We could be treating Canada Post as not just an essential delivery service, but an essential social infrastructure in our communities. Instead the government prefers to treat it as a costly burden that must be subject to death by a thousand cuts.

Honestly I want to throw my phone into a large body of water.

Details do matter but also the CD Howe can kiss our arses in the meantime cdhowe.org/publication/...

“We cannot keep relying on digital surveys that are inaccessible to people outside the AI governance realm who do not have the resources to engage.” Instead, Brandusescu suggested town halls as a solution to “bring government to the people.”

If Waterloo Region's availability for industrial space is among the highest in the CBRE report, at 7.4%, why does the Region need farmland for an industrial mega-site? Keep up the #FightForFarmland signs. #NoFarmersNoFood. Join our mailing list. wilmotcan.com/subscribe-to... #FridayFact

Truth.

A military attack on some other European country could lead to the first general European war since 1945, and perhaps to a third world war. It is in everyone’s interest here in the West to forestall such an attack. @crof.bsky.social writes.

Every farmhouse kitchen (the real ones, not the Chip and Joanna Gaines ones) that I knew growing up had a comfy spot to lie down tucked against a wall or very nearby - the post midday meal nap was *a thing* for every old farmer I knew and I’m just saying… it was a thing for a reason.

New AI School should totally be fun and safe for academics. Totally.

Shit is so bad that the best American news of the week is that Dolly Parton didn't die.

Looks like Canada's approach to "sovereign AI" will involve creating structural dependencies on large US tech companies

What Governor Pritzker is doing is right for his state, but it is vital for the Republic.

NYC "remains the only municipality in the US to guarantee the right to shelter, a commitment established through decades of advocacy + litigation. Public Address, by artist Alex Strada, is a citywide public artwork that centers the lived experience of those most impacted by housing insecurity."

repost this if an editor has ever saved you from yourself

🤗 to see @timothyaschuler.bsky.social on the work of Reimagine the Canals (+ my friend Angelyn!), who, in revitalizing the Erie Canal, "hope [to] serve as a model for how public agencies might approach aging infrastructure at vast scales, marrying... basic maintenance with... public access"

Right, so listen. If Dolly, ya know, on top of everything else? I won’t be okay.

Curious about where science meets poetry? Science Communication through Poetry is an online course exploring how creative language can make research more human and engaging. Only a few places left. Register here: napier.ac.uk/study-with-u... #SciComm #Poetry #AcademicSky #SciArt 🧪

So ... he's an expert in profits? That's all this program is going to create.

The one choice that's always in your hands is to live a principled life

Only two days left to register! Oct 9, 2PM ET: Learn how Canada and the EU are coordinating on wildfire prevention and response from those leading the charge, including EU Ambassador Geneviève Tuts. @euincanada.bsky.social us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

My latest newsletter is about how the generative AI industry made us fear the wrong things. AGI won't kill us all, and AI won't take our jobs. But it'll still harm us. Generative AI a paper tiger, with a real tiger behind it. whatwelost.substack.com/p/generative...

I just saw someone use the abbreviation “AI;DR” and I’ll be laughing for a while.

The crazy thing is, the latter scenario is actually really awesome and I promise it won't hurt. The therapists ya'll desperately need for your massive status anxiety will be covered.

Newsflash: Either Trump breaks it all and everybody dies in a long series of horrendous wars, political chaos, and climate collapse, or we shut this shit down and do the fucking obvious: tax the rich, UBI, universal healthcare, K-16, sensible consumer protections across the board.

Absolutely! This almost feels like a pipedream considering our current political climate but I would love, love, love to see a civil society group or hell, even the NDP, putting out information on taxes; what the hell they are and how they work. Mutual aid at scale is taxation! Taxes can be good!

If YouTube is where you listen to your podcasts, you can listen to the latest episode of Futures Possible featuring @ashleighweeden.bsky.social here: youtu.be/blWW0_Rcrcw?...

Hey folks! Interested in podcasting? I am teaching a short workshop with the Story Center focused on interviewing for audio storytelling this October. Sign up here: www.storycenter.org/schedule/pod... #podcasting #storytelling #interviewing

It was a real joy to do this with @bojanfurst.bsky.social - a kindred spirit and fellow fan of “good trouble”. I love the concept of the Futures Possible series and participating in this in the aftermath of my beloved Dad’s death was powerful. I’m still thinking about the questions Bojan asked...

I think closest analog I can think of is green entrepreneurship — a lot of slushy capital needing to go somewhere, no real valuation method of “good” outcomes, a lot of entrepreneurial activity looking to externalize risk, and a lot of greenwashing metrics emerge.

It’s a hard one to get at empirically. It’s part social network analysis and part textual analysis, I think. And I think there’s a bit in how qualitative assessments of a business person’s value becomes quantified. Because they use these board placements as metrics

Just talking about this recently given our state’s current shenanigans. I sincerely believe that this happened because of the business influencer consulting industry. Whole guide books out there about getting appointed to a university board to build your brand.

Here’s a dissertation topic for an ed policy / higher ed student: right-wing tech and finance plutocrats as ‘policy entrepreneurs’

Women have run this tiny Newfoundland town since 2013. They were just re-elected.

Canada’s innovative potential is vast, but realizing it has been a persistent challenge. What will it take to unlock it & ensure benefits are broadly shared? I certainly have my ideas & will share some at CSA Group's 'Building a Thriving Canadian Economy' conference Nov 5th. Join us via link below:

Prof. Snyder warns about Trump wanting to use US troops against US cities and how it could lead to the breakup of the Republic. www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-p...

Brilliant article by a teacher highlighting the current dire situation for teachers and kids every winter when it comes to infection risk and spread. We continue to fight for our kids to have the right to breathe clean air. stevebheadteacher.wordpress.com/2025/09/30/d...

1/ Around the world, governments are tripping over themselves as they abandon the centre and lean right. But what they are ignoring is that you don’t beat fascism by borrowing from its playbook. Copying the far right’s language or tactics doesn’t weaken them; it normalizes them.

I wrote a short essay about refusing to participate in Canada's public consultation on AI.

I say it all the time, but imma say it again: a lot of very book smart people lack the emotional education and communication skills that would allow them to generate the courage they want to embody in their work. They are incurious about their own emotional lives, and consequently, those of others.

It’s obvious to me that he resents the places his theories cannot reach. And this resentment invokes a profound lack of curiosity, an intellectual eye-roll, for the stories of those who have always had to know what he can’t fathom. That’s why his analysis is flawed. And why he won’t see that.

What Klein couldn’t seem to admit was that his core political analysis is born of his personal experience, and nothing about his personal experience prepared him to face the complexity of the current moment. What he could not cope with acknowledging, is that he never thought that would matter.

If all the left needed was policy that improves people lives, they’d win every time. What keeps them from that isn’t a lack of good ideas or evidence of good outcomes from those ideas. The biggest obstacle is the societal push to ignore what the lack of soft skills in everyday people leads to.

The conversation between Klein and Coates showed me that a lot of people who screech about “infighting” on the left aren’t aware of the fact that marginalized people have been forced to learn how to regulate their emotions during conflict, and so, are better able to hear what’s actually being said.

This from @marietjeschaake.bsky.social's excellent book "The Tech Coup" remains an evergreen statement.

And also that most people still have the skills to do so.

“If you can only be tall because somebody is on their knees, then you have a serious problem.” —Toni Morrison

Yep. *woof*

When you recognize something is a result of your own actions and beliefs that calls forth different responses than when something is a crisis that needs to be navigated. One calls for a reckoning the other for managing (or for pushing consequences onto others, the worst kind of managing).