Our latest roundup of NiCHE Conversations with @jessicamdewitt.bsky.social is now out!
Find convos with @sabinelebel.bsky.social, @adelinekpiercy.bsky.social, Patricia Roussel, and Carmen Gilmore!
niche-canada.org/2026/02/25/n...
#envhist #cdnhist #envhum
NEWS: Canadian billionaire Jim Pattison was planning to sell a warehouse for use as an ICE detention and processing facility. After pressure from the public, and from B.C. Green Party leader @emilylowan.bsky.social, Pattison's company has cancelled the sale
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
"AI didn't just increase its footprint in Washington in 2025. It ate tech lobbying whole." www.axios.com/2026/01/23/a...
24.01.2026 14:16 — 👍 41 🔁 27 💬 0 📌 0
A young Indigenous man, Bronson Paul of Neqotkuk First Nation, was shot and killed by a police officer.
Bronson leaves behind his loving partner and several children, whose lives have been forever changed.
Donate to help Bronson’s family: gofund.me/3217eb9b7
There’s a GoFundMe for Jonathan Ross’s legal expenses for murdering Renee Good.
This violates GoFundMe’s Terms of Service. Everyone must report it.
A thread on how to do that 🧵
Today is the 300th anniversary of the signing of the 1725 Peace and Friendship Treaties in Boston by leaders of the Penobscot (acting as representatives of the Wabanaki Confederacy) and the British colonies of Nova Scotia and Massachusetts
15.12.2025 18:12 — 👍 30 🔁 15 💬 2 📌 1
Kill fascism, fund a trans filmmaker.
Here is my patreon:
patreon.com/tjcuthand
This conversation was based on @sabinelebel.bsky.social's NiCHE article, "'Capsize the Rich': Orca Memes and Anti-Capitalist Interspecies Solidarity" - niche-canada.org/2025/08/13/c...
#envhum #envhist #orcas #memes #animalstudies
i’m genuinely so convinced all of this has been a planned operation by the student and her mother (who is commenting on this publicly, and associated closely with the republican party), and big far right propaganda account going all in on it. this is designed to oust trans people from public life
01.12.2025 18:09 — 👍 6563 🔁 1756 💬 134 📌 52
Please, take a listen. 🇸🇩
youtube.com/shorts/yORJq...
Our next NiCHE Conversation will be on Monday, November 24th at 10am EST on Instagram Live.
@sabinelebel.bsky.social will join @jessicamdewitt.bsky.social to chat about orca memes and anti-capitalist interspecies solidarity.
Follow NiCHE on Insta here: www.instagram.com/niche.canada
#envhum
The Trudeau Liberals cut 10,000 public sector jobs beginning last year. PM Carney's plan to axe 30,000 more jobs will impact access to access pensions, Employment Insurance, and passports
The latest from my colleague Harrison Samphir for @breachmedia.ca
breachmedia.ca/canada-publi...
Maybe it’s just the Humanities professor in me, but let it be noted that events of today (ahem) have demonstrated the value of being able to assess a large volume of qualitative data and do careful textual analysis with deep attention to context.
13.11.2025 00:24 — 👍 3600 🔁 524 💬 20 📌 21
Anti EDI & anti science motion related to Tri-Council funding (major Canadian academic funding body) in the House of Commons. Please consider signing & sharing: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
01.11.2025 17:47 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0The professor has been fired and senior administrators removed from their post. No mention of this in the New York Times, The Free Press, The Atlantic or other outlets who drove the campus speech moral panic.
10.09.2025 11:59 — 👍 5769 🔁 2138 💬 109 📌 78
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues.
Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).
Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.
Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Silicon Valley’s alliance with Donald Trump was a mask off moment and showed the world we can’t depend on US tech companies.
For the past few months, I’ve been trying to get off US tech and I put together a guide so you find alternatives too. I hope you find it helpful!
AI advocates have warned that if every author in the class action filed a claim, it would "financially ruin" the entire industry.
27.08.2025 15:53 — 👍 6332 🔁 2357 💬 994 📌 2858The Davis Cup has scheduled Team Canada to play Team Israel on September 12-13, 2025 in Halifax. Join the call for No Sports Washing of Genocide, War Crimes & Apartheid: No Team Israel at the Davis Cup - they are not welcome in Kjipuktuk! !! Send a letter buff.ly/QgtJ7qY
13.08.2025 18:51 — 👍 2 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0
"Graphic with 'Anthropic' logo on left, circuit-like design. Right text reads: 'Authors: You May Be Part of This Class Action Lawsuit. Anthropic AI Lawsuit Explained.' Modern, tech-themed design."
A federal court ruled that ANTHROPIC illegally copied MILLIONS of books to train its AI.
All authors and publishers whose books were downloaded by Anthropic from pirate websites are subject to receiving compensation. This could involve your work.
For more info: authorsguild.org/news/anthrop...
Today we have "'Capsize the Rich': Orca Memes and Anti-Capitalist Interspecies Solidarity" by @sabinelebel.bsky.social
This is the 3rd post of the Finding Humour in the Environmental History of the Climate Crisis series edited by @nulybranch.bsky.social
niche-canada.org/2025/08/13/c...
#envhum
www.tandfonline.com/toc/wjls20/2...
The earth is a Badass Butch Dyke in Menopause. Check out the piece Beth and I wrote, it really fun and sexy.
Kim Dubé, a criminology professor at l’Université de Moncton, said the City of Moncton made the right call by cancelling the performance, noting that hate crimes have risen over the past five years. Full interview:
23.07.2025 22:00 — 👍 7 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0Call Parks Canada today. They're keeping track of how many calls they're getting about the hate rally in HRM they gave a permit to during Pride week
22.07.2025 19:22 — 👍 96 🔁 37 💬 7 📌 2
Francesca Albanese's most recent report has profound implications for higher ed.
None is more serious than this: administrators are *personally accountable* under international law for complicity in genocide for institutional entanglements w/ Israel and military-industrial companies.
We explain:
Two Palestinian journalists were killed in Israeli airstrikes today, bringing the number of media workers killed since the war on Gaza began to over 230.
🔴 LIVE updates: aje.io/nr2igp
NO. AI. FOR. WAR. CRIMES!!!
08.07.2025 10:07 — 👍 1128 🔁 198 💬 19 📌 5
If you are a faculty member, researcher, postdoc, or staff at a university in Canada, please sign this letter demanding Canada issue study permit to Gaza students to be delivered to the Minister of Immigration by tomorrow afternoon.
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
