Everything is on fire but I wrote a fun thing for @macleans.bsky.social. Come for the stool testing and psychedelics, stay for the ball slapping and urine drinking macleans.ca/society/heal... #wellness #biohacking #masculinity

Calgary councillor on backing down from conspiracy thinking about public health: “We have a growing number of people who want very simple answers to very complex problems.” www.thestar.com/politics/fed...

Putting this on my syllabus

What is common knowledge in your field, but shocks outsiders? That "rhetoric" ≠ bullshit (and is actually an ancient discipline that studies the production, reception, and circulation of discourse). #teamrhetoric

The Headspace meditation app now includes an "empathetic AI companion." What could go wrong? Well, for a start, it could break the very mind at the centre of meditation.... ⬇️ www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/t...

I will never, ever, ever not be furious that a high ranking research officer at my uni dismissed an important knowledge mobilization project I wanted to propose because “AI could do it.”

I’ve been thinking about this for days: “Sometimes I’ll take the abstract or the methods section, because they’re using all this big terminology, and ask, ‘Can you simplify this as if you’re explaining it to a middle schooler?’ And it saves me so much time” www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/2339ca7...

Just over a year ago, I posted this smug update on the other site. Two days later, I broke my hand dropping into a skatepark bowl, resulting in surgery, a weird PTSD response that put me on medical leave, and months of physical rehab. 100% would do again. Life is for living. Do something fun today.

New data finds Americans are more likely to support labor unions over Big Business than at any time in the past 60 years. We are witnessing a historic rebirth of worker power.  If you want a better life for you and your children, join or support a union.

We visited one of Toronto's virtual emergency rooms last night and it was BRILLIANT. We had a minor issue that required attention but we would have languished in a physical ER for hours. Instead: -I booked appt at 7:20pm -we saw a nurse practitioner at 8 -all was resolved by 8:15 This is smart care.

Me, on self-care: “There is always a new diet or beauty routine to follow, a new supplement to take, or a new practitioner to see,” she says. “And if we fail to become ‘well’ despite our efforts, we simply need to try harder or try something else.” www.the-independent.com/life-style/h...

Very thoughtful discussion of "AI" in education from @emilymbender.bsky.social starting at 11:36. I will now forever refer to tools such as Chat GPT as "synthetic text-extruding machines." www.cbc.ca/listen/live-...

Meet my friend Oorbee, aka Aunty Skates. We have little skater mom posse in Toronto. We’ve spent Mother’s Day weekend taking over city skate parks because if you don’t make time for fun, fun won’t make time for you www.theglobeandmail.com/life/article...

Re-upping: What do you think, know, or do about AI in first-year writing courses, #TeamRhetoric and #Writing Studies? Keen on cold takes too.

I got shy and deleted my first post about this but it's important: the most unexpected and best benefit of starting skateboarding at 45 is I now spend weekends hanging out in parks across town with other middle aged skateboards. Zuck needs to get out of the house.

#TeamRhetoric and #WritingStudies folks, what are your best hot takes about AI and/in required first-year writing courses? Asking as an incoming WPA. #rhetcomp

You know what autism study I want to see? How many women in my mom's generation were given buckets of benzos for "neurosis" but were actually probably just autistic.

Election Day in Canada, part 4: This whole thread. It is perfect.

Grades are in. Phew.

Election Day in Canada, part 3: Our system isn't perfect but I love its reassuring blandness.

Election Day in Canada, part 2: those of us who live in the high Arctic or a remote lighthouse get to vote too. www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/2339ca7...

Election day in Canada, part 1: we vote on paper (most of us). Our votes become tangible—real things we pop into the ballot box ourselves. When my kid cast her first-ever federal ballot, people clapped. www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/2339ca7...

In the rare good-news department, I got an Instagram ad from the Ontario Government late last night promoting measles vaccines. After months of relentless awful news from the US, this official reminder from my own government that vaccines are safe and effective was a balm before sleep.

I'm all for patient empowerment but maybe it's not ideal to upload pathology reports directly to patient portals without an explanation of what findings mean. Especially not at 6:05pm on a holiday Thursday, right as doctors' offices have closed for 3+ days.

Breast cancer diagnoses rose by over 300% between 1973 and 1992. Was there a breast cancer epidemic?! NO. Mammograms were implemented for screening in 1976. PREVALENCE is a function of being able to correctly diagnose something. This is also about autism.

But the reason why anti-vaxxers & ivermectin pushers & lockdown opponents & lab leakers aren’t publishing in Science or Nature isn’t academic censorship or prestige gatekeeping. It’s because the quality of their scientific work is insufficient to pass peer review.

FYI to the NIH Director: having your paper rejected because peer reviewers found it lacked scientific merit is not censorship or gatekeeping. It means your work didn’t pass muster & wasn’t up to scientific standards. Expert peer review is what distinguishes a journal from a blog.

Dying from an oversharing-on-the-internet hangover today but I’m not deleting my v personal thread about RFK’s appalling claims about autism because I’m not letting that eugenicist troll come for me, my family, and everyone whose brain runs on a different operating system.

I'm autistic. Somehow I've been married for more than 26 years, paid taxes for 30+ years, and raised an autistic kid who is now studying engineering. I've been a professor for 15 years, a full professor for 2, and have published 2 books. Oh and I can 🚽 just fine. 🧵

Everything sucks but The Boss is awake so I'm hanging onto that. www.cbc.ca/player/play/...

Aside: "Talk to other humans. Go outside" is probably the best advice for anyone in just about any situation.

This Gen Xer needs a very long nap.

Just in: The Canadian Association of University Teachers officially advises academics in Canada against non-essential travel to the US. I'm pulling out of my existing commitments and pausing any new ones. www.caut.ca/latest/2025/...

A good summary of why I will not be travelling to the US for the foreseeable: “The United States is not a safe place anymore: it is a wild and predatory wilderness, filled with…a brand of cruelty that wasn’t as obvious before. Don’t go.” www.thestar.com/politics/pol...

The Autism Discourse right now is so not cool. Even the well-meaning science fans rightly asserting that vaccines don't cause autism are getting it very wrong with autism.

Not all important care delivered in hospitals is "medical." Important new initiative at @sickkidsto.bsky.social www.thestar.com/news/gta/chi...

There's nothing I would love more than for my research on wellness, natural health, and alternative medicine to be rendered irrelevant so I can move on to something new but I guess that's not going to happen any time soon.

A colleague found that Blackboard now has an AI autogenerate feature in discussion boards. I am ready to give up y’all

Truly scandalized that this @nytimes.com obit fails to mention Val’s role in the best movie about scientific research ever made. Yes, I’m talking about Real Genius. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/m...

I'm a Canadian and not a political rhetorician but, man, do I love a good ol' American filibuster(ish)

Legit only use of AI I’m interested in hearing about

Want to hear the story of why I'll never serve in an official university admin role again? In addition to the million other reasons, the tipping point was when I was department chair and some genius at my university decided to get rid of all institution-supplied garbage cans in faculty offices. 1/

Please note that cement : concrete :: flour : cake. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Is this an argument for *not* publishing in open-access journals?

Just googled for a link to one of my articles and discovered that AI is now presenting pieces of my argument, my intellectual property, as unattributed, machine-digested facts. I hate this timeline.

Yes, because there are almost no Americans in faculty positions in Canada lol

it's a little funny that the biggest story in Canada today is that a man is willfully avoiding the classified information that the government is trying to give him access to, and in America, the story is about the government showing a different man classified information he didn't want to see