John Berlinsky

💥 🔥 #NeverPeePee

Sunday thought: A national trauma We need to talk about it openly

Nobody in the USA wants to believe we are in mid 1930s Germany right now. When you say NAZI even people on the left get upset ...
Sunday thought: America’s trauma
open.substack.com/pub/robertre...

I left X in December 2024 and have not looked back. I think people should be very critical of Canadian decisionmakers who use X, and I would encourage you to leave X and take as many of your large audience as you can with you. The only way to kill it is to stop using it.

The solution is clearly that more resources are required because the available resources are not adequate to deal with the workload.

Timely reading, if not long overdue, for a gloomy late-September day.

Why Ukraine is winning the war Russia has failed to achieve its core aim — the destruction of the Ukrainian nation

"Nations aren’t made of clumps of earth or of drops of blood. They are made of stories, images and memories in people’s minds. The memory of the Russian invasion [and] atrocities and of Ukrainian sacrifices, will continue to sustain Ukrainian patriotism for generations to come."

on.ft.com/3KmyOLS

Trump is a national embarrassment and an international menace.

Tried to get my real ID. I had my license, my SS card and my birth certificate.

I was not allowed to get my real ID because my birth name is different than my married name. Now I have to go dig up a marriage certificate. You know who wouldn’t have to do this? A man.

Never change your last name.

I feel like it’s a good time to remind everyone that Hillary was right.

About everything.

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Debating is bad. Professor Watchlists are bad. Disagreement and listening is good. Taking facts seriously is good.

"Considering the long history of liars winning debates by lying, you would have thought that intellectuals might have learned to stop debating liars." @hormiga.bsky.social

...from old timey creationism "debates", to climate etc. social media today. 🧪

scienceforeveryone.science/debating-is-...

❤️

i used to wonder why people don't use their brains more, but now i think maybe people have just lost their brains. there are no brains.

WaPo columnist says she was fired over ‘unacceptable’ Charlie Kirk social media posts ‘The Post accused my measured Bluesky posts of being ‘unacceptable’, ‘gross misconduct’ and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues — charges without evidence, which I reject completely as fa...

She ... is now “being silenced by the Washington Post” for “lamenting America's acceptance of apathy towards political violence and gun deaths — especially when the violence is encouraged and carried out by white men.”
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

The Charlie Kirk assassination is that little dot on the map of gun deaths in 2025.

Local woman wakes up, is existentially tired, makes oatmeal.

Coming soon:
Canada’s first high-speed rail project, running approximately 1,000 kilometres between Toronto and Quebec City at speeds of up to 300 km/h. The Carney government wants construction to start in five years on the public-private partnership that would cost $60 to $90 billion.

As more info comes in this needs to be said: if it wasn’t some left wing radical that did it, and it appears it wasn’t, there need to be massive pushback because they are STILL pretending it’s some culture war and it is only in their own minds

Dangerous times

SickKids named world’s best pediatric hospital in new ranking The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto has topped a new list ranking the world’s top pediatric hospitals.

This will not play well with American critics of the Canadian public healthcare system.
"SickKids named world's best pediatric hospital"

www.cp24.com/local/toront...

Man arrested in Charlie Kirk’s killing had no known criminal history, had become ‘more political’ WASHINGTON (AP) — Family members of the young Utah man accused of shooting Charlie Kirk told authorities he had recently become “more political” and saw the ally of President Donald

Trump and his MAGA fans will not find what they are looking for in this white male college-age shooter with no criminal or political record, raised by a Republican family in Utah, who realized, all on his own, that Charlie Kirk's main activity was spreading hatred. www.thespec.com/news/world/m...

Grateful @davidgilbert.bsky.social covered this.

I NEVER celebrated anyone’s murder.

I said I was terrified the far-right would use this as an excuse to retaliate, and they’re proving me right with every post.

These guys are out for blood. They don’t care whose.

This is really bad.

there should be consequences for andrew scheer for targeting rachel like this

There are already a few affordable EVs being made by North American and European manufacturers and there will be more that are cheaper and better in the future. It would be a strategic error to rely on China for these products.

U of L board member takes a stand against Smith’s anti-trans policy by resigning from a board position.

👏🏼 👏🏼 👏🏼

“As your representative, I have worked hard to ensure that all members of the University community are treated with respect and fairness. The B of G is required to support the University, and I cannot continue to serve on the Board, as I cannot support this provincially mandated policy.”

You don't think US actions will affect what Canada needs to do to meet its EV requirements and the timescale on which that can happen?

It makes sense to take a short time to review how Trump's tariff wars will impact our ability to grow Canada's EV industry. Relying on cheap Chinese EVs is the wrong approach. EVs are improving quickly and will certainly become dominant in the next few years. The big question will be who makes them.

Just finished writing my reminiscences as Pres. of the McMaster Faculty Assn in 2009-10. In the early 2000's, Mac was taking pension holidays, claiming there was no way the fund could go into deficit, even with contribution holidays. 2008 changed that. Ultimately things worked out as they always do.