BD Ferguson

Being forced to listen to other people's full-volume, no-headphones phone calls on transit will be the thing that starts my Villain Era.

(It blows my mind that this is such a common thing. Long calls, short calls, sharing personally identifying info calls, casual obnoxious chitchat calls...)

Memorizing this

Little Ghosts Festival: I'm a Vendor! Saturday and Sunday October 4th & 5th 12pm-5pm Tranzac Club 292 Brunswick Ave

The Little Ghosts Festival is coming up this weekend, October 4th & 5th, 12pm-5pm, at the Tranzac Club at 292 Brunswick Ave in Toronto.

We'll have old and new spooky books including Rebecca Campbell's new collection THE OTHER SHORE. Plus drop by the eco-horror panel on Sunday!

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

The Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada is pleased to announce that its next conference, on the topic of Victorian Trade, will take place in Winnipeg MB (Treaty One Territory) on May 1 and 2, 2026. We look forward to welcoming Dr. Sarah Fee (Senior Curator, Global Fashion & Textiles; Royal Ontario Museum) as our plenary speaker. Trade establishes new relationships and shapes existing ones. Nineteenth-century trade evokes not only economic pursuits, labour activism, and the geographical movement of goods but also the exchange of ideas. We encourage proposals that expand our ideas about Victorian trade, whether focused on material objects, people, knowledge, identities, values, or emotions. We welcome proposals for papers, panels, and workshops that explore the theme of Victorian Trade. Established scholars, emerging scholars, independent scholars, and graduate students are all encouraged to apply. Please send a proposal of no more than 200 words, accompanied by a brief biographical statement, to vsawc2026@gmail.com. In the case of panels or workshops, please share participants’ materials in a single email. Please submit proposals no later than December 1, 2025. Our conference will be held at the Alt Hotel in downtown Winnipeg. Graduate students and underemployed scholars will have the opportunity to apply for funding to reduce the cost of participation. Please direct any questions to conference host Dr. Vanessa Warne (vanessa.warne@umanitoba.ca). To learn more about the Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada and past conferences, please visit our site. To learn more about our organization’s journal, Victorian Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Victorian Studies, please visit: https://victorianreview.org/ Image: Detail of a mid-nineteenth-century Four Seasons shawl (collection of the Metropolitan Museum).

Please check out (and share!) this CFP for the 2026 conference of the Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada: VICTORIAN TRADE! #VISAWUS #VSAWC #Solidarity

...2
Can I answer each of her questions? Yes. And recognize every cameo + call-back line? Also yes.

Had no idea just how full of Marvel Kool-Aid I was. Easily 85% of my bodyweight.

Ridiculous.

Watching Avengers: Endgame with Mom, who has seen perhaps 23min of maybe 5 Marvel movies, in no order. Her comments: "Who's that? Why did they do that? Who's this... robot?"

Makes me remember how this movie stitches a truly ludicrous number of studio properties into an already timey-wimey plot.

Blame Riker

Relatable

And wait'll you hear how they assign blouse sizes

I know other classes might find relevant ways to integrate AI tools of all kinds. Mine doesn't, I have no interest in doing so, + I want students to be aware of the environmental + ethical impacts.
Yes, I know they will use it anyway. Of course.
But I'm tired of AI shit and this is what I can do.

Image of a PowerPoint slide that begins "I strongly discourage the use of AI for our assignments" and provides points about excessive energy use, stolen copyrighted material, and the [redacted] school's authorized AI tools as last resorts, recommending the Writing Centre instead.

My "Teaching in the Humanities in the Age of AI" webinar last week recommended we be very clear with students about their use of AI in our course. S'pose this will do? 🙃 It's part of my Day 1 slideshow.

And I put shorter but similar lang on every single assignment description.

Yeah, I know... /2

And I'm the teacher!

#shame

Hi authors! Please remember to file a claim!

Any other transit users in Ontario (or elsewhere) having trouble loading funds onto their #PRESTOcard over the website? Yesterday + today I just see endless loading screens.

This. And don't forget "You can never ever switch it off or avoid the 'Let's get started!' window on startup"

a cartoon penguin is sitting at a table eating soup Alt: Pingu the clay-mation penguin is sitting in a pink chair at a pink table, arms crossed, sulking and blinking angrily directly at you. In front of him is a bowl of soup with a whole fish skeleton laid across the top. The room behind him is a blue-white, with pieces of other furniture seen indistinctly at the edges of frame.

Again, yes, the political news elsewhere in the world is far more urgently awful, but I've been low-key grumpy today that Alberta let PP back into Canada's political landscape. It's been so nice not to have to look at or hear from his whiny little face.

(Plus it's back to school soon *grump*)

Crazy making that every day we wake up to more information about millions of ppl being violently slaughtered while the most powerful Empire in the world openly shifts to dictatorial fascism & also there is LITERAL SMOKE FROM THE WORLD BURNING filling the sky & we still have to answer emails

It was the omg what now of times, it was the seriously wtf is happening of times

Ralph Wiggem “I’m in danger” meme

*Academics in early August

Is the answer "because years of cuts to education + the rise of anti-intellectualism + the persistent myth that STEM is more valuable than humanities have actively decimated any of my potential workplace into unsustainable stress wads with shoestring budgets"?

A joke for Those of a Certain Age ...like me

And who also often wish ChatGPT would be dropped into an active volcano

So I finished *Department Q* on Ntfx last night & really enjoyed it. Great work all around.

And yeah I know the world is shit rn, but I have a request: I need as many folks as possible, in Scotland & elsewhere, to assure me that mullets are NOT making a comeback.

Please. Please, no.

when a company announces they're going to start using Al in their products all I hear is "our stuff is about to get noticeably shittier, but you should be excited because it'll be cheaper for us"

i can’t remember anything that has felt more foisted upon us than AI. repeatedly telling us why we actually need is like thinking a joke will get funnier the more you explain it.

Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy - Reactor Perihelion and its crew embark on a dangerous new mission at a corporate-controlled station in the throes of a hostile takeover… Novelette | 7,540 words They were still three hours out when Perihelion...

The new Murderbot short story is up at Reactor Magazine: reactormag.com/rapport-mart... Edited by Lee Harris, art by Jaime Jones.

Also, my TV died last week, so I'm an ep behind and can't watch it or the finale until the new one arrives. It's supposed to get here tomorrow. 🤞🏻

NO SPOILERS PLS THANX

As a massively nerdy & protective fan of the books, I admit I've struggled at times to appreciate the show's adaptation.
But as its own thing, the series is a fun as heck production and I'm 100% willing and happy to watch more.

This will be on @reactorsff.bsky.social on July 11.

Canadian dies while in ICE custody in Florida, U.S. agency says | CBC News A Canadian citizen died while in custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier this week, the agency says.

Hey @mark-carney.bsky.social ,

Better step up for Canadians because this is important.

www.cbc.ca/news/politic...