Vladdy hit a home run I have to teach in the morning.

Do I have to be up early tomorrow? Yes. Yes I do.

“Oh Canada” is genuinely hard to sing but I will forgive the terrible vocals because “our home ON Native land” was just sung at the #WorldSeries 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

Dale Bissland ~ Texture & Light, Crail, 2022

My hot take is that when you are literally at the very top of the game, diss tracks are- by definition- nothing short of bullying. If you have no-where to punch but down, it's time to try something entirely new.

Being a politics prof usually feels like an endurance sport, but these days it feels more like high speed, high intensity interval training.

Evergreen post

I don't know about you guys, but today I would much rather mourn the 3000 people who were killed by al Qaeda on 9/11, & the upwards of 4 million people- mostly civilians- who were killed (directly and indirectly) by GWB's ensuing "War on Terror" in the subsequent 20 years. But hey, that's just me.

Two things can be simultaneously true: political violence almost always leads to very bad things, for everyone. And also, the establishment that enabled a malignant bigot to thrive doesn’t get to demand respect or civility for him, especially from the very targets of his hatred.

Post sabbatical blues: this mountain of HR training modules that I cannot put on 1.75 speed are literally going to make me slip into a state of catatonia...

The Ai “assistant” in WhatsApp asking me if I want a “helpful summary” of [squints, checks notes] ONE missed message is the thing that might finally push me over the edge to just accept that humanity is doomed.

I would read an academic murder book in which the murder was solved by reading the syllabus

Meanwhile, also yesterday, I got a cheerful message from the Dean’s office about how “helpful” guides on how to be “more thoughtful” about how we can incorporate AI in the classroom are now available to us…Then MS Copilot asked me if I wanted help summarizing the message. WTF ARE WE DOING HERE?

I also read a whole NYT piece at 1:50am about a family suing Open AI bc Chat GPT literally encouraged their 16 year old to conceal his suicidal ideation and gave helpful tips on how to hang himself…

The Prestige Cartel is real. We also need to talk abt the hiring biases in Canadian Poli Sci depts. There is a tendency to assume Ivy League/US & Oxbridge grad job candidates are inherently “better” applicants, while those from amazing Canadian *programs* are cast onto the NO pile way too quickly.

We live in a seriously screwed-up world.

I don’t know how to process that my social media feeds tonight were 10% footage of rescue workers getting blown up on live TV in an IDF ‘double tap’; 10% footage of bereft Palestinian parents wailing in grief over the lifeless body of their little girl and 80% rich famous white woman got engaged

I have thus far managed to avoid all awareness of/participation in any #LoveIsland fandom or discourse whatsoever. Until now.

A horrifying statement published today by the Editorial Committee of the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency. "Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die" Translation from French to English by @cnorristrent.bsky.social:

Premiere Danielle Smith would like to speak to the manager. Of Jasper.

In UK w my kid. We’re queuing at a figurine store & some guy comes out yelling “if you’re queuing to buy the special edition labubu danglies but haven’t won the online lottery & don’t have a purchase number or photo id you will NOT be seeing ANY labubus today.” I thought I was having a stroke.

Worth a watch: Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.

Meanwhile…

Trump being genuinely surprised that Netenhayu isn’t licking his boots is something to see

Carney has been doing some things right but I’m increasingly disappointed by his govt’s response to urgent security & IR issues. I shouldn’t be surprised, but I guess I was hoping for more Chrétien-on-Iraq energy & less gotta-keep-kissing-American-ass-and-refusing-to-name-or-sanction-genocide energy

My advice for the heatwave: Normalize using umbrellas for sun.

This is literally what the talks were for. The talks that were already taking place before anyone was bombed.

No longer shocked and definitely not in any kind of awe. Just resigned to watching humanity spiral deeper into derangement and insanity with the worst possible people having power to inflict the most pain on other humans.

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

Feel like I'm slowly going insane as part of a shrinking minority who think *maybe it's not good* to outsource simple tasks & research inquiries from our brains to environmentally untenable server farms that are stupidly mashing together word clouds scraped from all of the trash data on the internet

FTR, the RIGHT side of this is a steadfast insistence on upholding the integrity of international law & condemning the indiscriminate targeting of civilians- by anyone, for any purpose. We cannot stand for justice while declaring our "unwavering support" to *any* state that flouts these principles.

No, this is not @thebeaverton.com This timeline man, I dunno.

Just to underscore the lunacy of "warning" people to "evacuate" Tehran, the city is comparable in size and population to Mexico City and London, England. Imagine any other nation "warning" all Londoners to "evacuate" their entire city due to impending attack. The G7 is on the WRONG side of this.

Future generations will point to official statements like this as evidence of the great ontological unravelling of human rights & democratic institutions on a massive scale. And as an example of our deeply hypocritical (and frankly, delusional) self-concept of being unerringly “civilized”

To put it not-mildly, The Discourse in the West on Israel and international security is officially f*****g deranged.

This statement is… not good. To put it mildly. www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/stat...

Much appreciated @matthewlebo.bsky.social 's commentary on political violence on today's Afternoon Drive. It's refreshing to hear someone assert the clear partisan asymmetry in the upward trend (it's fomented much more by the right). Indeed, American democracy is in deep deep trouble right now.

"Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels." arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

Attention @mark-carney.bsky.social the “reaffirming” here should be for respect of international law and your commitment to Canadians who include diaspora from the *entire* region. At least you only posted this lacklustre response to Israel’s brazen rogue state behaviour on X. Do better.

“The UN has warned that 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in the next 48 hours without aid” I wish for 14 thousand headlines telling us their names, their hobbies & dreams, their hopes & future plans…. Most of all I wish for them to be human beings first and numbers second.

I had hoped for more from our leaders (and sooner), but this is the clearest condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank yet. www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/stat...

JESUS H CRACKERS STOP THIS MADNESS

It’s almost like govts premised on neoliberal conservative political ideology cannot be trusted to run education systems (or any systems) in the public interest. You know, given that their *whole shtick* is to reject the concept of governing in the public interest.

"Masked security forces captured an opposition leader in the coastal province of New Jersey as regime officials continue their months-long crack-down against pro-democracy elements in the embattled United States. The arrest comes as the regime issued calls for summary detentions without trial."

BREAKING: A federal court ruled that our client Rümeysa Öztürk must be released on bail immediately. She will return home to New England as her case proceeds.

WHAT ARE THE FEDERAL DEMOCRATS AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL JUDICIARY WAITING FOR?

ICE just arrested the MAYOR OF NEWARK for protesting an immigration detention centre that he did not authorize and that the state of NJ does not allow under their own laws. This is bananas. What will it take for this Administration to be censured?

Pope Turabian I

The fact that the new pope comes with an online history full of (good) shitposting is the most 2025 thing ever