I feel like the key to looking competent is understanding jargon while also thinking that it's stupid.

CJSW Live! Check out the live sessions of Jed Arbour, Shoplifting, and Jairus Sharif with Malcolm Mooney.

Every Friday, we'll be dropping a batch of live sessions recorded in the CJSW studios. Check out more sessions @ youtube.com/@CJSWRadio

I'm sure there's a hacky joke to be made from the fact that International Women's Day gets one fewer hour than all the other days this year.

Spending my free time listening to multi-part podcasts on nuclear annihilation and societal collapse and reading about the dangerous delusions of tech billionaires is somehow not as relaxing as I’d hoped.

It's not that I'm not paying attention. I just don't have the words.

Spending my free time in 2026 so far reading Lucifer and playing Hades II and no I don’t see a theme here.

Tweet from April 3, 2019. Text reads Fiscal debt is only one kind of debt. Not building and maintaining infrastructure creates a debt. Sacrificing the quality of education for a generation creates a debt. Failing to address climate change creates a debt. Social debts are real, and ignoring that is irresponsible.

This was the most popular thing I've ever posted, and seems even more relevant now than it did seven years ago. Maintenance isn't glamorous, but skipping it to keep the budget down isn't fiscal responsibility, it's taking on a loan where you don't know the interest rate or when it'll be called in.

Opened a soda bottle by popping the cap against a picnic table. Cap flew straight into my eye and scratched my cornea.

Residential street at night, with hoar frost on all the trees, illuminated by a street light.

At least this winter has the decency to be pretty.

View of the downtown Calgary skyline in the far distance on a foggy, cloudy day. Bottom two thirds of the image is a frozen Bow River, with chunks of jagged ice and small patches where the river is more visible.

View of Calgary’s skyline over the bow river, Jan. 2, 2026.

The A.M. – CJSW Radio

A new year's reintroduction: The AM is a weekly radio show on @cjsw.bsky.social in Calgary, AB, airing live on Monday mornings at cjsw.com and 90.9FM locally.

Each episode is three hours of music to help find your footing for the week. Electronic, jazz, psych, shoegaze, mostly new, but not always.

(Watch or listen to it, that is.)

AI slop is the fulfillment of the promise of the feed. Content without the burden of meaning or reality. Text, photos, and videos that exist only to provide one more entry in the list. It’s where we’ve been heading since the dawn of Web 2.0 and the endless scroll.

Subscription platforms transform music and film from discrete works into fodder for playlists. Content to be consumed. We don’t watch it listen, we’re fed.

The biggest blockbusters succeeded by emulating the feed: a constant stream, nothing satisfying on its own. The post-credits tease turns every ending into a beginning.

The feed gives the illusion of continuity, but everything is discrete, one thing after another, this then that, not this therefore that. Whatever satisfaction it delivers is from the spectacle of isolated moments. So that becomes what society values.

The medium that defines the 21st century so far is the feed. A boundless, contextless present, no beginning and no end. Hypertext promised connection between every idea, rabbit holes leading to deeper insights and new understanding. The feed is the opposite: fragmented, shallow, distracted.

I would've thought an environment minister would have had something to say about the environment in their resignation letter, but what do I know.

Added to my reading list, thanks!

I know it's an excessively broad topic, but seeing how people define it is half the appeal.

Anyone seen any good essays on the first quarter of the 21st century? I'm trying to put together some of my own thoughts but would love to see the arc of the last 25 years as interpreted by people who are smarter than me.

AM Gold 2025:
50 favourite albums from the past year, and 150+ others that are also very much worth a listen. Ambient, psychedelic, modular synth, jazz, library grooves, jangle pop, and other sounds suited to early mornings and contemplative moments.
wanderlines.ca/2025/12/18/a...

This seems like blasphemy but I think I spent too much time this year watching movies and listening to music? I think in 2026 I need to spend more time having conversations and eating food with people and taking part in things that aren't scripted or recorded.

100+ movies is too much.

When?

Just saw the first episode of Welcome to Derry. Does it get any better from there? Will I get to see any space turtles? I need the answer to at least one of those to be yes if I'm going to keep watching.

Anything you believe that I disagree with: Divisive rhetoric
Anything I believe that you disagree with: Common sense

People know you can make smart moves in 2D chess, too, right? Doing something strategic doesn't always imply access to whole other planes of existence.

The real major project is politics, not pipelines | The Narwhal Carney’s major projects push has angered many in Alberta over perceived lack of support for a pipeline project that doesn’t exist

A national project list that doesn't do anything (yet) and a pipeline that doesn't exist. It's amazing how much debate nothing can stir up. #ableg #cdnpoli thenarwhal.ca/alberta-pipe...

Is there a piece of fiction that describes our current moment as well as something like 1984 and Dr. Strangelove did for theirs?

Huh. Cold November rain.