The rationales of people using genAI to generate novels and claiming they're authors are like explaining that they've spent money to send an AI to France, and therefore they are now French.

“When a wise, magical tree, the hero of the story, declares it can be any pronoun it wants, many children will think, ‘Maybe I can too.’ That’s a seed most families in this room never agreed to plant.” They prefer children to suffer rather than express something they don't want to hear.

Girl Guides of Canada has made a statement, likely in response to the cowardly decisions of Girlguiding UK. 🏳️‍⚧️

Take over threats. Tariffs. Now MAGA has woken Canada’s sleeping giant: Franklin.

🔥 BREAKING: A spokesperson for Kids Can Press, the publisher of the Franklin the Turtle books, messaged me today about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth using the likeness and image from the books to make light of killings in the Caribbean in his post yesterday on X.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbR_... Jesse Wente's take on anything is always worth listening to. His thoughts on the impact of pretendians, and what this behaviour says about settler society, needs to ring through the streets.

We've discussed pretendians ad nauseam on the podcast, with each new exposé much like the last. That said, as we heard from @kimtallbear.bsky.social in 2024, once we get beyond the tabloidy and tawdry, there is a bigger picture at play podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/m...

I wish there were more ways for pretendians to be unmasked that didn't cause so much harm to Indigenous people. The fraud is harm, the unmasking is harm, it's harm all the way down and in every direction.

I honestly don't understand the anti-diversity perspective. You have to ignore reality and the work itself so fiercely to take that stance. The mental load of avoiding learning anything must be exhausting.

Is there a reason why people make videos sitting in cars?

I just realized this morning that kids don't play cards so much anymore. So they aren't playing bad card games over lunch like we used to. Is that a loss? I don't even know. I guess I should teach my niblings how to play President.

Well, it sure is a Monday. Oh wait.

I thought Clara Zetkin died in 1933 at the age of 75, but today I learned she's been living in Portland with her girlfriend. Does she has a gofundme to support her efforts to evade American authorities, or

20 books by Indigenous authors in honour of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation: www.cbc.ca/books/20-boo...

On the eve of Truth and Reconciliation Day in Canada, we recommend five books to read and reflect on from @arsenalpulp.bsky.social, @ecwpress.bsky.social, @gooselane.bsky.social, @talonbooks.bsky.social, and @nightwoodeditions.bsky.social. Browse our full list here: alllitup.ca/book-list/re...

"More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

He is out here living his best life, even in this economy.

I'm disappointed in the quality of the discourse around AI at the moment. Because there's so much fear, suspicion, and discomfort, the criticism is often kneejerk and lacks necessary nuance. I don't mean "give ChatGPT a chance," I mean "that's a bad and potential dangerous argument".

If you ban books for young people that address queerness and sexuality, who is served? Who is best served by keeping these topics taboo, and by keeping children ignorant about them?

I wish these book-banning folks were asked about how they landed on this issue, what problem they think they're solving, and how banning mostly queer books would solve it.

"Librarians aren't psychologists, they aren't qualified to decide what children can read!" "40% Albertan have a BA. No one can say parents don't have the education to determine what children can read!" Wait til this right-wing talking head finds out how many degrees librarians have.

I enjoy the idea that universities somehow aren't in the real world. It's what I always suspected: universities exist in a fantasy realm with enchanted forests and lithe elves bounding around with flowers in their hair. You have a question? Let's stop time and just ponder it for a while, shall we?

That thing where someone uses the term "neurodiverse" and you don't whether they don't believe in disability and think everyone would be a peak performer if it weren't for capitalism, etc., or if they just thought it was just a nice alternative to "neurodivergent".

We asked some Australians to try these classic Canadian snack foods and they died, they all died

Marks & Spencer ships to Canada.

DANCING WITH MAMMOTHS—Neanderthals, #queer found family 🌈, #neurodivergent perspectives 🦄, pygmy mammoths 🦣, and a sibling bond that could outlast an ice age 💗. Set in Vancouver. 🇨🇦 Give'r. #questpit #MG #S #Q

@cbcstephenquinn.bsky.social I Don't Like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats, though

11-yr-old Saffron sees emotions as coloured steam and assumes—wrongly—that everyone does. When her de-extinction scientist parents are arrested and there's a rumour that a kid in her class is a Neanderthal, she fears it’s her. 🇨🇦 #playlistpitch #kidlit #MG open.spotify.com/track/1WFTbf...

Anyway, this reminded me that the reason I quit Pokemon Go was that despite the MANY, MANY warnings to pay attention to my surroundings while playing, one time I almost fell into an open excavation near Capilano Mall

🏺🦣 Recorded a radio interview today (for upcoming series), and refreshing my reading on its theme led me to this gorgeous project by Oliver Beer: an exploration of sound & voice & space within one of my *absolute* favourite Palaeolithic painted caves, Font de Gaume. www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hc5...

My main character's role model is her brother's boyfriend. When she feels like a monster, he reminds her that being different is hard, but also brave and kind of amazing. Receiving that compassion makes her want give it to others. #bluepit #AmQuerying #MG

Vancouver on Monday evening: a dude with Alberta plates blasting the Barenaked Ladies. Not one of the fun ones, either, Hairshirt. We've got these chains hanging around our necks People wanna strangle us with them before we take our first breath. It’s a mood.

The first people a dictator puts in jail after a coup are the writers, the teachers, the librarians — because these people are dangerous...Let us have the courage to go on being dangerous people. From a lecture to the Library of Congress. www.themarginalian.org/2014/04/10/d...

“This is the origin of present-day differences. Not the differences between groups dispersed around the world, which are tiny in comparison. The differences between the genomic halves within every one of us.” www.johnhawks.net/p/the-humani...

I am a librarian! I just finished a story about a girl who sees emotions as coloured smoke. Her mother resurrects extinct animals, including a dinosaur and a herd of pygmy mammoths. There's a rumour someone in her class in a Neanderthal, and she's afraid it's her. #QueerWriters #writesky

Back in the day it was easy to vicariously attend conferences by just following the social media posts, but alas. I hope everyone's having a great time at #WILU2025!

The crows are very shouty today. I know their babies are big, demanding teenagers now, and I'm sure these two facts aren't unrelated.

MG pitch I wish I could use: Inside Out and Onward meet The Wild Robot, but gay.

Yesterday I saw a crow repeatedly dive bomb a corgi while shouting at him non-stop. The corgi was completely unfazed by this and almost seemed happy about it. I am forced to assume that corgi is a destroyer of worlds.

I think people using AI to write fiction are seriously underestimating the creative decision-making involved. They must believe that the idea is the main thing, a solid outline = authorship, and word choice and sentence construction are just grinding, or something.

Tuesday evening reminder: Write the book. Make the zine. Pack the shelves. Fill the world with so many stories they'll never be able to silence us all.

The settler audacity to presume that you can take other people's land and leave with it! Those treaties weren't signed with Alberta. Without the crown via Canada, Alberta has no land. Secessionist movements are functionally #landback movements. Go ahead, give it back.

Full story here.. Danielle Smith is allegedly trying to 🇺🇸ise #Alberta 🇨🇦 even more.. edmonton.citynews.ca/2025/05/07/p... "Political scientist Jared Wesley has said the bill mirrors anti-democratic tactics used by 🇺🇸 President 🟠" #ElbowsUp to within 📢 #cdnpoli 🇨🇦

May 5 is Red Dress Day, the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Today is dedicated to honouring the thousands of lives of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people.

Gosh, the costumes in Andor are stunning.

The young coyotes in my neighbourhood are learning to howl. I'm pretty sure what they're saying is, "MOM, HE'S ON MY SIDE! MOM! MOOOOOOOOM!" I saw four of them running around in the rain last night arguing about who was It. Good show, highly recommend.

If you’re singing in a Canadian pub and you aren’t singing Barrett’s Privateers, are you completely letting the team down, or just partially?

I wildly misread a sign as “Hot Bingo” and there’s a concept no one needs.