Agree with this. A social media “ban” for youth will probably not work (they will get around it), lets platforms off the hook with regards to countering online harms, and will likely require intrusive verification systems.

Ooooh, big acceptance to a big journal... can't wait to share the details.

Oh, this will become an article of the faith in some conservative circles. The CBC blacklist! CBC bias! It is literally nothing of the sort

The testimony of Travis Dhanraj was absurd: he misrepresented his time at CBC in multiple ways, and a huge swathe of Canadian conservatives saw what they wanted to believe. In a way, it was a very instructive example of how Canada’s conservative sausage is made. www.thestar.com/opinion/star...

Well. That's dumb.

Holy perfection, Batman.

The point of a literature review is to identify what is said and known, but equally what is not said or known. I’m willing to bet AI can do a 70% job at this, but also hallucinate shit. Which is most certainly not good enough as a basis for actual knowledge contribution. It’s just slop.

Ooooh, guess who just got invited to speak in Vienna next Fall...

Federal spending power is opposed by provincial govts. But it is not opposed by the people living in those provinces.

And here's the *really* stupid part: LLMs exist in large part by hoovering up original published academic work, chopping it up into bits&bytes, and regurgitating it back in things that resemble coherent sentences. It is not only exploitative and plagiaristic, but an inherently limited resource. 1/

My fav claim about the federal spending power is that it lets feds intrude on provincial areas of jurisdiction by "abusing their power of taxation"... as if provinces don't have taxation powers. Reality: provinces keep their taxes low on the backs of their demands for federal money!

That's not a counterpoint, that's just proof that raging assholes can get degrees.

I'll shut up about AI the day an AI system demonstrates one original idea. Because right now all it seems capable of doing is deluding a lot of people into thinking that *synthesizing information (and disinformation) readily available on the Internet* and replicating patterns = real research.

"As someone who has bought into the system I can tell you the system works perfectly...." Honestly, by your logic we can now abandon the training of subject matter experts entirely. AI will do all the learning, and advance all the knowledge we need, for us.

I'm hearing this type of thinking creeping into academia a LOT, and it scares the bejesus out of me looking toward the future.

"AI will let us turn PhDs from 4 year degrees into 6 month degrees!" Literally shitting on the part that makes it intellectual development. It requires things like *reading* for yourself and *writing* for yourself. Those aren't chores, they're part of skills acquisition and critical development.

Not to mention the minimising, for no good reason, of what it means to be human.

AI is such a great tool for outing the idiots and fools in society. Show me someone saying that LLMs are "game-changers" in a purely positive way and I'll show you a moron. The slop-infested future is going to be hell...

Honestly, I am absolutely disgusted by academics suggesting that AI can do the reading and writing for you. At a certain point, what you're bragging about is fraud. And in a broader sense, what you're contributing to is the erosion of knowledge and the destruction of trust in academic publishing.

I can see why he needs help "building writing"...

They have now gone from "No one bombed a school" to "Someone else bombed a school" to "We are looking into who bombed a school" to "We bombed a school back."

Not sure I buy these choices. Trump means that it simply may not be possible to "keep the country steady" (whatever that even means). If option 1 is not available, option 2 becomes necessary.

Apolitical professionals who would never obey illegal orders doing some professional posting

New addition to my lecture on the perils of uncritical AI use. This kind of bias is (one of many reasons) why I don't use it in my own research and writing.

To the contrary, the framers of the American constitution were *deeply* concerned about a Trump. They believed - it turns out incorrectly - that the system of checks and balances, the other institutions, would prevent a despotic president.

What this great thread highlights is *norms*. Rules only stop actors from doing things when the rules are enforceable by an authority with the power to stop you. Norms, on the other hand, are what stop you from doing shit on your own volition, because you believe in the principles undergirding them.

Here's a great example of my last post. Instead of fighting fascism this loser wants to further destroy any capacity for good governance.

I'm less worried by these knock-on effects than I am by the fact that the Democrats will inevitably be terrible at capitalizing on them in the midterms.

A basic statement of fact no one in the government of Canada is principled or brave enough to make.

When is Bluesky going to properly integrate the translate function?

Congrats to everyone for that epically unserious debate about “quiet quitting” and how nO oNe wAnTs tO wOrK aNyMoRe and structural unemployment v2.0 during the raging global pandemic. Looking forward to doing that again during the next global economic crisis.

We are living under the One-Third Reich.

It's called a concentration camp.

Made virtually impossible by an idiotic jurisprudence that - in its current form - ties Canada's line of succession inextricably to the UK's, despite it properly being understood as a distinct institution.

The CBC can write up this self-justificatory bullshit all it wants, the simple fact is this: it is deeply immoral to accept an award from a fascist criminal. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

US aid cuts: $45bn UK aid cuts: $8.2bn EU aid cuts: $2.5bn France aid cuts: $2bn German aid cuts: $2bn Canada aid cuts: $675m Aid has dropped by over 50% in the last two years. So it’s a good job the world is a lot safer now and there are definitely no major humanitarian crises brewing!

It sounds hand-wringingly lefty because it is a universal truth. There is always money for bombs and never money for desperate people Fletcher travels the world pleading for pennies down the couch so people don’t starve to death. $6bn a year The US just spent that in five days bombing Iran

The supposed explosion of the federal public service looks less explosive if you put it in per capita numbers and draw a line graph back to the mid-80s.

Big adverse effects discrimination case under s15 of the Charter by the SCC today. Looking forward to writing about it.

8 years ago:

Lots of Canadians triumphantly dunking on this, but to be fair to the US, roughly half of Americans *are* morally bad people.

The chucklekfucks at the Western Standard are calling Jason Kenney a "leftist," and I am going to lose my gods damned mind.

📣 www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

Counterpoint: No, no it won't. CNN - Mike Pence: History will record that Trump 'made the right call' www.cnn.com/2026/03/04/p...

When the BC Conservatives voted for a bill to repeal the human rights code, the NDP caucus promptly put out a press release slamming the Cons who "couldn’t muster the courage to stand against it." Today, 0 NDP MLAs mustered the courage to vote against a bill to close all BC's safe consumption sites

WAIT, WHAT? The BC NDP are voting to eliminate safe consumption sites???

Tara Armstrong sounds like an evil piece of shit.

Was great to welcome the Deputy Minister of Indigenous Affairs Ontario to speak to my Master of Public Service class this morning! A great talk and Q&A, and the students found it a very rewarding experience.

Americans: we live in a fallen state—embroiled by sin, cheating, lying, and evil. You cannot trust anyone, not even those who claim to know you best Canadians: I love my neighbors and my friends!