out to be a lot of fun, and more importantly, it raised tens of thousands of dollars to help feed less fortunate people in Toronto. You’d think the event was months in the planning, but it wasn’t! (I was at that very first one, and wrote about it here.)

There’s food aplenty to go around in Toronto, but the chasm between the haves and have-nots — like in many other places around the word — is widening. The median monthly income is $691, Toronto food banks are seeing a million visits a year, food bank use in Canada has climbed 21% since HoHoTO’s inception, and 30% of the people who rely on Toronto’s food banks are children. HoHoTO are helping to make a dent in that situation, having raised nearly $300,000 for the Daily Bread Food Bank and sent nearly 4 tons of food to Toronto’s hungry.

HoHoTO returns Thursday, December 19th, from 7:00 p.m. until late, it’s taking place at The Mod Club (722 College Street, at Craword, three blocks east of Ossington), and tickets are on sale online right now. They’re $45 for regular admission, or $150 for the VIP admission package, which gets you drinks and appetizers from 7 to 9 p.m..

Go and support a good cause and have a good time — go to HoHoTO!

It happens more often than you’d think.

Let’s see if we can make the future better than this, shall we?

(In case you don’t get the reference, here’s the relevant scene from WALL-E…)

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

Click the photo to see the original.

Well, there is a movie in the works…

Oh yeah.

Add Greg Gopman to the list of Silicon Valley people contributing to the “Cyberselfish” and “Entitled Millennial” stereotypes, thanks to this Facebook post that he and his company’s PR person will be dealing with for the next little while:

Just got back to SF. I’ve traveled around the world and I gotta say there is nothing more grotesque than walking down market st in San Francisco. Why the heart of our city has to be overrun by crazy, homeless, drug dealers, dropouts, and trash I have no clue. Each time I pass it my love affair with SF dies a little.

The difference is in other cosmopolitan cities, the lower part of society keep to themselves. They sell small trinkets, beg coyly, stay quiet, and generally stay out of your way. They realize it’s a privilege to be in the civilized part of town and view themselves as guests. And that’s okay.

In downtown SF the degenerates gather like hyenas, spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy, they act like they own the center of the city. Like it’s their place of leisure… In actuality it’s the business district for one of the wealthiest cities in the USA. It a disgrace. I don’t even feel safe walking down the sidewalk without planning out my walking path.

You can preach compassion, equality, and be the biggest lover in the world, but there is an area of town for degenerates and an area of town for the working class. There is nothing positive gained from having them so close to us. It’s a burden and a liability having them so close to us. Believe me, if they added the smallest iota of value I’d consider thinking different, but the crazy toothless lady who kicks everyone that gets too close to her cardboard box hasn’t made anyone’s life better in a while.

In case you have any doubts as to which side of the rich/poor divide Gopman lives on, remember that he’s in the business of organizing hackathons worldwide, which clearly puts him on the “shuffling wealth around, not creating it” side of economics. He’s doing all right, judging from a couple of his recent tweets:

@casey_lau @andy_mui @JoshuaKrammes @joshuaxls @SoftLayer Join me in Singapore this weekend to see one double that size 😉

— Gregory Gopman (@Gopmania) November 21, 2013

@alexabyte me and Carmen are in Bali this weekend. You should join us ^^

— Gregory Gopman (@Gopmania) November 27, 2013

Gopman has since deleted his original Facebook posting and posted an apology:

Last night, I made inappropriate comments about San Francisco and its less fortunate citizens on Market st. I’m really sorry for my comments. I trivialized the plight of those struggling to get by and I shouldn’t have. I hope this thread can help start an open discussion on what changes we can make to fix these serious problems. Again, I am deeply sorry.

Gopman’s original sentiment will become only more prevalent on those who are on the better side of the ever-widening Gini coefficient gulf that separates rich from poor. It’s a line of thinking I see more and more among people who are making more — oftentimes much more — than the mean wage: that people who’ve had bad breaks must have bad character. (Were this true, Rob and Doug Ford would not be millionaires.)

Let’s see if Gopman’s metanoia is real, or if it’s just backpedalling to counter bad PR.