Fully endorse this. Getting a used digital piano and starting virtual piano lessons in 2020 was one of the best things I have done for myself. I play terribly and it’s so much fun!

Liberal MP Bruce Fanjoy from the Ottawa-area riding or Carleton is breaking ranks with the Carney government on its Return to Office policy for public servants: “There is little to no evidence that a one-size-fits-all RTO policy will improve productivity or service to Canadians”

Not for nothing, these are the things that white supremely., capitalism, and the venture-capitalist industrial complex want to take from us. Don’t let them. Take a humanities course. Support the arts. And if you’re a STEM person? Fight for your colleagues.

Good morning.

Who's going to leverage synergized excellence though.

Union workers solved the trolley problem, you're welcome

"...women receive substantially lower potential ratings despite receiving higher performance ratings... lower potential ratings do not reflect accurate forecasts of future performance: Women subsequently outperform male colleagues..." pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/...

Recently, I got a notice from my new pharmacy provider that they wouldn’t cover my thyroid medication and bizarrely suggested insulin instead! I need my thyroid medication. Then a couple of days ago, they called and told me to disregard the letter they had sent. AI is such a time and labor saver!

Hello? Cassandra here. Remember all those times we AI-resistant educators were warning about this exact thing?

I just thought everyone should see this

Here it comes. The US administration is intervening directly in Canada's internal politics to try and bring about the breakup of the country. This demands a forceful response.

Just because Mark Carney and Evan Solomon aren’t interested in hearing from the public (or anyone outside their hand-picked experts circle) doesn’t mean we can’t make our voices heard. www.peoplesaiconsultation.ca

Remote work was framed as a temporary response, but the data show a lasting shift. Office attendance has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. Evidence points to higher retention, stable productivity, reduced infection risk, and critical support for workers affected by Long COVID.

Ever wondered what a downtown pedestrian streets looks like on a Monday evening in the middle of January in Montreal?

Me: Carney must have nothing to do with Trump's "Board of Peace". Joining is complicity. Carney: Says he'll accept. Carney fans: He's just playing 4D chess / Don't you want aid to get into Gaza? Trump: Pay me $1 billion. Also, I'm inviting Putin. EU: Hard pass. www.i24news.tv/en/news/inte...

I love Doctorow’s writing. This article is packed with insight. The particular concept of an “accountability sink” related to the example of AI “reading” X-rays is going to stay with me: “The radiologist’s job is not to oversee the AI’s work, it is to take the blame for the AI’s mistakes.”

Canada must not do this. It is a mockery of international political governance, legitimizing the idea that Trump can simply push aside other countries' sovereignty. www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

Is CIHR still on/posting at the other place? Why isn’t it here yet?

Seeing Zohran instantly getting a bunch of shit done in like a week makes you realize that politicians could always do that on some level if they wanted it bad enough and very few of them actually do.

"It's not the same as Twitter", friend Twitter isn't the same as Twitter. Old Twitter died years ago, we need to accept that almost no-one under 30 is interested in joining text-based social media - the format will die with us, like floppy discs, Mars Delights, and the concept of hope for the future

the left has offered solutions: -raising wages -universal healthcare -affordable housing -universal childcare -paid parental leave -action to mitigate the climate crisis if only our leaders supported these wildly popular solutions. people don’t want kids in a world we’re struggling to survive in.

Academics’ enthusiastic (and often uncritical) embrace of LLMs and generative artificial intelligence will be a factor in the junkification of research. You can’t outsource thinking nor the cognitive task of gradually absorbing knowledge. Nor discernment and creativity.

As this ramps up and we are asked to cheerlead for it, I remain genuinely shocked that Canada, once again, under the banner of a **nation-building**, has created a funding program that excludes Canadian students and researchers based on presence in Canada. /1 universityaffairs.ca/news/feds-la...

THIS. Did you know sickle cell is curable, now? FULLY curable. If you're feeling down or despairing about what FEELS like technology/advancement/science "standing still" or being fully malicious, I have great news: You're not paying attention to actual science. Just tech industry marketing.

The time between Christmas and New Years is like the dot above the i in Jeremy Bearimy.

Things are Terrible, but this isn't. Be weird.

i'm fascinated by how much people love and are amazed by chat gpt saying "nice catch!" and "great observation!" because i personally find the condescension and obsequiousness the most skin-crawling thing about how LLMs "talk"

This is s why I hate the rush to add “AI coding” and “automatic thematic analysis” into QDA software. It is both antithetical to foundational precepts of qualitative research, and it is is neither valid nor empirical as a process. Utterly self defeating “innovation” just to scale a product feature.

Just decline the peer review invitation. What are you people even doing?

Nothing more than perceived wealth that doesn’t exist for the purposes of taxes, but magically does for the purposes of leverage. Meanwhile, the rest of us pay real taxes on low wages and can’t leverage shit. The game is rigged. Tax the rich.

The coming years are going to reveal a lot more waste on 'AI' like this by our governments, to the tune of 10s of billions squandered on appalling nonsense, all to make rich Tech Bros richer.

Excerpt taken from an article on Verge. The fact that the ad took so much longer, with so much extra effort only to come out so much worse than it would be to shoot it traditionally. GenAI videos proving themselves not as useful as most techbros dream them to be.

"I'm not in denial, I'm in open rebellion" damn that quote goes hard

Anniversary of halifax explosion so obligatory "Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbour making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye boys." - Vincent Coleman saved like 300 people on a train, and started the emergency response. Died for it

December 6 is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women in Canada, to mark the anniversary of the murders of 14 female engineering students at l'École Polytechnique de Montréal in 1989 in an act of gender-based violence and to remember those women.

Finally someone with stones !!!!!

Day 3 of Berton’s advent calendar

Justified text is the absolute worst way to format a manuscript or a grant and this is a hill I am willing to die on.

There are more disabled people who are pretending to be healthy so that you don’t judge us or think us incapable than there are healthy people pretending to be disabled. If you find yourself questioning whether someone is really disabled, you’re doing the work of the oppressor. #disability

This is actually quite brilliant, up to and including the final sentence 🔥

I don’t know if anyone else notices or cares, but when I see a presentation in which the speaker uses obviously generated-AI images to illustrate their slides, it makes me immediately less confident in whatever other content they’re presenting.

What a great headline

i know WHY this is but that just makes it even more of a kick in the pants lmao

Definitely something wrong with our healthcare system. However, beware the easy non-solution of "just privatize it!"

SocArXiv announces moratorium on AI-topic papers

Some are suggesting you deliberately write inaccurate or confusing alt text, because they say this confuses AI scrapers that are analyzing images. The purpose of alt text is to help people who cannot see the image. Deliberately misrepresenting the image is a gross misuse of alt text. Don't do it.

You’ve been kidnapped. The characters from the last TV show you watched are trying to rescue you. Who’s coming to save you? Outcome … uncertain

one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.

(A) stop feeling pressure to be perfect; (B) normalize asking questions, because that is normalizing learning; (C) do not ask AI if your turkey is done; ask a meat thermometer