Black text on a yellow background - This is Alice's friend Sandy Ho, posting. Per Alice's wishes, this message is being shared at the time of her passing.
Hi everyone, it looks like I ran out of time. I have so many dreams that I wanted to fulfill and plans to create new stories for you. There are a few in progress that might come to fruition in a few years if things work out. I did not ever imagine I would live to this age and end up a writer, editor, activist, and more. As a kid riddled with insecurity and internalized ableism, I could not see a path forward. It was thanks to friendships and some great teachers who believed in me that I was able to fight my way out of miserable situations into a place where I finally felt comfortable in my skin.
We need more stories about us and our culture.
You all, we all, deserve the everything and more in such a hostile, ableist environment. Our wisdom is incisive and unflinching. I'm honored to be your ancestor and believe disabled oracles like us will light the way to the future. Don't let the bastards grind you down. I love you all.
Black text on a yellow background - This is Alice's friend Sandy Ho, posting. Per Alice's wishes, this message is being shared at the time of her passing. Hi everyone, it looks like I ran out of time. I have so many dreams that I wanted to fulfill and plans to create new stories for you. There are a few in progress that might come to fruition in a few years if things work out. I did not ever imagine I would live to this age and end up a writer, editor, activist, and more. As a kid riddled with insecurity and internalized ableism, I could not see a path forward. It was thanks to friendships and some great teachers who believed in me that I was able to fight my way out of miserable situations into a place where I finally felt comfortable in my skin. We need more stories about us and our culture. You all, we all, deserve the everything and more in such a hostile, ableist environment. Our wisdom is incisive and unflinching. I'm honored to be your ancestor and believe disabled oracles like us will light the way to the future. Don't let the bastards grind you down. I love you all.
Here in Vancouver, the expert consensus is that the probability of a magnitude 9 earthquake is something like 0.1% to 0.4% per year. That's not a lot on an annual basis, but if you plan to spend, say, 40 years here, the cumulative risk is significant, at least if you believe the estimates (I'm told by an expert that one should have low confidence in the estimates, but that's a topic for another post).

When we looked at automotive safety in 2020, we saw that almost every car manufacturer does the minimum necessary to score well in crash tests and no more, assuming no one is cheating. Since then, it's been found that there has been major cheating for crash tests. In 2024, Toyota was caught cheating*, with a number of cheats, including cutting away a panel inside the vehicle that would cut the test dummy on impact.

After Toyota was caught, it also came out that Mazda, Honda, and Suzuki were cheating test results as well. These are all Japanese manufacturers because this came out when the Japanese government investigated cheating (it's unknown how much cheating would be found if other car companies were investigated). 

Should we expect building safety any different? Let's start with what we know and can verify. Unlike with cars, there isn't an agency that goes around testing copies of buildings I might live in, so we can't get direct data, but we can make some inferences based on what's observable.

Assuming the building code is designed correctly, buildings in Vancouver th...
Here in Vancouver, the expert consensus is that the probability of a magnitude 9 earthquake is something like 0.1% to 0.4% per year. That's not a lot on an annual basis, but if you plan to spend, say, 40 years here, the cumulative risk is significant, at least if you believe the estimates (I'm told by an expert that one should have low confidence in the estimates, but that's a topic for another post). When we looked at automotive safety in 2020, we saw that almost every car manufacturer does the minimum necessary to score well in crash tests and no more, assuming no one is cheating. Since then, it's been found that there has been major cheating for crash tests. In 2024, Toyota was caught cheating*, with a number of cheats, including cutting away a panel inside the vehicle that would cut the test dummy on impact. After Toyota was caught, it also came out that Mazda, Honda, and Suzuki were cheating test results as well. These are all Japanese manufacturers because this came out when the Japanese government investigated cheating (it's unknown how much cheating would be found if other car companies were investigated). Should we expect building safety any different? Let's start with what we know and can verify. Unlike with cars, there isn't an agency that goes around testing copies of buildings I might live in, so we can't get direct data, but we can make some inferences based on what's observable. Assuming the building code is designed correctly, buildings in Vancouver th...