Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
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Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
Subscribe to Brandon Donnelly
>4.2K subscribers
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
I finally did it. Over the weekend I ported this blog over from Tumblr to WordPress. I had been thinking about doing this for a while, but kept putting it off (1) because of the work involved and (2) because I was worried about my permalinks changing. About 35-40% of the visits to this blog come from organic search. I'm on the first page when you Google "real estate developer."
I had been using Tumblr since I first started writing this daily blog back in August 2013. But it started feeling increasingly limited. It isn't great for longish-form blogs like this one and it is terrible at handling photos and other embedded content. (I plan to post more of my photography now.) The last straw for me was the inability to blog from a mobile device. I tried that over the weekend and it was bad.
I was also starting to feel like the product was on the decline. Yahoo acquired Tumblr in 2013 for $1.1 billion. Tumblr hadn't yet figured out how to effectively monetize its platform and Yahoo needed a cool social product in their portfolio. But that deal doesn't seem to have gone as planned, at least not for Yahoo.
So here I am on WordPress. I'm still working out some of the kinks, but I think we're almost there. If you're reading this post in your inbox, it should be business as usual. If you're reading this post on the web, you'll notice a few differences (I'm still fine tuning the design).
Regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow now that we're just about setup.
I finally did it. Over the weekend I ported this blog over from Tumblr to WordPress. I had been thinking about doing this for a while, but kept putting it off (1) because of the work involved and (2) because I was worried about my permalinks changing. About 35-40% of the visits to this blog come from organic search. I'm on the first page when you Google "real estate developer."
I had been using Tumblr since I first started writing this daily blog back in August 2013. But it started feeling increasingly limited. It isn't great for longish-form blogs like this one and it is terrible at handling photos and other embedded content. (I plan to post more of my photography now.) The last straw for me was the inability to blog from a mobile device. I tried that over the weekend and it was bad.
I was also starting to feel like the product was on the decline. Yahoo acquired Tumblr in 2013 for $1.1 billion. Tumblr hadn't yet figured out how to effectively monetize its platform and Yahoo needed a cool social product in their portfolio. But that deal doesn't seem to have gone as planned, at least not for Yahoo.
So here I am on WordPress. I'm still working out some of the kinks, but I think we're almost there. If you're reading this post in your inbox, it should be business as usual. If you're reading this post on the web, you'll notice a few differences (I'm still fine tuning the design).
Regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow now that we're just about setup.
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