Martin R. Lefebvre PhD 🇨🇦

in my experience, people who were exposed to severe Christian homophobia in the 2000s were protected against "Just Asking Questions" transphobia of the 2010s precisely because we realize that it never stops at "these are human beings" and always goes to cruelty

I went through the WHO Disease Outbreak Notice about the pneumonia of undetermined aetiology in Siberia. SPOILER ALERT: Russia is lying. About what is less clear but I have some ideas 👇 rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/the-plague...

Pakistan supported the Taliban because it got the Pashtun militias to stop pushing for independence of the Pashtun territories from the Pakistani state for a bit and focused most of their energy on Afghanistan and the US for a while. It was always kicking the can down the road but they got 20 years.

ea nasir cannot keep getting away with it

This is what shutting down scientific debate actually looks like

Since my request went ignore on linkedin

Here is my letter to the MacDonald Laurier Institute on the subject of their appalling research. Use as you will. I recommend sending something of your own, though. And if you know anyone associated with MLI - and Board directors, say - send it to them, too.

Jason Kenney keeps telling us about his racism, and yet the commentariat in this country keeps trying to turn him into an elder statesman.

Boutros Boutros‑Ghali wouldn’t have botched the Broadview 6 case — he was too rules‑bound to actively break anything.

Who let the wolves in? Genetic record for domestic dogs pushed back by 5,000 years www.nature.com/articles/d41...

FT EXCLUSIVE: The Gulf governments are talking about declaring force majeure on the full gamut of contracts because they say they're short of cash. This could wreak some global havoc and slash investment in the US from regional sovereign wealth firms.

The scariest sentence in the English language: "Hey, this is Isaac Chotiner, can I give you a call?" (Yes, yes, I know sometimes he does great interviews with smart people too, but... )

Is there anything more British than being annoyed at the notion of admitting De Gaulle might have been right?

get the kid in the brown hoodie a scholarship

If you're wondering why Canadians are nervous, it's never good to become the focus of the mentally unwell ruler of a larger nuclear armed neighbour

Dems got what they wanted from the shutdown but it’s crickets from this site

"I recently spoke with Santa Claus, who is currently coordinating his staff of immortal blue-collar elves, about the morality of children and his friendship with a creature whom many carolers consider a war criminal: Krampus." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...

My dearest Martha, This evening we shot pepper balls at a man clothed in a frog costume. It had no effect. He continued to dance and taunt us. We retreated before he could charge our lines and commit unspeakable horrors against our boys. I fear this war will never end. Yours, Silas

its kinda funny how fundamentally undemocratic this mindset if you inspect it even a little, because it really just boils down to the following: "people shouldn't get what they vote for"

One of the lessons we refuse to internalize post FDR and LBJ is large swaths of this country need to be *dragged* kicking and screaming into modernity and improvement

The political theory behind IRA was roughly as follows: We have lost control of the information landscape and can no longer win rhetorical or purely political battles; however, if we make substantive policy progress that directly touches voters' lives, they will notice and reward us.

Falling responses, budgets & staff are biting. #BLS will cut 350 #ProducerPriceIndex #inflation sub-indexes. It'll be harder to gauge effects of #supplychain disruptions, #tariffs, #monetary, #fiscal & #regulatory #policy and more. www.bls.gov/ppi/notices/... #econsky #PPI @aaronsojourner.org

Tariffs xkcd.com/3073

Elbows up, Canada.

Read about the insanity of doing business in the US economy

maybe you could explain how oil, potash, aluminum, uranium and other critical minerals are not “critical for national security purposes”. Seems like an odd way to frame the situation.

Many, many people have been warning about this all along. Since roughly 2000 I have been shouting & waving my arms: "hey, seems like allowing a giant shadow media full of lies, designed to permit & justify the grossest, cruelest behavior, is gonna have some ill effects on our politics!"

Screaming this for 25 years now, as America's political & media elite simply opened their arms to RW media, welcomed it in, followed its queues, chased all its shiny baubles, sweatily worked to gain the approval of its viewers ... and now here we are, collectively unable to think clearly.

Glad we got through the tariff emergency (at least the first wave of it....). Also glad that people are bringing creativity, energy, and determination to figuring out a medium and long-run response. But I want to throw cold water on three ideas I've seen floated. I'll explain...

i mean. trudeau is right. donald trump represents a betrayal of everything america promised to be. canada has been our ally for a hundred years, through the fires of two world wars, the cold war, all the great struggles of the twentieth century--and this is how we repay that? it's disgusting

Having a servant be even implicitly disrespectful to their station causes acute psychic damage to American rich people and I think that's a really underrated dynamic in why they went so insanely off the rails under Biden's economy and worked to tank it.

Some concrete ideas about what to do moving forward — in lieu of our usual circular firing squad — from @emptywheel.bsky.social And PS, If SCOTUS was *always* going to blow up the Trump cases, then the fault lies with CJ Roberts, not AG Garland being slow. www.emptywheel.net/2024/12/30/t...

Some thoughts on the demands for "reckonings" and just what kinds. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/recko...

!foryou