Rachel Warburton

As a historian, I can certify that we are in the bad times. But bad times eventually end.
In the meantime:
• Figure out a small way to help someone
• Figure out a small way to fight back
• Figure out a small place to find joy
• Figure out a small way to grow and thrive

And do it often.

‘Mind-boggling stupidity’: The consultancy that captured universities Nous Group has slowly taken over the university sector, filling VCs’ offices with ex-staff and buying ‘incredibly sensitive’ data that is sold back for benchmarking.

This seems important. Ontario academics take note. www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/educati...

Yep.

Not that I needed a warning. But this is where we’re at.

My current hot take: Mark Carney is a Joe Clark Conservative. Discuss.

Inside Doug Ford’s Plan to Starve Ontario’s Universities | The Walrus What happens when a government stops believing in education?

Every Canadian should read this. If you think we are immune to American-style devastation of education, we are not.

Blame Canada Our warmongering, drugged-out conspiracy theory

An unhappy but important read.

Opinion | The View Inside Trump’s Assault on Universities (Gift Article) The Trump administration’s attacks on universities will lead to the permanent diminishment of vital American institutions.

“The End of the University as We Know It”, by Meghan O’Rourke www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/o...

Sorry, but as a Canadian, it doesn’t feel remotely convenient. Terrifying is a better description.

On a lighter note…

In an alternative, better world, Doug Ford would have a lot less power right now Our first-past-the-post voting system means Ontario voters are being shortchanged.

www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

Trudeau: "They're talking about working positively with Russia, appeasing Vladimir Putin- a lying, murderous, dictator. Make that make sense. Canadians are reasonable and we are polite. But we will not back down from a fight...Canada will be implementing 25% tariffs against $155b of American goods."

For neurodivergent boyhood: The Curious Incident of the dog in the Nighttime. Black boyhood: All the Boys aren’t Blue and Moonlight, the play and the film. Not favorites, but would you include colonial gems such as Peter Pan and The Jungle Book?

I’d feel terrible for the Liberals IF they had actually followed through on their promise of electoral reform.

Of the ballots cast, the NDP received 19% of the votes for 21% of the seats, which does not seem unreasonable. However, the Liberals got 30% and only 11% of the seats compared to the Cons getting 43% of the vote and 65% of the seats.

Respectfully, pitting the NDP vote share and legislative seats against the Liberal vote share and seat numbers misses the point.

Dear Ontario: Vote!

Glad Day Books haul.

Wow. I thought of you when I say the news but didn’t know you’d seen her live.

I know. As if things weren’t bad enough already. But what a life!

RIP Marianne Faithfull. 😢

It’s important to know that a lot of productive activity is happening in person and offline, too.

Not all of it can be broadcast online, but we’ve had hundreds of people showing up to our trainings, mobilizations, and more.

Keep going. Tyranny is eroded by a sea of small acts. Everything matters.

"Researchers should note that this subject guide facilitates access not just to the records of the Shakespeare Globe Trust, but to the staging of works from the Early Modern corpus and both language and representation may now be offensive. However, even new writing can represent Queerness in ways that reinforce negative stereotypes (e.g. promiscuity, predatoriness and the spreading of disease) and productions can add queerness to characterisation that is little more than a titillating joke. More recent productions have content warnings in pre-publicity (which may specify homophobia, for example), and these are added to the catalogue for the recordings of those productions, but earlier productions of the same play do not have such warnings"

Useful resource for students and theatre folk ...
Shakespeare's Globe: Finding Queerness in our records.
Free pdf book download (156 pages)
#sexuality #gender #LGBTQ #history #queer #performance #drama
cdn.shakespearesglobe.com/uploads/2025...

Free educational resource from the Globe Theatre, London:
"Tracing Race in our Records" (146 pages)
#Shakespeare #history #drama #TeamEnglish
cdn.shakespearesglobe.com/uploads/2025...

Also highly recommended:

"Finding Gender in our Records" (146 pages)

[ A free educational resource from the Globe Theatre, London ]

#Shakespeare #history #drama #TeamEnglish #performance #gender #literature

cdn.shakespearesglobe.com/uploads/2025...

So infuriating and so dangerous.

U.S. Department of Education Ends Biden’s Book Ban Hoax The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) today announced that it has dismissed 11 complaints related to so-called “book bans.”

Holy doublespeak!

Comfort food for discomfiting times.