Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 673

Slate Asset Management is hiring.

We are looking to hire an Associate or Director to join the Development team here in our Toronto office. The full set of responsibilities can be found over here on LinkedIn , but at a high level, we are looking for someone who wants to join an entrepreneurial team and lead -- fairly independently -- a portfolio of urban infill projects.

Our approach to development really stems from the broader Slate platform . We are bold and thematic investors who work to create long-term value for our investors and partners. From a development perspective, that translates into an unwavering commitment to design & culture, innovation, and disciplined project execution.

We pride ourselves on working alongside the world's best architects and designers, and uncovering opportunities that others may be overlooking. We are proactive and hands-on in everything that we do. We also feel an inherent sense of responsibility for the buildings that we create and we want the work that we do to help improve our cities. We stand behind our product.

If this sounds like a mission that you can get behind, then I would encourage you to learn more about us at slateam.com and submit an application via LinkedIn . Please note that we are also asking candidates to introduce themselves through a short video.

Social media can be both fun and useful. Over the weekend, we were exploring a few different design options for an address sign at Mackay Laneway House and so I posted this image on Twitter and storied it on Instagram. I got a bunch of responses, as well as some great suggestions. And we ultimately ended up making a small change to the design. That process was both fun and useful. The final design is now out for pricing and production.

But as we all know, there is also a dark side to social media. The algorithms that power social media have been optimized to amplify whatever drives the most engagement. Oftentimes that means whatever gets people the most enraged. In this recent NY Times article , Stuart A. Thompson and Charlie Warzel make a compelling argument that Facebook has actually been coaxing many Americans into taking more extreme views on the platform -- it made them more popular.

And we're not talking about extreme views on home address signs.

Founded in 2003, Tokyo-based BALMUDA refers to itself as a creativity and technology company that creates home appliances and other products designed to deliver " thrilling and wonderful experiences ." Last year they entered the US market with products such as The Kettle and The Toaster. A toaster is perhaps one of those things that isn't usually described as being thrilling. But BALMUDA The Toaster is one beautiful toaster, and according to Monocle Magazine it has become a sleeper hit around the world. (The company went public last December in Tokyo and its share price is up nearly 80% at the time of writing this.) It has a special steaming technology that keeps bread moist on the inside and crispy on the outside. What you do is add 5 cc of water to the toaster before heating it up and that produces a thin layer of steam within the appliance. I never knew that my bread needed this, but clearly it does. Watching the latest movie from The Minimalists has taught me nothing. I hope these guys start shipping to Canada very soon.

Image: BALMUDA