Imagine that the greatest public funder of science has decided not to do that anymore and you were their neighbour to the north—the obvious thing to do would be to massively increase funding and adopt a leadership role. But we are Canada—and we think 19th-c extraction is the road to prosperity

“…the point of the comparison is to assert that as with Trump and pardons, Smith has quickly destroyed any notion that a unique constitutional power ought to be used with some care, and in ways that advance norms of democracy, the rule of law, and rights.”

Today, in Montreal, I was honoured to be inducted into to the Royal Society of Canada as a member of the RSC College. I’m looking forward to using the platform to fight residential school denialism and further truth and reconciliation.

This was inevitable when "always connected" became "always paying subscription fees". Modern tech is built like casinos, they're all looking for whales, but are happy to fleece everyone else too. So of course there will be people who don't want to walk into the casino.

I mean this non-flippantly: what is a core function? Let’s say the undergraduate students say one set of things, graduate students say another, the faculty - the the extent they agree - articulate core functions differently again, and the board has a totally different idea. Then what?

I'm frustrated that we've allowed gAI to be seen as doing research or writing knowledge, when what it was designed to do was write text that *looks* right. This is super cool technology, and can be useful in specific situations, but what it is *being* used for, and advertised for is not a good use.

Got home from my meetings in Vancouver and immediately got sick. So all the things I planed to work on this weekend have gone out the window. But at least I'm getting through a good novel.

Air Canada continues to live down to my expectations.

Had a productive day yesterday with the UBC Board, but as I get ready to head home I'm reflecting on how I was in Vancouver for 48 hours, didn't see the sun once, and it rained for about 20 of the hours. Very on brand.

Reading a book that I really want to like. Unfortunately wanting to like it has not equated to liking it. I'm 40% through, I think its time to admit that I just don't like this book and DNF it.

It's been a few years since I was on the UBC Vancouver campus last, so of course its overcast and damp. But thats how I remember it, so that tracks 😀.

As someone who does this experiment every year, there is no correlation between grade and hand-in order (~completion time) for any exam I've ever written. Just make a time a non-factor. Write exams that you think will take about X minutes and then give everyone 2-3X minutes to do it.

My hot take remains "killing people is bad" yes, even those people, yes, even if they did that, yes even if they're threatening to do that. There may be a very small number of situations where its the best option or unavoidable, but it's still bad then.

How it started / How it’s going

Here’s my story about Kitimat’s new motto of “it’s not for everyone”, which originally was going to be a ranking of all 161 municipal slogans in British Columbia until my bosses were like “justin this video is 14 minutes long” and “did you just make of slogans for half of these”

When your ambassador is SO deranged that Time Magazine says, "Yeah, that quote sounds real".

An intentional move by the government of Alberta to put barriers in front of access to health care.

Always fun in Brock to see the 'sidewalks' disappear whenever it rains. #kamloops

I hear it's turkey day down south. Remember to season your bird inside and out and use plenty of fat as well. Dry, tasteless turkey is an insult to Charles Boyle.

I'm writing up a conference proposal and it occured to me that while I see all of my work as being connected, others might not. It really all comes down to asking, and teaching others to ask, "but why?" in better and better ways.

Just saw a student affairs job posting in Canada with minimum education at a masters degree, thats pretty common, but with doctorate preferred. That's a new change for non-administration roles. Even stranger was that the starting wage was below FT sessional instructor rate at that PSI.

This is the 2nd time a major government report from Deloitte has been found to contain errors likely generated by AI. First in Australia and now, as The Independent has confirmed, in a major healthcare policy paper for the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador #nlpoli #AI #deloitte

The party that promised "free speech on campus" has made sure there can be no free speech on campuses.

It feels like every few years we get to learn a whole new group of rich men are trash. Unfortunately we still haven't take out the trash from the last time. That these people aren't social pariahs is an indictment of our society.

The academic world has done an extremely bad job at making even the most basic things about how academics works publicly understood.

See also coffee and wine: there's awful coffee and wine, and the jump from there to "middle" coffee and wine is miles bigger than the jump from middle to good.

Were I a newspaper person I'd be using this moment to go after the NYT for covering up, instead of covering, some of the biggest stories of the last decade and seemingly protecting pedophiles.

Once again, if you wrote a story in which the jetsetting corrupt FBI chief took a government plane to the "Boondoggle Ranch" an editor would tell you to get a different job, because you're not cut out for writing believable stories.

The aurora is just barely visible to the naked eye, but the magic of cameras can see it.

As a purely personal act of exercising agency against offense to my conscience and for wasting my time, I will not be reviewing Ann Patchett's next book (or any other Harper Collins book) because they took the time to pitch me a book of obvious lies. biblioracle.substack.com/p/why-i-wont...

This. As @biblioracle.bsky.social talks about, writing is thinking and thinking is writing.

Being pro-immigration was a key part of Harper season 1. It attracted a lot of second generation Canadians to the CPC platform.

Hey all, if you haven't been listening to Community of Praxis scholarly podcast you're missing out. @brennacgray.bsky.social had an amazing point in last weeks about learning experiences that are surprises to the teacher/educator and how important and impactful they are. #highered

I don't mean to only complain about the budget. Here is one of the awesome things in it, more funding to support work-integrated learning placements. www.cbc.ca/news/busines...

The 🇨🇦 Standing Committee on Science and Research passed a modified resolution this afternoon that the requested ricouncil applicant and reviewer data can be aggregated and anonymized. Thanks to the many researchers who signed letters pointing out legitimate data privacy concerns. 👏👏

Me: what on earth does Kant mean by this? Why can't I figure it out? One of the best philosophers of the last 50 years: yeah, no one can, I don't think Kant is wrong, but that is super confusing to everyone and really the distinction doesn't matter much in practical matters.

I get that the law has some restraint on Universities, and in that way - the administration in particular, are curtailed in how we engage in this conversation. However if this was a data breach by any other party, we would have made a statement, and done something about it.

This budget would be right at home for first season Harper in a lot of ways. Not an indictment of it, just a reflection on the type of government we have with Carney.

So what this tells you is a) these "cuts" to new visas issued aren't really cuts, but rather targets catching up to reality and b) the damage to instituional finances I described aren't going to happen next year - they've already happened.

Here's the biggest PSE story you haven't heard yet: the Canada Student Grant for low-income students is being cut from $4200/year to $3000/year as of next August. It's implicit in the budget tables but the government is too chickenshit to actually say so directly.

Kneecap to the PSE sector - TOTAL temporary resident target (TFWs plus international students) to be roughly halved, from 670K to 370K. That's minimum a $2 Billion hit to the sector. Probably more. Will work this out later

The budget seems like its very much a red tory budget. Lots of supports to industries, big cuts to civil service, backing away from PSE, R&D and green/climate change priorities. Other than complaining the deficit $ figure is higher than PP likes, how would the CPC actually do anything different?

Politicians deciding that promises of confidentiality are unimportant is not a good look. This kind of ethics violation being done for the sake of what? So they can get a headline or two?

The letter is crashing because so many people are trying to sign it (which is good). According to federally connected ethics peeps, the most important thing we can do if we are directly affected is to fill out this form and ask to make a formal complaint: services.priv.gc.ca/demande-info...

As I regularly note, "AI" at this point is an umbrella marketing term for a bunch or generative/machine learning/other formerly differently-termed processes that (of course) have no actual intelligence behind them. It means nothing useful for how the underlying computing proceeds. Thus the quotes.

Applicants and reviewers enter into a mutual confidentiality agreement with funding agencies to enable a rigorous and robust peer review system built on trust. Arbitrarily violating that trust and those agreements undermines Canadian science. /4

De-anonymizing data is a huge ethics issue. That information was given in response to a promise that it wouldn't be used like this, now some politicians want it. #cdnpse

"At what point does a Ph.D. program become too small to function?" Now this is THE question that every single PhD program in the United States is currently (or most definitely should be) discussing

Things I hate: limited word counts in submissions for conferences etc. Things that force me to write better: limited word counts in submissions for conferences etc.