🧪 So if de-extincted 'mammoths' really are "about two years" away, then they need to be implanting embryos right now, as @toriherridge.bsky.social pointed out in 2024. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

"AI is turning research into a scientific monoculture." www.nature.com/articles/s44...

I just want an endless stream of pictures of dinosaurs looking like fat, fluffy birds. For my mental health.

I don't think you have to be MEAN to people who use AI. Just be HONEST and don't accept their claim that the AI slop they prompted was authored or created by them. That's not mean, that's just the truth. Granted, being bluntly truthful can land as meanness to some people.

Ooof. Hug your kids.

OLA is accepting proposals from all libraries to share experiences & ideas about washrooms for the first-ever Safer Spaces Symposium. The goal is to create a day that benefits & speaks to the experiences of library systems, users, & staff. Submit your proposal by Feb. 13! buff.ly/gvnuAYb

i think we all need to step back and realize that peak art was made when neolithic pot in the shape of a pig was fired

Join me for an uncanny and nostalgic journey through Brampton's tragically forgotten malls. Curated by yours truly! Feb. 28 leaving from Toronto’s Chinatown Centre. #LiminalAssembly

My uncle got typhus is the late 1940s Berlin. There were so many cases they turned a morgue into a children's isolation ward.

I'm listening to the Sold a Story podcast, and it's blowing my mind. I had no idea this was happening. And I'm baffled by concept three cueing.

It seems like everyone is struggling and/or emotionally overwhelmed. There's so much going on. The smallest thing might be someone's last straw. It's a lot of absorb, and it's a lot to hold in. Can we take the year off, or something?

Emotionally exhausted, but so proud of the UBC students who turned up in the hundreds today to expressed peaceful solidarity in the face of unwelcome and uninvited "debate" about residential schools.

Fair bit of a scene at the OneBC event at UBC and the counterevent organized by students. Close to a thousand people here, mostly drowning out OneBC supporters. Some pushing and shoving, nothing escalating past that yet it seems.

Today is going to be a difficult day in my part of the world. But this difficult day is a reminder that as long as we don't work towards decolonization, reconciliation, and dismantling white supremacy culture, we pave the way for more difficult days like this one.

I'm stuck on the idea that someone might *unknowingly* use genAI to write fiction they're claiming as their own. This seems like a plausibility shield being raised pre-emptively. There is no way to *accidentally* outsource your writing to an LLM, no matter how many systems it's built into.

Sometimes you fly from Toronto to Vancouver, but end up spending the night in Calgary. One of life’s little surprises. Why visit just one province when you could visit two? Maybe tonight I’ll be in Winnipeg, who knows? Life’s rich pageant.

Yes! I work out the ending very early on, long before I start writing, usually. I like an ending that ties up the story beats, but also feels like the beginning of a new adventure. #kidlitchat

And how exactly do you propose to “kill trans ideology“ without killing trans people

As the head of content and publishing for Constellate Publishing, with the vast majority of our 2026 books so far written by women, I’m great with this.

[screaming at the top of my lungs, once again] the fundamental technology of humanity is care

I'm genuinely surprised that a chatbot became a tool for search so quickly for so many people. When has a chatbot ever been an effective or authoritative voice on anything? How is that a format that feels truthy?

“You aren’t from a dark planet, are you?” “No.” Calvin shook his head firmly, though the beast couldn’t see him. “We’re—we’re shadowed. But we’re fighting the shadow.” ~ A Wrinkle in Time

Well, I guess now's the time to take the whole text of A STUDY IN SCARLET, replace Sherlock Holmes with a gritty version of Winnie the Pooh, and slap it up on AO3. I'll call it A STUDY IN POOH. Behold the power of my authorship! Let the awards flow in!

When there's something strange in your neighbourhood...

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.