This is a trenchant (yet dispassionate) recounting of the history of Toronto's amalgamation… reminds me of how we really do need to confiscate all of Mike Harris's wealth towards repairing his damage, and also give Toronto some freedom from the provincial government www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtYS...

Brazil’s greatest moment on the world stage was when it was the most divided politically, in 1970 the country was at war with itself, the society was in open revolt against a military dictatorship imposed by a military moiety trained by Americans.

Oligarchs: *try to create a torment nexus* SF writer: *observes* *writes* SF writer: Do Not Create the Torment Nexus … Oligarchs: *succeed* Readers: wow the oligarchs totally misunderstood the book SF writer: actually I wanted readers to notice what they were doing and stop them

“If he would do that to me, he would do that to anybody” cornyn had a front row seat to trump treating other people exactly the same way for years and only now has come to this startling realization if u were wondering how fuckin self deluded these guys are

Which John Scalzi book should I read first?

Hello, island. It’s good to see you again.

Holy hell. Apparently, Pokémon Go users were unknowingly building a map that was sold to a military drone company, to make strikes more accurate. Mass lawsuit when, this is unconscionable. dronexl.co/2026/06/09/p...

this is fascinating, and a great explainer of how AI works, and how today AI has begun cannibalizing its own data because so many sites are protecting themselves with those "verify you are human" things to deter scraping. the biggest LLMs all use the same dataset, and train on their own issue

I was trying to figure out why some presumably desirable urban commercial properties (specifically retail/service) sit vacant for so long and I found this a very interesting read. If there are any experts out there who can provide a solution or even a different perspective I'd love to hear that

Step 2: Prosecute social media companies which fail to stop incitement to racial hatred, violence and riot. Step 3: Treat orchestrated far right violence against asylum seekers and immigrants as terrorism. Because that is what it is.

Police were warned for months about addresses targeted in Belfast riots

this guy is quite obviously seething with hatred of trans people, particularly trans women. cant even do anodyne sports posts without him sneering at you. that’s *why* he gets hired by the New York Times to write about trans issues

really upsetting coda to the case of Calvin Duncan, an exoneree who, as I wrote last month, was elected by New Orleans voters in a landslide, prompting state Republicans to pass a law *abolishing* his position: Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the law last week ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

I live in a large apartment building and every so often someone nearby has renovations. Days and days of sporadic loud buzzing sounds of grinding and drilling. The sonic equivalent of a bad head cold. You try to go on with your life but it keeps intruding. You just want it to be gone. So anyway,

They keep trying to sell me on the World Cup but I’m not interested

Twitter/X is an enormous national security threat on a global scale, and a lot more nations need to grow a spine and start blocking it (and taking other active, aggressive measures).

Does it come with one sad oompa-loompa?

If human editors can’t control who reviews science, it’s no longer peer review — it’s a rubber-stamp machine designed for volume and profit, not quality. I have no intention of attaching my name to it. So I’m out.

I emailed and met with the editorial office to ask for the AI assistant to be turned off. I was told this is not possible. Instead, I was treated to some vague promises of potential future improvements and a dose of gaslighting.

Over the last month I saw that human editors are now stripped of control. I could no longer stop the system from auto-inviting "reviewers" with zero relevant expertise. Even worse - the AI began actively revoking the invitations I manually sent out to actual, qualified experts.

When Frontiers started automating the editorial process, I stayed. I reasoned that as long as the automation could be turned off, human editors can still ensure rigorous, high-quality peer review. This now became impossible - the system has been entirely hijacked by algorithms.

it's a shame that "The End of History and the Beginning of Something Much More Stupid" couldn't have fit on the cover

I just feel like this is a sketch in the making. "Did you turn it off and on again, John?" "No...you know I half expected you to ask if I prayed to God first, considering..." "John, I've been praying for you to figure this stuff out for years, God can only do so much for you."

Yourself, but as a cartoon. I drew this, uh, more than 40 years ago. I don't have a more recent rendition…

Post a picture of yourself as a doctor

This is probably the most traditional possible behavior for the family of a pope.

It's hard to be excited about the Artemis III mission announcements when the CEO of the company making one of the mission's rockets has spent his week inciting racial violence via his personal social media platform.

Remembering the LPC Biennial in Montreal a few months ago. I told everyone the Billy Bishop plan was a disaster, extremely unsafe, and the Feds needed to stop it immediately. And a certain Minister practically patted me on the head and dismissed me. #cdnpoli #LPC

A FIFA referee has spent more time in federal custody for being Somali than anybody on epstein's list for raping kids.

I have never seen such a bunch of reactionaries in my life as the US media establishment. Someone with 0 followers & a sickle in the bio told you to go die so now all leftism is evil. some asshole on an ebike ran into your kid so now bike lanes must be destroyed. Its like watching children do meth

Open concept office

For when pepper is not enough

"...women's voices matter and that character in public life is not optional." - Jeff Flake Yeah, okay, man. You two were deciding votes to put Kavanaugh on the bench so he could roll back Roe.

New York City still needs a cure...

what sci-fi writers got wrong about our dystopian future is that they made our overlords smart

Do you have a tremendous idea that could change the world? Great! Now convince a sociopath to pay for it.

Reading through hundreds of VC profiles is like scrolling Hieronymus Bosch's Tinder. I don't like any of you because you're awful, awful people. Write me a check and go get eviscerated by a helmeted fish man, sinner.

This is an incredible thread in response to the ICE agent who hit us with a car saying he was scared of getting dragged out of his car, assaulted, and beaten.

As someone who teaches the history of Toronto’s urban form, I think this might be the single worst decision in its 250-year evolution. Number two would be the railroads cutting off the city from the lake, but at least the railroads were useful.

Hey, remember that news story about how Minnesota cops looked up the drivers license record of a female ex-coworker hundreds of times in 4 years? 104 officers in 18 agencies were regularly pulling up her headshot to jack off to. www.startribune.com/minnesota-co...

Your occasional reminder: "good grammar" is different from "clear" or "coherent" and serves a different purpose. sesquiotic.com/2018/12/25/1...

Great piece on that much-revered Orwell article, which contains some good stuff but is kind of patchy. Also: it me!

That’s called a bribe.

Hi! I'm Bret Rhett Chet, here to tell you why you should buy and hodl SpaceX stonk. For a mere $135/share, you get pro forma tangible book value of $7.85/share, an immediate 94% dilution. New investors are putting up 48% of all capital ever invested in SpaceX in exchange for 4.2% of the shares. /1

excuse me what "We are aware of a violent and unwarranted incident at a Vancouver public secondary school last year. An SLO drew a firearm and pointed it directly at an unarmed school worker who was locking up his bicycle on school grounds after arriving at work." bccla.org/policy-submi...

This is a pogrom, incited and instigated by Elon Musk. This is now the second set of pogroms incited by Elon in the UK in 2 years.

And his hit job led to direct harm in Kenya, according to a Kenyan educator who was part of WE: carolyn-moraakenya.medium.com/jesse-brown-...

Also of a spice that, famously, if you eat too much of it (and it takes little enough that it does happen), can cause hallucinations and even death pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...