A very unfortunate mustache on Pascal

B R

B R

— 3 min read

Hello it is Garbage Today again. Welcome to my new old blog on Ghost. Hopefully you got here alright. Ghost is fine. They don't appear to be actively aiding Nazis like Substack, but it does cost money.[1]

Renting

We like the place we are renting quite a lot so we texted the owners about staying longer. How this communication went illuminates the difference between how renting works in Montreal vs Seattle.

(coming from Seattle where there are basically no renter rights at all)
Us: Hey we know the lease was just for three months and all but could we pretty please stay longer month to month without like a 30% rent increase?

(confused because we just asked them not to violate several well enforced city laws)
Owners: Uh sure? Please just give us 30 days warning when you want to leave?

Everything this CBC reporter mentions are rights Seattle all renters should have:[2]

  • Does my landlord have to show me the previous tenant's rent?
    Yes, of course.

  • Oh shit! I just found out it was way lower!
    You have two months to apply to fix the rent.

  • What do you mean fix?
    The government will force them to lower it to 1-2% increase, depending on taxes, maintenance costs, etc. They have to follow a formula.

  • Can I reject my rent increase?
    Yes, you have a month to do so in writing. Again, it follows a formula.

    More in the video.

Best sandwich in town so far? Pinocchio's:


The original story of Pinocchio was incredibly fucked up. He kills Jiminy Cricket like 5 minutes after meeting him. Highly recommend. Here is a comic version by KC Green, who made Gunshow (and the "this is fine" dog forever ago).

The flag of Montreal is extremely good.

They basically took symbols of each wave of colonization/immigration plus indigenous peoples and plopped them on there.


Shamelessly ripped off from Wikipedia, basically the only remaining good website (for now). Montreal has been multicultural/multiethnic for a while. Could stand a few more for the more recent waves (African, Arabic) in my opinion


Learning French

...in the sense of properly speaking it to other humans who can understand you and reply and you understand them - remains challenging. But every day when I get off the subway heading to french classes I am heartened by this rando public service advertisement:


"The merchants in your neighborhood are learning french. 'I am learning french. Encourage me!'" And then a link to this site where you can sign up to be a mentor or -if you are a merchant - get support, two hours of French lessons a week at the workplace, etc.

The homework continues to be a source of amusement:

Someone should say something right?

  1. It's not like, a lot, but still. The technology itself is open source and this is all Markdown so I could just host it myself if they start going fasc too. ↩︎

  2. And I am saying this as a reluctant Seattle landlord now (can't sell the place, we just bought it last year). ↩︎

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