I was interviewed on CTV Edmonton’s morning show today. It went pretty well! You can watch it below:

One of the things no one tells you about running an influencer side-gig is that at least 1 morning every week is eaten up reading & writing emails, entering data into spreadsheets, completing & submitting invoices, and also reading, signing, & submitting contracts. Because paperwork is inescapable.

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An old white man complains, in a column published in the country’s second-largest national newspaper, that no one will publish or listen to old white men in Canada anymore. His book on the topic is being released in two days. Irony is dead. /1

I allow the conversation about ‘common sense’ in my communication classes to come up organically (it always does) because it’s the best way to look at how its appearance conceals a bias. Sometimes it’s not conscious? But just as often it’s actively weaponized to reframe bias as undeniable truth.

It took 360 days but we found it, the video of the year:

TikTok’s moderation makes zero sense. I posted sponsored content. Clicked the box to indicate as much. Tagged the brand as sponsor. And it was removed for violating sponsored content rules IMMEDIATELY. I also can’t appeal - I’m given the option but the submit button simply… doesn’t work. Ffs

Got a diagnosis of a type IV allergic reaction, which prompted a joke about how I ‘look like [i’ve] been poisoned’. The cause is still a mystery, though, because it wasn’t poison ivy. So that’s fun.

Fun fact: I turn 44 later this month! 🙃

This FAQ for baseball player Jhostynxon García somehow doesn’t include what I imagine is the *most* frequently asked question about him:

Utilities $300 Mortgage $1500 Blackberries $200 Raspberries $400 Strawberries $3,600 Someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. My toddler is bankrupting us.

This is a really remarkable video essay on contemporary film and the theories of Laura Marks. It's making me think about movies in a new way.

The son of a former Conservative Prime Minister - who also inexplicably hosts 1 of the country’s few mainstream media political tv shows - thinks the left in Canada says ‘pretty abhorrent things that simply don’t exist on the right’ and I have to wonder whether he’s a terrible liar or just an idiot.

I don’t know what this actually says because this is what i heard: ‘You know that thing you enjoy doing? We can make a robot that replaces you. And those people who enjoy watching you do it? Yeah, fuck those suckers.’ Thanks, AI company, I hate everything you said and stand for.

Because the huge Anthropic class action settlement limits eligibility to works registered w/ US Copyright Office, non-US writers are mostly locked out. But there's a similar proposed class action covering Canadian authors (click Documents link, then Amended Notice) www.cfmlawyers.ca/class-action...

I was asked by the CBC what it would take to save the college system. I replied that since Doug Ford loves giving $ to his pals, maybe we should see if Ford Fest’s hot dog supplier is available to become president of our school. I hope they run the quote as an excuse to mention this again:

I tweeted on Threads yesterday that men make terrible electoral choices - and added a tongue-in-cheek suggestion that men just shouldn’t be allowed to vote. (In seriousness, tho, I think removing voting rights is always bad and we should instead expand voting to as many people as possible.) /1

This is maybe the least shocking thing I’ve heard all year but it’s still disappointing.

For my progressive and left-of-center🇺🇸 friends, this is cool: a political donation platform that directs you to the close races where your money will make the biggest impact, based on the issues you care about. It specifically seeks out campaigns that need funds and stand a real chance of winning.

Sports fandom guarantees you’ll be unhappy most of the time. There are far more losers than winners! But at least you get to be unhappy in a community.

If anyone remembers anything from this Blue Jays World Series run, I hope it’s this: never slide on a force play at first or home. Never.

If you see this, quote with a vampire that isn’t Dracula

World Series Game One! (The last picture was taken immediately after the Barger grand slam)

WERE GOING TO THE WORLD SERIES OH MY FUCKING GODDDDDD

A story in three parts

…what kind of group chats was Vanc€ involved in when he was in college???

I’m certain that this meme is too online to work as a softball team logo but I would LOVE to make this my softball team’s logo.

Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world,... I feel like I can't take it. And my heart is just going to cave in.

When the Yankees get eliminated

I’m not paying to read the rest of this on The Free Press so can someone tell me whether the subhead means something other than what it appears to mean? Because what the fuck.

Get — and I cannot stress this enough — fucked.

Just opened a mold testing kit, only to discovered that it’s used. Petri dishes labelled and just disgustingly full of mold. Of all the things that someone might return used AND that a company would resell without checking, first… 🤢

DEI for me but not for thee

"cancel culture"—a left wing censorship campaign—never existed. is one problem with framing right censorship as cancel culture. 1

1) Glad to see a continued virtual consensus among non-Conservative voters in Canada, something you almost never find in politics. 2) If this holds, I have no idea how Conservatives win the next election. Any stance you take will piss off half your base and there’s no in-between option? Good luck.

Presenting at a conference and the organizers put me up in a Robert De Niro themed room. There are 7 photos/posters of De Niro in here, including one directly over the toilet. (There was clearly a missed opportunity to put a Taxi Driver poster directly opposite the bathroom mirror.)

Larry Tesler, inventor of the cut, copy, and paste commands, dies at 74

About his debate style - it was all non-sequiturs and thought-terminating cliches designed to stun his opponents into silence and make it appear he ‘won’. And it was always in bad faith. So let’s also not commend him for popularizing a debate style designed to short-circuit, y’know, actual debate.

There are repeated mentions in the reporting that the faculty member and people who defended them were fired for ‘breaking the law’. But - surprise! - no one citing that as the reason can name an actual law that was broken. And this is what cancel culture ACTUALLY looks like, btw.

Who could possibly have foreseen?

Actually, the doctor success was the REAL monster success of the Venice fun festival all along.

Actually, Frankenstein is a doctor success at the Venice film festival

JFC, you’d think that anyone this concerned would actually be following along: -Chorus didn’t dictate anything, which Lorenz admits in the deluge of clarifications -they also didn’t place any limits *other than* to avoid suggesting Chorus endorsed a politician, which TL also acknowledges /1

The wonderful people at the Heart Tattoo Society are running a fundraiser to keep their Monday BBQs at the Downtown Eastside going and both spreading the word and any contribution help: www.facebook.com/donate/74448... #fundraiser #DTES #DowntownEastside #FoodInsecurity #BBQ

If being trans is a ‘common denominator’ among mass shooters, just wait until they find about how many of them are white cis men.

I'm not right wing but some of this "woke" stuff is a little over the top [6 months later] Slavery was fine. Your city is under martial law

The more I hear from Sam Altman, the less inclined I am to believe that he is a serious person. (Or a smart one, for that matter.)

Jack Kirby story from 1959 ("I Fought the Colossus," Strange Tales # 72) predicts AI would be developed by 2020 and that one major fear would be that it would start giving the wrong answers to questions and "wreck civilization." Gotta love the 1950s giant mainframes.

What we are witnessing with air Canada is a complete breakdown in Canada's industrial relations regime. It's part of a trend that should be scaring the hell out of average people.

The union representing Air Canada’s flight attendants is defying the back-to-work order from the government and remaining on strike, at least temporarily, so… this will get interesting 👀