Indulging in Saturday morning retail therapy - treats from the farmers market, including flowers - lupins - for the kiddo who has a Grade 12 prom today; and purchasing music via Bandcamp, today Nemahsis. Grateful for the privilege.

Are we doubling electricity production in Canada to keep up with demand from data centres?

Finished my census questionnaire. Learned something new about my common-law spouse and I feel a sense of accomplishment.

Desperately seeking #Halifax. Also TGIF.

It’s hard to connect with truth through the news. So, this week, I was grateful for a daily and delicious experience of truth - in the form of dates, product of a people, a culture, a place, the state of Palestine.

Raising a glass to everyone who put their heads down and worked today, then raised their heads to WTF

The smallest of the “ponds” - at curb cuts/ intersections - that I leapt over this morning. Why don’t we make crosswalks at intersections water-shedding speed bumps?

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." -Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

Just thinking about how we’re all treaty people and resolving to show up on Treaty Day is a more consistent way now that our Provincial government has signalled that it is not honouring that relationship. Also about how artists - like Louise Pitre at the Craig Gallery - process these things.

About that $1,400 average tax cut. There is no actual average Nova Scotian. The avg includes the higher income and the lower income; one benefits 10 times more (fr HST & PIT cut). Income of $290,000 or more, taxes reduced by $2,600, income of $25K and less by $256. (Using SPSD/M stats can modelling)

I understand this may be offered but means-tested. So kids and families identify as low income to schools and bus drivers. Terrible stigmatizing policy change, if true.

I'm furious at so many of the cuts in NS's provincial budget. They'll impact all Nova Scotians, in ways we don't fully comprehend yet. We didn't vote for eliminating bridge tolls, and now the gov't has to find that revenue loss elsewhere -- like in cuts to arts and culture. As a writer, this hurts.

Make this land use illegal in your community. In every community.

"The level of racism and hate that has been expressed has risen undoubtedly, and it is aligned with this premier's... attempt to pin all of her failings on newcomers to this province." ABNDP's Rakhi Pancholi argues Premier Smith's referendums are designed to anger and distract.

This building with - 8 or 12 or? Units - replaced a story and a half on a corner lot, two blocks from fairly frequent bus route #7 in Halifax. My only complaint: the lot was empty for years before it was built, and now the (completed?) building is still unoccupied. #MissingMiddle

« I find it difficult to imagine Council canceling other projects or programs with so little information or so little care for finding alternative approaches » Appreciate the thorough explanation of the budget process right now and this Councillor’s decision-making process.

Everyone in the world comes to get married at the NYC Marriage Bureau. Last week, the Mayor stopped by to officiate a few of those ceremonies.    Thank you to all the couples who shared their joy with us. Happy Valentine's Day, New York.     Watch the full video at Youtube.com/nycmayorsoffice

This is blackout poetry to me

I used to make leek mushroom soup with milk in it. Tonight I made leek soup with potatoes and not even the veg stock that the recipe called for. 15yo had three bowls.

Being in the US without status is civil infraction, not a crime. People are subject to the penalty of deportation, but not to criminal punishment. Look at that car.

Today I'm appearing before the Senate committee on finance about the upper income tax cut that the middle class happens to see a small benefit from. Here is my full analysis www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc... @policyalternatives.ca

Video of BRT working as intended on Barrington this morning. Not pictured: the mom next to me saying “There was a school shooting yesterday” and us discussing the heartbreak and the coincidence that our kiddos did lockdown drills this week.

“I had many conversations with people who arrived in Victoria, saw the mountains and the ocean and the sunshine and then concluded that the city’s best feature was the comparative ease of finding a parking space.” 🤣

I am daily grateful for my commute, though I look forward to switching from bus/ ferry to bike/ ferry when winter ends. Two stops I can make if I have 5 minutes to spare: O’Bees in Alderney Landing (also Port City for $2 dark roast) and Carrefour Atlantic in the Historic Properties.

JUDGE JOHNSTON: “Today, immigrants are being detained without due process. Tomorrow, under the Government’s interpretation of the law, American citizens could be subject to the same .. This Court will not allow such an unraveling of the Constitution.” storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

I am peddling good coffee at the Windsor Forum market today - a volunteer gig connected to time I spent in Guatemala 30 years ago. There is an abundance of great sourdough bread, quality produce, eggs, and lots of room to sit and enjoy the coffee. Come make a vendor’s day.

I’ll start with the question that sparked my idea to do this: Q: What is happening outside of the frame of the videos of ICE and ICE Watch? Is it protests? Or is there no one else there?

Exactly right, and therefore important not to give credit for an investigation of an obvious atrocity. Appropriate responses are apologies, resignations, firings, impeachments. The individuals who killed people should be tried before a judge and jury.

Father at toddler swim class with his lawyer’s phone number conspicuously written in dark sharpie on his arm

I sat in @busstoptheatrecoop.bsky.social last night for the first time in ages and watched Lee-Anne Poole’s How to Knit and might go back today and catch the other two Halifax “Refringe” shows on offer. Live theatre is an option. That is all.

Dropped off my five pieces for Pre-Shrunk at @argylefineart.bsky.social this afternoon - a little rainbow of Haligonian street scenes. Here's a little sneak peek 🐱 The show opens for its 22nd year(!) next Friday at 7pm with >300 4x5" pieces, $175 each. It's always a wonderful show #preshrunk2026

Many people still think of poverty as something that happens when people don’t work. But the reality is different: majority of people who live in poverty in Canada are working or live in families who work. @gillianpetit.bsky.social and my 2026 chart to watch www.theglobeandmail.com/business/eco...

We deserve this too. We’re so used to being told to pull up our bootstraps by people who never bought their own boots for anything that we’ve come to accept that these ideas are too much to want.

The light finds its way #forestfriday #photography #classicmono

From a clear, educational, compelling opinion piece by @dougsaunders.bsky.social in the Globe and Mail: “According to a report by a panel of United Nations experts leaked last year, the RSF has been able to prevail, despite having only 100,000 fighters compared to the army’s 200,000, because …

28 / Thus, it would be a huge mistake for SCOTUS to endorse as “constitutional” the ham-handed, ill-informed, one-sided “liberation day” tariffs on the pretext that they are “natural” means of regulating trade. Katyal is right.

I’m not attempting to keep up on social media or otherwise, but volunteering selling coffee (in solidarity with Guatemala, where I once lived, through Breaking the Silence Network) and three different people said they were going to “the rally.” www.saltwire.com/cape-breton/...

Microsoft and Google say data centers will create thousands of jobs in Chile. But our analysis of permit filings shows a much smaller number of potential positions — mostly in security and cleaning, not skilled IT jobs. New: restofworld.org/2025/data-ce...

This song and singer @desireedawsonmusic.bsky.social are a new favourite. Also I’m looking for a chopping block of good dimensions for turning split wood into kindling. DM with a #Halifax address if you could leave such a thing on the curb after the rain eases up. m.youtube.com/watch?featur...

While Trump and Carney debate who's better at resurrecting Ronald Reagan, trade expert Beth Baltzan explains why free trade today looks more like Reganomics than the internationalization of FDR's New Deal. Watch: youtu.be/_nOlyx8zNa0?...

"Haligonians are rightfully frustrated about traffic congestion. But the premier’s promise has pushed another 10,000 cars onto the roads, clogging up your commute. These 10,000 trips are trips that the drivers were previously not willing to pay a single dollar to make"

Indigenous grandmothers co-created this video resource linked in Growing Together, Alice House’s online course about supporting children impacted by IPV. “Strong Women’s Circle: A Systems Change Approach to Addressing Family Violencs within Communities.” A good 20min #TRC learning. lnkd.in/eMbHWGT9

"Margaux Blanchard" may go down as a kind of minor Stephen Glass of the AI moment. Whoever, or whatever, they are, they seem to have used AI to fabricate multiple articles with fictitious sources published in Wired, Business Insider, and other publications pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/d...

Two things I feel good about this week - indulgence in amazing Nova Scotia peaches and choosing to not let AI train off my posts on LinkedIn. Little wins, folks.

This is an issue for many farmers in Nova Scotia. And the provincial regulations/ abattoirs are adequate for doos safety - in fact, compared side-by-side with federal regulations, the provincial ones are sometimes more stringent. There should be a “de minimis” exemption for interprovincial trade

Hi #BikeHfx and #Halisky! We could use your help again, this time in downtown Dartmouth. #KidicalMassHfx rides on Sunday Sept 14, and we'd be at our best with a few more volunteers. Let us know if you can help?

The Embankment cycleway (CS3) in London was purposefully built to be wider than was usual in order to future proof it. Some said it would hardly be used. Now there’s a decent case for widening it further. Induced demand is real.

I scroll on Meta sometimes. This @motherjones.com explainer of “Theo bros” partly answers my continual WTF re the US and also - as the last few seconds point to - US support for genocide www.instagram.com/reel/DNtgO8l... Combine with a CBC front burner episode on Christian Zionism.