The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) paid $18 million for a chatbot named Charlie, which the auditor general reported gave her team the wrong answer 66% of the time. The chatbot's responses were found to be brief and lacking context, with only 2 out of 6 questions answered accurately.

This account from the Halifax International Security Forum has been rolling around in my head all day. www.readtheline.ca/p/matt-gurne...

I’ve seen this problem at our reference desk too. An LLM can mimic the form of an archival citation (fonds, series, file, etc.), but the content is nonsense. Researchers expect us to be able to pull a file that doesn’t exist.

Found on martiniden666's Tumblr - thought this was a drawing but the caption says it's a photo from 1953 titled Cat in the Snow from photographer Hannes Kilian. #cats #catsinsnow #photography

Merry Krampusnacht, and a good night to all naughty children! media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2l...

This is so cool. If you’ve been to that stretch if the Rhine, you can recognize individual castles.

We have permission for take-off! Hello Bluesky! Follow this account for images and news from the City of Toronto Archives. #Toronto #TOHistory #TOArchives

I didn’t know that Norval Morrisseau also did some paintings of urban wildlife! (Alt: portrait of two punks in the style of N.M., with large solid blocks of bright colour and thick outlines. The backdrop and faces are red, outlined with blue. Still faces contrast with exuberant mohawk hairstyles.)

I’m hearing versions of this from multiple friends who still work in academia.

For a year now, Georgians have protested every single day in 8+ cities. 120+ people have been jailed for years. Most opposition leaders are in prison, and opposition parties are expected to be banned. Peaceful protest has been criminalized. Yet, we're still here. Keep an eye on our big rally today.

Pedestrian struck by motorist on Parkside a block from the speed camera that vigilantes kept tearing down that caused ford to remove them from all Ontario. Drive as you wish Ontario. Nobody matters. This is what you voted for.

This. Whenever local government reviews the library budget and asks, "Why should we give you money?" We want the library to be able to say, "Because we provide a valuable service used by many people!" Libraries are like muscles, using them more makes them stronger. 💪

I shall be posting this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two posts diverged on my screen, and I— I took the bait, I hit reply, And that has made zero difference.

I have been WAITING for a journalist to write this story. I specialize in manuscripts produced in England between 1300 and 1500. If this had occurred in the midst of writing my dissertation or first book, it would have exploded my career.

Those Trudeaus have a flair for the dramatic. This was a game between Calgary and Montreal, played in Toronto, so basically everyone in this photo is wearing regional folk dress as a fan costume.

Almost everywhere in the City of Toronto has fewer people that it did 50 years ago

I wish I had known about this chart when I was doing freelance editing and translation a few years ago. If you freelance in Canada, put it in your bookmarks.

Wut. deadline.com/2025/11/aaro...

These catalogue updates allow me, a serious historian, to search for "fart" and find the case where the accused allegedly said he "cared not a fart for the Lord Mayor of London." What will you find? discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_a...

It shouldn’t be forgotten that a big piece of Mamdani’s campaign was simply “cities are cool and lots of people enjoy living in them” which in and of itself dismantles alot of rightwing talking points

Toronto harbour, circa 1920s Artist: Stanley F. Turner Medium: Goache on illustration board #1920s #torontoart #art #artist #harbourfront #architecture #torontohistory #toronto #canada #jeremyhopkin

If you aren't seeing skeets from some of your fave people, they might have been labeled "Rude" by bsky mods. Idk what they are thinking, I don't need a mommy to tell me who to be buddies with. Anyway, go into Settings > moderation > bluesky moderation (advanced) and turn Rude off.

There are strange things done in the desert sun By the men who chisel stone; A mocking hand, a sneer of cold command Lying separate and alone; Near the wreck’s decay, sands stretch away But a traveller still can see ‘Pon this cenotaph an epigraph “My name is Ozy-man-dee”

I’m flashing back to that time in 2015 we elected a progressive Ismaili candidate of Ugandan extraction, and the entire political establishment did NOT lose their flippin’ minds. NY Repubs & centrist Dems should be embarrassed by the campaigns they’ve run.

There are strange things done in the desert sun By the men who chisel stone; A mocking hand, a sneer of cold command Lying separate and alone; Near the wreck’s decay, sands stretch away But a traveller still can see ‘Pon this cenotaph an epigraph “My name is Ozy-man-dee”

The subway on Halloween night is one of the greatest things about NYC.

it's me, unnamed critter from bosch's triptych of the temptation of anthony!

thinking about potato house this halloween

i think if you ride public transit enough you learn that most weird behavior is not dangerous, and conversely i think driving a car teaches you that everyone is trying to kill you at all times

Something I love about archival films is that when someone had a couple feet of film left on a roll they'd often use it to film their cat. So many films finish with a few seconds of cats So, here's some cats from the 1950s and 60s. They were loved Scanned from 8mm films #Film #History #Cats

Brundage’s flowchart of medieval sexual decision making as a computer program.

New etiquette rule: if you email someone a question, please actually state the question. Please do not make them read a 5 pages of copy-and-pasted transcript of your convo with a slop bot to find out what you want. It’s rude, and it wastes everyone’s time.

Getting people to understand how LLMs work is a safety and health emergency

Much #charterrific fun to be had on the new Fiscus website, dedicated to fiscal lands in the regnum Italiae! #medievalsky fiscus.unibo.it/en/

One of my favorite medieval dudes is a guy named Sir Hugh Eland, a knight who started his career by pillaging his neighbors and ended it as a noble advocate for prison reform (from behind the bars of Nottingham jail). Medieval story time!

If they invade Toronto, do we go with inflatable trash pandas, or Mel Lastman-style artsy moose?

Photos from today's walk at the Seattle Japanese Garden (thread). I was quite taken with these red leaves, dangling by a bit of spiderweb in a way that made them look like they were falling. #photography #PNW #autumn #FallColors #nature #red #31DaysOfHalloween #SeattleJapaneseGarden

The internet is NOT forever.

Aww, look at that little cutie!

In addition to the report below, a new report shows that a vehicle belonging to a Ford government cabinet minister was caught driving 50km/h over the limit *twelve times* over the past three years.

The word on the street is that the WOTS is good this year, but don’t just take my word for it.

The white supremacist conceit that everyone in antiquity was living under some kind of global jim crow segregation is just complete bullshit news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

Ontario Land Records Index is now digitized and freely available to the public: archive.org/details/onta.... Thanks to the collaboration with the Archives of Ontario, @tofamilyhistory.bsky.social, OurDigitalWorld and CRKN. internetarchivecanada.org/2025/09/24/n...

Now is a great time to buy hard copies of your favorite queer literature.

A grant for digitizing endangered archives outside North America and Western Europe.

I had no idea that the phrase “Back to the old drawing board” comes from this Peter Arno cartoon from March 1st 1941’s New Yorker. It’s rather splendid to be able to date the birth of what would become part of everyday speech with such precision.

obsessed w the medieval origin of harbinger, it's an amazing word: traveled from Old Saxon through medieval French, conveys in origins harbor, a place of safety. A medieval harbinger was one who provides lodging, as well as one who travels ahead in search of safe dwelling, a herald and guarantor.

New parking enforcement officer on duty.

"…and Magda Goebbels made a great strudel.”