Most rural people get their mail from post office boxes. Household mail delivery is an urban thing. We could use a book rate and a new look at how it competes with Amazon.

Never forget, Canada, approximately 95% of the Counties bordering Canada voted for Trump. I did a thread last month about it. You can look up the voting maps on Politico to see the States' Counties bordering your province. Now they're crying for our money - dressed as friendship. #ElbowsUp!!!

J.W. Dafoe was the most powerful and respected editor in Canada, turning the Winnipeg Free Press into one of the great newspapers of the world. So proud that my book Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brebeuf and the Destruction of Huronia made the J.W. Dafoe Prize shortlist. dafoefoundation.ca/news/

More distractions

So very, very sad that we have lost the brilliant Elaine Dewer.

We are proud to announce the 2025 J.W. Dafoe Book Prize Longlist! Congratulations to all of the phenomenal authors on the list. Keep in touch, to learn more about each of these titles. We will be announcing the five shortlisted books on September 25th and the winner on October 14th.

"A riveting chronicle of the battle for chess supremacy & the brilliant, eccentric, extremely online grandmasters changing an ancient game." Can’t wait to read this, from multi-award winning writer (aaaaand top three all-time favourite brother) Jordan Himelfarb.

Maurene Comey, the lead prosecutor in the Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffery Epstein saga, is now suing Pam Bondi, the DOJ and the Office of the President for her unlawful firing. Maurene has all the receipts.

I'll be at the Eden Milld book festiva; Sunday, talking about democracy.

In the latest Biblioasis awards news: Mark Bourrie's CROSSES IN THE SKY made the J.W. Dafoe Book Prize longlist! Congrats to @drmarkbourrie.bsky.social 🎉 dafoefoundation.ca/2025/09/02/j... Keep an eye out for some fun highlights of the longlisted books on the @jwdafoebookprize.bsky.social socials!

Fox News had to pay 3/4 of a BILLION dollars for lying to its viewers. And it STILL lies.

Congratulations to my friend @drmarkbourrie.bsky.social for yet more credit for his fantastic Canadian history stories

Some would say Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre is a ripping good read. See why so many crackpots want to tear into it.

Almost all cities, even those with newspapers, radio stations and TV outlets, have become news deserts. The newsrooms might exist, but they are almost empty. (Many private radio stations have no real reporters at all.)

The Muhammas Restaurant in Jabilya, Gaza, is, according to Google Earth, temporarily closed.

Good thing the Tories weren't elected. They weren't, right? Sometimes it is very hard to tell.

I've got a chapter in this describing how Mackenzie King played the press like a virtuoso. King was the only PM to come to the job from journalism and public relations, something that was lost on his biographers. They just saw him as a bureaucrat. www.amazon.ca/Enduring-Rid...

I found an Eobronteus on the weekend! Probably 200 people in the world would care, but it's an extremely rare trilobite. And mine is on a plate of crinoids (and my own blood).

I need the 2020s US Democrats to stop reminding me all the time of the 1933 German Social Democrats

Interesting. Does anyone know how this turned out? encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/a...

Conservative media attacked my 2025 book "Kill the Messengers". In it, I call out the fascistic tendancies of the populist Right. Now I get asked to be on panels with Andrew Coyne. No. That's not going to happen. "A Note on 'Trump Derangement Syndrome'" open.substack.com/pub/mikebroc...

An autopsy of an interview open.substack.com/pub/noralore...

Really looking forward to this: Concordia University PhD Oral Exam - (Student's name Redacted) History Dept. Thesis topic: "Labyrinths of Despair: Crime, Emotion, and the Racialized Courtroom in Nineteenth-Century Yucatán"🤔

The new reality: weeks of summer ruined by smoke. Don't tell me things are the same as they used to be.

I'm working on this. Can people see it? www.instagram.com/ontariotrilo...

The thing about living in a glasshouse..

Keep this in mind about economics: a messy divorce generates more GDP than a typical wedding. Building a bomb improves the numbers much more than feeding a child.

The Big Beautiful Bill gives Meta a $15 billion check. That’s more than our federal government spends on child care in an entire year. If we invested that much in child care & early childhood education, we’d create stronger futures for everyone, not just Mark Zuckerberg.

This is a short read, but it's the funniest thing I've read in ages: OTHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE open.substack.com/pub/richardj...

The Infinite Complexity of History open.substack.com/pub/dgardner...

Stephen Colbert was nominated for another Emmy yesterday. He was fired today. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/b...

Do you live in a news desert in Canada? Care to talk about it for a book chapter I'm writing?

Fun to see my book on emergency powers incl. in bookauthority.org/books/best-p... 's "9 Public Law Books That Separate Experts from Amateurs." Buy a copy now to look cool & smart! 😎 www.amazon.com/States-Emerg... Tx for nod @nomiki.bsky.social @benjaminwittes.lawfaremedia.org & @garyvee.com

"Reich citizenship will not be laid in the cradle of every one born in Germany, but will be ceremoniously conferred on him after he has shown himself worthy of it through special accomplishments, through loyal services to the State." NY Times, July 6, 1933.

We are deep into the summer news drought.

"She is a Threat to Humanity" This is seriously what the president of the United States posts about on his third tier social media platform. Americans need to realize just how drastically this man has destroyed their reputation with this jackass at the helm.

I am so thrilled to be among the Canadian historians invited to contribute to this book, which will be out in early October. My chapter is on how Mackenzie King was his own comms director and played the media like a virtuoso: www.ubcpress.ca/the-enduring...

A real July weekend... A day sailing Saturday, and a trip to a lovely country restaurant and beach on Sunday. Couldn't have done that last summer.

It's not the most demanding university in the world, and most of its faculty are non-entities.