Dave Vasilevsky

This graph is a good reason to introduce my new paper: By Generation and by Design: A Review of the Empirical Rent Control Literature. This paints a (somewhat) misleading picture of rent control evidence because it groups all rent control together regardless of design feature.

Parti Québécois finally finds minority it likes

Wrote up some thoughts on the role of LLM contributions in open-source projects.

This might be the funnier YouGov poll: Canada's retaliatory tariffs are above water with US adults:

I made this website which shows the construction date of each building in Montreal as a colour gradient so one can easily explore when the different borough were built and such. map.parisien.cc

The City of Ottawa posted the raw speed data from before and after Doug Ford banned speed cameras and the effect is so obvious it's not even necessary put a line marking when that happened. This chart shows the percentage of drivers going 15km/h or more over the posted limit.

With alt text

1/5 💙 Michèle, le PEQ et 83% des québécois-es. Hir la firme Leger a divulgué un sondage commandé par l’UMQ et qui révèle que 83 % des québécois-es estiment que les personnes immigrantes qui occupent déjà un emploi et qui sont bien établies dans la province devraient pouvoir y rester.

@bretdevereaux.bsky.social Hi! Bronze Age specialist here (on the linguistic side) to say that I really enjoyed your post on the Bronze Age collapse, but I want to correct you on one of the points that you made (and then add something else I think is really cool). 1/

Short musings on "cognitive debt" - I'm seeing this in my own work, where excessive unreviewed AI-generated code leads me to lose a firm mental model of what I've built, which then makes it harder to confidently make future decisions simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/15/...

Walz: "We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody is gonna write that children's story about Minnesota."

Someone has lifted the QuickTimeVR movie files from 1994's "Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual", upscaled them then built an in-browser replica of the ITM's "Tour" module. mijofr.github.io/st-panorama/ #StarTrek

“By reading this plaque, you have made a valuable addition to the number of people who have read this plaque” … an important heritage moment on the streets of Toronto (by artist Sarah Lazarovic).

What both grows and shrinks at the same time? The never-ending riddle of Canadian health spending, by @picardonhealth.bsky.social www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/0fc7a92... via @theglobeandmail.com

We are deeply saddened by the loss of Greg Newby, who led Project Gutenberg ( @gutenberg.org ) with passion and purpose. Greg’s belief in free and open access to knowledge continues to inspire us and so many others working to preserve our shared culture online. gutenberg.org/about/newby....

“There are many living witnesses to what happened,” Mastromonaco says. “But it’s either not broadly acknowledged or it’s trivialized, perceived as anecdotal and insignificant. But it wasn’t anecdotal, and it wasn’t insignificant.” @thewalrus.ca thewalrus.ca/were-immigra...

🚨Today we have a special edition of Insight monitor, where on a Friday morning I woke up and chose data. I take a close look at claims of rising left wing terrorism in the US: open.substack.com/pub/insighti...

People from all over are showing up for DC. This is not a moment. It’s a movement. We are united in our demands. We are all DC! #FreeDC

Multiplexes are coming! But more slowly in some places than others. Why? @jensvb.bsky.social & I highlight our recent (open access) paper w/ Tsur & @tomdavidoff.bsky.social comparing multiplex reforms in Kelowna & Coquitlam & also look at Vancouver so far. homefreesociology.com/2025/08/29/m...

Irwin Cotler, Charles Bronfman sign open letter calling for Israel to end the war in Gaza www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2...

The housing shortage isn’t just about homelessness. It’s also the young person who can’t afford to move out. It’s the couple who can’t get a place big enough to have children. It’s the people stuck with roommates (or even in abusive relationships) because they can’t get a place of their own.

This is incredible. This computer science professor makes his students play a game that simulates the risks and repercussions of getting Long COVID, and then he's like, hey anybody want a mask? And: "approximately 95 to 100% of students who’ve played the game now wear masks in his classroom."

Live version and code, plus some additional graphs and details, on my blog. (This is adapted from @karimdouieb.bsky.social's iconic animation of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.)

I invite you to read my new Substack paper called "Measuring improvements in Canadian standards of living" at the following URL: philip635.substack.com/p/measuring-...

With Yoon removed from office today, by my count that makes 34 democratic leaders convicted since 2010. Only one—Trump—faced no real consequences. Trump's actions weren't uncommon. What was exceptional was how our institutions failed to hold him accountable.

Firefox 136 shipped with my new feature: LZMA compression for .dmg downloads blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2025/01/23/f...

Hmm, looks like Dropbox just upgraded me to a new API version, exciting! But it apparently also means I can't bulk-export my Dropbox Paper docs anymore!? And now have to export all of my hundreds of docs, one at a time!?! Welp, I guess it's time to write a bulk-doc-exporter tool.

Filesystems are fun! I figured out how to mount Clonezilla backups as directories, so I can look at just one or two files inside: gist.github.com/vasi/b6285221a

As someone trained as a trade economist, it is my duty to share the 1929-1933 Kindleberger Spiral, showing the month-month decline in global trade due to the combined factors of the (global) Great Depression and retaliatory tariffs. Smooth Hawley is implemented mid-June 1930.

Curious why we don't see much Broken Windows Theory applied to police You let cops get away with little crimes like parking illegally and passing out “get out of traffic ticket” cards to friends & family. Next thing you know they’re killing unarmed civilians and abusing their spouses at high rates

The truth about asylum in Canada 🌎 Yvonne Sue explains that the moral panic around asylum seekers, particularly international students, ignores reality: Asylum is not automatic, and many claims are rejected. Read more here: policyoptions.irpp.org?p=115144

Toronto Star interview is up! www.thestar.com/news/gta/vid...

Boutique primary care clinics are making the family doctor shortage worse, by @ritamc.bsky.social healthydebate.ca/2024/12/topi... via @healthydebate.bsky.social @christinebirak.bsky.social #PrimaryCare

Looks like Montreal will come in at about 1.66 murders / 100k population for 2024, about half the rate of NYC or Toronto and 1/20 the rate of a bunch of US cities. I do love the combination of living in a big vibrant city that's also very safe.

Across northern Ontario, 24 First Nations that previously relied on diesel generators for power are now connected to the provincial electrical grid. In the communities, the culmination of this decades-long project is cause for celebration:

People sometimes make fun of science that sounds stupid and random. Meanwhile, a study of lizard saliva turned into a peptide medication, which was turned into a diabetes medication, which was turned into a GLP1 weight loss drug, that just became the first therapy every approved for … sleep apnea

With all the goings on, there's probably no interest in why the 2023-24 deficit grew from $40B to $62B. Just in case: ~75% due to contingent liabilities related to Indigenous rulings/awards; rest due to lower tax revenues. Details: budget.canada.ca/update-mise... #cdnecon #cdnpoli

"Backsliding is less a result of democracies failing to deliver than of democracies failing to constrain the predatory political ambitions and methods of certain elected leaders" www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/mis...