Talking to somebody yesterday about a Cdn oral history archive that disappeared - turns out LLMs were scraping it so much it crashed their servers so it’s offline. Vile vulture technology.

This is a heart-breaking story, and it was very, very interesting to see Telus International listed in the mix of companies this man had ended up subcontracting for. That was not a name I'd expected to see.

This is an amazing lunch read: www.404media.co/the-last-vid...

This is an amazing book list: www.npr.org/2025/11/24/g...

I could never have imagined this happening, and I am so sorry my friends at Kids Can Press have had to actually put out a statement distancing Franklin the turtle, of all characters, from this ridiculousness!

This is fabulous! We definitely need a Canadian version.

More strikes. I've started keeping track of strikes, as I feel they're under-reported. There are many more of them happening than I had originally realized.

If you've been shopping at your local Starbucks because the strike hadn't reached it yet, SWU is asking everyone to stop shopping there now.

Libraries remain one of our most radical spaces

It's good to see that the people of Quebec are pushing back against their would-be authoritarian government.

newly posted at @periodicities.bsky.social : Penn Kemp : For You, Dear Friend and Fellow Poet / @pw.org @nightwoodeditions.bsky.social ; for Barry Dempster (January 17, 1952-November 27, 2025) periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2025/11/penn...

Nope. Just nope. And I'll be very surprised to hear anyone doing the work wants to use AI, I'm assuming that this is a top down decision.

An interesting approach.

An interesting bit of analysis from David Moscrop - though I'd love a longer piece than the G&M Op Ed platform allows.

the lesson is ALWAYS play the long game :)

If 2023 was the year AI slop was embraced by spammers and social media influencers, and 2024 was the year the slop era began in earnest, 2025 was when slop became embedded in our cultural institutions and social spheres. On the slop layer that we all must navigate now:

“The organized white nationalist movement in Canada is the biggest it's been in modern history. A big part of that is Second Sons Canada, the Dominion Society, Diagolon, the Active Club movement.”

A great lunch read: thewalrus.ca/find-a-book-...

How many times do we have to prove that giving money to poor people improves their lives

I love him. “The first time I caught up to [ICE], I could tell that they already knew who I was. They had seen me before, so they thought they were just going to speed away. I was like, ‘Ha ha, bitches, I got a new scooter!’”

For my novelist friends, here's a little inspiration. This story has lots of potential.

A fascinating piece on how journalism is evolving, and I love this gem of advice to people looking for a job they don't hate, which applies beautifully to publishing, and to likely most arts and nonprofit work: "Get comfortable making a lot less money," never goes over particularly well."

A very important report here:

We’re a small team of seven journalists who investigate stories wealthy and powerful people don’t want Canadians to know about Now we need your help to defend our journalism and continue shining a light on information politicians want to keep secret Help us out 👉 JournalismDefence.ca

Because the majority of American's can't afford to live? While there are always exceptions, I refuse to believe that most people are too stupid to figure out the basics. Corporate profits and billionaires like we have now only happen because they're squeezing it out of people.

An interesting, and somewhat heartening read: prismreports.org/2025/11/11/i...

This is a bit older, but I missed it the first time around. But there's brilliant writing and observation in here. A great lunch read.

This was a lovely lunch read: cslewisofficial.substack.com/p/narnia-bus...

she's sharing all sorts of NYT receipts on IG, highly recommend taking a look: www.instagram.com/msrachelforl...

Rachel was great. And now it's a radio show. Listen at the link. www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/...

Wow!

Once you start thinking of AI as a war on humanity, on human thought, on human inquiry, on human labor, on nuance and critical thinking, it slots in pretty seamlessly with the right wing ideological project, oligarchical political projects, big tech's political projects, etc

Everybody in publishing and libraries and education needs to read this article: www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...

“This is replicable. [Mamdani’s] whole campaign was not just anti fascist, but the antithesis of fascism.” @naomiaklein.bsky.social tells @mehdirhasan.bsky.social why she was an early supporter of Mamdani, who just made history as the first-ever Muslim mayor of New York.

HUGE THING: 100,000 people volunteered for Mamdani. 1000s volunteering for the FIRST TIME. And they just won BIG. So that's a massive army of progressives HUNGRY to keep on winning. That's worth more than all the billionaires' money. We're going to keep working. And we're going to keep winning.

The 10 richest people in the United States have seen their collective fortune grow by nearly $700 billion since President Donald Trump secured a second term in the White House and rushed to deliver more wealth to the top in the form of tax cuts.

arXiv, a preprint publication for academic research that has become particularly important for AI research, has announced it will no longer accept computer science articles and papers that haven’t been vetted by an academic journal or a conference. Why? A tide of AI slop.

Okay, for a spectacular lunch read, I highly recommend this article: thebaffler.com/salvos/we-us...

This is an amazing article.

Medicine Hat emergency room physician Dr. Paul Parks is warning the public about what he asserts is a looming crisis in Alberta’s health-care system that will overwhelm the province’s already over-capacity and understaffed hospitals and lead to unnecessary deaths. #abpoli

Some important work being done by The Breach

This is a wonderful article about student journalism!

An interesting book industry read: www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Interesting

A really good explanation of why today's demonstrations are struggling to create change:

An interesting lunch read: canadiandimension.com/articles/vie...

"Institutions should embrace collective storytelling between those who hold deep knowledge and those with the cultural fluency and media reach to deliver it effectively." Amen to that!

Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist

“Multiplying protest frogs” 🤣

Blown away by how good an idea the costumes are. More shareable and fun than pics of a regular protest, and it’s immediately clear that the protestors are non-violent.