The view of the Northern Ontario forest fire haze engulfing the Toronto Skyline from Humber Bay Park West. #ForestFire #TorontoHaze #TheBigSmoke #Toronto

I said I wasn't going to allow myself to get my hopes up re any sports thing post-Blue Jays last year... and yet here we are

Ah. Glad I turned the game off.

Welp

somehow feels like england are down a man (or argentina have 12)

Well then

Totally assumed the Hesgeth thing was a joke? Is it... not?

Sure, the air is full of wildfire smoke but it's acting as a shield against the sun so it's a bit cooler today. Win-win amirite??!

Yesterday it felt like 40+ C in Toronto. Today it's cooler... because smoke from the wildfire that has obliterated Collins First Nation in northern Ontario is blocking the sun. Seems like time to re-up my column from last year on the summertime blues. thenarwhal.ca/seasonal-dep...

what’s the Odyssey about? I’m so glad you asked

It’s coming home! (Assuming home is either Madrid or Buenos Aires)

All Spanish(-speaking) final eh?

I'm not a "I need to like the characters to like the movie" kind of person but I loathed Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Left me feeling not just empty but emptier and more bitter and cynical than before I watched it.

Three ppl in a row reposted this on my tl

Sorry, for clarity, they left in the 60s/70s. I just think it’s funny (“funny”) when Toronto is as hot as northern India in July.

Parents left Chandigarh, where today it was 37 degrees, to (eventually) live in Toronto, where today it is supposed to be 37 degrees.

yes, but also, could be that everyone who uses a phone regularly finds it hard to resist a form meant to keep you swiping

source callout: did you hold off on buying a piece of electronic equipment and now can't justify it because prices on everything have gone bananas due to the AI-induced RAM crisis? (this is not really a source callout)

Toronto pals! Harbourfront Centre's free summer screenings are back, and I'm hosting them! This year has a musical each week, starting this Tuesday with DIRTY DANCING. Full schedule below! Show starts at 8:30pm! (Please note actual seating is limited, so bring a chair or a blanket or a pillow.)

There are lots of seemingly trite, cliche phrases that turn out to be true and all the health ones -- health is wealth, it's your health that matters, "When you have your health, you have everything. When you do not have your health, nothing else matters at all" -- are in fact correct and I hate it

Hard not to notice a similar line of thinking re MS gaming execs and Hollywood studio execs: big tentpoles, recognizable IP, all in service of being able to briefly catch attention amidst the cacophony of the 21st century.

Good: Sinner winning. Great: Zverev losing. Man I hate that guy. Federer vs. Nadal or Sinner vs Alcaraz that match was not, though.

Well at least the English press won’t make a big deal about an ENG v ARG match or imbue it with some deep significance or anything

#Developing 2 dead, 5 injured in active shooting near the annual Salsa on St. Clair festival

Well then

Won’t be surprised if they take the penalty back.

Wait

4-1 Norway by the end of extra time? It’s a possibility

Well then

See? I might have a future in coaching

I think England would do better if someone were to tell the players they’re supposed to put the ball behind that white frame with the net thing

'Arry rolling around on the ground while a twelve-year-old Viking decapitates his friends

This is going well

hot take but true

I talked to some experts about the boom and busts of viral food lines, and why we ("we") wait, especially when we don't need to www.weareravenous.com/restaurants-...

kate bush running past sisyphus

This could just be me being defensive but I'm not sure I liked or was convinced by the reading article everyone is talking about, in part bc I dunno if the reading of Ong is as precise as it needs to be

Whenever there’s heavy rain and you see birds and squirrels squatting under leaves etc you can’t help but think why they don’t get their act together and… build shelter? Develop an opposable thumb or two? Look into materials engineering at least? Pretty lazy of them imo

Yeah screens are a problem and hs curricula and whatever else, but that Atlantic article cites a study that said, of "236,000 American adults, only 2 percent read to a child on a given day." You have it in your power to socialize your children as readers, even if that alone is not enough.

The AI industry is prone to massive, frequent, and intensifying narrative mood swings. Part of this is typical of a boom. But I think it's also intrinsic to the tech itself nymag.com/intelligence...

Did a rare morning napkin cartoon at the airport bar…

An argument for the return of micropayments - that AI scraping tools or "grounding" (i.e. when AI models look for new information) be subject to a kind of toll. Sounds dubious to me, but interesting at least. www.therebooting.com/p/ai-has-rev...

huuuuuuge

anton chigurh: heads or tails. you must chose. me: is that a Prince Valiant cut? anton: yeah it used to have more volume me: you want to use something light on it, no silicone-heavy washes and of course... both of us (laughing): blow dry from the roots! me: alright heads anton: it's tails

Canada needs out of the box thinking, it's true. But why is no-one proposing truly radical pipeline ideas? The cheese sauce pipeline. The blue cheese-ranch pipeline. The hibiscus kombucha pipeline.

toronto! come help me celebrate the launch of my book, A Nation of Tinkerers. i'll be in conversation with Melissa Vincent to talk about the book's subjects and themes, and @dianachanmcnally.bsky.social will be treating us all to some CanCon disco classics. 7:30pm, July 28th at Osler Records.

Still really struck by this thought. My initial thoughts about AI were about what I suggested was a desire for an "objective" outside voice that could dispense truth; but there's an interesting labour wrinkle to this idea below: that the labour-replacing tech can appear to function as a form of aid?