Musical interlude

Kx5 feat. Hayla - Escape

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- The Honest Sorceror points out the obvious unsustainability of exponential growth in resource extraction when the mass of inanimate man-made objects already exceeds that of life on Earth. And Andy Thanatogenos discusses how to live with the knowledge that we're on a doomed trajectory, while Ajit Niranjan reports on research showing that anger is the emotion most likely to spur action to try to avert an ecological breakdown. 

- Jane Braxton Little writes that many communities which may consider themselves immune from urban wildfires are in fact at substantial risk due to flammable vegetation and the prospect of "flash drought". And Whizy Kim and Kenny Torrella point out how the effect of extreme heat on workers looks to be one of the major workplace health and safety issues for decades to come.

- Cailinn Klingbeil writes about the UCP's assault on post-secondary education in Alberta. And Adam Hunter reports on the effort by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association to protect trans and gender-diverse Saskatchewan students from mandatory outing and systemic discrimination at the hands of the bigoted Moe government. 

- Finally, Helen Branswell discusses how COVID-19 has continued to surge in more frequent and severe waves than normal seasonal illnesses - no matter how determined governments have been to say it's now part of that grouping to justify a lack of mitigation. 

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- The Associated Press reports on how the climate breakdown is producing every form of extreme weather everywhere all at once, while E.M. Fischer et al. study how even more intense heat waves are an imminent possibility. And Brishti Basu points out how younger people are trying to cope with a future steeped in climate anxiety, while Kiffer George Card and Kalysha Closson warn of the problems with letting a climate calamity drive people apart. 

- Meanwhile, Michelle Woodhouse highlights how we don't need Line 5 and other dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure to meet our energy needs. 

- Erika Morris reports that every single developer in Montreal has chosen to pay a fee rather than meeting standards for affordable housing - signaling how futile it is to pretend that profit-motivated corporations are any part of the solution to the provision of human needs. Ximena Gonzalez writes about Calgary's failure to implement recommendations to encourage the supply of affordable homes. And Zane Woodford reports on the particularly callous comments from one Lower Sackville councillor that ending homelessness just isn't going to happen - though it's hard to see much distinction between that position and the policy choices of Regina and other municipalities. 

- Finally, Marcus Baram reports on the tens of millions of dollars in unpaid wage assessments in New York which are still outstanding due to a lack of enforcement capacity. And Zak Vescera reports on the B.C. government's choice to shut down its fair wage commission even in the face of strong recommendations that its work is far from done. 

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Tuckered-out cats.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Madeline Holcomb reports on new research showing that COVID-19 boosters are more effective when delivered to the same arm as previous vaccine doses. 

- Jessica Wildfire highlights how the war on remote work is the result of corporate landlords' determination to sacrifice human health and well-being in order to prop up real estate values. And Nojoud Al Mallees reports on the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's warning that we're actually seeing a reduction in the construction of desperately-needed housing, while Marc Lee points out what we can learn from Singapore about the value of public-sector ownership of the provision of housing.  

- Mitchell Beer rightly warns against taking the word of Suncor's CEO on climate policy as he tries to lock in decades of extreme carbon pollution in order to keep extracting profits. And Geoff Dembicki takes a look at the oil industry-funded death cultists claiming credit for Danielle Smith's ban on clean energy. 

- Finally, Gary Marcus predicts that an already-enshittified Internet stands to get far worse as junk content from large language models crowds out accurate material.