Jane Fonda relaunches free speech group started by her father during the McCarthy era In wake of the Trump administration’s censorship threats, the actor re-established the Committee for the First Amendment with A-list support

"Jane Fonda relaunches free speech group started by her father during the McCarthy era...The ability to criticize, question, protest, and even mock those in power is foundational to what America has always aspired to be." www.theguardian.com/film/2025/oc...

YouTube video by NPR Music SsingSsing: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

mods are asleep post ssingssing tiny desk concert

If you live in Canada and believe you're immune from an Orwelian future, please be aware that the Edmonton School District just banned 200 books, including six of mine, from its school libraries.

Step back and take it in: the US is entering full authoritarian mode | Jonathan Freedland Trump’s dictator-like behaviour is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. But now it’s time to call it what it is, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland

“Trump’s march towards authoritarianism is so steady that it’s easy to become inured to it: you can’t be in a state of shock permanently. And besides, sober-minded people are wary of sounding hyperbolic or hysterical: their instinct is to play down rather than scream at the top of their voice.”

A practical utopians guide to the coming collapse What is a revolution? We used to think we knew. Revolutions were seizures of power by pop- ular forces aiming to transform the very nature of the political, social, and economic system in the country ...

"What happens when the creation of that sense of failure, of the complete ineffectiveness of political action against the system, becomes the chief objective of those in power?"

Fascinating piece by the dearly departed David Graeber.

Archaeologists Are Finding Dugout Canoes in the American Midwest as Old as the Great Pyramids of Egypt In the waterways connected to the Great Lakes, researchers uncover boats that tell the story of millennia of Indigenous history

Archaeologists Are Finding Dugout Canoes in the American Midwest as Old as the Great Pyramids of Egypt. In the waterways connected to the Great Lakes, researchers uncover boats that tell the story of millennia of Indigenous history.

www.smithsonianmag.com/history/arch...

King Street: Toronto's Transit Inferiority Corridor | UrbanToronto Long planned upgrades to Toronto's busiest streetcar line have gone off the rails once more, with anticipated improvements to the 504 King's Transit Priority Corridor notably absent from the recently rebuilt intersection of King and Church streets, and indicative of a failure to truly prioritize the street for moving people.

Excellent article today in UrbanToronto regarding the King Street priority corridor. After 7 years of transit priority, the street remains unchanged, with no timeline for when improvements are coming. This is low hanging fruit and the city is failing big time. urbantoronto.ca/news/2025/08...

YouTube video by CBC News Report says Americans undertook influence operations in Greenland

American covert influence operations in Greenland, according to the Danish public broadcaster based on government sources

Dear Ron DeSantis:

Fuck you.

Op-Ed: A City Is Not A Cake — Streetsblog USA There's no recipe to building a great city. So why are so many zoning and road design policies written like there is — and how can loosening standards make cities less car dependent?

A City Is Not A Cake
There's no recipe to building a great city. So why are so many zoning and road design policies written like there is — and how can loosening standards make cities less car dependent?
usa.streetsblog.org/2025/08/26/o...

The Squamish people of what is now Vancouver were illegally dispossessed of this land a century ago. They sued, got their land back, and are using their sovereignty to ignore local zoning and build 6,000 new homes over the objections of NIMBY homeowners in the wealthy Kits Point neighborhood nearby.

Actually, Slavery Was Very Bad The president’s latest criticism of museums is a thinly veiled attempt to erase Black history.

I debated writing this. It can feel tempting, upon encountering yet another instance of this administration’s racism, to let it be. How many ways can you say the same thing over and over again? And yet we have to write it down, if for nothing else, so those who come after us know we were against it.

After Maui's fires, native Hawaiian families face a new threat: foreclosure “Often, the people who have been on the land the longest are the first to get displaced.”

“Often, the people who have been on the land the longest are the first to get displaced.”

After Maui’s fires, native Hawaiian families face a new threat: foreclosure.

Wages of unionized workers are 13% higher than their nonunion counterparts.

But unions also set a higher pay standard that all workers enjoy.

In high-union-density states, median household income is $12,000 higher than in low-union-density states.

This is why unions are vital.

Canada isn’t in a housing slump — Ontario is, RBC analysis shows | Globalnews.ca Ontario’s lag in housing construction was at 'the root of the housing crisis' in Canada, new analysis by the Royal Bank of Canada shows.

The year is 2027. Ontario is lagging behind all provinces in construction again. "My friends, we are going to fix this", Doug Ford says at a press conference. "Starting tomorrow, cottage bunkies and provincial park yurts will count as housing starts. It's all part of our Plan to Protect Ontario."

Earth’s climate is approaching irreversible tipping points Scientists are racing to work out just how close they might be

Good luck explaining to your grandchildren why we crossed known climate tipping points.

“Oh, we wanted to let big companies pollute for free,” won’t have much appeal.

The Flooding Will Come “No Matter What”: Climate Change is Already Forcing People From Their Homes The complex, contradictory and heartbreaking process of American climate migration is underway.

The Flooding Will Come “No Matter What”

The complex, contradictory and heartbreaking process of American climate migration is underway.

(Published April 2024)

The City of Toronto has contracted w Garda too - currently doing encampments secure.toronto.ca/council/agen...

I feel like a toddler* talking about bike lanes so much but the Premier of Ontario insists that's all we talk about.

(*unfair to toddlers they have many interests)

We need a councillor to champion it - and transportation to get behind it. I still worry that our city won’t.

#OpenStreets Work.

June 6-8
Do West Fest (Little Portugal) Dundas St W, from Shaw St to Lansdowne Av

July 19 & 20
BIG on Bloor: Dufferin to Lansdowne Av.
Festival of South Asia (Little India) Gerrard St E, Greenwood to Coxwell Av.

Ossfest & Beaches Jazz Fest
toronto.citynews.ca/2025/07/24/w...

It’s a Natural Resource We Don’t Think About Often. Public Health Depends On It More Than Ever. As extreme heat becomes deadlier, cities are rethinking trees, awnings, and shaded spaces as essential infrastructure.

I wrote about shade, which is surprisingly hard to come by.

featuring: the National Shade Map, @samkbloch.bsky.social's book, LA's ridiculous tree-planting regulations, the genius of Olmsted, and a shade-themed bible study by @laura-m-hartman.bsky.social
slate.com/business/202...

Coupled, decoupled, and abrupt responses of vegetation to climate across timescales Climate and ecosystem dynamics vary across timescales, but research into climate-driven vegetation dynamics usually focuses on singular timescales. We developed a spectral analysis–based approach that...

In analysis of fossil pollen records over 600k yrs, study found "vegetation was able to respond at timescales from 100s to 10s of 1000s of yrs, but not at timescales less than ~150 yrs." IOW at current rates of change, there's no way ecosystems will be able to adapt.🌏 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Paris reopens River Seine to public swimming after century-long ban About 1,000 swimmers a day will be allowed to use three bathing sites after €1.4bn clean-up programme

NEW: Paris reopens the Seine River to public swimming after a century-long ban! “About 1,000 swimmers a day will be allowed to use 3 public bathing sites after €1.4bn clean-up program.” 14 more bathing spots beyond the city are planned.

Big, bold leadership.

@annehidalgo.bsky.social @paris.fr

Firefighter understaffing in Ontario is worse than previously understood, these numbers show As dozens of fires burn simultaneously, including one that is now the second biggest fire in the province's history, Ontario is calling on other provinces for help.

"Ontario’s shortage of wildland firefighters, equipment +staff is worse than previously understood...These shortages have left the province scrambling to fight dozens of fires burning simultaneously, including one that is now 2nd biggest fire in Ontario’s history..."

www.thestar.com/news/canada/...

Also wonder how the new river system will change things too!

Supposedly I read once that also when the island changed shape, due to storms and human activity- some of the inner harbour currents changed which also meant it low longer froze over too. I think I read it in Toronto Undressed.

Canadians like to act like we're so much better but we have government officials literally fighting to deny people access to clean drinking water because it might interfere with oil and gas profits.

Who needs science when you can forecast the weather with a Sharpie?

As we noted before, the real play is to force the public to pay for weather forecasting in the future. To do that, they need to take the government out of the weather business entirely. www.npr.org/2024/11/15/n...