“Right now the focus should be on supporting the community in mourning, not weaponizing this event as hate against a vulnerable group at large.” I hate profoundly that articles like this need to be written when, like Mel says, the focus should be on community. But thank you Mel for writing ❤️

if you played sonic the hedgehog and put down the controller, sonic would look at you and tap his foot impatiently. this was proof that sega genesis cartridges had souls. the decision was made to make the storage cases a lot larger than the cartridges so they would have room to move around in there

No son, they are not "magically delicious." The workers made them delicious. This is a slogan meant to mystify the social conditions of labor

Something I’ve been thinking: if you create software, or do something that is potentially “a software problem,” AI can seem like it would be incredibly transformative. But are most things software problems?

The small-town paper in Tumbler Ridge is going to need support. This is its front page right now. Their subscription page is here: www.patreon.com/tumblerridge...

This is really good. Makes a link between the attention economy, the superhero era and what it means to be the person paid attention to vs. being "a normal" i.e. the faceless no-one who is part of the crowd.

Going to vibecobe a split screen app that rapidly flits between Bluesky and Twitter Clockwork Orange-style and radicalize myself into becoming a reactionary centrist

Well I for one find this positively shocking www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/w...

You write things and then years on you don't exactly feel the same way. For example, I wish I were more sympathetic to homeowners or people's sense of their own safety in this.

Hey, here's a thing I wrote in 2022. thewalrus.ca/porch-camera...

As a middle-aged man, it is my duty to inform you that we might touch 0°C today for the first time in >3 weeks. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

"My first instinct — that I didn't think too well on — I walked out and punched it right in the face." www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

A while ago, stupidly drove to a book event, gave up out of frustration after looking for parking for nearly an hour. So for tonight’s book thing, took transit!… and got stuck on a streetcar for 25 minutes and missed the event. Toronto: The city designed to sap your will to live™️

Me, reading Bluesky today: but bangers *are* English

Me in the Criterion Closet: wow Hollow Man, what a film Criterion employee: you aren’t allowed to bring movies in Me in the Criterion Closet shaking my sleeves in an odd way: wow Hollow Man 2, what a film

In some minor good news, the New Yorker has hired Becca Rothfield.

Housing is always far more complicated than can fit in a headline, but this is worth a read: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/r...

Extremely exciting news: We're hiring a full-time film critic to come work with me at The A.V. Club! You probably have an idea if you're qualified for this, but if there's something that's not in the job listing, I'm sure I can answer Qs www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/43...

Totally shocked to see quite a few people walking on Lake Ontario

Totally shocked to see quite a few people walking on Lake Ontario

In this weekend’s @thestar.com column I look at how churches have a tradition creating needed housing in Canada & Cabbagetown’s objection to height at St Luke’s is wrong. It’s also voter-supported city policy to force all density into a few areas so you can’t have it both ways, yo.

Maybe there’s something to this critique of the smart home but some people live in a completely different reality than me:

I still check Twitter, partly for work and (relatedly) partly bc there are still smart people there amidst all the muck. Pretty remarkable, though, how it's just normal there now to log on to quite explicitly racist debates playing out. Really feels it's the place where that stuff became normalized.

Folks... I'm starting to have my doubts about this Donald Trump fella

Doug Ford is wrong about supervised consumption sites #Opinion

I will say that it would be hard for us to have multiple family members over because they all live in car dependent suburbs and parking would in fact be an issue. Some could take transit, some physically could not, others would simply balk at the idea.

An account you control, @PagliacciDaClown, has been suspended for the following post: "Who up doing clown shit, lmao? I'm thinking about ending my own life." Our moderation policies aim to encourage healthy discourse. For an example of a user we think exemplifies this spirit, see @PagliacciDaClown

i wonder what happens to poptimism in the era of slop

Huh. Keen to read this later. Ime, these "gremlin boxes" are incredibly popular amongst S. Asians in the GTA too, as they give ppl access to hundreds of channels from India

Definitely worthy of a trigger warning, but confronting this sort of thing seems important (even if one already knows). www.thetimes.com/article/3c43...

“Problematic” movie that you have nonetheless watched numerous times and will watch many times again? Mine is Sicario

The biggest Canadian song of the moment being “Yukon” and the fact that it is referring to the vehicle, not the territory, means something, I just don’t know what

one thing that would be cool, when prominent creators turn out to be terrible people, would be if we didn't have to go through this performative dance of insisting that their work was never good in the first place.

Worth taking some time to see Greenland through Greenlandic eyes. Jason Farago on Inuuteq Storch's photography at MoMA PS 1: ‘Raw, sometimes romantic pictures taken across the island ... focus[ing] on the usual, the modest. What’s fleeting. What melts.’ www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/a...

Well, what does it mean for AI to be "fake?" Language evokes intelligence - in the reader. It's a powerful illusion. A reasonable critic sees that computation at scale can fuse language w/math in ways that do things. That is not "intelligence," and the problems that come that error are bountiful.

My policy of not using profanity on these internets is... tested

"The world is looking to Canada for reassurance that a stable, thriving multiracial democracy is not only possible but desirable. This is the message Carney left out of his speech - and it is one our prime minister must urgently convey." - www.thestar.com/opinion/cont... @rondeibert.bsky.social

Escorted over to Ward’s Island this morning #Toronto

Logging into Bluesky

It seems so completely, plainly obvious that absurd amounts of wealth and the corresponding power that comes with it are corrupting, morally on an individual level and more broadly on a social level. People will look back on the early 21st century and wonder how it was allowed to happen.

Catherine O’Hara has died at the age of 71, TMZ reports. (www.tmz.com/2026/01/30/c...)

Not to lib out too much but the fact that the Canadian prime minister embraced the gay hockey romance (almost literally) does point to meaningful differences at the moment between public culture in Canada and the U.S.

Reminder: journalists get arrested in Canada too. In fact, The Narwhal is in court right now challenging the RCMP for arresting photojournalist Amber Bracken. Our editor-in-chief,Carol Linnitt, testifies today and Monday, and court is open to the public if you're in Vancouver.

While we are reading the news about journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort being arrested, a reminder that a Canadian journalist was arrested while covering a protest action in Northern B.C. in 2021. thetyee.ca/News/2026/01...

alright that's enough bluesky for today, time to log off

I don't know why I find it so funny that Trump just says out loud the thing that has driven the housing crisis for well over a decade

My pet theory is that airports/flights contain more hot people than average because there's some correlation between attractiveness and earnings/wealth