FuriousFather

09/07/2026

China is doing something almost no Western government has had the courage to try: actually deflating a housing bubble on purpose, in the name of livability instead of landlord profits.

For years, Beijing’s mantra has been that housing is “for living in, not for speculation” – a line first pushed by Xi Jinping in 2016 that then became the guiding principle for national real estate policy. That wasn’t just rhetoric. It translated into tighter credit for developers, curbs on speculative buying, and a refusal to use runaway home prices as a quick-and-dirty GDP stimulus. In other words: while the U.S. and much of Europe let housing become a financial asset class first and shelter second, China explicitly moved in the opposite direction.

China already has one of the highest homeownership rates on Earth, with roughly 90% of households owning their homes, far above most rich countries. When your starting point is near-universal ownership, the political calculus shifts. You can prioritize stabilizing or lowering prices to keep housing affordable for younger and poorer households, instead of worshiping “wealth effects” for existing owners at all costs. Beijing’s line has been consistent: stabilize land prices, stabilize home prices, stabilize expectations – and make rental housing and social housing part of the core system, not an afterthought.

There will be real economic pain, failed developers, and long, grinding provincial restructuring. But history may judge it as an almost unheard-of experiment: a major government choosing to puncture a bubble and accept short-term turbulence rather than keep feeding a housing casino. In a world where “housing policy” usually means “protect asset prices at any cost,” that alone is a radical, and instructive, choice.

08/07/2026

Liberal members of the House ethics committee shut down debate Tuesday over an Opposition motion to investigate the Carney government’s controversial plan to purchase thousands of unsold B.C. condos from developers.

An “emergency” meeting was called by the Conservatives during the summer recess on Tuesday to launch an ethics probe into the program, which would see Build Canada Homes and BC Housing partner to convert 2,200 unsold condo units in the province into affordable housing. The plan, announced unexpectedly, has received significant criticism from housing advocates and opposition parties, who have called it a “bail out” for developers that made bad calls speculating on rising real estate prices.

However, a Liberal MP moved a motion to adjourn debate on the issue, on the basis that summer is not the best time to tackle the issue, and members of the committee should be in their constituencies.

The motion carried with the Liberal majority in support.
Conservative MP Aaron Gunn had tabled the motion to summon Vancouver developer Bob Rennie, Housing Minister Gregor Robertson, B.C. Housing Minister Christine Boyle to testify before the committee, as well as representatives from Build Canada Homes, BC Housing, and Brookfield Asset Management, among others. Prime Minister Mark Carney had previously been chairman of Brookfield Asset Management before entering politics.

Gunn’s motion also called for Duncan Wlodarczak, chair of the Liberal Party of Canada in British Columbia, to testify. Wlodarczak worked for Vision Vancouver, the party Robertson represented when he was the city’s mayor. Wlodarczak is currently chief of staff to the president of Onni Group, a Vancouver-based real estate developer.
Gunn’s motion stems from a letter sent to the committee by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, where he alleges several developers attended a Liberal party fundraiser in February in Vancouver, paying $1,775 per ticket.

“Canadians have very real concerns about the Liberal plan to bail out billionaire condo developers in the fifth most unaffordable housing market in the entire world,” said Gunn.

“All this begs some pretty obvious ethical questions that I think deserve answers, such as if the Liberals didn’t campaign on this policy, why are they suddenly deciding to pursue it now?”

Liberal members of the committee criticized Conservatives for calling for an investigation on a program where the full details are not fully public yet.
Liberal MP and vice-chair of the committee Linda Lapointe said Opposition MPs were making baseless accusations.

Liberal MP Fares Al Soud said the 2,200 homes would not be an insignificant addition to the affordable housing supply, and that only $150 million of federal taxpayer money is allocated towards the initiative, before moving the motion to adjourn.

“Canadians are intelligent, and they will make their own minds up through the facts, and that is exactly how it should be,” he said. “With that chair, I move to adjourn debate.”

Al Soud then attempted to table another motion to set the agenda for the proceeding committee meetings, that would include a statutory review of the Lobbying Act, the use of artificial intelligence in algorithmic pricing and a review of the Privacy Act.
The committee chair, Conservative MP John Brassard, then moved to adjourn the meeting without debate on Al Soud’s latter motion.

Several concerns were raised by opposition MPs over the course of the two-hour meeting.

Carney was asked by a reporter last month if any developers had pushed for the buyout. He replied that developers had not lobbied him “directly” for the program. Carney also acknowledged his government did a “poor job” rolling out the $1.45-billion program.

The prime minister and B.C. Premier David Eby have also said that these purchases would be for distressed assets bought at “below market rate,” although few details have been made public. Eby also said the city of Vancouver would not be included in the program, which would target the Fraser Valley, Vancouver Island, and the Okanagan.

NDP MP Jenny Kwan questioned the federal government’s track record on funding for affordable housing, adding that the condo initiative does not pass “the public smell test.”

“Make no mistake, this latest announcement of the condo conversion is massive bailout for developers, even though the prime minister wants to pass it off as affordable housing,” said Kwan. “No one is buying it.”

Conservative MP Gabriel Hardy also brought up that on June 3, Brookfield Asset Management, the firm Carney chaired prior to becoming prime minister, partnered with Concert Properties, to invest in eight industrial properties in British Columbia. The $1 billion-deal occurred just a few weeks before the condo conversion program announcement. Hardy pointed out that Concert Properties owns interests in several condo properties in Burnaby, B.C.

Bloc Québécois MP Luc Theriault suggested that the committee should get in touch with the lobbying commissioner’s office, adding that even the appearance of a conflict of interest warrants an investigation.

National Post

08/07/2026

Outside a bakery in Trstenik, Serbia, a lonely stray discovered that if he stood in just the right spot, the moving arm of a mechanical advertising statue would gently stroke his head. Day after day, that cold metal arm became the closest thing he had to love.

A passerby filmed the heartbreaking moment, and the video spread across the internet. It eventually reached animal rescuer Nina Pinter, who drove for hours to find him. After patiently earning his trust, she brought him to safety and gave him a second chance at life.

The dog, later named Hogar, no longer has to settle for a machine pretending to care. Today, he has warm hands to pet him, a safe place to sleep, and people who truly love him.

08/07/2026

I can’t stand when people say the only way to make a successful woman-led action or superhero movie is to have her also appeal to the male gaze. It’s such a lazy and outdated take.
There have been so many great women-led action movies that prove you don’t need that to make it work — and we need way more of them. Look at so many of James Cameron’s films. Sarah Connor in the Terminator series is the ultimate badass. In Terminator 2, she’s this hardened, highly trained survivor who’s all about protecting her son and fighting for humanity’s future. She’s strategic, physically dominant in fights, and emotionally complex — and she doesn’t spend the movie catering to any male gaze. She barely even looks at a man romantically in the entire series. It’s all grit, intelligence, and raw power.
The same goes for Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley in Aliens — another Cameron masterpiece where the female lead is the smartest, toughest person in the room without needing to be sexualized for appeal. These movies succeeded because the characters were written as fully realized heroes, not eye candy.
Women can (and should) lead big action films as strong, capable protagonists on their own terms. The success of these stories shows audiences are ready for it. Stop reducing female-led projects to the male gaze — let’s get more Sarah Connors and Ripleys instead.

07/07/2026

Before any telescope on Earth could photograph a black hole, one man drew it by hand.

In 1978, French astrophysicist Jean Pierre Luminet sat down with an IBM 7040, a machine that ran on punch cards and had less computing power than a modern calculator. He fed it the equations of general relativity and asked it a question nobody had visually answered before. What would a black hole actually look like?

The computer spat out raw numbers. No screen, no rendering software, nothing to display the result. So Luminet took those coordinates and plotted them manually, dot by dot, using black India ink on white paper. Then he inverted it into a negative so the void appeared dark against glowing gas.

What emerged was strange and beautiful. A dark sphere wrapped in a lopsided halo of light, brighter on one side than the other. That asymmetry was not an artistic choice. It was physics. Gas orbiting the black hole at nearly the speed of light appears brighter when it moves toward you and dimmer when it moves away, an effect called relativistic beaming. And the light from behind the black hole bends over and under it, so you see the far side of the disk stacked above the shadow itself.

Forty one years later, the Event Horizon Telescope released the first real image of a black hole, assembled from radio dishes across the planet. The resemblance to Luminet's ink drawing was uncanny. The lopsided glow, the bent light, the dark heart. He had gotten it right with punch cards and patience.

The math knew what a black hole looked like decades before our instruments could confirm it.

If a drawing from 1978 could predict a photograph from 2019 this accurately, what do you think today's simulations are quietly getting right about things we haven't seen yet?

07/07/2026

The episode in question?
It was called " Home" and was subsequently banned from the air after the first run.. which is happened to see at the age of like 5 or something hahahaha

The truth is out there…

07/07/2026

People are genuinely terrified (and rightfully upset) about the way Lupita Nyong’o basically dissed Homer in her recent interview while promoting Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. She joked that if she could ask the ancient poet one thing, it’d be how he feels about all the screen time the women are getting in the new movie, considering how little time he supposedly spent with them in the original epic.
Fans of the classics are not having it. The Odyssey is one of the foundational works of Western literature, and Homer gave significant depth to female characters like Penelope (whose cunning and loyalty anchor the whole homecoming story), Athena (a major divine force guiding Odysseus), Circe, Calypso, and Nausicaa. These women aren’t afterthoughts — they explore complex themes of intelligence, power, temptation, and resilience.
Calling it out like that during promo feels like unnecessary shade at the source material to make the adaptation seem more progressive. It’s sparked major backlash because it comes across as disrespectful to one of history’s greatest storytellers. The trailer already had controversy, and comments like this are only adding fuel. Respect the epic that inspired it.

07/07/2026

Is ADHD the Hunter's Brain? 🤔
The popular "hunter vs. farmer" hypothesis suggests that some ADHD traits—such as heightened alertness, novelty-seeking, and rapid attention shifts—may have been advantageous in ancestral hunting environments.

🔬 While this is an interesting evolutionary idea, it remains a hypothesis, not a proven scientific explanation for ADHD. ADHD is a complex neurodevelopmental condition influenced by genetics, brain development, and environmental factors.

🌍 The theory offers one possible perspective, but it should not be taken as established fact.

07/07/2026

It’s ridiculous how overblown the reactions to the trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey have been. Yes, there are strong opinions on casting and the look, but people are acting like the movie is already doomed before it even drops on July 17 — and that’s just silly.
Nolan has literally never failed to deliver a cinematic event. From Inception and Interstellar to Dunkirk, Tenet, and Oppenheimer (which grossed nearly a billion and won Oscars), he consistently brings massive scope, IMAX spectacle, groundbreaking storytelling, and unforgettable performances. His casting is always phenomenal too — think Cillian Murphy, Robert Pattinson, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, and so many others who absolutely killed it in his films.
The pattern is the same every time: backlash hits hard before release over choices that look “wrong” on paper or in a short trailer, only for the movie to prove everyone wrong once it hits theaters. This stacked ensemble for The Odyssey (Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, and more) has that same potential to shine under Nolan’s direction in a mythic epic with a reported $250 million budget.
Let the man cook. Pre-judging based on a trailer and culture war noise is exactly how we almost missed out on some of his best work. I’m betting this one will be another masterpiece.