happy birthday queens

thank you Iva!!

the National Post guys are real mad about this one, that's how you know it's good:

i love human ambition actually, which is why I think it’s worth considering who these particular ambitions serve & what they’ll achieve. sorry but mining the moon fails to thrill me

this was such an unpleasant read

what

With the Artemis II Mission, the Lunar Land Grab Begins | The Walrus The moon once belonged to everyone. Soon it will belong to the rich

wrote about colonizers in space for @thewalrus.ca! thewalrus.ca/with-the-art...

They changed the classification to make it look like the drug decriminalization trial wasn't working.

The NDP government let this happen, and this failure has doomed decriminalization for another generation. They ceded the ground to misinformation and cruelty WITHOUT A FIGHT.

Tanya Tagaq isn’t here to make pretty things On her sixth album, Saputjiji, the Inuk artist sings (and yes, sometimes screams) about the ‘farcical clown show’ of capitalism and its environmental harms

on the cover of @theglobeandmail.com arts section today, my profile of the incredible @tanyatagaq.bsky.social; the original draft of this piece had a lot more "fucks" so you'll just have to use your imagination: www.theglobeandmail.com/culture/musi...

Canada’s Reconciliation Panic - Macleans.ca Indigenous peoples are gaining territory and political and economic clout. Not everyone is ready for what that will mean.

"The panic now visible in British Columbia is not evidence that reconciliation has gone too far. It is evidence that reconciliation has begun to have material consequences." @khelsilem.bsky.social in @macleans.bsky.social: macleans.ca/politics/can...

congrats man! great news for books

Defend Academic Freedom for Scholars Researching Indigenous Identity Fraud in Canada We, the undersigned academics, issue this public statement to express our deep concern with the subversion of Indigenous rights and title that will result from the Court of King’s Bench for Saskatchew...

lots more to say about this in the future, but for now, there is a response to the decision and its implications for scholarly research into Indigenous identity fraud, signed by 249 academics so far: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

this case I covered last summer has ended in a defamation ruling. the judge set aside Coupal's claim to Algonquin ancestry — which was disproven over the course of the trial — saying that only her "honest belief" in an Indigenous identity was relevant: www.aptnnews.ca/national-new...

not surprising but still worth lingering on that proud, self-avowed Nazis say journalists and anti-hate groups pose a bigger threat to white supremacist groups than cops

The cost of my reporting stared me in the face last week, when two Nazis showed up to try to intimidate me for my journalism on a private night out.

But that’s far from the only fallout of my latest investigation.

I took a few days, watching the reaction -- and now I’ve got much more to share:

re-considering my views on the merits of press releases

to be more technical, they *can't* sell the land — they also can't own it outright. it's held "in trust" by the federal government under the Indian Act. that's also why First Nations on reserve couldn't build the kind of generational wealth through home ownership that non-Indigenous Canadians have

framing this as some kind of First Nations revenge against settlers is inaccurate & just serves to fan the flames of non-Indigenous paranoiacs who believe Native people are out to get them. the First Nation here is behaving both fairly and legally.

not included in this rage-bait story is the fact that most B.C. municipalities use zoning to restrict mobile homes, camper vans, tiny homes etc, which is why you find so many RV parks on reserve land. an easy fix by non-Indigenous governments. thediscourse.ca/nanaimo/regi...

if we’re fomenting rage against First Nations because people are being given two years notice to vacate their expiring leaseholds on reserve land then we’ve kind of lost the plot

thanks for joining! ❤️

ok literal icon

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

well, I hope you consider reflecting more deeply on it. if you have concerns about our policy, or more broadly with AI, we're soliciting feedback

Big AI dreams in rural Alberta | The Narwhal The AI industry is changing our lives and landscapes at an unprecedented pace. Here’s what that could mean in Alberta — and for our work at The Narwhal

we did not. we are testing one tool that generates audio versions of select articles (many publications now include AI audio with all articles, they just don't announce it), and we are asking for feedback from readers about AI generally. you can read more here: thenarwhal.ca/newsletter-a...

The Narwhal’s AI guidelines The Narwhal’s AI guidelines are rooted in principles of accuracy, verification and transparency to preserve the trust we’ve built with our audiences

if you read our update, it was clear that we do not use AI in any part of our reporting process. our guidelines are here: thenarwhal.ca/ai-guidelines/

a very fun read on @thenarwhal.ca today from @zoeyunker.bsky.social!

I also think it's valuable to bear in mind that while there is a lot of attention on AI enviro impacts (and we report on those!), every online activity — streaming videos, storing files on Dropbox, sending emails — uses natural resources, and we should try to understand all of it holistically

appreciate all of this thoughtful feedback. re: the environmental impact, the audio file is generated once & each "play" uses that file, so it's not generating it each time; my understanding is that minimizes the data used