Devon Black

Okay this is a good headline

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

“Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar”

Never forget or forgive that Trump, Rubio, & Musk *chose* to inflict this monumental level of death and suffering on the poorest & most vulnerable people.

The corrupting influence of the affiliate links is so complete that these “news” sites usually don’t even editorially link to the *manufacturer’s websites*, even if they provide more information (which they almost always do) or a better price for consumers (which they often do).

Seismic shift needed to address N.L. housing crisis, experts say – The Independent Housing is a human right in Canada, yet unchecked rent hikes, Airbnb pressure, and landlord-lawmakers have left thousands in Newfoundland and Labrador one paycheck away from homelessness

In his book The Tenant Class, @policyalternatives.ca researcher, @ricardotranjan.bsky.social, says the housing market is working as it was designed. It was always made exclusively with the focus on capital growth, disregarding the basic need for habitation. #cdnpoli theindependent.ca/news/seismic...

Justin Ling: We need to stop being so naive about what America is becoming. Trump and his secretary of war just showed us why Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright observed some years ago that fascism is quite hard to define. It is not an ideology, she said. “I think it is a method,

This, but just about every definition, is fascism. The only question now is whether everyone lets it continue. www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

Religious protesters say ICE threatens religious freedom in Chicago (RNS) — Despite potential danger, religious leaders and faith activists have been a visible presence at Chicago-area ICE protests, some waving signs with slogans such as ‘Love thy neighbor’ and ‘Who w...

NEW: I spoke to clergy and faith leaders who've joined protests at the Chicago-area ICE facility.

Three say they've been shot with pepper balls, sometimes while praying.

All say ICE is also violating their religious freedom, and one is arguing it in court. religionnews.com/2025/10/07/i...

47 VPD officers made over $100K in OT last year — and one banked $239K, FOI data shows | CBC News A single Vancouver police sergeant was paid $239,258 in overtime alone last year, on top of the rank's base pay of up to $158,000. The figure comes from a freedom of information request filed with the...

47 VPD officers were paid more than $100K in OT last year, including 7 constables who more than doubled their possible $140K salaries. One sergeant raked in $239K in OT on top of possible $158K salary.

Meanwhile, the force went $6.5M over its $400M+ budget.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Canada Post faces two futures—a revitalized public service or a billionaire cash machine ⋆ The Breach The Liberal government is dismantling Canada Post for the billionaire class, while ignoring bold proposals from postal workers to reinvent the public service

Canada Post is exactly the type of nation-building project Mark Carney was elected to carry out. Instead, the lucrative parcel market is being given to fly-by-night operators who exploit burnout-track employees, compromise our safety and pollute the air.

breachmedia.ca/canada-post-...

Spent four hours helping out at the Fairfield Repair Café and it RULED. If you need stuff fixed (clothing, small appliances, jewelry, maybe a 30 yr old Furby), mark Dec 6 in your calendar! I will personally fix your jewelry and darn your sweaters!

Hey. The fragmentation of the social media landscape has been hard on indie #scicomm 🧪 projects

So if you'd like to follow a podcast that's enthusiastic about #linguistics, could you check out @lingthusiasm.bsky.social?

And if you think your followers might like to, could you give this a repost?

Trudeau made headlines with free birth control. Why didn’t Canada follow through? Nearly a year after a historic law promised free contraception, most provinces still haven’t signed on

What happened to free birth control? Canada's landmark #pharmacare program stalls as provinces fail to sign on. Only three provinces and one territory have deals in place, by Olivia Bowden www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s... via @theguardian.com

Social media algorithms push rage and division to keep us scrolling. Here’s how the business model works—and the law that allows it to continue. #Algorithms #SocialMedia #Radicalization #PoliticalViolence #TechPolicy #Section230

Living a moral life in an age of bullies requires collective action; it cannot be done alone. Each of us must organize and participate in a vast network of moral resistance. From this solidarity we will grow stronger. This is what our current moment requires.

That last line is one of the absolute single scariest things to me and that it was said with such casual happiness is even more disturbing.

Not distressing.

Full tilt disturbing.

Do not punish the behaviour you want to see I mean, it seems pretty obvious when you put it like that, right? But how many families, when an introvert sibling or child makes an effort to socialize, snarkily say, "So, you've decided to join us"? Or when someone does something they've had trouble doing, say, "Why can't you do that all the time?" (Happened to me, too often.) Or any sentence containing the word "finally". If someone makes a step, a small step, in a direction you want to encourage, encourage it. Don't complain about how it's not enough. Don't bring up previous stuff. Encourage it. Because I swear to fucking god there is nothing more soul-killing, more motivation-crushing, than struggling to succeed and finding out that success and failure are both punished.

Do not punish the behaviour you want to see.

Canada needs all evidence assessed before recognizing genocide in Gaza, says incoming UN ambassador | CBC News Incoming UN Ambassador David Lametti says Canada needs "all the evidence to come in" and be assessed before it can recognize whether Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza — and the first benchmark d...

never again, but only once we’ve assessed all the evidence and tens or hundreds of thousands of people have already been slaughtered

Yeah. It’s Fascism. Earmuffs, JD.

"When one law firm, one college, one media company rolls over for Trump, it compels others to do the same. Meanwhile, with every new capitulation, Trump grows bolder." At the end of the day, resisting is *easier* than caving. www.thebulwark.com/p/yeah-its-f...

So much for the UCP’s argument that their anti-trans surveillance law is all about protecting girls in sports. Young women’s participation in sports has dropped off, no surprise. #ableg

Not Every MP Rose to Honour Charlie Kirk | The Tyee South Surrey MP Ernie Klassen said he and other colleagues abstained from the gesture. Here’s why.

Given the extreme nature of many of Charlie Kirk’s comments, the simple act of rising for a standing ovation in response to his death has taken on significance.

#canpoli #uspoli

The union representing the musicians from Jimmy Kimmel’s band releases a statement calling the FCC’s pressure on Disney “state censorship.”

Huh wow turns out the people who wanted to misgender and deadname trans people and use racist slurs never cared about free speech, they just wanted to misgender and deadname trans people and use racist slurs

A series of four images with black text on a white background, containing a long reflective passage about how authoritarianism and oppression gradually take hold unnoticed. First image: The text explains how small, seemingly inconsequential steps—each justified or regretted—prevent people from recognizing the larger process until it’s too late, comparing it to a farmer not noticing corn growing until it towers overhead.

Second image: A colleague explains how each act is only slightly worse than the last, leading people to wait for a shocking turning point that never comes. Fear, uncertainty, and the desire not to stand alone stop people from resisting. Outsiders seem content, and those who sense danger are dismissed as alarmists.

Third image: The text describes how, eventually, a small personal incident shatters self-deception, revealing that everything has changed—society, spirit, and morality. People accept things once unthinkable. Life feels normal on the surface, but principles have eroded. When realization comes, it’s too late—people are compromised by inaction.

Fourth image: The writer notes how friends drift away, meetings shrink, and isolation grows, weakening resistance further. The long-awaited great occasion for mass opposition never arrives. Instead, oppression progresses step by step, each act numbing people to the next. The example is given of Nazi Germany, where atrocities escalated gradually, making it harder to resist at each stage.

From Milton Mayer's "They Thought They Were Free"

I first read it in November and I'm rereading it now. It crushing feeling the exact same things as this academic did. It's the same process.

I can't stop thinking about 1 sentence in today's UN report regarding Israel's genocide in Gaza. "Israeli security forces shot at & killed civilians, including children who were holding makeshift white flags. Some children, including toddlers, were shot in the head by snipers.”

Nothing to add.

trans rights strike at a fundamental base of individual liberty: if we do not have control of our own bodies, you don’t either

Charlie Kirk was an asshole who did not deserve to die because a well ordered society does not make being an asshole a death sentence. It also does not make it a crime to truthfully recount who they were.

Barely a mention in Canadian media as far as I've seen which is really frightening. The ex-leader of the conservative party put a target on a journalists back and now she's getting death threats.

For correctly pointing out that she was worried the right were going to weaponize political violence

“There is no requirement to take part in this whitewashing campaign, and refusing to join in doesn’t make anyone a bad person. It’s a choice to write an obituary that begins ‘Joseph Goebbels was a gifted marketer and loving father to six children.’”

This point hasn’t been given nearly enough attention. If you applied actually existing research principles to genAI, it would never be allowed anywhere near a university, research project or classroom.

I put an email out to the WSJ editorial staff asking when their apology/explanation will be forthcoming for putting lives at risk and spreading terror. I'm far from alone on this. HRC is demanding one as well. We cannot let them skate on this. They acted w/the caution of a St0rmFront message board.

Police can ruin lives just by doing their jobs. Landlords can make us homeless just by evicting. An employer might fire you if it's good for the bottom line. It seems that Capitalism wants us to be decent as children but then expects us to be corrupt and awful to each other as adults. Perhaps a system that delivers on the potential of that pro-social behavior we are taught as kids is a better system than the one we live under

It does not have to be this way.