Don't be shy to take on a little two-week side project. These five months will be the most precious three years of your academic journey.

Hah, I would be genuinely DELIGHTED if some poor soul slogged through my 100+ page Official Gov’t Report that was finally published a month ago and emailed me with opinions

I don't have a lot of faith in the Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation portfolio. "Move fast and break things" is, at best, a lazy ethos when it comes to disrupting....laundromats or some shit. But it's downright irresponsible as government policy.

Here, here. Excellent thread (scroll up) on result of the woefully badly constructed AI-in-government survey from last fall

As a reminder, back in October, there was 30 day public consultation on Canada's AI strategy. There were...impartiality issues:
bsky.app/profile/scie...

This is largely by design. If we stop thinking about AI as simply technology and instead as part of a political and economic program, its chief function become easier to see: namely to erode interpersonal trust so that ultimately we give up on forms of agreement & negotiation arbitrated by people.

The word blurb was coined in 1906 by American humorist Gelett Burgess (1866–1951).[2] The October 1906 first edition of his short book Are You a Bromide? was presented in a limited edition to an annual trade association dinner. The custom at such events was to have a dust jacket promoting the work and with, as Burgess' publisher B. W. Huebsch described it, "the picture of a damsel—languishing, heroic, or coquettish—anyhow, a damsel on the jacket of every novel". In this case, the jacket proclaimed "YES, this is a 'BLURB'!" and the picture was of a (fictitious) young woman "Miss Belinda Blurb" shown calling out, described as "in the act of blurbing." The name and term stuck for any publisher's contents on a book's back cover, even after the picture was dropped and only the text remained.

The original Belinda Blurb

It brings me great pleasure to inform you the word "blurb" is named after a made-up woman named Belinda Blurb whose job is to tell everyone how great a book is

photograph or a poster on cream colored paper. "Dear President Ambar, we are writing to you on a typewriter that is over 70 years old. This is a machine that we all know well. With it, we misspell words without the crutch of spell check or generative AI and we think intently about every phrase we pound out. As we force ourselves, for once, to slow down, we engage in a cognitive dialogue with ourselves. We do not seek perfection because we know that education is about the growing and challenging of our young minds' potential, not the chasing of institutional 'gold-star' approval. We do not believe that your so-called 'Year of AI Exploration; providing enterprise ChatGPT and Google Gemini subscriptions to every Oberlin student aligns with our college's founding principles. You claim that this year will be one of experimentation, not adoption. But even just one semester of accepted (encouraged even) chat bot use will jettison our student body down a lazy and irredeemable tunnel of intellectual destruction. We are a college grounded in learning and labor, which now risks straying from these rooted ideals. With ChatGPT at the helm, our emails, essays,and discussion posts will be generated for us, not by us. And let's not fool ourselves. This is precisely what these platforms will be used for by our busy, anxious student body. We see your vision for this year as.advancing the college's 'businessification'--an alarming trend also seen in the takeover of our beloved library cafe by a 'bookstore' with no books in stock and an app replacing customer service. In one instance, the college assumes we want efficiency at all costs through automated rather than hand pulled coffee. In the other lies the false belief that we simply desire to turn in an essay, regardless of how little we've written of it." there's more that doesn't fit in the 2000 character limit :(

OH MY HEART...the Oberlin Luddites Reject "The Year of AI Exploration"! 💚

🎉🎉🎉!

Canada's own foreign policy makes advancing an open, rules-based trading system a priority. That's a value! That serves Canada's interests!

It is in our interests that the countries we work with play by agreed rules, treat their people well, and don't do idiotic stuff that harms everyone

The flaw in the Carney doctrine is the idea that countries can only advance values when they are economically sovereign

That only when there is no economic risk, can a country afford to talk about values

It's not just defeatist, it misses the point that values are how you get economic security

As @ldobsonhughes.bsky.social notes, international law isn't a principle to be sacrificed on the altar of hard-headed self-interest: it's a core Canadian national interest, and should be defended as such.

bsky.app/profile/ldob...

If your perspective is that Canada should only voice support for international law when it has an narrow self interest in doing so, we're no longer discussing international law.

Several points:
1) Iran's regime is odious. Its citizens deserve support.
2) That does not mean an attack will help.
3) Canada will find it hard to be so selective in its support for international law.
4) Canada does not benefit from a US administration unbound by the US constitution.

Left side profile of the pheasant who regularly visits my mum and dad's garden on the day he first became a pheasant monk and got a tonsure.

The pheasant who regularly visits my mum and dad's garden, looking straight on us while daring us to suggest he is partly made of fuzzy felt.

A more relaxed side of the pheasant who regularly visits my mum and dad's garden, but where he still looks like he is the product of an industrious afternoon from a local fibre arts group.

I absolutely refuse to believe that the pheasant who regularly visits my mum and dad’s garden is real and has not in fact been crocheted.

What doesn’t seem to be on the table: it’s obvious the existing scheme of having the urban core pay for suburban sprawl, and have new home owners and renters pay more taxes than long-time home owners isn’t working. But they will try literally anything but fixing that

Someone please show me how to do alt text when I am sharing text only photos without having to type it all out

B

C

D

The list of things council is considering cutting in order to keep taxes “flat” is insane. (From Sam Austin’s website). Call your councillor and tell them you won’t support them if they support these cuts.

*staring directly at the current Canadian federal policy agenda*

The biggest challenge Canadians face right now involves the utter disconnect between Carney’s rhetoric and his actual policies. It makes it so difficult to even begin a debate about what actually standing up to the US would look like.

How Trump’s regulatory cuts threaten Canada’s safety Trump’s dismantling of U.S. science agencies puts Canadians at risk. Canada must boost regulatory capacity to protect health and food safety.

Canada has relied on U.S. science for decades - for health info, drug review, food safety, weather monitoring, and more.

As the US dismantles its science ecosystem @ntusikov.bsky.social argues Canada’s civil service cuts will put public heath at greater risk.

policyoptions.irpp.org/2025/12/trum...

If I were a PM who believed we were at a global rupture moment, upending decades of international order, and requiring totally new relations with the world, I probably wouldn’t cut my foreign affairs staffing and budget by 15%

Paintings of hammerhead sharks depicted in the "Oki National Products Illustration Notes". From Japan, Edo Period, ca 1735

A pair of happy hammerhead sharks
(ca. 1735 Edo period Japan)

We didn't survive and thrive as a species because we had warriors or hunters - pretty much every omnivore can manage that.

We did so because we developed Grandmothers, and domesticated Dogs.

Community is what defines us as a species, and every "self-reliant" libertarian shitweasel be damned.

A morbidly inclined sheep, who likes to hang around in graveyards, detests parties and owns original pressings of the entire classic run of Leonard Cohen LPs from 1967-1974.

THREAD. A collection of photographs of excellent sheep I have met on walks.

You will find the captions to each photo in the alt text.

Legal Issues Raised by a Lethal U.S. Military Attack in the Caribbean The Trump administration’s extraordinary lethal attack on this purported smuggling vessel raises significant potential legal issues.

1/ I worked at DoD. I literally cannot imagine lawyers coming up with a legal basis for lethal strike of suspected Venezuelan drug boat.

Hard to see how this would not be "murder" or war crime under international law that DoD considers applicable.

Read expert analysis by @bcfinucane.bsky.social⤵️

If cabinet is hoping the guy who wrote the fascist playbook will give advice on stopping fascism then we are in trouble.
Adorno reminds us that clever people were the first to be suckered by the fascist playbook because they thought they could outsmart it.
There is nothing hidden in their plan.

And I resent the way companies are trying to force it. The other day Slack emailed saying they were adding AI to their product that already functions fine. I immediately cancelled that account. I don’t want it. It is not a benefit or feature. It is a yoke. I am happy on this hill even if I am alone

Yes. I am right. I am seeing how Chat GPT is ruining students critical thinking and writing skills in real time. It is not the future. It is a tool designed to render the populace helpless, to make people doubt their innate intelligence, and to foster overreliance on technology.

Canada and India reset relations as Mark Carney and Narendra Modi meet Leaders call time on two-year diplomatic dispute triggered by death of Sikh activist

Seeing my prime minister shake hands with a man behind the murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil turns my stomach.

Mark Carney will talk about rule of law and human rights, but at the end of the day, it’s economy, economy, economy, no matter the cost.

Like yet again the fear of "losing out" on the "AI revolution " takes precedence over the risks of joining in. There'd literally have been fewer genocides of we'd just pumped the brakes on Facebook a bit