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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 17h

This is extremely funny.

Reposted by Michael DeMoor

Jeff Samsonow @jeffsamsonow.bsky.social · 18h

ICYMI here's the last mayoral forum of the municipal election, live at EPL with an assist from Taproot Edmonton. Election Day is Monday, October 20. www.youtube.com/live/mND9EOW...

2025 Edmonton Mayoral Candidates Forum

October 9, 2025 6 p.m. - 8 p.m.The Edmonton Public Library, in partnership with Taproot Edmonton, invites you to an engaging and nonpartisan forum featuring ...

zurl.co

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 22h

“Your late uncle left you a portfolio full of mature assets.”

“Yay! I’m rich!”

“This is Alberta.”

“…Oh…”

Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 23h

I am utterly unqualified to comment on the substance, but “mature asset” seems like a darkly ironic euphemism for what we are dealing with here.

Phillip Meintzer @phillipmeintzer.bsky.social · 1d

Meintzer said he’s especially concerned that the mature asset strategy’s report, in his view, may violate the polluter pays principle... “It's just going to be used as a way to offload company cleanup obligations onto the public,” he said. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/... #ABLeg #ABPoli #CleanUpYourMess

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 23h

A liability that is a ticking ecological/human health time bomb is apparently a “mature asset”. Brilliant in its sinister inversion of reality. Note-for-note upside-downing. Poetry.

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 23h

I am utterly unqualified to comment on the substance, but “mature asset” seems like a darkly ironic euphemism for what we are dealing with here.

Phillip Meintzer @phillipmeintzer.bsky.social · 1d

Meintzer said he’s especially concerned that the mature asset strategy’s report, in his view, may violate the polluter pays principle... “It's just going to be used as a way to offload company cleanup obligations onto the public,” he said. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/... #ABLeg #ABPoli #CleanUpYourMess

Groups push back on Alberta’s strategy to deal with inactive oil and gas wells as plan moves forward | CBC Accessibility

A band of advocate groups are pushing back on the province's current plan to manage its inactive and aging oil and gas infrastructure.

www.cbc.ca

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 1d

Meh. I like it here. I just wish my neighbours found it a bit easier to accept changes.

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 1d

As a pedestrian I have been struck (fortunately not literally) by how insanely high the hoods of trucks are getting. I’m no giant, but I’m not a short guy… and I’ve looked front grills in the face.

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 1d

Guess I know about as much about trucks as Jason Kenney (bet I could get the gas cap off, though).

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 1d

This take is me being as mean as I can make myself be publicly. If it’s not derisive enough, by all means outdo me.

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 1d

Not owning a car is a very substantial savings, indeed!

Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 1d

Toronto, at least within the ring of freeways is reasonably close… or was in the aughts, when I lived there. But then you see the 401 and it makes the urbanist in me weep angry tears.

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 1d

100%. The wisest Edmonton has ever been was when it rejected freeways going downtown. The NIMBYish unimaginativeness can be a force for good sometimes :) And the urban planners aren’t always the good guys.

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 1d

I have seen that - but, as a prairie city boy - have not lived it. Maybe I’ll retire to it. My post was not at all meant to be anti-small town.

Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 1d

I am exposed once again as both an ignoramus and a mocker. Doubly damned by my own efforts (as, I suppose, we are all of us damned). :)

Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 1d

I totally get the attraction of that; I live it. But it is unsustainable and perdures by pushing away the costs of that way of life or by “naturalizing” those costs as inevitable (cf. all the costs we bear - both publicly and privately - for our car dependence).

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 1d

Totally fair. I know a lot of people value our prairie cities for the fact that they are big cities that don’t “feel like” big cities (including, until quite recently, the facility to “hide” “big city problems” from the gaze of most residents, or at least to bottle them up in a few neighborhoods).

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 1d

100% What is inevitable and natural cannot be ideological.

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 1d

… means we could do without it. So we did.

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 1d

Precisely! Living in a “real” city for a while can also give us a sense of perspective that might relieve us of unfounded anxieties.

We briefly had a car in Toronto. If we parked within a block of home, we’d seriously consider never moving the car again.

And then we’d realize that maybe that …

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 1d

Good phrase! Living on the outskirts with no car is a kind of heroism I can only admire! It’s like swimming upstream in rapids.

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 1d

Yes! My walk home from work is along 50th street and it’s mad how much traffic noise we tolerate as if it’s inevitable.

That’s the lack of imagination I mean.

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 2d

Nice places to visit but they wouldn’t want to live there.

Albertan cities, on the other hand, are nice places to live, but you wouldn’t want to visit there.

I just think we can have both :)

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 2d

I was being salty, of course, and hence both uncharitable and imprecise. I love Edmonton (and I can grant, as an intellectual exercise, that a reasonable person might love Calgary). I’m a Prairie City Boy. But the experience of living in them for must of us is more suburban than urban.

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 2d

Above all, they could have a fiscally, socially, and ecologically sustainable place to live. Less pollution, fewer property tax increases, central neighbourhoods with lots of kids in them, etc.

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 2d

‘e’s not pining, ‘e’s panpsychist!

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