i usually include at bottom of alt text but moved to the top this time. better to leave out altogether?
normalize not normalizing the new normal the pandemic is now hypermaskuline energy since 2020 i pity the fools but i do not suffer them Ⓥ 🇨🇦
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i usually include at bottom of alt text but moved to the top this time. better to leave out altogether?
text follows the url … is it possible to skip past?
good to know! 🙏🏼
I am BEGGING people not to concede that "COVID wasn't bad for kids because they don't die of it." Death isn't the only metric!! 10-20% of kids who get COVID end up with long COVID. More children now have long COVID than have asthma. We have utterly failed our kids. www.newsweek.com/why-are-so-m...
happy labour day 2025 🇨🇦 when the federal and provincial governments continue to conveniently ignore workers’ right to refuse unsafe work, enshrined in their own labour codes—by ordering employees to return to offices during the ongoing COVID pandemic, with no mitigation or compensation provided
gahhh. i feel this 😖
“post-COVID”
NEW: With Ontario premier Doug Ford & the City of Ottawa announcing all their workers will have five days of in-office work next year, I wrote about how coverage all places COVID as a relic of the past. Even the pieces decrying the move refuse to acknowledge the inevitable impact of COVID. #cdnpoli
not to mention needlessly exposing them repeatedly to COVID and other airborne viruses to dramatically up their chances of getting sick and possibly becoming too incapacitated to continue working ever again 👍🏼👏🏼
you put your elbows up you take your elbows down you put your elbows up and you shake ‘em all around you do the hoser poser and you turn yourself around and that’s what it’s all about
it looks even worse as a cheap joke on a $40 t-shirt or a hoodie for $80
shitty news not told shittily: cbc avoids saying “during the pandemic”. applaud small wins where you can. 👏🏼 www.cbc.ca/news/politic...
🚨COVID is a workplace safety issue🚨 Since the premature, ubiquitous abdication of COVID mitigation measures governments at all levels and employers across Canada have conveniently but recklessly ignored workers’ enshrined right to refuse unsafe work.
“Work-from-home and remote-work flexibility limits outbreaks of respiratory infections by enabling parents to keep their kids home from school when they’re sick. Removing remote work policies during the back-to-school season is a dangerous game to play, especially with declining vaccination rates.”
dOn’T hOLd uP a MiRrOr To A mEnDaCiOuS bAtShIT bLoWhARd, BE aN AUTHENTIC MeNdAcIoUS bAtShIT bLoWhARd!!! 🤪
same yesterday! (well, one check-out librarian anyway)
how a celebrated former hostage negotiator who brandishes emotional intelligence as a carrying card could develop such a deranged read on a career con-man and sociopath is beyond me. but the decision by the @nytimes.com to do a feature profile on this batshit point of view is beyond disturbing
i listened on the off-chance the headline framing was inconsistent with the substance of voss's take. tore out my earbuds as soon as he went off about trump's "bold" handling of the middle east, following the story of how trump once hosted/mc'd a fundraiser for him @ mar-a-lago and did a bang-up job
whenever trump interacts with putin my mind invariably goes to brent and finchy of the office. of course trump is every bit as pathetic as brent (if not more so) with none of the redemptive potential and finchy's cruelty is no match for putin's. it would be cringe funny if the stakes weren't so high
me three (with my co-parent). we feel you
parents buy into it readily because it absolves them of any anxiety and/or guilt about sending their kids into harm’s way. win-win for government and public health efforts to maintain the status quo because parents are now active accomplices, however unwitting. the economy/capitalism is preserved!
so her skills cutting off baby pigs’ balls that she boasted would make her such an excellent senator have indeed come in handy—just not in the way she promised, ie cutting wasteful government spending, but rather cutting off her own constituents in person and from medicaid youtu.be/7BgLwe8bFNg?...
capital D-duh-double-D-dee
RIP ignaz semmelweis: july 1, 1818 - aug 13, 1865 bsky.app/profile/stai...
meh. make sure he rescinds and renounces the conspiratorial COVID lab-leak theory first
glad your son’s OK 👍🏼 had to kindly ask the PHN to put on an N95 (which we provided) to administer our 4.5 yr-old’s MMR shot the other day. she was v. sweet and obliging but man, was i waiting for the offer during the preamble as we all three sat in our flo masks …
my least popular but correct take is that a guy who kills a buffalo for sport is no worse than the guy who demands pigs be killed because they ❤️❤️❤️ bacon or cows corralled to the kill floor for their big macs or who boils lobsters alive to slather them in butter. it’s all cruelty for pleasure.
a close family member was first to insist to me in early ‘20 that COVID was airborne. they urged me to mask even though the i newsroom i worked in at the time was still reporting droplet dogma. in the summer of ‘23 this same person told me they were through with boosters and precautions in general.
i’m old enough to remember the huge scandal that erupted after it was revealed mamy & teathan lip-synced all their speeches
“ i prefer ikeezhwer”
the one and only component i was ever any good at
proud of the confederacy and proud to flout the spirit of the country’s signature statue, lady liberty, and the words inscribed on her pedestal, “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …” they may not have physically torn it down. but they’ve torn it down.
humans: HAHAHA A BUFFALO GORED HIS HUNTER TO DEATH! HOPE IT WAS PAINFUL AS HELL FUCK HIM AND HIS FATHERLESS DAUGHTER also humans: I NEED ALL THE CHEESES AND STEAKS WRAPPED IN BACON!!! PLEASE UNDERSTAND I GET ZERO PLEASURE FROM IT I COULDN’T LIVE WITHOUT THEM IF I DON’T EAT THEM I WILL LITERALLY DIE
why is an animal trophy worse than a celebrated pulled pork recipe? because it’s garish and ostentatious and forces us to confront the cravenness and gratuitousness of the killing.
the woman whose post i quoted has as her pinned post a recipe for pork that apparently makes the meat *sing* (her words), and yet celebrates that a teen girl is now fatherless because her dad chose to hunt a buffalo for sport. is his crime so much worse than hers that he deserves a grisly death?
i said *i* was not talking about hunting. look the point is, most of the meat we consume and the way we consume it is *for fun*. most of us don’t have to eat it—if you have a medical reason that you must then fine. nevertheless, we certainly don’t have to relish in the consumption the way we do.
wasn’t talking about hunting. there’s no waste in factory farms? most animals slaughtered are younger than 5 years—better than mature animals in their prime?
curious how many of the commenters on this story harbour the same bloodlust for the slaughterhouse workers who kill the animals that provide them their pork chops and filet mignons which they fastidiously marinate for hours and season with savoury herbs to pair with the perfect wines
“abundance of caution” ➡️ “miraculous recovery”
this is obviously outraging—thankfully social tolerance for corporal punishment is greatly diminished since maribeth’s heyday—but it also illuminates why so many parents today have 0️⃣ issue sending their kids to school unmasked (let alone unvaxxed) despite the known risk of significant harms to them.
“As of July 2025, over 320,000 children, the entire population under five in the Gaza Strip, are at risk of acute malnutrition, with thousands suffering from severe acute malnutrition, the deadliest form of undernutrition.”—UNICEF www.thewhig.com/opinion/wors...
me makes three!
he has the air of a young dylan
same energy as every unmasked health-care professional to their patients tbh
“our old relationship with the united states is over … unless of course they have a problem with that. in which case … sorry, eh?”
this ignorant director of schools threatens that after 3 absences, kids (& their parents) will face juvenile court & won’t be able to attend graduation or get their driver’s licence. by forcing students to attend school while sick he’s ensuring some won’t be able to do either due to chronic illness.
“[Y]ou can live in a society where memory and erasure are two sides of the same coin. You must remember the Holocaust. You must commemorate it. And you must forget who lived here just a few years before I was born. There was an entire civilization there, erased from memory as well as concretely.”
“No, no, no, genocide is not just a word. [It’s] an internationally recognized crime. And if you identify a particular event as genocide, signatory states are duty bound to do something about it.” (Host): “So calling something a genocide is a mandate to act.” “Yes, yes, and a mandate to punish.”
“I'm not an exception among genocide scholars. There is a growing consensus among genocide scholars and experts in international law that what we are watching is genocide. There's more people in these groups say there is genocide than not.” podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/s...
what an utter failure—especially since worksafebc was so instrumental in containing SARS1 in vancouver when it first emerged in 2003, as this episode of”public health is dead” chronicles. we really are going backwards. podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/p...
thisisrachel.substack.com/p/a-trip-to-...
www.thegauntlet.news/p/the-pandem...
what a dick
the media enthusiastically perpetuates the myth that COVID is behind us (unless of course you’re one of the ‘vulnerable’)—and 🇨🇦’s public broadcaster (my former employer) is no exception, as the sampling of recent headlines below demonstrates (links in ALT)
get sick to get more weller!
shoutout to the media for doing a bang-up job of minimizing as well! 👏🏼
So someone came on CBC this week to say 20% of Covid infections result in long COVID & it's just business as usual. No one realizes how dire this stat is. And CBC keeps on forcing its staff to work in offices with no mitigations
the CBC (and all legacy media) will only ever go so far. to admit that public health capitulated to COVID too soon and it still demands an aggressive, multi-layered response upsets the status quo too much. it would necessitate admitting failure and require a massive societal pivot to right the ship.
MAGA losing its collective shit over the epstein horrow show has me thinking again about this book i read this winter. as strong a testament to that old adage that “history never rhymes but it often repeats itself” as i can think of. may it close with a straight-up homonym bsky.app/profile/stai...
🎯
no new information was provided in that interview. the guest (although himself very good) cited studies dating back years. it was timed to coincide with the 5th anniversary of the pandemic and presented as coverage of recent, revelatory findings. and yet … bsky.app/profile/stai...
sadly, ignoring the order wasn’t an option for us. hybrid was still unacceptable, given COVID doesn’t stay home on certain days. so they forced us to resign. bsky.app/profile/stai...
it’s not much better here in 🇨🇦. while kids can get the 💉uptake is low because public health is modelling that COVID is effectively over. the media is fully complicit. no mitigation in schools or workplaces to speak of. and meanwhile on top of COVID there are measles outbreaks across the country.
i thought that was what the whole campaign was about? #elbowsup
you might think that. i couldn’t possibly comment.
after many months, this was the reply: (in short: despite our role as a government watchdog, we always followed what the government said to do. also, management is independent from our reporting so we don’t have to follow what the science we cover says. also, there are many ways to cover COVID.)
my partner wrote to our former employer, CBC, to ask why it was OK to force us back to the office with no protections when our son was too young to be vaxxed—especially given the CBC’s own science show reported on the danger of repeat COVID infections on this episode: 1/ www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks...
(and yes, i am aware that by many accounts, on a personal level dahl was an insufferable asshat on par with jk rowling, but on this score at least he is absolutely bang-on)
to those who insist wearing a mask deprives innocent little children of smiles essential to their emotional development, allow me to present a truth i re-encountered while reading with my four-year-old, from one of the preeminent children’s authors in the english language, roald dahl:
haha i think there are more sculptures in nelson just down the road where i live
castlegar!
i’m fozzie on your meaning here
look for a quaker trucker. they’re always haulin’ oats 😫
‘haven’ and/or ‘the pull of the stars’ by @emmadonoghue.bsky.social 🔥🇮🇪🇨🇦
well, why not? they’re consistent if nothing else. they also greatly eased access to sars-CoV-2 (even for kids!), despite mounting evidence of all its harms. and let’s face it, getting drunk is a helluva lot more fun than COVID.
and here i am already following him! forgot somehow. thanks!
anyway thank you @michaelhobbes.bsky.social and peter shamshiri for ripping it to shreds, with humour to boot. the @nytimes.com daily pod really needs to retract the episode featuring these two dorks and issue a correction—perhaps an entire mea culpa episode with the @ifbookspod.bsky.social authors?
man, it is crystal clear from this thoroughly-researched podcast episode that the authors of this book began with a premise that they then tried to shape “facts” to fit. kind of like the musical “mama mia” strung together a plot from abba songs. only wayyy worse podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/i...
🙏🏼 thank you. i appreciate that very much.
(which i had paid into all those years) but was denied because the government contended i left my job voluntarily and was therefore ineligible. my kid is four now. to the best of our knowledge he’s still never had COVID. despite the damage to our careers, the choice we made is still a no-brainer.
we return to the office. we refused to risk infecting our son (let alone ourselves as his sole caregivers). it was clear by then that COVID posed a serious threat to kids, just like everyone else. our union was of no help, effectually siding with management. i then applied for employment insurance …
i was forced to resign after nearly two decades with canada’s public broadcaster, CBC. my partner too. we had an infant at home at the time too young to be vaccinated. we had already been working remotely for two years at that point. but management dropped all protections and very quickly demanded …
“truly humbling” would mean resigning and apologizing to british columbians and canadians for minimizing the risk of sars-CoV-2 and downplaying the importance of masking, clean air in schools, etc. but we all know that won’t happen. she’ll gladly accept the honour. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
climate change. COVID. we ignore these crises at our own peril, at the altar of the all-important, insatiable economy, which of course will crumble along with everything else
dr. bonnie henry is hubris personified
henry receiving the order is the most egregious bestowal since buffy sainte-marie. a blight on the institution until it is revoked
“We know people are generally sicker today than before the pandemic. There are more people unable to work, there’s more absenteeism, etc. And we’re not just talking about older people. The people proportionately most affected right now are the caregivers of school-aged children.”
is there a greater canadian example of failing up?
i’m sure both my late dad and his hero dr. semmelweis would be glad to find handwashing is still an established and recommended practice during an ongoing pandemic. but i’m as certain they’d both be sporting n95s and wondering why so many of their contemporaries aren’t 4/4
but in the downstairs bathroom of our house, my dad pasted a poster prominently over the mirror with a bunch of cartoon germs on it that read: “in celebration of ignaz semmelweis, let’s all wash our hands.” 3/4
as a young doc in the ‘60s my dad visited vienna general hospital where semmelweis worked. he was surprised and not a bit dismayed to find the newly-unveiled monument in his honour rather unassuming, and in an out-of-the-way courtyard on the encompassing university campus. 2/4
happy birthday 🇨🇦, and also to one of my dad’s heroes ignaz semmelweis, born 207 years ago today. semmelweis was a hungarian physician who urged his fellow doctors to wash their hands. he was ridiculed by his colleagues so much that he suffered a breakdown and was committed to an asylum. 1/4
ambassador archie bunker here told the very same cbc host more than a month ago that the 51st state rhetoric was over and done with and it was time to move on. so which is it?
how legacy media colludes with law enforcement to perpetuate the false idea COVID is over: CTV invu with the former OPP commish who falsely asserts it is & so protesters only mask to conceal their faces, to which the anchor replies “always great insight” & signs off www.ctvnews.ca/video/2025/0...
thank you!
“great insight as always,” says the reporter to this very point made by fmr. opp commissioner chris lewis. not only no pushback, but praise for advancing astoundingly irresponsible info. inexcusable www.ctvnews.ca/video/2025/0...
www.ctvnews.ca/video/2025/0...
