Ryan McNutt

AI can seemingly hallucinate NHL players having actual personalities.

"Misery" rocks.

I mean, in an existential sense, everything is temporary I guess. Plus this totally worked once before: remember how America elected Biden in 2020 and Trumpism was defeated once and for all?

In some ways, I'd almost feel better if this were all part of some grand nefarious scheme, instead of multiple questionable decisions being made without due care or consideration to their externalities and wide-ranging impacts. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

1) Remove bridge tolls as demand increases and w/o properly addressing congestion points.
2) Pick fights over bike lanes out of jurisdiction
3) End nearly all remote or hybrid work in the public service.
4) ....????

Not saying I fully believe this, but if the PC government were actively trying to make Halifax traffic worse to achieve some kind of larger structural policy objective... it would make a hell of a lot more sense than whatever explanation we have right now on how these moves fit together logically.

The Tumbler Ridge shooting is already fuelling anti-trans hate in Canada | Xtra Magazine Bad actors on the right are leaping to connect the shooter’s trans identity to the violence

NEW from me today:

Tumbler Ridge is mourning a horrific loss. But how the shooter's identity is being talked about online, and the dangerous links being made to trans people at large, will have resounding and dangerous impacts in the months and weeks to come.

xtramagazine.com/power/tumble...

New Radicals forever

Sue their ass, Gregg Alexander

we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad

What’s happening here is parallel to what’s happening in America: as conservatism moves rightward, its adherents start to realize how many of their policy goals are actually unpopular and increasingly unlikely to win at the ballot box — and so they start exploring ways to opt out.

This ad uses dogs to justify technology surveillance expansion that’s immediately terrifying the moment you think about any single application beyond dogs.

Dogs deserve better.

‘Together, We Are America’ Bad Bunny’s critics said his Super Bowl halftime show would be divisive. They were totally wrong.

This is a great piece by my colleague spencer on the bad bunny helftimeshow but of course there’s never been a more divisive idea in American history than all of us being American, we fought a civil war over it and Trump is nothing if not manifest opposition to it www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...

The Patriots shall not be vanquished till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane!

A definitive Blue Jay through and through. There was a time I grew weary of him on play by play, but the voice always brought me back, and I felt he found his footing again on colour - especially with Dan.

Get that spot on the Level of Excellence ready ASAP.

Incredible art of gritty playing fiddle on the roof of a west Philadelphia row home. In Yiddish it says Fidler Oyfn Fakh פֿידלער אױפֿן דאַך)

We put on an all-Yiddish community production of fiddler on the roof in Philadelphia and cast member and local artist Sofie Rose Seymour created the most amazing show poster that ever was

But is it a FUTURE for the Muppets? I'm not sure, especially when you consider that the variety show format the Muppet Show (historical and present) emulates, satirizes and celebrates is basically non-existent in 2025. If it continues, curoius to see how much it has to offer beyond nostalgia.

Rogan and Goldberg's concept of "Why don't we just do the Muppet Show again?" succeeds in the same way Muppets Tonight did in the '90s, or Jason Segel's The Muppets did (which was "Why don't we do the Muppet Movie again?") There's still gold in the core concepts here!

The one-off (for now) Muppet Show special on Disney+, spearheaded by Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg, is great fun. I hope they get to do more of them. Not sure it solves "the future of the Muppets" but having them do more things that work and less things that don't is a good place to start.

Not for nothing, but it was a Washington Post article about romance fiction that pushed Jacob Tierney to contact Rachel Reid about making #HeatedRivalry.

This part of our response essay is where I'm at. Boiling down all of politics to electoralism has been absolutely terrible for resisting rising authoritarianism.

www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-no...

The veil. BUT… while subtler, I found the post-credits scene to be nearly as thrilling as those two. A really beautiful, interesting coda to the film.

At least it guaranteed a political comment?

I’m not sure I’ve ever loved anything as much as the Grammys love awarding Billie Eilish for B-grade Billie Eilish material.

Notable to me that the only two speakers on the Grammys thus far who’ve been willing to say anything remotely political have been British and Puerto Rican, respectively

Also none of these best new artists enunciate when they sing, but I feel like the battle vs mumblesinging was lost a long time ago.

The majority of the Grammy performances thus far have been admirably live, which makes the ones clearly not live REALLY stand out.

No wonder it bit Ruskin. It was right to fear us.