Fight Online Harms: Canada Needs a Duty of Care ⚠️ Big Tech has free rein in Canada. Every democracy has acted, except Canada. AI-era online harms are no joke. Demand Duty of Care now! 🇨🇦 https://openmedia.org/FightOnlineHarms

Fuck Big Tech’s free rein in Canada. Every other democracy has acted, because AI-accelerated harms are no joke. Demand a platform Duty of Care: openmedia.org/FightOnlineH... @openmedia.org

THE BLINDED BIRD So zestfully canst thou sing? And all this indignity, With God's consent, on thee! Blinded ere yet a-wing By the red-hot needle thou, I stand and wonder how So zestfully thou canst sing! Resenting not such wrong, Thy grievous pain forgot, Eternal dark thy lot, Groping thy whole life long, After that stab of fire; Enjailed in pitiless wire; Resenting not such wrong! Who hath charitv? This bird. Who suffereth long and is kind, Is not provoked, though blind And alive ensepulchred? Who hopeth, endureth all things? Who thinketh no evil, but sings? Who is divine? This bird. THOMAS HARDY

April is the poetriest month

@athabascau.bsky.social MA students wishing to take this fall’s special topics course on #vampire #literature (MAIS 752): please be sure to register by August 10. Gory details: www.athabascau.ca/syllabi/mais...

Salt air
and the rust on your door
where a raven sits, muttering “nevermore”

happy mothers’ day

Photo of the book Kicking and Dreaming: a story of heart, soul, and rock and roll, by Ann and Nancy Wilson with Charles R. Cross (It Books 2013)

thanks for the music memoir reading tip! here’s one for you

black and white stencil image of former Conservative PM Harper as Robocop brandishing a pistol (detail of p. 182 of English Studies in Canada, vol 42 no 1-2)

Trust no polls.
Trust no projections.
And *definitely* trust no phone calls (remember how the Cons’ guy was linked to last decade’s robocalls scandal?).
The best, easiest way to counter vote suppression and disinformation is just voter turnout.
So go vote, #Canada.
#elxn

black and white stencil image of former Conservative PM Harper as Robocop brandishing a pistol (detail of p. 182 of English Studies in Canada, vol 42 no 1-2)

Trust no polls.
Trust no projections.
And *definitely* trust no phone calls (remember how the Cons’ guy was linked to last decade’s robocalls scandal?).
The best, easiest way to counter vote suppression and disinformation is just voter turnout.
So go vote, #Canada.
#elxn

Today I voted at advance polls, which I’d never seen as busy as this. ❤️ Go Canada, get out there and vote ✊

Alain-G Gagnon, FRSC, President of the Royal Society of Canada (left), presenting the coronation medal to Dr Wright (right)

The King Charles III Coronation Medal

Congratulations to Dr. Julia M Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social, George Munro Chair in our Department, on being awarded the King Charles III Coronation medal for her work with @src-rsc.bsky.social and her “valuable contribution” to Canada! @dalhousie.bsky.social @dalalumni.bsky.social

CXXVIII If I should tell how glad I was, I should not be so glad, But when I cannot make the Force Nor mould it into word, I know it is a sign That new Dilemma be From mathematics further off, Than from Eternity. (excerpted from The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson, Sterling/B&N, 2003)

#EmilyDickinson was wielding the Force way back when. Happy #WorldPoetryDay

these are the days of lasers in the tundra
lasers in the tundra somewhere
unfactchecked signals of constant misinformation
a loser occupation of millionaires and billionaires and babies

(apologies Paul Simon)

Post a meme made by you

4 still shots from film show King George speaking: “a bill for the regulation of trade with our possessions in North America”; on which his aide clears throat, after which interruption the king restates “our *former* possessions in North America”

still frames from The Madness of King George (1993)

aka why studying 19th-century English #literature & #history matters

Photo of shelf showing Broadview Edition copies of (right to left): MG Lewis’ The Monk, Austen’s Northanger Abbey, DeQuincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, & RL Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde

#AthabascaU students read avidly. But finding good editions of great reads is harder than ever (between Amzn & AI…).
Coming soon, my English MA course LTST612 Gothic Transformations will teach & ship a curated set of four @Broadviewpress.bsky.social Editions.
#Read the classics.
#BuyCanadian.

photo of monochromatic Canadian spring, streetside, the Canada and Ukraine flags flying high against a Ukraine-coloured sky (a stratum of blue clouds above the sunset’s yellow stratum)

little behind on current events but if i’ve got this right, the USA has finally lost World War Two, somehow to both the Nazis and the Reds?

Happy Twin Peaks Day, my friends ☕️

so, reach the stars by killing science?

NASSR 2025: #Romanticism’s Commons call for papers & panels *deadline extended* to middle March (get it)
Details: landing.athabascau.ca/pages/view/2...
#Humanities #literature #history #research

photo of car bumper from which an #OPA sticker (from #TheExpanse) is breaking and peeling off

Coincidence?
#TheExpanse #iykyk

closeup of CD-ROM titled Becoming Bell: The Remarkable Story of a Canadian Enterprise (Bell Canada, 2005)

going through my dad’s old stuff I found this Kier Egan grade shit.
#Severance

Quote from Wikipedia article on “enclosure”: An anonymous poem, known as "The Goose and the Common" has come to represent the opposition to the enclosure movement in the 18th century: "The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common, But lets the greater felon loose Who steals the common from the goose." (Part of 18th century poem by Anon.) — Boyle 2003, pp. 33–74

Wiki quote continues: According to one academic: "This poem is one of the pithiest condemnations of the English enclosure movement—the process of fencing off common land and turning it into private property. In a few lines, the poem manages to criticize double standards, expose the artificial and controversial nature of property rights, and take a slap at the legitimacy of state power. And it does it all with humor, without jargon, and in rhyming couplets." — Boyle 2003, pp. 33–74

Romanticism’s Commons: call for papers

Friday Feb 14 is the deadline for proposals for papers, pre-assembled panels, etc. to the North American Society for Studies in #Romanticism’s 2025 conference, hosted by Athabasca U, Aug 14-16.
Details: landing.athabascau.ca/pages/view/2...
#research #NASSR

sundial buried under snow

Canadian sundial

horizontally split image shows, at top, church sign reading “Love thy neighbour. Yes, even that guy,” and at bottom, still frame from The Expanse tv series showing closeup of Amos (played by Wes Chatham) against Baltimore backdrop

#LoveThyNeighbour #TheExpanse