Yannick Desranleau

He was a pure manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had one, must have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers.

A hand holds a book called "Disabling Intelligences: Legacies of Eugenics and How We are Wrong about Al" by Rua M. Williams. The cover is burgundy with orange leaves, and behind the book is a blanket with similar colors.

This will be my thread for thoughts while reading Disabling Intelligences by @fractalecho.bsky.social this week.

I'm all wrapped up in a fleece blanket, I have my highlighter and page flags, and on page 2 I'm already love their writing style.

🧵

What I suspect is also left unstated, is the work of the art workers at the PhART who contributed to the curation and outreach before Suda arrived (but implemented as she got there) which she was able to claim ownership (like for instance, a lot of the exhibitions described in the article)

I thin Wells makes that pretty clear, yes

National Gallery of Canada: coda and prelude A former director of an Ottawa institution has a bad week

An update on the Suda firing at the (LOL) PhART, with its Canadian ramifications. I would want someone cross-analyzing this with Gaétanne Verna's recent firing, as a pulse check on the working conditions in CDN art institutions paulwells.substack.com/p/national-g...

Wow- that’s a cold slap in the shoulder for our arts communities. Looks like the even though there was a pre-budget request of $140 million.. what was apportioned $6 million. That’s a monumental spending cut.

😳

I wonder how much reworking and maintaining the canada council portal costs, maybe add that into grants since it's just a very fancy lottery system with an onerous application process

The exhibition that we curated "Against the Tyranny of Reality" is opening today at Musée d'art de Joliette! It's the third instalment of this touring show that includes 18 artist working with prop performance and camp for video.
www.museejoliette.org/expositions/...

New Canada Council Portal Update: What a nightmare. Tiny text boxes? No way to back track on the application without starting from the beginning and saving each section? The French portal is mostly all in English? Support documentation details limited to 255 CHARACTERS? What is going on?

It's been really difficult to integrate the UofA community already, and witnessing this happening to a colleague in the building next door where I get my coffee (and btw Florence is a fabulous person irl) just makes my heart sink

“AI” isn’t a tool or technology or even a cluster of technologies with a misleading name. It’s the infrastructure at the foundation of a form of capitalism dependent on data brokering. We should be teaching our students about this and not teaching them about “responsible” use.

The Simpsons old man sitting on a stump telling a story but all the kids have been replaced with headstones

me telling my grandkids what it was like to have vaccines

This is what I said about Kirk-style conservative "debate" culture a few months ago, and I still believe it.

“There’s a reason he debated college students, not college professors” - Will Menaker

Well, it feels so bizarre to say, but I just got my measles booster-- thank god being part of the university, the campus clinic made it a breeze. Alberta currently has the highest infection rates in North America and nothing indicates the situation will get better.

Trump's declaration that radical right extremism is justified as a response to the left will likely be heard all over the far right as a clear invitation to violence.

“That statement is basically a permission slip," one tracker of right wing extremism tells me.

newrepublic.com/article/2004...

The right using Kirk as a lightning rod to usher the system into more violence against the left draws into focus how little institutional power the left wields. You think they could get away w/ this if there were unions ready to shut the country down for more legal protection against violence?

People are ‘shocked’ when I say things like ‘who knows if I’ll have a job in two years’… meanwhile…

A cute orange cat looking upward

6 years old and still cute

Allez lire cette chronique décrivant l'homogénéité du paysage politique québécois et sa tendance autoritaire

According to Twitter there's another fire that started around 43rd and 92nd

Carney’s first 100 days: Unpacking the new prime minister’s ‘disappointing move to the right’ with Linda McQuaig ‘If it comes to a U.S. invasion, no amount of military spending on our part is going to defend us from that’

Carney’s first 100 days: Unpacking the new prime minister’s ‘disappointing move to the right’ with Linda McQuaig: ricochet.media/politics/car...

CBC Agreed To Follow Israeli Censorship Order On Gaza Aid Drop Flight According to the CBC, Israel said filming Gaza from above would “jeopardize flights.”

NEW: CBC agreed to follow an Israeli censorship order on board a Jordanian aid drop flight last week.

Israel supposedly claimed filming Gaza would “jeopardize flights.”

ITV News was also on a Jordanian flight, but filmed Gaza from above for all to see.
www.readthemaple.com/cbc-agreed-t...

we need to teach the 1930s properly so that people know the Reichstag Fire was exactly this stupid

I wonder if this feeling came from this kind of almost-radio novella delivery was contrary to my experience of first-witness style radio talk (instinctive and unrehearsed) and documentary radio talk ("read", with no performance of drama or overblown expression)

They published some pretty solid series -- The Apology Line being the most memorable one-- but the production values were so high that somehow the non-fiction content seemed fake? It's hard to explain but definitely is an aesthetic phenomenon worth exploring. Oh and the network ID was cringe lol

A still image from a scene from the play "For Everyone Stuck Chasing the Clock", at théâtre La Chapelle, in March 2025. In a dark room lit from above, four characters in lavish pleated costumes dance in a line with a red cane-looking object, in front of a simple white decor.

"For Everyone Stuck Chasing the Clock", our latest work, got a fabulous review in Revue Esse by the fabulous DJ Fraser: esse.ca/compte-rendu...