Dave

“The climbing community has built a special bond with the land as well that should not be ignored”

Like, are you guys for fucking real? Colonizers started climbing there in the 60s. The Wotjobaluk people by contrast have been living there for millennia

‘What are they going to do, chase someone up?’ Victorian rock climbers scorn ban on Mount Arapiles Indigenous sites State park contains rock art dating back at least 3,000 years and tens of thousands of artefacts

The degree of settler entitlement that goes into the Australian (and international) climbing community’s response to the Djurid (Mount Arapiles) climbing bans boils my blood

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

I also wonder if the Wagner/Côté bloc would have decided this case the same way had it been individual v. individual, rather than individual v. city? Honestly, if it had been about a family enclosing and squatting a strip of their neighbours' land, the SCC wouldn't even have taken up the case at all

This one gets complicated by a lacuna in Ontario's Real Property Limitation Act on the specific issue of adverse possession of municipal lands. Effectively, it looks like the SCC is rubber stamping the enclosure of public lands (I'm thinking now of a couple houses in Ottawa encroaching on NCC land)

satisfy the requirement, which is 10 years of "open, notorious, peaceful, adverse, exclusive, actual and continuous possession." Notorious, in this usage, typically means that the possession is known widely (and usually, to the actual owner of the title).

Anyway, yeah, lots of thoughts about this. Like, if the previous owners had never actually established legal ownership of the strip through arguing adverse possession, why would that adverse possession continue to the new owners? Shouldn't they need to possess the land til 2027 in order to...

This is the problem with appointing SCC Justices with such short bench careers. Maybe Trudeau thought he was getting his own version of Ketanji Brown Jackson, but that's obviously not the case.

The SCC overturned that decision on a 5-4 ruling. Seeing a pattern where it's looking more and more like O'Bonsawin has been absorbed into the Wagner-Côté bloc.

For context, the couple in question bought the property in 2017, and it included a chain link fence that cut off a section of municipal park land. They offered to buy the strip, the city refused, court ensued. Both the Ontario Superior Court and Court of Appeals found in favour of the city.

But the one that really wrinkles my historian brain is how weird it seems, on the face of it, that a First Nations supreme court justice wrote a majority decision ruling in favour of adverse possession. Like, in this case we're literally talking about enclosure!

Supreme Court of Canada sides with couple over disputed portion of their backyard The Supreme Court of Canada says a Toronto couple owns a portion of their backyard that became the subject of a lengthy dispute after they discovered the municipality was the title holder.

There are a bunch of reasons to suspect this was a bad decision (as my lawyer spouse took the time to explain to me): www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/arti...

A quote from The Bright Ages that reads “Even when she seemed to intervene at the moment of Guy’s death, this golden girl was thanking Gerbert for being a friend.

Finally getting around to reading “The Bright Ages,” when I encounter this line. And lo, I am slain!

Full-throated guffaw, enough to startle at least the person seated across from me. This is what I get for reading on the streetcar.

Thanks AI, this historical timeline is incredibly useful and will really help my students...😑

“Hey baby… time for a little Yub Nub”

A map of a portion of Northern Ontario, demonstrating the irrefutable presence of a place called “Wawa”

Um, I beg your pardon? There is definitely a Wawa in Canada. It might mean something different here though…

“🙌 Potato is Risen! 🙏”

“Dying potatoes”? I guess dying is the first step to them becoming true Easter potatoes?

Anyway, that guy deserves every block coming his way

Dude needs a serious reminder that him inferring something =/= someone else implying something. Context matters, and in this case the context is a clueless white forever-backbencher deciding he is the arbiter of what is or isn’t racist against Britons of colour

This fucking guy

the Borg (at least before they became a constant presence with a horny queen) aren’t really evil, they’re amoral, they don’t give a shit about anything but growth, all they say is “that’s irrelevant, we’re going to add you to the thing”

They aren’t communists they’re Silicon Valley capitalists

It’s sort of telling how popular Minions and Stormtroopers are in American culture.

Prob also about time to tear up that “safe” third country agreement, among other things

Saving this for the thread

New favourite Al Green just dropped

A fake Captcha asking the user to select all images of Mark Hamill, consisting of a mix of Slavoj Zizek and Mark Hamill photos

ie. the impossible Captcha

Converted all those Apartheid emeralds into Dunning-Krugerrands

SpaceX is a terrible spaceship company but an amazing fireworks company

Oh man, you’re missing ‘The Kid’ (1921)! I think it’s a tier below Chaplin’s later greats like ‘Modern Times’ or ‘The Great Dictator’, but it holds up.

Oh heck yeah!