I’m in the middle of two amazing opportunities, one through my work, and one through my union. The work thing is complex — and important. Decolonizing the library: walking in two worlds Circle of Life, Trevor Hunt I am part of a small team that is creating a framework of
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wmtc: what i’m reading: god’s bits of wood + labour book club update
My BCGEU Vancouver Island Labour Book Club is happening! 25 people expressed interest, 18 people registered, and about 5-7 people have been attending. A few other folks are following the reading but not attending the discussions. I take all of this as wins. The fact that it’s happening at all
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading: bread & roses: mills, migrants, and the struggle for the american dream
I’d be willing to bet my paycheque that Bruce Watson, author of Bread & Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream, did not want his book to have that title. The 1912 millworker strike in the city of Lawrence, Massachusetts is now referred to as “the Bread
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Mammoth Ideas For Past, Present, and Future – Sweetish Meatballs
Bread, beef and milk will be artificially produced pic.twitter.com/4AYs2kHe3N — Paul Fairie (@paulisci) March 27, 2023 Not now, meatball created from long exti wait what? pic.twitter.com/gXbcHg4aGU — tern (@1goodtern) March 28, 2023 They took extinct mammoth DNA, repaired it with elephant DNA, used sheep stem cells for replication, and created
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading: my notorious life by kate manning (madame restell, fictional version, nonfiction to follow)
I read this book last year, and have been recommending it nonstop, so it’s about time to commit it to wmtc. My Notorious Life was an obvious book for me to love — or to hate. Much historical fiction feels contrived to me. An author takes a period of history, writes
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading: empire of pain, the secret history of the sackler family
Buried on page 364 of the hardcover edition of Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty — almost two-thirds into the book — is one sentence that, for me, defines the most important piece of this urgent story. The opioid crisis is, among other things, a parable about
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Into Wokism’s Raging Maw: Frances Widdowson at the University of Lethbridge – C2C Journal
We must guard against this sort of degenerate mob justice. See the entire article here. “When talking to people about the state of universities in Canada, many deny the negative impact of “woke-ism.” My current “lived experience” in a province with a reputation for supporting free speech, however, indicates otherwise.
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Hidden History
Ideally, history teaches us about the past so that we can gain perspective on what came before and learn some lessons so that we don’t make the same mistakes made over and over again, ad infinitum. While recent history underscores the fact that we are not apt students, even the
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: The Idea of Precolonial Africa is Vacuous and Wrong – Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò
This is a lens shattering essay by Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò who asks us to put aside our current demarcations of African history – Precolonial, Colonial, and Post-Colonial because they obfuscate the rich tapestry that is the history of Africa. “When ‘precolonial’ is used for describing African ideas, processes, institutions
Continue readingThings Are Good: Pompeii Powered by Polymer Panels
Historic sites that attract a lot of tourists know that if they loose their historical look that the tourists will stop coming, so how do you locally produce renewable energy while not looking modern? This question has been answered by the stewards of Pompeii with a simple solar solution. A
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading: nine nasty words by john mcwhorter
If you enjoy language, and history, and humour, you will probably enjoy Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter — Then, Now, and Forever by John McWhorter. A slim book written in a breezy style, Nine Nasty Words is an absolute delight. McWhorter takes the reader through a history of English words
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading: krakatoa: the day the world exploded: august 27, 1883 by simon winchester
The 1883 volcanic eruption known as Krakatoa was the largest, loudest, and most destructive natural event in human history. The explosions (there were many) were heard almost 3,000 miles away. The eruption produced shock waves that travelled around Earth seven times. Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 has
Continue readingwmtc: worlds collide: more notes on "gods of the upper air"
Gods of the Upper Air, by Charles King, which I recently wrote about, highlights several books that were highly influential in their time, for good and for ill. In The Passing of a Great Race, published in 1916, a man named Madison Grant foretold the extinction of the “Nordic” race and their
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading: gods of the upper air, outstanding nonfiction by charles king
Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century by Charles King is a compelling, fascinating, impeccably researched, and thoroughly readable work of narrative nonfiction. It is one of the very best nonfiction books I’ve read. I borrowed it from
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Advanced education minister’s video features porkies about premiers, prime ministers and petroleum
Why did Advanced Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides choose or approve a nano-clip of prime minister Pierre Trudeau saying “just watch me” to illustrate a cringeworthy social media video justifying Premier Danielle Smith’s unconstitutional Sovereignty Act? Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in his famous 1970 interview with CBC reporter Tim Ralfe (Photo:
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading: the night watchman by louise erdrich
I read Louise Erdrich long ago, in the 1980s and ’90s, devouring several titles, including Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and my favourite, Tracks. Erdrich remained on my radar, but somehow I didn’t pick up another of her books for decades — until now. And I’m so glad I did. The Night
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Transgender Ideology is Lysenkoism All Over Again
The parallels are chilling between the fatal bullheadedness of Lysenkoism – the denial of genetic facts and reality to Gender Ideology which denies biological fact. Go to Arty Morty’s Substack to read the rest of his brilliant article. “Of course, logic and reason tell us that biological sex, like natural
Continue readingwmtc: "they thought they were doing the right thing at the time": a harmful denialism that we must challenge
They thought they were doing the right thing. They thought they were helping children. Now we know better. I recently heard this from a library customer. They were referring to the residential “schools”, the accepted euphemism for the system of concentration camps that was used to destroy Indigenous families, communities,
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading: killers of the flower moon: the osage murders and the birth of the fbi
I’m sure many of you have read Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. It’s an award-winning bestseller that garnered a lot of attention when it was published in 2017. If you haven’t read it, get it from your library, or
Continue reading52 Ideas: Conservatives should search for a better analytical lens
As an Ideology, Conservatism tends to use already developed ideas. Conservatives tend to go back into the past and look for the best ideas to lead us in this time. These might be ideas that have been forgotten, ideas which didn’t work in an earlier time or ideas that were
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