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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months ago

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Lies, damned lies, and Uber

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in PHOENIX (Changing Hands, Feb 29) then Tucson (Mar 10-11), San Francisco (Mar 13), and more!

Uber lies about everything, especially money. Oh, and labour. Especially labour. And geometry. Especially geometry! But especially especially money. They constantly lie about money.

Uber are virtuosos of mendacity, but in Toronto, the company has attained a heretofore unseen hat-trick: they told a single lie that is dramatically, materially untruthful about money, labour and geometry! It's an achievement for the ages.

Here's how they did it.

For several decades, Toronto has been clobbered by the misrule of a series of far-right, clownish mayors. This was the result of former Ontario Premier Mike Harris's great gerrymander of 1998, when the city of Toronto was amalgamated with its car-dependent suburbs. This set the tone for the next quarter-century, as these outlying regions – utterly dependent on Toronto for core economic activity and massive subsidies to pay the unsustainable utility and infrastructure bills for sprawling neighborhoods of single-family homes – proceeded to gut the city they relied on.

These "conservative" mayors – the philanderer, the crackhead, the sexual predator – turned the city into a corporate playground, swapping public housing and rent controls for out-of-control real-estate speculation and trading out some of the world's best transit for total car-dependency. As part of that decay, the city rolled out the red carpet for Uber, allowing the company to put as many unlicensed taxis as they wanted on the city's streets.

Now, it's hard to overstate the dire traffic situation in Toronto. Years of neglect and underinvestment in both the roads and the transit system have left both in a state of near collapse and it's not uncommon for multiple, consecutive main arteries to shut down without notice for weeks, months, or, in a few cases, years. The proliferation of Ubers on the road – driven by desperate people trying to survive the city's cost-of-living catastrophe – has only exacerbated this problem.

Uber, of course, would dispute this. The company insists – despite all common sense and peer-reviewed research – that adding more cars to the streets alleviates traffic. This is easily disproved: there just isn't any way to swap buses, streetcars, and subways for cars. The road space needed for all those single-occupancy cars pushes everything further apart, which means we need more cars, which means more roads, which means more distance between things, and so on.

It is an undeniable fact that geometry hates cars. But geometry loathes Uber. Because Ubers have all the problems of single-occupancy vehicles, and then they have the separate problem that they just end up circling idly around the city's streets, waiting for a rider. The more Ubers there are on the road, the longer each car ends up waiting for a passenger:

https://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Uber-Lyft-San-Francisco-pros-cons-ride-hailing-13841277.php

Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. After years of bumbling-to-sinister municipal rule, Toronto finally reclaimed its political power and voted in a new mayor, Olivia Chow, a progressive of long tenure and great standing (I used to ring doorbells for her when she was campaigning for her city council seat). Mayor Chow announced that she was going to reclaim the city's prerogative to limit the number of Ubers on the road, ending the period of Uber's "self-regulation."

Uber, naturally, lost its shit. The company claims to be more than a (geometrically impossible) provider of convenient transportation for Torontonians, but also a provider of good jobs for working people. And to prove it, the company has promised to pay its drivers "120% of minimum wage." As I write for Ricochet, that's a whopper, even by Uber's standards:

https://ricochet.media/en/4039/uber-is-lying-again-the-company-has-no-intention-of-paying-drivers-a-living-wage

Here's the thing: Uber is only proposing to pay 120% of the minimum wage while drivers have a passenger in the vehicle. And with the number of vehicles Uber wants on the road, most drivers will be earning nothing most of the time. Factor in that unpaid time, as well as expenses for vehicles, and the average Toronto Uber driver stands to make $2.50 per hour (Canadian):

https://ridefair.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Legislated-Poverty.pdf

Now, Uber's told a lot of lies over the years. Right from the start, the company implicitly lied about what it cost to provide an Uber. For its first 12 years, Uber lost $0.41 on every dollar it brought in, lighting tens of billions in investment capital provided by the Saudi royals on fire in an effort to bankrupt rival transportation firms and disinvestment in municipal transit.

Uber then lied to retail investors about the business-case for buying its stock so that the House of Saud and other early investors could unload their stock. Uber claimed that they were on the verge of producing a self-driving car that would allow them to get rid of drivers, zero out their wage bill, and finally turn a profit. The company spent $2.5b on this, making it the most expensive Big Store in the history of cons:

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/infighting-busywork-missed-warnings-how-uber-wasted-2-5-billion-on-self-driving-cars

After years, Uber produced a "self-driving car" that could travel one half of one American mile before experiencing a potentially lethal collision. Uber quietly paid another company $400m to take this disaster off its hands:

https://www.economist.com/business/2020/12/10/why-is-uber-selling-its-autonomous-vehicle-division

The self-driving car lie was tied up in another lie – that somehow, automation could triumph over geometry. Robocabs, we were told, would travel in formations so tight that they would finally end the Red Queen's Race of more cars – more roads – more distance – more cars. That lie wormed its way into the company's IPO prospectus, which promised retail investors that profitability lay in replacing every journey – by car, cab, bike, bus, tram or train – with an Uber ride:

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1RN2SK/

The company has been bleeding out money ever since – though you wouldn't know it by looking at its investor disclosures. Every quarter, Uber trumpets that it has finally become profitable, and every quarter, Hubert Horan dissects its balance sheets to find the accounting trick the company thought of this time. There was one quarter where Uber declared profitability by marking up the value of stock it held in Uber-like companies in other countries.

How did it get this stock? Well, Uber tried to run a business in those countries and it was such a total disaster that they had to flee the country, selling their business to a failing domestic competitor in exchange for stock in its collapsing business. Naturally, there's no market for this stock, which, in Uber-land, means you can assign any value you want to it. So that one quarter, Uber just asserted that the stock had shot up in value and voila, profit!

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/02/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-twenty-nine-despite-massive-price-increases-uber-losses-top-31-billion.html

But all of those lies are as nothing to the whopper that Uber is trying to sell to Torontonians by blanketing the city in ads: the lie that by paying drivers $2.50/hour to fill the streets with more single-occupancy cars, they will turn a profit, reduce the city's traffic, and provide good jobs. Uber says it can vanquish geometry, economics and working poverty with the awesome power of narrative.

In other words, it's taking Toronto for a bunch of suckers.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/29/geometry-hates-uber/#toronto-the-gullible

Image: Rob Sinclair (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Night_skyline_of_Toronto_May_2009.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #uber #hubert horan #fraud #toronto #geometry hates cars #urbanism #ontpoli #olivia chow #self-regulation #transport #urban planning #taxis #transit #urban theory #labor #algorithmic wage discrimination #veena dubal

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allthecanadianpolitics · 7 months ago

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As the province's average rent price for a one-bedroom apartment continues to creep above a range many of us can reasonably afford on our own, landlords continue to search for alarming ways to appeal to prospective tenants who might be strapped for cash.

Adjust your filters on rental websites like Facebook Marketplace or Kijiji, and you're bound to come across at least a handful of listings that fully invade the tenant's privacy.

In just the past year, landlords have gone to great lengths to earn additional income, including stuffing mattresses at the tops of staircases, renting out beds smack dab in the middle of kitchens, and even packing room to the brim with shared bunk beds.

The latest disturbing listing to emerge out of Ontario's rental market is a shared room in Kitchener for $485 per month for one male, or $450 for a couple.

The listing boasts the home's proximity to transit connection points, but glosses over the fact that tenants will have to share beds within less than a foot of each other.

Full article

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

#cdnpoli #canada #canadian politics #canadian news #canadian #housing #landlords #rent #ontario #kitchener #housing crisis

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agaypanic · 2 years ago

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Benny weir x reader. Can you do one where Benny gets an online gf but have never met irl but she knows everything about the gang and him included the supernatural parts. Anyways Benny is like ALWAYS bragging about her but the gang fully just don't believe she's real. So reader flies out and decides to move to where Benny lives to surprise him. She tries really hard to wait to surprise him when he gets home from school but she just caught a glimpse of him while he was messing around outside the school and just couldn't resist running up and kissing him! Benny is? Shocked. The gang is? Shocked. Reader is? Love sick. Once Benny realized who it was he started to get so excited and not believing she was actually here all while Ethan is just like, who tf is this hot girl that's trying to get in Benny's pants rn?. And Benny has to literally make reader say she's his gf to make them believe him finally-🐇

Summer Love (Benny Weir X Reader)

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Summary: Benny’s friends don’t believe him when he tells them he has a girlfriend.

A/N: I’m having the reader move because of her parents’ work instead of just for Benny bc idk it feels a lil weird for a teenager to move for their s/o and not even telling their s/o that they’re moving

***

School had just ended for the summer, and you were racing home. Your boyfriend had made a habit of facetiming you when you were out of school, but you were hiding something from him that you really wanted to keep a secret.

After greeting your parents, you went to your room. It was filled with boxes, bubble wrap, and suitcases. Your boyfriend couldn’t see this. It would ruin the surprise.

Suddenly, your phone started ringing. You pushed everything off your bed and ensured there was nothing out of the norm around you. Deciding that everything would look fine, you answered the phone. “Hey, Y/n!” His regular grin widened when you popped up on his screen.

“Hey, Benny!” You and Benny met last summer when he was taking a road trip and went through your town. You were waitressing at the diner he and his grandma stopped at. Usually, you’d roll your eyes whenever some rando tried flirting with you, especially when you were working. But there was just something different about Benny.

It might have been the fact that he was a warlock, but he insisted that it was his amazing charisma.

“So, how was your last day of school?” He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary with your surroundings, or if he did, he didn’t say anything.

The two of you talked for about an hour before you got a text from your mom. It said something about her needing your help loading boxes into the moving van that your family had rented. You sighed.

“I gotta go; my mom needs help with something.”

“Okay, Baby. I’ll talk to you tonight?”

“Of course, Bens.” After saying your goodbyes, you hung up and ran downstairs to help your mom.

“How was your talk with Benny?” Your mom asked as you carried a heavy box out of the house.

“He didn’t suspect a thing.” You didn’t like keeping secrets from someone you cared about, especially one this big. But you knew it would be totally worth it.

“What are you gonna do when we’re on the road?”

“I told him that people were fixing the power lines on our block starting tomorrow, so we can only text or call until the power and wifi are back on. But no facetime.”

“Smart. How are you gonna surprise him?”

You hauled the box into the van, dusting your hands off.

“Still figuring that out.”

***

After lengthy drives and your parents constantly switching between driving the car or the moving van, you had finally made it to Whitechapel, Ontario. Your dad was offered a promotion in one of the corporate offices of his company, which just so happened to be in the same town that your long-distance boyfriend lived in. To say you were ecstatic to hear the news was an understatement. You remember grabbing your phone as fast as you could, about to call Benny, when you paused. Something this big shouldn’t be told over the phone.

So you decided to just tell him when you saw him. Now, you were just debating on how to do it.

After unpacking a good amount of your stuff into the new house, you told your parents that you were going to explore Whitechapel. It would give you both time to think about how you’d surprise Benny and time to get used to your new surroundings.

Whitechapel was very beautiful when you didn’t think about the freaky supernatural stuff that your boyfriend and his friends encountered almost daily. Even if you didn’t have Benny, you think that you’d still be delighted about this move.

After walking through the park and getting lunch at some little restaurant, you decided to go by the school you would be attending after the summer. It was a decent walking distance from your new house, thank goodness. As you approached the courtyard in front of the main entrance, you heard lots of laughing and talking. There was a group of kids about your age messing around. As you caught the face of the tallest boy, you started to panic.

You must have forgotten that school was going for another week in Whitechapel. Because instead of hanging out at the park or someone’s house, it looked like Benny and his friends were just now leaving school.

If it was just Benny, you’d be all over him by now. But he was with his friends. And his friends were convinced that you didn’t exist. Sure, this could have easily been disproven by a phone or facetime call. But something always prevented you and Benny’s friends from interacting for some reason. One or the other being busy or faulty internet were the main things. But Benny had also shown them pictures of you, and they didn’t believe him.

You had to do something. You were just standing there like a weirdo while your boyfriend and his friends were messing around across the street. You needed to make a decision, either run to Benny or run away from him and figure out how to tell him later.

“Benny!” You yelled as you crossed the empty street. A look of recognition crossed his face before becoming confused. He heard your voice, but there was no way you could be in Whitechapel. “Benny!” He turned to the sound of your voice.

“Y/n?!” He shouted back with an incredulous tone. He started to run towards you, and the two of you met on the sidewalk. He kissed you the second you were in his arms. Months of being apart amplified the passion; you two didn’t even care that his friends were gawking at you.

“Why is Benny making out with her?” Ethan asked. “Who even is she?”

“Maybe he paid her a million dollars,” Erica replied, looking at the scene in front of her with slight disgust.

“Wait, you can do that?” Rory asked.

“What are you doing here?” Benny asked you, refusing to let go of you. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d be here?”

“Surprise.” You smiled. Seeing him on your phone was nothing compared to seeing him standing before you. He looked so pretty, especially when he was smiling at you with a smile that he only gave you. A lovesick smile, as if you were the person for Benny. “You have no idea how much I wanted to tell you, but I wanted to surprise you.”

“Mission accomplished; this is crazy.” He kissed you again. “How long are you gonna be here?”

“Oh, you’ll be seeing a lot of me, Bens. Let’s just say you should change my address on your phone.”

“No way.” He muttered. “Are you serious?”

“Surprise again.” He kissed you to the point where you almost lost your breath, but you didn’t care in the slightest.

“This is probably the best day ever, holy crap.”

“Uh, Benny?” One of his friends called out, making the two of you remember that they were even there. “Wanna tell us what’s going on?” Benny turned around, you still in his hold. He brought you to his friends.

“Guys, this is Y/n. My girlfriend of almost a year that I keep telling you about.” His friends kept looking from you to him. “Y/n, this is-”

“Oh, don’t tell me. I got this.” You pointed to each person before naming them. “Erica, Sarah, and Rory, the vampires. Ethan, seer. And Benny, greatest warlock I know.” Your boyfriend blushed at the compliment and even more when you kissed his cheek.

“Right as always,” Benny said.

“Benny, you told her about us?” Sarah asked, somewhat panicked.

“Of course I did. That’s what you do with someone you’re dating; you tell them stuff.”

“Benny, I know that you’ve been pretty insistent on the fact that you have a girlfriend.” Ethan sighed. “But going as far as to hire someone and tell them very personal stuff about us? That’s crazy.”

“E, I didn’t hire her. She’s my girlfriend.” Benny groaned, frustrated that this debate was still going, even though his girlfriend was standing right in front of his friends. “Y/n, tell them.”

“I’m genuinely Benny’s girlfriend.” You said. “I wasn’t hired to do this; I’ve been dating him for almost a year. We met last year when he and his grandma were on a road trip.”

“I still kinda don’t believe this,” Sarah muttered. You shrugged.

“Well, it’s your guys’ loss if you don’t believe us, I guess.”

It took showing photos, messages, and even questioning Benny’s grandma. But at the end of the day, Benny’s friends finally believed the two of you. They apologized to you for not believing you were real and to Benny for not believing he really had a girlfriend all this time.

“So, besides thinking you didn’t exist, what did you think of them?” Benny asked you as he walked you home.

“They were pretty cool. I’m kinda scared of Erica, though. She has a very intense energy to her.”

“Don’t worry, she’ll warm up to you. It just takes time.”

“How long did it take for her to warm up to you?” He sighed.

“Still working on it.”

#benny weir #benny weir x reader #my babysitters a vampire x reader #my babysitters a vampire #mbav #agaypanic

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indulgentdaydream · 11 months ago

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ive had this thought for ages about jason dating a southern girl/guy/person

Thoughts?

YES ANON OH YES I HAVE

I’m not southern in an american context (which i assume this ask is in) but I am very much southern in a Canadian context (which, in ontario, is pretty similar)

I’m thinking of this as also a from the countryside! type of reader headcanons…

Here are my thoughts…

(This is gn!reader btw)

So for whatever reason, you end up moving to Gotham City. Whether for school or a new life or a new job opening.

Rent is cheap, but you’re thinking you may need to put yourself into self defence classes.

Lots of pros and cons.

Luckily!! One pro is your new boyfriend!!

I really don’t believe Jason would date anyone unless he had known them and been friends with them first (demiromantic!jason truther right here)

ANYWAYS

Jason being a little shocked at the idea that you used to have to drive 30+ minutes to get to the grocery store before you moved to Gotham

Jason getting HEART ATTACKS because you’re way too busy staring up at all the buildings in awe while walking, too busy to be looking for highly possible dangers up ahead

“That’s so huge!! Look at all the windows at that one!”

“Please tell me you don’t do this when I’m not here guiding you.”

Later in your relationship, if you’re not afraid of heights, and he knows no one will see y’all, he takes you to the top of wayne enterprises to see all of gotham

One time during patrol, he catches sight of you walking back from one of your outings.

He’s not stalking… he’s making sure his partner is getting home safe!

He watches you wait for a crosswalk when there isn’t a single car around and finds it adorable.

Like… just cross. It gets you home faster and out of danger.

He finds your differences in growing up fascinating,

He was in alleyways, broken down buildings, only got to properly see the sun once in a blue moon when the clouds were gone and it was just at the right angle.

You grew up always in the sun, able to see the stars at night in such clarity, had the choice of seeing the sunrise AND sunset every day.

Please take Jason to the country on a clear summer night so this boy can look at the stars with you PLEASE

I was going to comment on accents, but Jason has no say against yours

I’ve always imagined him with the THICKEST new jersey accent, distinctly something that people associate with Gotham (or at least the poorer people of gotham)

He’s trained it away, but it comes back when tired, pissed off, distracted, saying something familiar, etc. (it happens to me at the best of times with that canadian accent😞 i catch myself off guard sometimes)

If he comments on your southern accent, you have FULL authority to bring up the one time he woke up at your place talking about a “cuppo CAUWfee” (cup of coffee)

Feel free to add on to this with your own hcs in the reblogs!!

This is kinda messy my bad

❤️- Missy

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things-stankyle-probably-said · 21 days ago

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Just curious, what do you think the main 4's living situation is like in the future for how you see them? Maybe like any decor choice/aesthetic?

how come you didn't put the symbol thingy :(

stan and kyle live together, obviously on the west coast, in a mansion, they do a lot of renovating on to give it a soul. most mansions on the west coast are all grey or all white monstrosities of modern architecture which is ugly as sin but they take the time and money to give it color and make it a home they're both happy in, neither of them really know or are interested in things like aesthetic, their home is a mish mosh of different things that make them happy, almost nothing matches. they live on the west coast because it's where both of their jobs are (stan is a musician, kyle is an athlete, they're both A-listers in their fields)

cartman lives with his mom until his late 20s not because he has to, she just won't kick him out and he keeps making excuses about not needing to spend his own money on rent and not wanting to live with roommates, eventually he does decide he wants to live on his own (with money his mom put in a college (lmao) fund for him) he bums around at people's houses, basically random acquaintances traveling all over until he decides to set roots in some red state, he actually has a job making online content until he gets "discovered" for reality tv but until then he has a two bedroom apartment he has set up like every twitch streamers apartment ever, that's his decor taste

kenny mccormick moves up east to upstate new york, somewhere small with a lot of nature, he travels to the city for work when he needs to, he lost contact with kevin and his parents but he keeps in touch with karen, who lives close by in ontario, he has a cabin that's more cozy than creepy, with a lakeside view, his place is the most cluttered because he has a real home that's all his own and what makes him happy is having it be filled with things he buys or is gifted, whether that be books, quilts, mugs, dvds, plants, it's def not a hoarder situation, he knows when to part with things, but he's enjoying not having to go without, his decorating style is very warm and soft, there are no bare spots anywhere

#anon #south park #south park headcanons #stan marsh #kyle broflovski #eric cartman #kenny mccormick #ask

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kemetic-dreams · 1 year ago

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"The original "Uncle Tom",

Rev. Josiah Henson and wife; Dresden ,Canada (c1907)

Josiah Henson (June 15, 1789 – May 5, 1883) was an author, abolitionist, and minister. Born into slavery in Charles County, Maryland, he escaped to Upper Canada (now Ontario) in 1830, and founded a settlement and laborer's school for other fugitive slaves at Dawn, near Dresden in Kent County. Henson's autobiography, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (1849), is widely believed to have inspired the character of the fugitive slave, George Harris, in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), who returned to Kentucky for his wife and escaped across the Ohio River, eventually to Canada. Following the success of Stowe's novel, Henson issued an expanded version of his memoir in 1858, Truth Stranger Than Fiction. Father Henson's Story of His Own Life (published Boston: John P. Jewett & Company, 1858). Interest in his life continued, and nearly two decades later, his life story was updated and published as Uncle Tom's Story of His Life: An Autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson (1876).

Josiah Henson was born on a farm near Port Tobacco in Charles County, Maryland. When he was a boy, his father was punished for standing up to a slave owner, receiving one hundred lashes and having his right ear nailed to the whipping-post, and then cut off. His father was later sold to someone in Alabama. Following his family's master's death, young Josiah was separated from his mother, brothers, and sisters.His mother pleaded with her new owner Isaac Riley, Riley agreed to buy back Henson so she could at least have her youngest child with her; on condition he would work in the fields. Riley would not regret his decision, for Henson rose in his owners' esteem, and was eventually entrusted as the supervisor of his master's farm, located in Montgomery County, Maryland (in what is now North Bethesda). In 1825, Mr. Riley fell onto economic hardship and was sued by a brother in law. Desperate, he begged Henson (with tears in his eyes) to promise to help him. Duty bound, Henson agreed. Mr. R then told him that he needed to take his 18 slaves to his brother in Kentucky by foot. They arrived in Daviess County Kentucky in the middle of April 1825 at the plantation of Mr. Amos Riley. In September 1828 Henson returned to Maryland in an attempt to buy his freedom from Issac Riley.

He tried to buy his freedom by giving his master $350 which he had saved up, and a note promising a further $100. Originally Henson only needed to pay the extra $100 by note, Mr. Riley however, added an extra zero to the paper and changed the fee to $1000. Cheated of his money, Henson returned to Kentucky and then escaped to Kent County, U.C., in 1830, after learning he might be sold again. There he founded a settlement and laborer's school for other fugitive slaves at Dawn, Upper Canada. Henson crossed into Upper Canada via the Niagara River, with his wife Nancy and their four children. Upper Canada had become a refuge for slaves from the United States after 1793, when Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe passed "An Act to prevent further introduction of Slaves, and to limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude within this Province". The legislation did not immediately end slavery in the colony, but it did prevent the importation of slaves, meaning that any U.S. slave who set foot in what would eventually become Ontario, was free. By the time Henson arrived, others had already made Upper Canada home, including African Loyalists from the American Revolution, and refugees from the War of 1812.

Henson first worked farms near Fort Erie, then Waterloo, moving with friends to Colchester by 1834 to set up a African settlement on rented land. Through contacts and financial assistance there, he was able to purchase 200 acres (0.81 km2) in Dawn Township, in next-door Kent County, to realize his vision of a self-sufficient community. The Dawn Settlement eventually prospered, reaching a population of 500 at its height, and exporting black walnut lumber to the United States and Britain. Henson purchased an additional 200 acres (0.81 km2) next to the Settlement, where his family lived. Henson also became an active Methodist preacher, and spoke as an abolitionist on routes between Tennessee and Ontario. He also served in the Canadian army as a military officer, having led a African militia unit in the Rebellion of 1837. Though many residents of the Dawn Settlement returned to the United States after slavery was abolished there, Henson and his wife continued to live in Dawn for the rest of their lives. Henson died at the age of 93 in Dresden, on May 5, 1883.

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fatehbaz · 2 years ago

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Scientists use a refrain to sum up in the impact of earthworms [...]: “Good in your garden, bad in the forest.” It’s a quip that can sometimes come as a surprise to people used to thinking of earthworms as symptoms of healthy soil.

In Canada’s northern forests, there’s increasing evidence of a worm problem.

According to research from 2013, tiny soil invertebrates, like mites and springtails, decrease in abundance by more than 50 percent when earthworms are present. These minute creatures play an important role in the decomposition and nutrient-cycling of plants, and their decline can likely be attributed to the rapid way earthworms devour leaf litter. [...] And earthworms, it seems, are spreading everywhere. Research on their presence in northern US forests, where invasions are more advanced, suggests that they could have cascading effects including everything from more severe drought to greater human allergies. [...]

[N]early all native species of earthworms in Canada were wiped out over 12,000 years ago, during the last period of glaciation. Earthworms, we now know, have been present in southern Canada for only a few short centuries, the first having hitched a ride with colonizing Europeans [...].

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Lumbricus terrestris -- the common earthworms people find in their gardens, which are often called dew worms or Canadian nightcrawlers in fishing circles -- are one of the worm species that were transported from Europe and have settled into their new home so successfully that they’ve emerged as a valuable commodity. According to Steckley’s later research on the subject, demand for these worms as fishing bait exploded as recreational fishing became popular in the wake of the Second World War. But earthworms defy attempts at commercial cultivation and have to be plucked from the wild.

In the 1980s, southwestern Ontario, with its rich soil, abundant volume of introduced nightcrawlers, and steady supply of immigrant labour, quickly eclipsed the other worm-producing regions of North America. By the time Steckley drove past the worm pickers,

Ontario had become the epicentre of global nightcrawler production, with an estimated 500 million to 700 million worms picked and shipped across North America every year.

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Steckley, who is now a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto researching Ontario’s bait-worm industry, says that he was actually right about his initial impression: there were bags of money in that farmer’s field, at least in the figurative sense. Worm pickers usually make around $30 per 1,000 worms, and a picker in the right conditions can scoop up to 20,000 worms a night.

“Farmers who rent their land [for an entire year] can make more from worm pickers than any other crop that they feasibly plant,” says Steckley, who’s heard of rents of up to $1,500 an acre. The industry is worth around $230 million today, Steckley estimates.

Despite the spread, Steckley says there have been few efforts to regulate its downstream environmental effects -- in fact, most people he’s encountered have been unaware that earthworms are invasive. [...]

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But, in the boreal forest, most of the carbon is stored in organic matter -- that thick layer of fallen leaves, roots, moss, and rotting wood that, under normal conditions, decomposes slowly. But deep-burrowing earthworms feed on this material [...]. Justine Lejoly, who is conducting doctoral work with the University of Alberta and the Canadian Forest Service, found that, in some invaded parts of the Canadian boreal, 96 percent of this layer has disappeared. “Most of the forest floor is gone, so that means a lot of carbon is gone,” she says. This finding, which Lejoly made alongside her supervisor Sylvie Quideau is striking because 28 percent of the boreal forest is found in Canada and as much as one-third of terrestrial carbon is stored in the boreal worldwide. [...]

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Text by: Moira Donovan. “Revenge of the Earthworms.” The Walrus. With illustration by Joey Ng. 13 June 2022. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks added by me.]

#please search the keyword worms or earthworm on my blog to see how devastating non native earthworms are

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