Why does fiction matter? Because stories can sharpen the way we understand other people. A meta-analysis found that reading fiction has a small but positive effect on social cognition. Including our ability to interpret emotions, motives, and inner lives. ⏰📚💙📚🎧 #books #reading #fiction

The oligarch from Etobicoke. Time to send him packing.

More than a fifth of UK’s ‘austerity children’ scarred by poverty, study says

Oligarchy (noun): A government of and by a few at the top, who exercise power for their own benefit. Their power and wealth increase as they make laws that favor themselves, manipulate financial markets, and create monopolies that put more wealth into their pockets.

I’m so excited to say that the WHO WANTS NORMAL? paperback is now available to pre-order. This edition has a brand new forward and all the interviews with 50+ of Britain’s best known disabled women, from Ruth Madeley to Rosie Jones. Pre-order from a range of stores here: linktr.ee/WhoWantsNorm...

134 years ago this cartoon was drawn, and in 134 years the problem has only gotten worse.

Still wondering if inequality is out of control?

Vienna has fewer homes per capita than Vancouver. By supply-and-demand logic, the Austrian capital should be more expensive. Yet prices are 50% lower. Why? Because over half of Vienna’s housing is non-market. The issue isn’t supply. It’s commodification.

At B.C.’s universities, a violent RCMP unit showed up to spy on student Palestine protests. A Breach investigation reveals how the CRU was shaping the encampment response, as the militarized unit grows itself into Canada’s go-to force to repress dissent. breachmedia.ca/a-notorious-...

policyoptions.irpp.org/2025/04/cana.... "Three-quarters of the gap in per capita output is captured by higher incomes for the top 10 per cent of Americans. There is little difference in incomes between the bottom 90 per cent in the two countries"

"The problem is not too much public spending. It is too little." Broadbent fellow Danyaal Raza debunks the myth that "health-care costs are unsustainable, and the government cannot afford more." Health-care sustains us, and the Carney government can afford to pay more. www.hilltimes.com/st...

The left doesn’t have a policy problem—it has a power problem. Shifting intellectual firepower from wonkery to collective action means rebuilding parties as more than just electoral brands, writes @aliterrenoire.bsky.social.

Pay attention folks. Danielle Smith and the Alberta MAGA machine are using the Donbas playbook. This isn't about "independence" it is about sedition and subservience to Trump.

To teach today is to choose sides: between memory and amnesia, democracy and authoritarianism, justice and organized forgetting. The future will be shaped not only by those who wield power, but by those who decide whether education remains a force for critical consciousness and democracy.

"There is no refuge in neutrality. Silence is never innocent; it is pedagogical. To retreat from public life, avoid controversy, or reduce education to mere technique is to surrender cultural terrain to those who weaponize ignorance and cruelty,” write Henry Giroux and William Paul.

The danger is not that neoliberalism is ending, but that it is being replaced by something worse: a world of militarized competition, eco-fascism, and technocratic management of permanent crisis. Acknowledging the collapse of the old order is not the same as building a democratic alternative to it.

Alberta renters don’t need more ‘supply’ — they need non-market housing options Governments keep chasing the market while community housing providers deliver stable, affordable homes that won’t disappear when profits rise. New from @ximenaka.bsky.social: ricochet.media/justice/hous... #abpoli

The Trump admin is not enforcing labor laws as strongly as they should be. Workplace health and safety penalties are down 45%, while Wage and Hour Division penalties are down 94%. President Trump is putting workers’ health, safety and wages at risk. https://bit.ly/490IB2U

My statement from @americanprogress.bsky.social on disability justice activist, author, MacArthur fellow, and cyborg oracle Alice Wong.

Canada’s right-wing has become obsessed with hating on the brown people who work at Tim Hortons. Katia Lo Innes explains how the racist scapegoating of migrant workers aims to divide and distract us from our real enemy — the corporate elite. youtu.be/SRjQ-MJinFg

The UCP’s use of the NWS clause to end the teachers strike is sinking in. This is a terrible precedent for *all* groups with protected rights. Why would the government ever not use s 33 now in any case where they can’t make a credible s 1 argument?

To get buy-in from all 10 provinces (which it didn't), Canada's constitution has a clause allowing provinces to override its fundamental rights and freedoms. The framers -- I've spoken to some -- imagined it used in existential-crisis cases. Well, a province just used it to break a teachers' strike

Mark Carney’s austerity, militarism and fossil fuel expansion plan is setting the stage for a wave of resistance. From Indigenous blockades to public sector strikes, workers and communities are already pushing back against Ottawa’s new class offensive.

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency.Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything to steer the future away from endless war and grinding down of the poor.Hope gives a future." -Rebecca Solnit

The system works, but not for most Canadians www.thespec.com/opinion/cont... @futurism.bsky.social @mrpeterjulian.bsky.social @patrioticmillionaires.org @profsmithsask.bsky.social @chloelewis.bsky.social @larryneufeldsk.bsky.social @broadbent.bsky.social @jimbostanford.bsky.social

PWD (Persons With Disabilities) in Canada CALL upon @mark-carney.bsky.social & @liberalparty.bsky.social to remove DTC requirements to access the Canada Disability Benefit immediately. The CDB should be available to all medically assessed & designated PWD in EVERY Province! #NoMorePovertyPWD

Happy to share Vol. 21 of Reflections on Research featuring PhD student @wmacg.bsky.social: "Canadian Disability Poverty, Policy, and Marginalization: Critical Analysis, Neoliberal Influence, and Lived Experiences within the Context of Canada's Liberal Welfare State" ➡️ www.yorku.ca/research/rob...

Justice is... the opposite of served. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g1u...

Barrie #Ontario recently declared a "state of emergency" over homelessness. But for its mayor, the risk to human lives is not the emergency. The visibility of poverty is. New op-ed from Nir Hagigi: ricochet.media/justice/hous... #onpoli #Barrie #housingisahumanright

Identity politics that obscures class politics and ignores economic inequality only makes the many miseries around us worse.

The new $ 17.60-an-hour minimum wage is an arbitrary figure that could and needs to be much higher. Why is it not? Because the Ontario government is making the political choice to keep minimum wage workers poor. My latest @thestar.com www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

My piece on how the Jimmy Kimmel firing is indicative of the growing authoritarian nature of the American regime. The American century is over and it collapsed so quickly. charlieangus.substack.com/p/jimmy-kimm...

General pattern in regime change: the comedy gets better and then it gets banned.

Extremist murders by ideology, 2013 to 2022. www.pbump.net/o/reassessin...

Canada loses an astonishing $15 billion every year to tax havens. Jared Walker & @silasxuereb.bsky.social argue that this money could fund public services, but successive governments have let corporations shift profits offshore—while regular Canadians pay the price. breachmedia.ca/canadas-hidd...

Carney’s first 100 days: Unpacking the new prime minister’s ‘disappointing move to the right’ with Linda McQuaig: ricochet.media/politics/car...

Simeon Brown is forcing Health NZ to sign 10 year contracts with private hospitals - meaning it will be very difficult for a future government to back out of the contracts. But the evidence is clear, privatised healthcare costs more and delivers worse outcomes: www.rnz.co.nz/news/on-the-...

A reminder that if we hope to ever rebuild an economy that works for everyone, we need a much stronger labor movement.

The Air Canada flight attendant strike was illegal. It was also profoundly Canadian. As Jen ‪Hassum explains in a new column, Canada’s democracy depends on defiance, not obedience. Read it here: ricochet.media/labour/the-a... #AirCanada #cdnpoli @hassum.bsky.social

Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege. Tommy Douglas

Check out the @policyalternatives.ca analysis highlighted in this article. “productivity” [is not] "the solution to the affordability crisis...[because]...affordability isn’t just about how much we produce, it’s about how the gains are shared. (Link in article.) thetyee.ca/Analysis/202...

So much for evidence-based policy making 🤷‍♀️

www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc.... "government in Canada have pursued supposedly productivity-enhancing policies—like corporate tax cuts, deregulation, and privatization—for decades without delivering broad-based prosperity - these strategies have widened inequality and eroded public trust."

Ahh yess some brilliant accountability reporting from CTV's @pennydaflos.bsky.social who dug up how much the province is spending on agency nurses vs union nurses. Basically what private vs public health care BC is funding. Private nurses get almost twice the wage! www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/ar...

Health advocates shocked as Carney Liberals back away from pharmacare program

youtu.be/S0pGpik5FIk?.... In light of Carney's proposed austerity and tax cuts, this analysis I feel applies to Canada equally as well.