The suggestion here that CBC offer a national streaming service with French/English captions or dubbing makes a LOT of sense. What better way to meet its mandate than share original French-language productions with English Canada?

Interesting take on the business of gen-AI.

The audio version of this week’s No Mercy / No Malice, as read by @georgehahn.com open.spotify.com/episode/1aek...

It's getting really hard to tell what's just stupid news and what is satire these days. Unfortunately, this one is the former.

“Most of us have strong, strong faith in the myth of technological progress. Most people associate thinking about collapse with pessimism because you’re questioning the orthodoxy of our modern religion, which is faith in progress.”

This is how all companies behave in the absence of effective competition. It's bad for users and ultimately bad for innovation.

There may be a huge opportunity to think about lanes in terms of size, weight and speed to encourage innovation at the small, light, zero emissions part of the vehicle mix. Don't we want more of this in crowded urban areas?

In April, President Trump and Salvadoran President Bukele shook hands in the Oval Office to celebrate a deal to ship gang members to the notorious CECOT prison. But a new ProPublica investigation found there’s more to the story. 🧵👇

So glad I saw a chance to see him play a few years ago. There is such a bittersweet innocence in so many of his tunes that he wrote as a young man that still resonated -- perhaps in a different way -- as he played them as an older man. He will be missed.

I think that America has shifted from creating value to extracting value -- akin to what @pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy calls the 'enshitification' of tech platforms. 🧵

Good read, putting Trumpism within the great American tradition of televangelists, pyramid schemes, hucksters and snake oil salesmen.

I think the reason it works -- why cons in general work -- is they know we truly *want* to believe them. They promise easy, magic-pill answers to really challenging, complex problems. Your commute is contributing to climate change? No problem: buy this EV and you can read on the way to work!

"Ottawa has historically funded about 40 percent of NORAD investments ... and is putting $38B into the command to add new radars in the north over the next two decades. Without those investments ... officials believe the U.S. will have trouble putting together a credible North American air defense."

These precedents mean that long after Trump, the US will struggle with stability and reliability as an ally. Every election will mean a whole bunch of things can change by fiat.

Damning portrait of what the US presidency has become. A system that consistently creates these kinds of results cannot be relied on by Canada. Let's be friendly, but realistic. We need to quickly build capacity and find a range of reliable partners.

Interesting Canadian company working on practical diesel-electric hybrids for heavy-duty trucking. They have a great social media presence as well: a great down-to-earth hoser attitude, trying to develop practical tech for logging applications.

In the dead of night, the UCP passed the most comprehensive set of anti democratic reforms in Alberta history. No public consultation. No meaningful debate. How bad is Bill 54? Not horrible if you like Trump-style democracy. open.substack.com/pub/drjaredw...

Once again, the oligarchs have said the quiet part out loud.

Interesting read. Lewis Mumford was well ahead of his time.

Trump will destroy world trade, but democracies can defend themselves – and each other | Anders Fogh Rasmussen

Can the term ‘cloud fascism’ help us understand – and resist – the hard right? Ece Temelkuran www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"The Liberals were 44 votes behind the Bloc Québécois in Terrebonne, 77 votes behind the Conservatives in Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore and 77 votes behind the NDP in Nunavut. If the Liberals had found just 201 more voters across those three ridings, they would have" achieved a majority.

Which is a huge red flag for me! Complaints and excuses don't solve problems.

This is awful. A non-partisan judiciary is what stops democracy from turning into a mob rule. If Ford doesn't like the ruling, then come back with legislation that follows the rules! Corrosive that he even said this; I hope he walks this back.

"In fact, among the most dedicated Conservative activists it’s not hard to find affinity for Trump, which I did at the Poilievre rally, when some attendees, finding out I was American, would lean in, drop their voice and say they like the president."

When the consumer carbon tax came off, my local gas price dropped from about $1.45/l ton$1.15. A few weeks later and it's already back to $1.39. curious as to why when, at the same time, the price of oil is generally stable or falling.

Donald Trump's approval rating in his first term moved in a narrow band: never above 50%, but also seldom below 40%, and then not much below. 1/x

As Canadians, it's easy to get overwhelmed by bewildering news daily from our southern neighbour. It's good to balance that with stories like this: US elected officials fighting for democracy and the rule of law.

Spammers are flooding TikTok with pro-Conservative content A new investigation from @pivot.quebec finds that a small number of mostly pro-Conservative accounts are responsible for 15% of comments on election-related videos

"If Donald Trump were trying to lose his trade war with China, it’s hard to see what he would be doing differently" from Rogé Karma @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/economy/arch...

I'm beginning to believe we may have a lot in common -- and a lot to learn from -- the Scandinavian nations that have long lived beside an unpredictable superpower. I'd be ok with Canada adopting a plan like this; something I doubt I would have said even 12 months ago.

"This is the last great heist, and they are getting ready to ride out the storms they themselves are summoning – and they will try to defame and destroy anyone who gets in their way." Good read by @naomiaklein.bsky.social and @astra.bsky.social.

This article is nonsense, but it's a look at the intellectual underpinnings of populism. Liberalism is a product of the very "western civilization" he puts it in opposition to, which he doesn't address.

As a Canadian, this was nice to hear from a US elected official.

This is just a theory, but it seems a lot more consistent with what's actually happening than many other pundits I've read. If this is the plan, I'm skeptical it will work as it's already having the impact of creating collaboration excluding the US that was unlikely previously.

I admit, I clicked through because I didn't believe the US Sec of Education would refer to AI (in an AI focused session!) as A1. But, here we are. I'm not sure how comedians can satirize this kind of stuff. You just look on with a combination of disbelief and sadness ...

"Jaguar Land Rover and Volkswagen’s Audi brand have paused car shipments to the United States from Europe while Stellantis has idled production at auto plants in Windsor, Ont., and Toluca, Mexico." It begins.

@seanokane.bsky.social (with some help from me) spent many months chasing this down. Lots of great details in here based on documents, filings, and sources. techcrunch.com/2025/04/08/i...

It's a very good time to listen to @yanisvaroufakis.bsky.social

ok so!!! something I found really interesting after talking to Korean protesters was... well, it was actually me realizing something about protest in the US: protest is trapped in an unwinnable spiral about "peaceful" versus "violent" protest, and even people who know it's dumb can't break free

Interesting read and a textbook example of why critical, sensitive information should not be disclosed via commercial message apps.

Warms my heart to see it! The best American tradition in the face of injustice: peaceful protest. A lot of us outside the US are rooting for you.

Too many democracies are looking to Hungary when they should be following this example from S. Korea; despite being tested, the rule of law won out.

The perfect GenX concert: Trans Canada Highwaymen playing power pop Cancon favourites from the 1990s and AM hits from the 1970s. Highly recommend -- all hits, no filler! And home by 11:30!!

I'm all for freedom of association, but this raises concerns about just how big the CPC 'big tent' is. It's interesting the Ontario Ford gov't has made public moves to keep the most extreme views out of its ranks *and* there seems to be a bit of a gap between the Ontario and federal conservatives.

Crazy if true. And ... lazy? If you spend your entire public life arguing for tariffs, why half-ass the policy when you finally have the chance to enact it? These do not appear to be serious people, which is dangerous given the power they wield.

Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive. No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief. 1/ A 🧵 to explain his plan and how we fight back.

Great point here. We keep jumping on the next policy bandwagon because it sounds good or someone else is doing it with little actual research or smaller-scale pilots to see if it works here. And ... we all want magic pill solutions (cheap, easy fixes) which often don't stand up to scrutiny!

This probably deserves some attention in English Canada.

“While Canada should have no illusions about replacing America as some world superpower, Ottawa should have designs to become the world’s premiere Arctic power.”