Deb Chachra

Copying the masters is a traditional part of an artist’s practice for a reason! Your copy will almost always be terrible, relatively speaking, and you also learn a lot by trying.

My dad abhors any negative comments about immigrants. Asked him recently why he’s so strong on it: ‘Because we’re always happy to take the rich and clever ones. Which means it’s not about disliking immigrants. It’s about disliking the poor and vulnerable. And that’s a bad human instinct.’

Yes! Stephen Sprouse et alii. Somehow black and brights is too high-contrast for me (I can’t do black and white either, only black + dark grey + very occasionally other low-saturation colors, like aubergine.)

hahaha WELL PLAYED

Open up the photos on your phone and look through them until something speaks to you?

The church next to me in Central Sq was incredibly bad at clearing their walk, and so many people just *struggled* to get past (including me with my groceries, but obviously especially people with strollers, walkers etc.) — it is such a fuck-you to (a profound lapse in care for) your neighbours.

You are 100% correct.

Grey + brights = infrastructural palette.

Black + brights = hazard signage.

Galaxy Quest.

I mentioned to a Vancouver local that I'd already bought a snow shovel and some ice melt, because of course you don't want to be getting them *after* it snows, and apparently I'm a bit more serious about clearing the sidewalk than the local norms.

You can take the girl out of New England...

those who leave snow on their car roofs are without honor

I've talked about the events of that day with my US engineering faculty colleagues and my students many times over the years -- it's almost always the first they've heard of it.

On its 36th anniversary, it was in the brief top-of-the-hour news on CBC Radio this morning. I teared up hearing it.

thirty-six years later Engineering Cairn, UBC (December 3, 2025) I wrote and first shared this piece in December 2014. It’s been lightly edited and updated, including new links for...

Today, December 6th, is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada. I wrote about the event that precipitated its creation, and its role in my own life, on its 25th anniversary. buttondown.com/metafoundry/...

Extralibrary Loan: Making the Civic Infrastructure We Need Amid a war on public knowledge, libraries are pushing outward, enlarging the commons through new configurations of civic and creative life.

"The library is not meant to be a node in the just-in-time-economy that puts a rights-restricted copy of 'Abundance' in our AirPods. It’s meant to be an accessible portal to our government, the place we go to access shared knowledge and to make meaning with others."

— @shannonmattern.bsky.social

I am happy to pay $30 a year for USPS Prime, which delivers mail daily to my home

A rough stucco box with a wall and another box. There's a yellow Porssche in front. It probably hasn't even chimed 1970 yet.

Quote from "Gehry Talks" in an article on gehry by the great Jean-Louis Cohen: Gehry has described the process: “Whatever was in my consciousness, I loved raw rough stucco. No buildings were being done with that. They call it ‘tunnel mix.’ It was underneath the freeways. Under the freeways they’d spray it on. So I asked the plastering contractor to do it, and they said they couldn’t; they didn’t know how. An artist friend was building a little studio in Venice. I told him what I was looking for. He said it sounded great, and if I wanted to use his garage to experiment on, he wouldn’t mind. I found out what the equipment for tunnel mix was. I went to the U-Haul and rented it, mixed the plaster, and did it myself. I sprayed it on the garage, and it was beautiful! Then I brought the contractor down, showed him the equipment, showed him the walls, and that’s how the Danziger building was made.”

RIP Frank Gehry. Here's the Danziger Studio and Gehry talking about the material (article: www.domusweb.it/en/from-the-...)

Tonight’s #UrbanismBookClub offering is “The Design Of Childhood” by @langealexandra.bsky.social. A GREAT book by an author who WON THE PULITZER PRIZE for a series of articles on the same broad subject in @opinion.bloomberg.com Citylab! Alexandra interviewed me for the book on Vancouver’s work. 6/

It has just been brought to my attention that the greatest ever video in this genre is, in fact, cat jump fail vs Sail by AWOLNATION...

Joy Division vs Charlie Brown dance party also slaps...

I am still thrilled that I have two excellent reinterpretations of these posters from you that I get to share with others — I use the stamp to make custom bookplates.

Passengers are stressed, angry, and frustrated *at the airlines*. Flight attendants (and desk staff) are who get stuck dealing with it. And yes, you sure as hell should be kind to them.

Requiring airlines to pay compensation is the equivalent of yelling at the people who are actually responsible.

I got a US$500 cheque because my AA flight out of Boston was delayed for operational reasons, and I was flying to Canada.

The current administration just rolled back a similar requirement to compensate US passengers.

But sure, slippers.

www.travelandleisure.com/us-drops-pla...

8. Flood of Molasses
9. An Explosion in Halifax, A Christmas Tree in Boston

It seems like the deformation professionelle of economics is particularly strong because money has become such a universal metric -- like putting a dollar value on human lives! -- so seeing everything through that lens is easy, useful to capitalism, and often not even noticed as a specific lens.

Sage Policy Profiles - Discover and track the impact of your research on government policy We believe in the power of research to improve the world. That’s why we’ve teamed up with the policy experts at Overton to help you understand your published work’s policy impact, served up in an eas...

Hey academic policy peeps, DYK there is a citation tracker that finds research citations in government policy docs? Its a great tool to quantify research impact but its also fun/motivating.
(this post brought to you by finding my research cited by Cali Energy commission)

policyprofiles.sagepub.com

Loved this 🧵 from the NY Transit Museum, in honor of Rosa Parks' anniversary today, about the desegregation of the NYC transit system. In 1854! By a teacher!

Side note: When my son was little, NY Transit Museum was one of our favorite spots. It's a gem of a local museum for kids and adults alike.

Interactive AIDS Quilt The National AIDS Memorial, through a partnership with the AIDS Quilt Touch team, presents all 48,000 panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in an interactive experience People around the world can experie...

“The National AIDS Memorial, through a partnership with the AIDS Quilt Touch team, presents all 50,000 panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in an interactive experience so people around the world can experience the beauty of the Quilt and witness the love and stories stitched into each panel.”

I feel like you, specifically, might appreciate this short piece I wrote a while back about Kirby Krackle and dark matter: www.hilobrow.com/2011/02/23/k...

"So, you must be really smart then?" is definitely my least favourite question from someone who's just learned I'm an engineering professor.

[staring down my first winter solstice after not only moving north but also from ridiculously far east in the time zone — Boston is EST, like Detroit, rather than on Atlantic Time like New Brunswick to the north — so it’s the long dark early *mornings* that are The Blackness]

When I lived in London, I enjoyed telling people that I was from Canada but it was the furthest north I’d ever lived. [I grew up at 44N, and just moved from Boston (42N) to Vancouver (49N). London is at 51N, and Edinburgh and Glasgow are at about 55N — north of Edmonton, south of most of Scotland.]