Gab Taillefer McLaren

Speeches are great but a reminder that what we're getting here in Canada so far is:

* Tax cuts for the wealthy
* Militarization and more surveillance powers
* More oil, less action on climate change.
* Austerity and cuts to the public service
* Deals with authoritarian regimes

I really think one of the best things we can do for ourselves and our communities is to read any non-fiction history book. There is so much to learn from how our ancestors met the challenges of their times, and that's a source of strength the grokipropaganda brigade has cut themselves off from.

I can't believe I'm crying about a book on road ecology. People are good and do things like design road crossings that toads will like (Crossings by Ben Goldfarb)

Consultants, especially American ones, have no business shaping the future of postsecondary education in Canada. Chris Hurl wrote a great book on "The Consultant Trap", which speaks to their role in legitimating neoliberal shock therapy.

Archival find of the week! The chickens clamour for asbestos.

"We're going to create superintelligence" How about making outlook search work first. How about that

You should read it, some really cool scholars and artists are in it!

the comps notes are spending the night in a drawer, what a rush

I cannot stress how grounding and comforting it is to have a garden to tend and connect to while reading through my environmental history comps list #phdstudent #envhist

There were so many thematic parallels between Sunrise on the Reaping and Catching Fire I think Collins will write a sixth Hunger Games book, so that there are three stand-alone books that follow the arc of the original series. I have theories, ideas, topics, and suggestions #hungergames

Happy New Hunger Games Book day to all those who celebrate or will need to tolerate me today

I had a really interesting conversation with students I TA about what going to high school in Ontario during the Ford years was like. I'm not surprised that the election turned out the way it did, but I'm sad for the next generations of high school students who will be neglected and underprepared

🫠

0 days since I called Benedict Anderson 'Benedict Arnold' in seminar 🙃

Community is seven strangers in a café watching a car parked on the streetcar tracks paralyze Queen St

Entangled “her”stories – An open multi-linked dynamic dataset of plant genera named for women Which plant genera do you know that are named for women? Who were/are they?

On the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we're spotlighting a fantastic project published in BDJ, which used the power of data to uncover the hidden stories of women in science and publish them as a freely available resource.

blog.pensoft.net/2023/12/06/e...

poster featuring a needle with several threads and a photo of a woman laughing wearing a black tshirt and red jacket. The main text reads: Small Things: Cross-Stitch Provocations. A Two-Part Hands-On Workshop with Dr. Sonja Boon. Monday Feb 10 and Monday Feb 24. 2:30-4:00pm, Tier 409. All are welcome to attend.

Coming up next week (and then two weeks later): Small Things - where we talk about cross stitch (or any stitchery, really) as life writing, as storytelling, as activism - and make projects that we'll release into the world as invitations and provocations!

day 25: one boy, one mother, one ship One boy, one mother, one ship. That’s where this project begins. What might a mother and her young child have talked about during a 3-month voyage took them halfway around the world. What would the…

writer-in-residence day 25: one boy, one mother, one ship (or, more tangling with inconsistencies in archival transcription)

stitchingempire.wordpress.com/2025/02/08/d...

Many thanks!

Any environmental historians working on the history of potash in Canada?#envhist #canhist #potash

AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking The proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has transformed numerous aspects of daily life, yet its impact on critical thinking remains underexplored. This study investigates the relations...

New study finds that frequent use of AI tools encourages offloading cognitive tasks and reduces critical thinking. Higher AI usage correlated with lower critical thinking skills, especially in younger users.
www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15...

AI is Trash: The Environmental Externalities of Machine Learning Tools with Dr. Anne Pasek discuss the environmental costs of machine learning and deep learning technologies.

Tired of being bombarded by AI propaganda? Concerned about the outrageous & escalating environmental costs of these technologies?

Then register for this online talk by @apasek.bsky.social on Feb. 12 at 12:00 PM EST. #envhum @nichecanada.bsky.social

More info & registration at link below.

kitchen table covered in piles of exams, a laptop, and a red speaker with a little white dog's head popping up at the bottom of the frame

the same crunchy little dog who sat on my lap while I wrote term papers from my parents' house is now helping me grade exams. thank goodness!

Happy Winter Solstice

Spend some time with our Winter in Canada series, edited and organized by Blake Butler and @benbradleyca.bsky.social earlier this year.

niche-canada.org/tag/winter-i...

#envhist #winter #cdnhist

And way more: censored, edited, self-censored, unwritten...

me (writing an essay) and the cat (doing ??? that involves propelling herself across the floor upstairs) are both fighting our own demons this exam season

How Bad Information Is Breaking the Energy Transition Why an attorney for Dominion Voting Systems is now defending renewables companies.

I spent the last two weeks researching how the top medical official in a Michigan county is using unfounded theories about the health impacts of solar energy to push for new restrictions aimed at killing development

@heatmap.news

heatmap.news/plus/the-fig...

Does anyone have a recent literature review on animal history? I'm writing a historiographical review on animals and epidemics as a term paper, and want to see how the literature I pulled intersects with new directions and themes in the field!

Exposing Residential School Denialism’s Transnational Network Residential school denialism may have its origins in Canada, but it is increasingly circulating and being used around the world as part of a wider matrix of imperial apologetics – a transnational n…

New essay out today (with @alanlester.bsky.social @adeleperry.bsky.social Omeasoo Wahpasiw) exposing residential school denialism’s transnational network, or how denialism in Canada is being used globally to defend empire and colonialism: activehistory.ca/blog/2024/12...