Jamie

Civic Spark is built by us — the civic tech community.

Join us Aug 16–17 for a volunteer-led gathering shaping the future of public life.

Full story → civictech.ca/announcements/civic-spark
Tickets → civic-spark.com

NBC News Parents are charged after their son, 7, is struck dead in a car accident. Gastonia, N.C., police charged the parents with involuntary manslaughter charges after allowing the victim and his brother to walk home alone from a nearby grocery store.

In order to eliminate any inconvenience to cars, we’ve made it illegal for children to be children

Andrea Mills Brewster Kahle Democracy's Library Canada Hacknight #497 IN PERSON AND ONLINE Tues June 10 → 7pm Civic Tech TORONTO

This Tuesday!

Andrea Mills (Exec Dir of @internetarchiveca.bsky.social) and Brewster Kahle (founder of Internet Archive) present Democracy's Library: a global initiative to provide free, permanent access to govt and civic information.

𝗝𝘂𝗻 𝟭𝟬, 𝟳𝗽𝗺: in person and online

guild.host/events/civic...

This Tuesday! Come and see Cherlene Tay talk about how you can help shape strong national digital governance standards to build public trust.

Plus our project and discussion breakouts!

𝗧𝘂𝗲𝘀 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝟯, 𝟳𝗽𝗺: in person and online!

guild.host/events/civic...

Civic Spark August 16-17, 2025 Toronto civic-spark.com

We’re putting on a conference!

Join us at Civic Spark 💥 August 16-17, 2025

civic-spark.com

Maybe you’ve felt the gap — between the problems we face and the systems meant to solve them. Maybe you’ve seen how those closest to the issues are pushed aside.

Help change that. 🧵

Tues April 29 → 7pm Civic Dashboard Turning Passion Into Action By Making Council Accessible To All Civic Tech TORONTO IN PERSON AND ONLINE Hacknight #491

Come hear about @civicdashboard.bsky.social: a 100% volunteer-run effort to make understanding City Council – and how to meaningfully engage with it – take just a few minutes

Plus our usual breakouts for projects and discussions!

𝗧𝘂𝗲𝘀 𝗔𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗹 𝟮𝟵 𝟳𝗽𝗺: in person and online

guild.host/events/civic...

Accurate, scalable and secure AI for the public sector

Tara Khani joins us to discuss her work at Edge AI Innovations, with a focus on civic use cases

Plus our usual breakouts for projects and discussions!

March 25th 7pm: in person and online

guild.host/events/civic...

Web Weekly 154 - Transitioning to height: auto - fieldset best practices - require(esm) - New baseline tooling - :in-range - Intl.DurationFormat

Aaaaaand I'm just about to send out the new Web Weekly. This week was jam-packed. 🥂

If you want to stay up to date with the web platform, you should check it out! 👇

www.stefanjudis.com/blog/web-wee...

We can upload 3 minute videos now.

YOU KNOW THE RULE

There is also an incredible amount of talent specifically focused on civic tech — technology that seeks to make the city work better — with a Civic Tech Toronto group meeting weekly to show off cool independent projects, often built using city hall’s generally unheralded but very useful Open Data department.

Great to be mentioned in the Toronto Star this morning - thanks @graphicmatt.com!

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

I met lots of cool people at the @civictechto.bsky.social #civictech hacknight hosted at @mozilla.org last night. In addition to new friendships I also came home with cool stickers.

Also last night I realized my posts are mainly graphs so I'll be trying to introduce some variation!

This Tuesday!

Sam Burton, Senior Policy Advisor at the Canadian Digital Service, talks about her recently released report into collaborations between Canadian governments and civic tech volunteers.

March 4, 7pm: in person and online

👉 guild.host/events/civic...

#civictech #GCDigital #GCNumérique

Do you know how your Councillor votes on climate issues?

Hear about Climate Voting Records Toronto – your go-to interactive tool for tracking how Toronto City Council votes on crucial climate and environmental policies.

Tues Feb 11, 7pm, in person and online!

👉 guild.host/events/civic...

The Internet Archive has to date downloaded 500 terabytes of US government websites, which it crawls at the end of every presidential term. The whole archive is fully searchable. This effort's housed by a donation-funded nonprofit, not a branch of the US government. blog.archive.org/2024/05/08/e...

Our next event: Katja Boutou talks about Crowdsorsa - a mobile game that lets people participate in improving their environment through fun and rewarding missions tailored to cities’ needs.

February 4th, 7pm - in person and online!

👉 guild.host/events/civic...

#civictech

This is what the government did with 120K+ Japanese Americans in 1942.

I know. I was there in those camps.

My first and definitely last time working with the Los Angeles Times. Editing out the most urgent point of an OpEd in the minutes before sending to press while then also assigning a title and image that suggest an argument entirely opposite to the author’s clear intent is pretty shitty.

Yes! For some reason I really like Small Gods but tbh it’s been so long I can’t remember why! Need to reread soon

Sourcery. Because of this chart!

bsky.app/profile/rinc...

After many many years I’m reading a Discworld book (or listening to one at least).

And let me tell you it is an absolute delight

Not gonna lie I did kinda expect our Democratic politicians to have something like a plan to counter the 920-page detailed fascist blueprint that was published in April 2023

a spilled pile of candy in the corner of an art gallery

"Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) is a 1991 piece by Felix Gonzalez-Torres in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. It's a spilled pile of candy. The pile of candy consists of commercially available, shiny wrapped confections. The physical form of the work changes depending on the way it is installed. The work ideally weighs 175 pounds (161 kg) at installation, which is the average body weight of an adult male. "Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) represents a specific body, that of Ross Laycock, Gonzalez-Torres' partner who died of AIDS in 1991. This piece of art serves as an "allegorical portrait," of Laycock's life. Visitors are invited to take a piece of candy from the work. Gonzalez-Torres grew up Roman Catholic and taking candy is a symbolic act of communion, but instead of taking a piece of Christ, the participant partakes of the "sweetness" of Ross. As the patrons take candy, they are participants in the art. Each piece of candy consumed is like the illness that ate away at Ross's body.

thinking again of this work of art. this work of shattering grief, of enduring love. a work that is somehow, at the same time, a kind of magical play

I have been informed it is Threshold Day 🦎🦎🦎

A day of unmitigated lust!

But such darling baby lizards…

Not sure i quite understand how this US federal worker buyout is a buyout at all?

They have to give working after they resign, until their departure date, and they get paid as normal for it. That's just a normal resignation?

Surely a buyout is when you get given your salary but you DON'T work

Munich would be great. Lovely in summer, lots of culture and history, close to alps but also to beautiful lakes etc nearby

Tonight!

Working in tech is cool because you can lose half a day to "rectangle sometimes too big."

Like the Section 31 movie was irredeemably boring and generic, but its worst crime was furthering the "CIA but in Star Trek" idea and continuing to infect Trek with the conservative/neolib garbage it was created to argue against

and worst of all, now they drive to work