#wellness programs in toronto on

[urbancore]

Corporate Wellness Programs!

In today’s fast-paced society, incorporating wellness into our daily lives is a challenging feat. More and more, people are looking to work at companies or find accommodations that offer comprehensive, on-site wellness programming. In turn, companies are now searching for buildings that provide opportunities for employees to stay active and maintain a good work-life balance. Know More: https://yoururbancore.com/facility-management/

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Your car spies on you and rats you out to insurance companies

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (Mar 13) in SAN FRANCISCO with ROBIN SLOAN, then Toronto, NYC, Anaheim, and more!

Another characteristically brilliant Kashmir Hill story for The New York Times reveals another characteristically terrible fact about modern life: your car secretly records fine-grained telemetry about your driving and sells it to data-brokers, who sell it to insurers, who use it as a pretext to gouge you on premiums:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance.html

Almost every car manufacturer does this: Hyundai, Nissan, Ford, Chrysler, etc etc:

https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2020/09/09/ford-state-farm-ford-metromile-honda-verisk-among-insurer-oem-telematics-connections/

This is true whether you own or lease the car, and it's separate from the "black box" your insurer might have offered to you in exchange for a discount on your premiums. In other words, even if you say no to the insurer's carrot – a surveillance-based discount – they've got a stick in reserve: buying your nonconsensually harvested data on the open market.

I've always hated that saying, "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product," the reason being that it posits decent treatment as a customer reward program, like the little ramekin warm nuts first class passengers get before takeoff. Companies don't treat you well when you pay them. Companies treat you well when they fear the consequences of treating you badly.

Take Apple. The company offers Ios users a one-tap opt-out from commercial surveillance, and more than 96% of users opted out. Presumably, the other 4% were either confused or on Facebook's payroll. Apple – and its army of cultists – insist that this proves that our world's woes can be traced to cheapskate "consumers" who expected to get something for nothing by using advertising-supported products.

But here's the kicker: right after Apple blocked all its rivals from spying on its customers, it began secretly spying on those customers! Apple has a rival surveillance ad network, and even if you opt out of commercial surveillance on your Iphone, Apple still secretly spies on you and uses the data to target you for ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Even if you're paying for the product, you're still the product – provided the company can get away with treating you as the product. Apple can absolutely get away with treating you as the product, because it lacks the historical constraints that prevented Apple – and other companies – from treating you as the product.

As I described in my McLuhan lecture on enshittification, tech firms can be constrained by four forces:

I. Competition

II. Regulation

III. Self-help

IV. Labor

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

When companies have real competitors – when a sector is composed of dozens or hundreds of roughly evenly matched firms – they have to worry that a maltreated customer might move to a rival. 40 years of antitrust neglect means that corporations were able to buy their way to dominance with predatory mergers and pricing, producing today's inbred, Habsburg capitalism. Apple and Google are a mobile duopoly, Google is a search monopoly, etc. It's not just tech! Every sector looks like this:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

Eliminating competition doesn't just deprive customers of alternatives, it also empowers corporations. Liberated from "wasteful competition," companies in concentrated industries can extract massive profits. Think of how both Apple and Google have "competitively" arrived at the same 30% app tax on app sales and transactions, a rate that's more than 1,000% higher than the transaction fees extracted by the (bloated, price-gouging) credit-card sector:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/07/curatorial-vig/#app-tax

But cartels' power goes beyond the size of their warchest. The real source of a cartel's power is the ease with which a small number of companies can arrive at – and stick to – a common lobbying position. That's where "regulatory capture" comes in: the mobile duopoly has an easier time of capturing its regulators because two companies have an easy time agreeing on how to spend their app-tax billions:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Apple – and Google, and Facebook, and your car company – can violate your privacy because they aren't constrained regulation, just as Uber can violate its drivers' labor rights and Amazon can violate your consumer rights. The tech cartels have captured their regulators and convinced them that the law doesn't apply if it's being broken via an app:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/18/cursed-are-the-sausagemakers/#how-the-parties-get-to-yes

In other words, Apple can spy on you because it's allowed to spy on you. America's last consumer privacy law was passed in 1988, and it bans video-store clerks from leaking your VHS rental history. Congress has taken no action on consumer privacy since the Reagan years:

https://www.eff.org/tags/video-privacy-protection-act

But tech has some special enshittification-resistant characteristics. The most important of these is interoperability: the fact that computers are universal digital machines that can run any program. HP can design a printer that rejects third-party ink and charge $10,000/gallon for its own colored water, but someone else can write a program that lets you jailbreak your printer so that it accepts any ink cartridge:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Tech companies that contemplated enshittifying their products always had to watch over their shoulders for a rival that might offer a disenshittification tool and use that as a wedge between the company and its customers. If you make your website's ads 20% more obnoxious in anticipation of a 2% increase in gross margins, you have to consider the possibility that 40% of your users will google "how do I block ads?" Because the revenue from a user who blocks ads doesn't stay at 100% of the current levels – it drops to zero, forever (no user ever googles "how do I stop blocking ads?").

The majority of web users are running an ad-blocker:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

Web operators made them an offer ("free website in exchange for unlimited surveillance and unfettered intrusions") and they made a counteroffer ("how about 'nah'?"):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

Here's the thing: reverse-engineering an app – or any other IP-encumbered technology – is a legal minefield. Just decompiling an app exposes you to felony prosecution: a five year sentence and a $500k fine for violating Section 1201 of the DMCA. But it's not just the DMCA – modern products are surrounded with high-tech tripwires that allow companies to invoke IP law to prevent competitors from augmenting, recongifuring or adapting their products. When a business says it has "IP," it means that it has arranged its legal affairs to allow it to invoke the power of the state to control its customers, critics and competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

An "app" is just a web-page skinned in enough IP to make it a crime to add an ad-blocker to it. This is what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model" and it's everywhere. When companies don't have to worry about users deploying self-help measures to disenshittify their products, they are freed from the constraint that prevents them indulging the impulse to shift value from their customers to themselves.

Apple owes its existence to interoperability – its ability to clone Microsoft Office's file formats for Pages, Numbers and Keynote, which saved the company in the early 2000s – and ever since, it has devoted its existence to making sure no one ever does to Apple what Apple did to Microsoft:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Regulatory capture cuts both ways: it's not just about powerful corporations being free to flout the law, it's also about their ability to enlist the law to punish competitors that might constrain their plans for exploiting their workers, customers, suppliers or other stakeholders.

The final historical constraint on tech companies was their own workers. Tech has very low union-density, but that's in part because individual tech workers enjoyed so much bargaining power due to their scarcity. This is why their bosses pampered them with whimsical campuses filled with gourmet cafeterias, fancy gyms and free massages: it allowed tech companies to convince tech workers to work like government mules by flattering them that they were partners on a mission to bring the world to its digital future:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

For tech bosses, this gambit worked well, but failed badly. On the one hand, they were able to get otherwise powerful workers to consent to being "extremely hardcore" by invoking Fobazi Ettarh's spirit of "vocational awe":

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

On the other hand, when you motivate your workers by appealing to their sense of mission, the downside is that they feel a sense of mission. That means that when you demand that a tech worker enshittifies something they missed their mother's funeral to deliver, they will experience a profound sense of moral injury and refuse, and that worker's bargaining power means that they can make it stick.

Or at least, it did. In this era of mass tech layoffs, when Google can fire 12,000 workers after a $80b stock buyback that would have paid their wages for the next 27 years, tech workers are learning that the answer to "I won't do this and you can't make me" is "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out" (AKA "sharpen your blades boys"):

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/29/elon-musk-texts-discovery-twitter/

With competition, regulation, self-help and labor cleared away, tech firms – and firms that have wrapped their products around the pluripotently malleable core of digital tech, including automotive makers – are no longer constrained from enshittifying their products.

And that's why your car manufacturer has chosen to spy on you and sell your private information to data-brokers and anyone else who wants it. Not because you didn't pay for the product, so you're the product. It's because they can get away with it.

Cars are enshittified. The dozens of chips that auto makers have shoveled into their car design are only incidentally related to delivering a better product. The primary use for those chips is autoenshittification – access to legal strictures ("IP") that allows them to block modifications and repairs that would interfere with the unfettered abuse of their own customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

The fact that it's a felony to reverse-engineer and modify a car's software opens the floodgates to all kinds of shitty scams. Remember when Bay Staters were voting on a ballot measure to impose right-to-repair obligations on automakers in Massachusetts? The only reason they needed to have the law intervene to make right-to-repair viable is that Big Car has figured out that if it encrypts its diagnostic messages, it can felonize third-party diagnosis of a car, because decrypting the messages violates the DMCA:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/drm-cars-will-drive-consumers-crazy

Big Car figured out that VIN locking – DRM for engine components and subassemblies – can felonize the production and the installation of third-party spare parts:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

The fact that you can't legally modify your car means that automakers can go back to their pre-2008 ways, when they transformed themselves into unregulated banks that incidentally manufactured the cars they sold subprime loans for. Subprime auto loans – over $1t worth! – absolutely relies on the fact that borrowers' cars can be remotely controlled by lenders. Miss a payment and your car's stereo turns itself on and blares threatening messages at top volume, which you can't turn off. Break the lease agreement that says you won't drive your car over the county line and it will immobilize itself. Try to change any of this software and you'll commit a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Tesla, naturally, has the most advanced anti-features. Long before BMW tried to rent you your seat-heater and Mercedes tried to sell you a monthly subscription to your accelerator pedal, Teslas were demon-haunted nightmare cars. Miss a Tesla payment and the car will immobilize itself and lock you out until the repo man arrives, then it will blare its horn and back itself out of its parking spot. If you "buy" the right to fully charge your car's battery or use the features it came with, you don't own them – they're repossessed when your car changes hands, meaning you get less money on the used market because your car's next owner has to buy these features all over again:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

And all this DRM allows your car maker to install spyware that you're not allowed to remove. They really tipped their hand on this when the R2R ballot measure was steaming towards an 80% victory, with wall-to-wall scare ads that revealed that your car collects so much information about you that allowing third parties to access it could lead to your murder (no, really!):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

That's why your car spies on you. Because it can. Because the company that made it lacks constraint, be it market-based, legal, technological or its own workforce's ethics.

One common critique of my enshittification hypothesis is that this is "kind of sensible and normal" because "there’s something off in the consumer mindset that we’ve come to believe that the internet should provide us with amazing products, which bring us joy and happiness and we spend hours of the day on, and should ask nothing back in return":

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-have-great-conversations/

What this criticism misses is that this isn't the companies bargaining to shift some value from us to them. Enshittification happens when a company can seize all that value, without having to bargain, exploiting law and technology and market power over buyers and sellers to unilaterally alter the way the products and services we rely on work.

A company that doesn't have to fear competitors, regulators, jailbreaking or workers' refusal to enshittify its products doesn't have to bargain, it can take. It's the first lesson they teach you in the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

Your car spying on you isn't down to your belief that your carmaker "should provide you with amazing products, which brings your joy and happiness you spend hours of the day on, and should ask nothing back in return." It's not because you didn't pay for the product, so now you're the product. It's because they can get away with it.

The consequences of this spying go much further than mere insurance premium hikes, too. Car telemetry sits at the top of the funnel that the unbelievably sleazy data broker industry uses to collect and sell our data. These are the same companies that sell the fact that you visited an abortion clinic to marketers, bounty hunters, advertisers, or vengeful family members pretending to be one of those:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/07/safegraph-spies-and-lies/#theres-no-i-in-uterus

Decades of pro-monopoly policy led to widespread regulatory capture. Corporate cartels use the monopoly profits they extract from us to pay for regulatory inaction, allowing them to extract more profits.

But when it comes to privacy, that period of unchecked corporate power might be coming to an end. The lack of privacy regulation is at the root of so many problems that a pro-privacy movement has an unstoppable constituency working in its favor.

At EFF, we call this "privacy first." Whether you're worried about grifters targeting vulnerable people with conspiracy theories, or teens being targeted with media that harms their mental health, or Americans being spied on by foreign governments, or cops using commercial surveillance data to round up protesters, or your car selling your data to insurance companies, passing that long-overdue privacy legislation would turn off the taps for the data powering all these harms:

https://www.eff.org/wp/privacy-first-better-way-address-online-harms

Traditional economics fails because it thinks about markets without thinking about power. Monopolies lead to more than market power: they produce regulatory capture, power over workers, and state capture, which felonizes competition through IP law. The story that our problems stem from the fact that we just don't spend enough money, or buy the wrong products, only makes sense if you willfully ignore the power that corporations exert over our lives. It's nice to think that you can shop your way out of a monopoly, because that's a lot easier than voting your way out of a monopoly, but no matter how many times you vote with your wallet, the cartels that control the market will always win:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/05/the-map-is-not-the-territory/#apor-locksmith

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/12/market-failure/#car-wars

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[chukys-mouthguard]

For your prompt requests maybe prompt #1 with Joseph Woll, maybe she lives in Toronto and he went home for the off-season.

I’ve never written for Joseph Woll, but he cracks me up in any little player personality type videos so I really enjoyed writing this one!

“I don’t think you’re gonna even recognize me when you see me babe.” 

Smirking to yourself you couldn’t help but chuckle. Joseph had been talking all about his off season training and how excited he was to get back to Toronto. To which you could attest, he looked great. He’d spent the summer with a couple of old teammates and they all committed to a pretty strict training program. The results were more than Joseph could’ve expected, giving him a nice confidence boost ahead of training camp. But of course it was also a plus for you to be able to drool all over your boyfriend’s new hot body. 

“What did you get facial reconstruction surgery too? I didn’t know that was part of the training program.” He snorts out a laugh, always loved your quick comebacks and digs you could dish out. 

“God I miss you.” 

He lighthearted tone now fading as his line of the phone goes silent. 

“One more night, and then you’ll finally be back in my arms.” You playfully call out into the phone as you head to the fridge to grab a drink before plopping down on the couch. 

“One more night might as well be 10! I don’t know what’s been hard this summer; my training schedule or not having you to come home to everyday. Of course you couldn’t be making me bomb ass dinners like usual. Would probably have to throw a few extra salads into the mix. Oh my god and no more cookies or banana bread.” 

He jokingly whined into the phone as you just shook your head. “Babe, you know there are healthier baked good alternatives I could make right?” “Yeah and they probably taste like shit! I can’t have you ruin my opinion of your baking with some gluten free buckwheat flower yak’s milk concoction. Noooo way!” 

Your laugh now filling your apartment, causing Joseph to even laugh at his own words. “I don’t even know if buckwheat flour is a thing…or yak’s milk. But if it is, I don’t want it!” 

The two of you continuing on your conversation as you’d heard the sound of Joseph’s car turning off, the locking with a beep. You hadn’t even noticed he was driving if you were honest. To excited about the conversation of him soon being home. 

“Joseph Woll, where on earth are you driving to this late at night?” Scolding him playfully you can hear him grabbing something from his car, assuming he had one last late night training session before he came back to Toronto. 

“Home silly goose.” 

Shrugging it off you picked back up in the conversation, discussing some new plot point that was introduced in one of your guilty pleasure tv shows that Joseph loved hearing the drama about. 

“And then, they built up the entire episode for you to think she was going to end up choosing Aaron, but then at the last minute she-knock knock knock- who the hell is knocking on my door at 11:50pm. Babe, stay on the phone please?” 

He hummed a response, letting you know he was still on the line as you nervously walked toward the door. The peep hole being covered so you couldn’t see who the culprit was. Deciding you weren’t tempting fate, you walked away, pickup back up with your story. 

“Babe who was at the door?” 

“I don’t know the peep hole was covered! I’m not trying to die before my boyfriend gets back home!” 

He laughed at you as a triple knock came again. 

“Trust me babe, open the door…” 

Something in his voice made you suspicious, quickly hustling back to the door to open it. Only to find Joseph standing their with a cheesy grin on his face as he laughed at you. 

“Joseph Woll you scared me half to death! What is wrong with you?” 

Playfully smacking him before jumping into his arms, wrapping him in a hug before pulling his lips to yous. “I couldn’t wait any longer, I had to get home to you. Can you forgive me?” 

He pouted his lips only to have the pout kissed away by you instantly. “Of course, now wait a minute-“ taking a step back you eyed him up and down. Taking in how his chest and arms now filled out his tshirt, how his joggers clung to his thighs. 

“I’m not sure we’ve actually ever met, you don’t look familiar, what’s your name?” He rolled his eyes at your comments, poking fun at his claim you’d not even recognize him. 

“Very funny, guess I won’t show what I look like without the shirt then if you don’t recognize me.” He leaned in as he spoke, his lips almost brushing yours with his words before he headed off down the hall to the bathroom. Turning the shower on, as you quickly followed. 

“Joooo, you know I’m just messing around I-“ stopping in your tracks you’d turned in the doorway of the bathroom to find him now shirtless as he reached into the cupboard for a towel. 

“Wow.” 

Simply the only words you could get out as he just smirked, slightly chuckling at your reaction before turning to face you. Closing the distance as you tried your best to look him in the eyes though his muscles really stealing the show. 

“Do you wanna pick your jaw up now or after I shower?” 

[ansonmountdaily]

Anson Mount on his podcast 'The Well'

While shooting Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 in Toronto, Anson filmed a podcast episode with co-host Branan Edgens, chatting about tv, books and music.

Anson's book recommendation is The MANIAC by Benjamín Labatut. The book explores the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake.

Anson's graphic novel recommendation is THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH by James Tynion IV and Martin Simmonds. It revolves around the idea that if enough people believe in a conspiracy, it becomes real, and there is a government agency involved with keeping reality stable. The agency is controlling the narrative for what they claim is the greater good. What is the deep, dark secret behind the Department of Truth? Read the first issue online at the official site.

Source: The Well Drop #22 clip (July 1 2024, recorded on Apr 29 2024)

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A rapid test importer landed an estimated $2 billion in federal contracts in 2021 and 2022, despite giving regulators incomplete data about its product’s accuracy, Global News has found. A year-long investigation into federal procurement revealed that BTNX, a small rapid test supplier based outside Toronto, deleted dozens of specimens, or samples, from a study it submitted to Health Canada. That evaluation showed how well the company’s test detected COVID-19. The deletions made BTNX’s test appear more reliable and sensitive than it really was, according to researchers Global News consulted. The device could detect the virus in users who were the most contagious, but results from leading regulators’ evaluation programs indicate BTNX’s test was much less dependable in all other cases.

Continue Reading

Tagging @politicsofcanada

[grantmentis]

Women’s Hockey News Round Up 6/16-7/1

Everything here is official only, and try to list the most relevant transactions globally but may miss something, so always feel free to add! Since a lot of people who follow this blog are North American/most familiar with the PWHL, i put less context there than I may for other leagues

Extended indicates they did not change teams. buckle in this one is long as hell

PWHL (North America)

RETIRMENTS: Becca Gilmore (OTT) and Erica Howe (TOR) announce their retirements

PWHL Ottawa signings: - Alexa Vasko (PWHL Toronto) for one year -Logan Agners (Quinnipiac, undrafted) for one year -Rebecca Leslie (PWHL Toronto) for one year -Anna Meixner (Brynäs) for one year -Shiann Darkangelo (extended) for one year,

PWHL Toronto signings: -Daryll Watts (PWHL Ottawa) for two years -Emma Woods (PWHL New York) for two years -Raygan Kirk ( Ohio state) for two years -Izzy Daniel (Cornell) for two years -Megan Carter (Northeastern) for two years -Julia Gosling (st Lawrence) for two years -Hannah Miller (extension) for one year -Allie Munroe (extension) for two years

PWHL Boston signings: -Lexie Adzija (extended) for one year -Hannah Brandt (extended) for two years -Emily brown (extended) for two years -Sidney Morin (extended) for one year -Sophie Shirley (extended) for two years

PWHL Montreal: -Mikyla Grant Mentis (extended) for one year -Cayla Barnes (Ohio State) for three years -Elaine Chuli (extended) for one year -Mariah Keopple (extended) for one year -Amanda Boulier (extended) for one year

PWHL New York Signings: -Abbey levy (extended) two years

PWHL Minnesota signings: -Liz schepers (extended) for one year -Denisa Křižová (extended) for two years -Michela Cava (extended) for one year -Klára Hymlárová (st cloud) for two years -britta Curl (Wisconsin) for one year,

Josh Sciba joins PWHL New York as assistant coach. He has experience as Union College's head coach of their women's program as well as with the USWNT as an assistant coach

SDHL (Sweden)

The league has announced they will have goal cameras in place next season!

Finnish national team defender Sini Karjalainen joins Skellefteå AIK after playing with Brynäs last season

18 year old Swedish defender Thea Liodden signs with Linköping HC from AIK

Clarkson University forward Darcie Lappan signs with MoDo hockey

Providence College captain Rachel Weiss signs with HV71

16 year old Ebba Westerlind, who has shown very strong success in Sweden's youth programs, signs with Frölunda HC

Ann-Frédérique Guay, who played 4 years at Norwich University on the D3 level before transferring to UMaine and having a successful final year, has joined Linköping HC

American forward Naomi Rogge, who was successful last season with SDE, has joined Linköping HC

SDHL veteran Emmy Alasalmi joins Linköping HC

Lily George of University of New Brunswick joins Leksands

Dominique Kremer, most recently with PWHL Minnesota, has signed with SDE

Jakob Löf joins Brynäs as an assistnt coach. He previously coached the programs u16 team

Swedish National Team forward Michelle Löwenhielm extends with SDE for another year

Naisten Liiga (Finland)

Rising Finnish national team star Emma Ekoluoma changes teams from Kärpät to Ilves

Norweigan national team defender Iben Tillman will join the league and HPK specifically after a strong performance at the D1A World Championship

24 year old finnish forward Anni Montonen returns to Kiekko-Espoo after spending a season in the SDHL. She previously played for Kiekko-Espoo from 2019-2023 and was one of their top producers

Susanna Viitala, who played for TPS last year and was just under a point per game, joins Kiekko-Espoo

Julia Kuusisto get a one year extension in Ilves after a season where she took a big step forward and played with the u18 national team

defender Nelly Andersson will be back with HIFK after playing 23 games with them last year for the first time and getting experience with both the u18 and senior team

Defender Ilona Palin who spent time with the team last year as well a the u18 Finnish team, will return to HIFK for another year as well

SWHL / Postfinance Women League (Switzerland)

HC Davos ladies make four big signings -Swiss national team defender Alessia Baechler who played with ZSC Lions Frauen last year -Renee lendi who also played with ZSC and their B league affiliate -American/Canadian defender Lucie Tenenbaum. This is particularly interesting because Tenenbaum played prep school with Bishop Kearney last year and is committed to Minnesota State for the year following next season, so cool to see her develop in Switzerland for the year in between -Italian national team forward Aurora Abatangelo who was with Ladies Team Lugano last year

EWHL (Central/Eastern Europe + others)

The rebranded KSV Neuberg Highlanders also add five new players -Bishop University graduate and defender Marie-Camille Théorêt -Slovenian national team forward and EWHL Veteran/consistent top forward Sara Confidenti -Slovakian forward and EWHL top scorer Nikola Rumanova -American forward and SUNY-Oswego graduate Kensie Malone -American forward and Franklin Pierce University graduate Claire Casey

[sunnystrollblog]

sky toronto runs a tight ship

tween branch and his dad boss sky toronto

i’ve decided to dub this the saccharine sweet au might change the name later

anyways when branch was twelve he was put into the “lil buddie program” a program that paired orphan trolls with a ‘big buddy’ who would take care of them until they got a permanently adopted. sky was chosen for branch and well he never got adopted officially so sky kinda just kept him… but it’s totally not a father-son relationship definitely

colored version

[nickmoldenhauer9]

𝘋𝘈𝘋'𝘚 𝘉𝘌𝘚𝘛𝘍𝘙𝘐𝘌𝘕𝘋

𝘗𝘈𝘐𝘙𝘐𝘕𝘎:𝘕𝘐𝘊𝘒 𝘔𝘖𝘓𝘋𝘌𝘕𝘏𝘈𝘜𝘌𝘙 𝘟 𝘔𝘊𝘎𝘙𝘖𝘈𝘙𝘛𝘠 𝘋𝘈𝘜𝘎𝘏𝘛𝘌𝘙!𝘙𝘌𝘈𝘋𝘌𝘙

𝘊𝘏𝘈𝘗𝘛𝘌𝘙 𝘖𝘕𝘌:

"did you decide on what college you're going to yet, smiles?" seamus asks, sitting down beside me.

"i'm stuck between umich and university of toronto." i answer, catching the attention of gavin in the process. "okay. i expected umich, but why uoft?"

"their media program is one of the best ones. but i don't know anyone out there and don't want to have to stay in a dorm."

"just tell your dad to text nick. he probably lives about fifteen minutes away from campus. i would say to have him text luca but he can barely keep track of his own kids at the moment."

"he's not going to text anyone. he's set on forcing me to go to umich because all of you did." i tell them.

"that's not right. don't let him talk you out of it, y/n. go wherever you want to go. if he won't message nick for you i will."

the door opens and we cut the conversation off there.

"what are you three talking about out here?" dad asks.

"just discussing my college options. i'm thinking about attending the university of toronto. their media program is really good, and i think it could be a great fit for me," i explain.

dad nods. "have you thought about where you'd stay? living arrangements are important too."

i hesitate, knowing dad is not going to like our plan. "i was thinking about having you ask nick if i could stay with him. he apparently lives nearby."

dad looks between gavin and seamus, probably trying to figure out which one of them gave me the idea. "moldy is the last person i'd trust you to live with. the dude is an idiot and you don't know him very well."

"i know, dad. but shea mentioned that he lives close by, and it would save me from having to stay in a dorm."

"i really think you would like michigan better, y/n. it's close to home and-"

"its not about what you want her to do, rutger. she's not a kid anymore. you have to let her make her own decisions now. if you want her to be happy quit pushing michigan on her and let her choose where she wants to go." seamus says, cutting dad off and taking him by surprise with his sudden outburst.

dad sighs, running his hand through his hair. "i do want you to be happy, Y/N. if you think uoft is the right choice for you, we'll figure out the living situation."

"even if that means maybe having to stay with nick?" i ask.

"yes, even if that means you having to stay with moldy."

[brian-in-finance]

Caitríona Balfe attends the "Ford v Ferrari" press conference during the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Bell Lightbox on 10 September 2019 in Toronto, Canada.

Image: Roxstar Entertainment

Collider Media Studio Returns To TIFF With Some of the Biggest Names in Hollywood

With the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) just around the corner, we’re thrilled to announce that Collider Media Studio will be returning to the Toronto International for another round of exciting interviews with support from Range Rover Canada. This year we have one of our bigger line-ups ever with scheduled talks with the top talent of the festival including Bobby Carnavale, Tom Hiddleston, Karen Gilian, Cobie Smulders, Ben Foster, Olympic Gold Medal Boxer Claressa Shields, Chloë Sevigny, Henry Golding, Beatrice Grannò, David Gordon Green, Pamela Anderson, Max Minghella, Orlando Bloom, John Turturro, Caitríona Balfe, Soul Rasheed, Brett Goldstein, Imogen Poots, Jee Young Han, Dakota Johnson, Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Olsen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Paul Rudd, Kate Mara, Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Ron Howard, Ana De Armas, Isabella Rosellini, Ed Burns, Shamier Anderson, Minnie Driver, Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka, Ryoo Seung-wan, Sandra Oh, Haley Joel Osment, and Gretchen Mol to name a few.

The program is produced by Leading Hollywood Events and Communications group, Roxstar Entertainment and their successful hospitality platform, the Cinema Center. Our sponsor partner Range Rover will help get the talent to our media studio with the 2024 Ranger Rover Sport, the official luxury vehicle partner of the Cinema Center and Collider Studio. Celebrities can enjoy the latest Range Rover Sport’s blend of sportiness, refinement, and connected convenience, ensuring they arrive at their red-carpet events in style and comfort.

Additional supporting sponsors include poppi soda, the better for you soda brand made with ingredients you love, like fruit juice and apple cider vinegar that create a mouthwatering soda with only 5 grams of sugar and 25 calories. Beloved by celebrities like Post Malone, Hailey Bieber, Kylie Jenner, Billie Eilish, Russell Westbrook, and Olivia Munn, poppi is revolutionizing soda for the next generation. poppi is now available at major retailers across Canada, including Loblaws, Real Canadian Superstore, Metro, Save on Foods, Maxi, Safeway, and Costco and key ecommerce retailers amazon.ca, instacart.ca and well.ca.

In addition, the Cinema Center will be serving up a themed cocktail menu featuring the ultra-premium Tequila Don Julio, as well as Ketel One Vodka, Tanqueray Gin, and Bulleit Bourbon. Don Julio’s luxury tequila is renowned for its use of only the highest caliber, fully matured and ripened Blue Agave that has been hand-selected from the rich, clay soils of the Los Altos region of the state of Jalisco.

Other partners include Canada’s new premium spring water brand, Legend Water co. and Peoples Group financial services will all be engaging our talent and guests with product offerings and special brand experiences onsite.

Check out the poster below and stay tuned to our socials for updates on this year’s Collider Media Studio at TIFF.

Collider

Caitríona Balfe attends the "Ford v Ferrari" press conference during the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Bell Lightbox on 10 September 2019 in Toronto, Canada.

Remember the return to TIFF?

[urbancore]

Effective Mental Health Programs in Toronto - Support & Resources

Explore mental health programs in Toronto offering support, counseling, and tools to manage stress, anxiety, and other challenges. Find personalized care and community resources to improve mental well-being and overall health. For more information visit our site: https://yoururbancore.com/

[toasttt11]

introducing hayden

Hayden Lee Blake was born June 4, 2001 in San Diego, California to her parents Harrison and Maddison Blake.

Harrison and Maddison met each other when they were very young at a hickey training camp hitting it off immediately, they are childhood sweethearts.

Harrison was drafted second overall in the 1986 draft to the Edmonton Oilers, he played with the oilers for eighteen seasons and won three stanley cups with them, he made many records and had incredible accomplishments in the NHL becoming of the one most well named in Hockey.

Maddison was an incredible hockey player, playing four years of hockey in collage and getting multiple gold medals for her national team, she stopped playing on a team after the birth of her daughter.

Hayden inherited both of her parents incredible hockey skills and passion and knew she wanted to play since she could skate on the ice.

After Harrison retired in 2005, the blake’s moved to Toronto and their house was next store to the Hughes’s.

The Blake’s and Hughes’s both immediately got along so well, Harrison and Jim became the best of buddies, Maddison and Ellen both had so many similarities they became best friends, Hayden and Jack are only a few days apart so they just easily clicked and became each other’s best friend, Quinn becalmed Hayden’s biggest protector and her older brother figure, Luke was young when he met the Blake’s but right away he immediately adored Hayden and would follow her every where.

Quinn immediately saw Hayden as his sister and became a very protective older brother to her, he has always been the person she goes to when she needs a hug and just some comfort.

Jack and Hayden are platonic soulmates, the two are so close and know everything about each other. More often than not they were mistaken for twins.

Luke has been Hayden’s little shadow since they met, Luke had always loved just being around Hayden and Hayden has always treated him as her child and has a very large soft spot for him.

The Blake’s and Hughes’s moved to Michigan in 2019 when Jack and Hayden both joined the program, that’s where Jack and Hayden met the rest of their best friends.

Trevor, his sunshine personality mends so well with Hayden, he is always making her laugh and smile and adores his best friend.

Cole, he became her unpaid therapist and her best friend who always knows what to say.

Alex, the one who brought out Hayden’s chaotic side and the two were usually up to no good when they are together and love to prank others.

Matt, her favorite reading buddy, the two sharing a love for reading and always sharing books, he’s who she goes to when she needs to calm down.

Hayden’s parents tragically passed away in 2018 and she was not yet 18 and had no other blood family alive, the Hughes took her in as that is what her parents had wished for if something had happened.

Hayden’s draft year was extremely tough for her, the pressure of the upcoming draft but also her being heartbroken from her parents death it was a hard year for her, when she in the draft lottery that the Oilers had the first pick she hoped that is where she would get picked just as her dad did.

Hayden found another piece of her family in the Oilers specifically Connor, Leon, Zach, Ryan and their families.

Hayden’s story is only just beginning.

[virtchandmoir]

Tessa Virtue Shared Hers & Fiancé Morgan Rielly's Fave Toronto Restaurants For Date Night

"It's a real melting pot of different cultures and cuisine."

October 24, 2023

Skating icon Tessa Virtue lives in Toronto with her fiancé Toronto Maple Leafs star Morgan Rielly and she says they have a lot of fun exploring the city's booming food scene for their date nights.

Virtue spoke to Narcity following a special ceremony during which she was inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame with her former skating partner over of 20 years, Scott Moir.

During the call, the Olympic athlete also talked about one of her favourite aspects of living in Toronto.

"I think the fun thing about living in a place like Toronto is that it's a real melting pot of different cultures and cuisine and it's just neat to kind of try new things," she said.

"I'm not a cook so it's nice to be downtown in the mix and exploring the restaurants."

As for where the couple likes to go, Virtue shared their four go-to restaurants in the city.

Union Restaurant

Price: 💸💸💸

Cuisine: French

Address: 72 Ossington Ave, Toronto

Why You Need To Go: Union restaurant is a French-Canadian bistro that is inspired by the "French vigour for good food," according to its website.

The restaurant works with fresh local and seasonal ingredients so they update their menu daily. Some of the more recent items featured on the menu include butter poached halibut, steamed P.E.I. mussels and elk sliders.

Union Restaurant Menu

Jacobs & Co. Steakhouse 

Price: 💸💸💸💸

Cuisine: American

Address: 12 Brant St, Toronto

Why You Need To Go: Jacob's & Co. Steakhouse is a classic steakhouse with elegant ambiance thanks to its piano bar.

It even has a spot in Toronto's Michelin Guide.

The menu includes fresh oysters, a seafood tower and 60-day dry aged rib eye.

Jacobs & Co. Steakhouse Menu

VELA

Price: 💸💸

Cuisine: American

Address: 90 Portland St, Toronto

Why You Need To Go: Vela is a stylish restaurant that offers a variety of creative dishes like chicken liver mousse, caviar fried oysters, several pasta dishes and a raw bar.

The restaurant also launched a brunch program in 2022, which offers items like a Norwegian salmon tower, souffle pancakes and a caviar service.

VELA Menu

Buca

Price: 💸💸

Cuisine: Italian

Address: Multiple locations

Why You Need To Go: If you like Italian food then you may want to try out Buca in Toronto. The restaurant offers a variety of pasta and pizza dishes.

It's also one that's recommended by both Virtue and Rielly.

Rielly spoke to Narcity during a pop-up ball hockey game in June and he named Buca as his favourite date night spot in the city.

"I like going to Buca on Portland. I like Italian food and, you know, that's where I like to go. But I mean, we like to mix it up as well," Rielly said.

Buca Menu

—Narcity

[doctorhelena]

Steggy Fic: Teach My Feet to Fly, Chapter 7/14

Summary: Peggy Carter, a world class ice hockey player learning to figure skate as part of a Canadian reality show, has an iron-clad rule about never, ever dating a teammate. Which means that she’ll simply have to get over the ridiculous attraction she has to her new figure skating partner, Steve Rogers.

Note: This story is complete, and has 14 chapters in total. New chapters are posted weekly on Fridays.

It’s also a very long-delayed thank you gift fic for the lovely @teaandatale!

Rating: PG

Read Chapter 7

Read from the beginning

Excerpt:

Toronto, Canada Battle of the Blades, Week 5 First Week of Competition (Thursday)

Rehearsals for the opening group number in the second week were no less chaotic than they had been for Week 1. It was partly, Peggy supposed, because not only were the figure skating techniques themselves getting more difficult, but each team also now only had a week to learn two new full routines: both the opening group number and their own new program. It was very easy to get the sequences confused - well, easy for the hockey players to get confused, at any rate. 

“I’m on your left,” Steve reminded Sam again, as, out of the corner of her eye, Peggy watched Dugan slide into the boards in a valiant attempt to avoid crashing into Sam and Steve.

Sam made a face. “Sorry. guess we’ll all have to take another lap.” He turned to Pietro. “Did you take it already? I assume you took it already.” Pietro grinned. He was a notoriously fast skater, and while he somehow made it work to his advantage while ice dancing with his sister, if left unchecked he did tend to skate far too fast for even the star hockey forwards to keep up - in figure skates, at least. Peggy wondered why on earth he hadn’t chosen to compete in speed skating instead. Lack of support for the sport in Sokovia, maybe.

It was also just a very odd routine to begin with, having been choreographed by Loki Laufeyson, Jarvis and Dottie’s assigned choreographer, who tended toward the avant-garde. Loki, wearing dramatic black and somehow managing to pace moodily while on skates, was getting increasingly impatient with the hockey players’ continued inability to “imbue every movement with glorious purpose”. Although Dottie, to be fair, seemed to be quite good at it.

Of course she was.

Read the rest of the chapter on A03

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Colin Wright

Published: Oct 2, 2023

On September 25, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) announced that they were cancelling a panel discussion titled “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why Biological Sex Remains a Necessary Analytic Category in Anthropology,” originally scheduled as part of their annual conference in Toronto from November 15–19. The cancellation and subsequent response by the two organizations shows the extent to which gender ideology has captured academic anthropology.

The panel would have featured six female scientists, specializing in biology and anthropology, to address their profession’s growing denial of biological sex as a valid and relevant category. While terminological confusion surrounding the distinction between sex and gender roles has been a persistent issue within anthropology for decades, the total refusal of some to recognize sex as a real biological variable is a more recent phenomenon. The panel organizers, eager to facilitate an open discussion among anthropologists and entertain diverse perspectives on a contentious issue, considered the AAA/CASCA conference an optimal venue to host such a conversation.

The organizations accepted the “Let’s Talk About Sex” panel without incident on July 13, and planned to feature it alongside other panels including those on politically oriented subjects, such as “Trans Latinx Methodologies,” “Exploring Activist Anthropology,” and “Reimagining Anthropology as Restorative Justice.” Elizabeth Weiss, a professor of anthropology at San José State University, was one of the slated panelists. She had intended to discuss the significance in bio-archaeology and forensic anthropology of using skeletal remains to establish a decedent’s sex. While a 2018 article in Discover titled “Skeletal Studies Show Sex, Like Gender, Exists Along a Spectrum” reached different conclusions, Weiss planned to discuss how scientific breakthroughs have made determining the sex of skeletal remains a more exact science. Her presentation was to be moderate; she titled it “No Bones About It: Skeletons Are Binary; People May Not Be,” and conceded in her abstract the growing need in forensics to “to ensure that skeletal finds are identified by both biological sex and their gender identity” due to “the current rise in transitioning individuals and their overrepresentation as crime victims.”

Despite having already approved the panel, the presidents of the AAA (Ramona Pérez) and CASCA (Monica Heller) unexpectedly issued a joint letter on September 25 notifying the “Let’s Talk About Sex” presenters that their panel was cancelled. They claimed that the panel’s subject matter conflicted with their organizations’ values, jeopardized “the safety and dignity of our members,” and eroded the program’s “scientific integrity.” They further asserted the panel’s ideas (i.e., that sex is a real and important biological variable) would “cause harm to members represented by the Trans and LGBTQI of the anthropological community as well as the community at large.” To ensure that similar discussions would not be approved in the future, the AAA/CASCA vowed to “undertake a major review of the processes associated with vetting sessions at our annual meetings.”

The following day, the panelists issued a response letter, expressing their disappointment that the AAA and CASCA presidents had “chosen to forbid scholarly dialogue” on the topic. They rejected the “false accusation” that supporting the “continued use of biological sex categories (e.g., male and female; man and woman) is to imperil the safety of the LGBTQI community.” The panelists called “particularly egregious” the AAA/CASCA’s assertion that the panel would compromise the program’s “scientific integrity.” They noted that, ironically, the AAA/CASCA’s “decision to anathematize our panel looks very much like an anti-science response to a politicized lobbying campaign.”

I spoke with Weiss, who expressed her frustration over the canceled panel and the two presidents’ stifling of honest discussion about sex. She was concerned about the continual shifting of goalposts on the issue:

We used to say there’s sex, and gender. Sex is biological, and gender is not. Then it’s no, you can no longer talk about sex. Sex and gender are one, and separating the two makes you a transphobe, when of course it doesn’t. In anthropology and many topics, the goalposts are continuously moved. And, because of that, we need to stand up and say, “I’m not moving from my place unless there’s good scientific evidence that my place is wrong.” And I don’t think there is good scientific evidence that there are more than two sexes.

Weiss was not the only person to object. When I broke news of the cancellation on X, it immediately went viral. At the time of writing, my post has more than 2.4 million views, and the episode has ignited public outcry from individuals and academics across the political spectrum. Science writer Michael Shermer called the AAA and CASCA’s presidents’ letter “shameful” and an “utterly absurd blank slate denial of human nature.” Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and political science at Duke University, described it as “absolutely appalling.” Jeffrey Flier, the Harvard University distinguished service professor and former dean of the Harvard Medical School, viewed it as “a chilling declaration of war on scholarly controversy.” Even Elon Musk expressed his disbelief with a single word: “Wow.”

Despite the backlash, the AAA and CASCA have held firm. On September 28, the AAA posted a statement on its website titled “No Place For Transphobia in Anthropology: Session Pulled from Annual Meeting Program.” The statement reiterated the stance outlined in the initial letter, declaring the “Let’s Talk About Sex” panel an affront to its values and claiming that it endangered AAA members’ safety and lacked scientific rigor.

The AAA’s statement claimed that the now-canceled panel was at odds with their first ethical principle of professional responsibility: “Do no harm.” It likened the scuttled panel’s “gender critical scholarship” to the “race science of the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” the main goal of which was to “advance a ‘scientific’ reason to question the humanity of already marginalized groups of people.” In this instance, the AAA argued, “those who exist outside a strict and narrow sex/gender binary” are being targeted.

Weiss remains unconvinced by this moral posturing. “If the panel was so egregious,” she asked, “why had it been accepted in the first place?”

The AAA also claimed that Weiss’s panel lacked “scientific integrity,” and that she and her fellow panelists “relied on assumptions that ran contrary to the settled science in our discipline.” The panelists, the AAA argued, had committed “one of the cardinal sins of scholarship” by “assum[ing] the truth of the proposition that . . . sex and gender are simplistically binary, and that this is a fact with meaningful implications for the discipline.” In fact, the AAA claimed, the panelists’ views “contradict scientific evidence” about sex and gender, since “[a]round the world and throughout history, there have always been people whose gender roles do not align neatly with their reproductive anatomy.”

There is much to respond to in this portion of AAA’s statement. First, it’s ironic for the organization to accuse scientists of committing the “cardinal sin” of “assuming the truth” of something, and then to justify cancelling those scientists’ panel on the grounds that the panelists refuse to accept purportedly “settled science.” Second, the panel was organized to discuss biological sex (i.e., the biology of males and females), not “gender roles”; pivoting from discussions of basic biology to murkier debates about sex-related social roles and expectations is a common tactic of gender ideologues. Third, the AAA’s argument that a person’s “gender role” might not “align neatly” with his or her reproductive anatomy implies the existence of normative behaviors for members of each sex. Indeed, this is a central tenet of gender ideology that many people dispute and warrants the kind of discussion the panel intended to provide.

The AAA’s statement made another faulty allegation, this time against Weiss for using “sex identification” instead of “sex estimation” when assessing the sex of skeletal remains. The AAA claimed that Weiss’s choice of terminology was problematic and unscholarly because it assumes a “determinative” process that “is easily influenced by cognitive bias on the part of the researcher.”

Weiss, however, rejects the AAA’s notion that the term “sex determination” is outdated or improper. She emphasized that “sex determination” is frequently used in the literature, as demonstrated in numerous contemporary anthropology papers, along with “sex estimation.” Weiss said, “I tend not to use the term ‘sex estimation’ because to estimate is usually associated with a numeric value; thus, I do use the term ‘age estimation.’ But just as ‘age estimation’ does not mean that there is no actual age of an individual and that biological age changes don’t exist, ‘sex estimation’ does not mean that there isn’t a biological sex binary.” She also contested the AAA’s claim that anthropologists’ use of “sex estimation” is meant to accommodate people who identify as transgender or non-binary. Rather, she said, “sex estimation” is used when “anthropologists are not 100 [percent] sure of their accuracy for a variety of reasons, including that the remains may be fragmented.” But as these methods improve—which was a focus of her talk—such “estimations” become increasingly determinative.

After making that unfounded allegation against Weiss, the AAA further embarrasses itself by claiming that “There is no single biological standard by which all humans can be reliably sorted into a binary male/female sex classification,” and that sex and gender are “historically and geographically contextual, deeply entangled, and dynamically mutable categories.”

Each of these assertions is empirically false. An individual’s sex can be determined by observing their primary sex organs, or gonads, as these organs determine the type of gamete an individual can or would have the function to produce. The existence of a very rare subset of individuals with developmental conditions that make their sex difficult to assess does not substantiate the existence of a third sex. Sex is binary because are only two sexes, not because every human in existence is neatly classifiable. Additionally, while some organisms are capable of changing sex, humans are not among them. Therefore, the assertion that human sex is “dynamically mutable” is false.

Weiss appropriately highlights the “false equivalency” inherent in the claim that the existence of people with intersex conditions disproves the binary nature of sex. “People who are born intersex or with disorders of sex development are not nonbinary or transgender, they are individuals with medical pathologies,” she said. “We would not argue that because some people are born with polydactyly (extra fingers or toes), often seen in inbred populations, that you can’t say that humans have ten fingers and ten toes. It's an absurd conclusion.”

On September 29, the AAA posted a Letter of Support on its website, penned by anthropologists Agustin Fuentes, Kathryn Clancy, and Robin Nelson, endorsing the decision to cancel the “Let’s Talk About Sex” session. Again, the primary motivation cited was the panel’s opposition to the supposed “settled science” concerning sex. The authors disputed the panelists’ claim that the term “sex” was being supplanted by “gender” in anthropology, claiming instead that there is “massive work on these terms, and their entanglements and nuances.” They also reiterated the AAA’s false accusation that the term “sex determination” was problematic and outdated. Nonetheless, the canceled panel could have served as a prime venue to discuss these issues.

In response to these calls for censorship, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) issued an open letter to the AAA and CASCA. FIRE characterized the groups’ decision to cancel the panel as a “retreat” from their scientific mission, which “requires unwavering dedication to free inquiry and open dialogue.” It argued that this mission “cannot coexist with inherently subjective standards of ‘harm,’ ‘safety,’ and ‘dignity,’ which are inevitably used to suppress ideas that cause discomfort or conflict with certain political or ideological commitments.” FIRE implored the AAA and CASCA to “reconsider this decision and to recommit to the principles of intellectual freedom and open discourse that are essential to the organizations’ academic missions.” FIRE’s open letter has garnered signatures from nearly 100 academics, including Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker and Princeton University’s Robert P. George. FIRE invites additional academic faculty to add their names.

The initial letter and subsequent statement by the AAA/CASCA present a particularly jarring illustration of the undermining of science in the name of “social justice.” The organizations have embarrassed themselves yet lack the self-awareness to realize it. The historian of science Alice Dreger called the AAA and CASCA presidents’ use of the term “cardinal sin” appropriate “because Pérez and Heller are working from dogma so heavy it is worthy of the Vatican.” Indeed, they have fallen prey to gender ideologues, driven into a moral panic by the purported dangers of defending the existence of biological sex to people whose sex distresses them. The AAA/CASCA have determined that it is necessary not only to lie to these people about their sex but also to deceive the rest of us about longstanding, foundational, and universal truths about sex.

Science can advance only within a system and culture that values open inquiry and robust debate. The AAA and CASCA are not just barring a panel of experts with diverse and valid perspectives on biological sex from expressing their well-considered conclusions; they are denying conference attendees the opportunity to hear diverse viewpoints and partake in constructive conversations on a controversial subject. Such actions obstruct the path of scientific progress.

“When you move away from the truth, no good can come from it,” Weiss says. The AAA and CASCA would be wise to ponder that reality.

==

I miss the days when anti-science meant creationists with "Intelligent Design," flat Earthers, and Jenny McCarthy-style MMR anti-vaxers.

It's weird that archaeologists are now denying evolution and pretending not to know how babies are made. Looks like creationists aren't the only evolution-denial game in town any more.

[flanaganfilm]

Mike, can you tell us your experience premiering Oculus at tiff 2013? I recently saw Perri Nemiroff’s interview with you (looking like a baby btw- so young) and it made me think about what your mindset must have been as in getting yo experience the launch of your career, post Absentia, at one of the most prestigious festivals.

Oh, I remember that very well... a lot changed in a very short amount of time. And I think I know the interview you're talking about, I keep trying to link to it here but it doesn't take...

So there are few things to point out about Oculus and about what was happening in my life at the time. When Oculus got greenlit, I was working full time as a reality television editor. I used to sneak out of my job at lunch to go to "doctor's appointments" whenever I had to come for production meetings or casting sessions (they started to think there was something really, really wrong with my health).

Making the movie was an amazing learning experience - it was my first "real" movie, and full of lessons. It was the first collaboration with people who would become pillars of my career moving forward, like producer Trevor Macy (who is now my partner at Intrepid Pictures and who has produced everything I've ever made since) and my DP Michael Fimognari, who is one of the most important collaborators of my life. It was also the first time I worked with a young actress named Kate Siegel, who played the spooky ghost in the mirror.

We went into TIFF with distribution already in place. FilmDistrict had committed to the project during the Cannes market before we shot the movie, so we thought we were set. It was going to be my big theatrical debut.

Just before we premiered at TIFF, FilmDistrict abruptly and bafflingly dropped the film. I still don't really know why. They had committed to a worldwide theatrical release for the movie, but for reasons that were never made entirely clear to me, they dropped us just before the festival. Suddenly the whole enterprise was in jeopardy, and I didn't know if anyone would pick the movie back up.

I was absolutely terrified.

Being my first "real" movie, I didn't really know how this world worked and couldn't understand why our distributor didn't want to release it. We'd made the movie they had been excited about, they seemed to really like it, and we'd done everything they asked - it was a shock to the system. So when we rolled into tiff, we were homeless and trying not to let FilmDistrict's abrupt change of heart poison our chances of another sale.

I had never been to TIFF before but heard about Midnight Madness, which had seen huge sales from Cabin Fever and Insidious. Bidding wars had broken out while the films were still screening. But being part of the program was absolutely no guarantee of distribution - in fact, this might be the highest this movie would ever rise.

Trevor Macy and I went to the world premiere of The Green Inferno, which was playing the night before we played, and the audience was ROWDY. Like, shouting and hollering throughout the movie. We looked at each other with wide, nervous eyes - if this was the Midnight Madness audience, they were going to hate our movie the next day. We were considerably slower, ponderous, and atmospheric in a room that seemed to demand visceral, overt entertainment. I left the screening feeling dejected and a little doomed. Trevor was more upbeat, citing conversations he'd had with the programmer, Colin Geddes, who assured us he'd put our movie in the best possible spot for its success.

Our screening was September 9th, 2013 at midnight. I was petrified, and we were sold out. I remember walking into the theater feeling like this was the most important screening of my life. I wasn't alone, thank goodness. Trevor Macy, Michael Fimognari, Brenton Thwaites, Katee Sackhoff, Rory Cochrane, and James Lafferty were on hand. The film seemed to play well. It was the opposite of the screening the night before, which Colin had told us would happen - "watch," he had said. "The Saturday night slot is the big crazy one. You guys are Sunday, and it's going to be completely different. They'll plug right in."

He was right. You could hear a pin drop for most of the first half, and then there were moments of scattered applause that picked up as the film progressed. By the end, people were jumping in their seats and cheering for young Tim and Kaylee. There was an audible gasp when the anchor swung. And the applause at the credits seemed heartfelt and loud.

Most of that is a blur for me. I found this grainy pic from the Q&A after the film. I still had no idea how it had gone, or what was going to come out of it. I remember having hard time putting words together, and I vividly recall feeling like I sounded like an absolute moron whenever I talked, and trying to pass the microphone over to the actors as often as I could.

It's tough to see everyone in the pic, but from left to right it is Colin Geddes, Michael Fimognari, myself, Trevor Macy, Katee Sackhoff, Brenton Thwaites, Rory Cochrane, and James Lafferty.

When I stepped out of the theater, though, I became aware that everything had changed. I was immediately surrounded by people who had seen the film, suddenly shaking a ton of hands and realizing that it had been a hit. I walked into the theater by myself, utterly anonymous, and feeling every bit like an imposter. But everything was different when I walked out. I remember someone from the press talking about it years later, and saying "I was there that night - you walked into the theater with nothing, and walked out with a career."

People were asking me to sign stuff. That had never happened in my life. People wanted to get pictures. It was SO. FUCKING. WEIRD. Someone snapped a picture during that little whirlwind, and you can see it on my (young, skinny, hopelessly naive) face - an overall bewilderment, a gentle disbelief that this was happening:

I loved my experience at TIFF. And it absolutely started everything. Relativity, Blumhouse, and WWE Films joined forces to make an offer on the movie at the festival, and we left with a theatrical distribution deal. My career had officially begun. Now, I wouldn't feel like it had for several more years - I remained in fight/flight/survival mode well through Gerald's Game - but in retrospect, yes, that's when it happened.

Thank you for asking this question, it's been a while since I've looked back at this period of my life. It kinda makes me want to watch that movie again. It has been a LONG time, and I owe it a lot.

Maybe everything.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The IRS will do your taxes for you (if that's what you prefer)

This Saturday (May 20), I’ll be at the GAITHERSBURG Book Festival with my novel Red Team Blues; then on May 22, I’m keynoting Public Knowledge’s Emerging Tech conference in DC.

On May 23, I’ll be in TORONTO for a book launch that’s part of WEPFest, a benefit for the West End Phoenix, onstage with Dave Bidini (The Rheostatics), Ron Diebert (Citizen Lab) and the whistleblower Dr Nancy Olivieri.

America is a world leader in allowing private companies to levy taxes on its citizens, including (stay with me here), a tax on paying your taxes.

In most of the world, the tax authorities prepare a return for each taxpayer, sending them a prepopulated form with all their tax details — collected from employers and other regulated entities, like pension funds and commodities brokers, who must report income to the tax office. If the form is correct, the taxpayer signs it and sends it back (in some countries, taxpayers don’t even have to do that — they just ignore the return unless they want to amend it).

No one has to use this system, of course. If you have complex finances, or cash income that doesn’t show up in mandatory reporting, or if you’d just prefer to prepare your own return or pay an accountant to do so for you, you can. But for the majority of people, those with income from a job or a pension, and predictable deductions, say, from caring for minor children, filing your annual tax return takes between zero and five minutes and costs absolutely nothing.

Not so in America. America is one of the very few rich countries (including Canada, though this is changing), where the government won’t just send you a form containing all the information it already has, ready to file. As is common in complex societies, America has a complex tax code (further complexified by deliberate obfuscation by billionaires and their lickspittle Congressjerks, who deliberately perforate the tax code with loopholes for the ultra-rich):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/11/the-canada-variant/#shitty-man-of-history-theory

That complexity means that most of us can’t figure out how to file our own taxes, at least not without committing scarce hours out of the only life we will ever have to poring over the ramified and obscure maze of tax-law.

Why doesn’t the IRS just send you a tax-return? Well, because the tax-prep industry — an oligopoly dominated by a handful of massive, ultra-profitable firms — bribes Congress (that is, “lobbies”) to prohibit this. They are aided in this endeavor by swivel-eyed lunatic anti-tax obsessives, like Grover Nordquist and Americans for Tax Reform, who argue that paying taxes should be as difficult and painful as possible in order to foment opposition to taxation itself.

The tax-prep industry is dominated by a single firm, Intuit, who took over tax-prep through its anticompetitive acquisition of TurboTax, itself a chimera of multiple companies gobbled up in a decades-long merger orgy. Inuit is a freaky company. For decades, its defining CEO Brad Smith ran the company as a cult of personality organized around his trite sayings, like “Do whatever makes your heart beat fastest,” stenciled on t-shirts worn by employees. Other employees donned Brad Smith masks for selfies with their Beloved Leader.

Smith’s cult also spent decades lobbying to keep the IRS from offering a free filing service. Instead, Intuit joined a cartel that offered a “Free File” service to some low- and medium-income Americans:

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free

But the cartel sabotaged Free File from the start. They blocked search engines from indexing their Free File services, then bought Google ads for “free file” that directed searchers to soundalike programs (“Free Filing,” etc) that hit them for hundreds of dollars in tax-prep fees. They also funneled users to versions of Free File they were ineligible for, a fact that was only revealed after the user spent hours painstaking entering their financial information, whereupon they would be told that they could either start over or pay hundreds of dollars to finish filing with a commercial product.

Intuit also pioneered the use of binding arbitration waivers that stripped its victims of the right to sue the company after it defrauded them. This tactic blew up in Intuit’s face after its victims banded together to mass-file thousands of arbitration claims, sending the company to court to argue that binding arbitration wasn’t enforceable after all:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/24/uber-for-arbitration/#nibbled-to-death-by-ducks

But justice eventually caught up with Intuit. After a series of stinging exposes by Propublica journalists Justin Elliot, Paul Kiel and others, NY Attorney General Letitia James led a coalition of AGs from all 50 states and DC that extracted a $141m settlement for 4.4 million Americans who had been tricked into paying for Turbotax services they were entitled to get for free:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/turbotax-to-begin-payouts-after-it-cheated-customers-new-york-ag-says/ar-AA1aNXfi

Fines are one thing, but the only way to comprehensively end the predatory tax-prep scam is to bring the USA kicking and screaming into the 20th century, when most of the rest of the world brought in free tax-prep for ordinary income earners. That’s just what’s happening: the IRS is trialing a free tax prep service for next year’s tax season:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/15/irs-free-file/

This, despite Intuit’s all-out blitz attack on Congress and the IRS to keep free tax-prep from ever reaching the American people:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/20/turbotaxed/#counter-intuit

That charm offensive didn’t stop the IRS from releasing a banger of a report that made it clear that free tax-prep was the most efficient, humane and cost-effective way to manage an advanced tax-system (something the rest of the world has known for decades):

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p5788.pdf

Of course, Intuit is furious, as in spitting feathers. Rick Heineman, Intuit’s spokesprofiteer, told KQED that “A direct-to-IRS e-file system is wholly redundant and is nothing more than a solution in search of a problem. That solution will unnecessarily cost taxpayers billions of dollars and especially harm the most vulnerable Americans.”

https://www.kqed.org/news/11949746/the-irs-is-building-its-own-online-tax-filing-system-tax-prep-companies-arent-happy

Despite Upton Sinclair’s advice that “it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it,” I will now attempt to try to explain to Heineman why he is unfuckingbelievably, eye-wateringly wrong.

“e-file…is wholly redundant”: Well, no, Rick, it’s not redundant, because there is no existing Free File system except for the one your corrupt employer made and hid “in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’”

“nothing more than a solution in search of a problem”: The problem this solves is that Americans have to pay Intuit billions to pay their taxes. It’s a tax on paying taxes. That is a problem.

“unnecessarily cost taxpayers billions of dollars”: No, it will save taxpayers the billions of dollars (they pay you).

“harm the most vulnerable Americans”: Here is an area where Heineman can speak with authority, because few companies have more experience harming vulnerable Americans.

Take the Child Tax Credit. This is the most successful social program in living memory, a single initiative that did more to lift American children out of poverty than any other since the days of the Great Society. It turns out that giving poor people money makes them less poor, which is weird, because neoliberal economists have spent decades assuring us that this is not the case:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

But the Child Tax Credit has been systematically sabotaged, by Intuit lobbyists, who successfully added layer after layer of red tape — needless complexity that makes it nearly impossible to claim the credit without expert help — from the likes of Intuit:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/29/three-times-is-enemy-action/#ctc

It worked. As Ryan Cooper writes in The American Prospect: “between 13 and 22 percent of EITC benefits are gulped down by tax prep companies”:

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-05-17-irs-takes-welcome-step-20th-century/

So yes, I will defer to Rick Heineman and his employer Intuit on the subject of “harming the most vulnerable Americans.” After all, they’re the experts. National champions, even.

Now I want to address the peply guys who are vibrating with excitement to tell me about their 1099 income, the cash money they get from their lemonade stand, the weird flow of krugerrands their relatives in South African FedEx to them twice a year, etc, that means that free file won’t work for them because the IRS doesn’t actually understand their finances.

That’s a hard problem, all right. Luckily, there is a very simple answer for this: use a tax-prep service.

Actually, it’s not a hard problem. Just use a tax-prep service. That’s it. No one is going to force you to use the IRS’s free e-file. All you need to do to avoid the socialist nightmare of (checks notes) living with less red-tape is: continue to do exactly what you’re already doing.

Same goes for those of you who have a beloved family accountant you’ve used since the Eisenhower administration. All you need to do to continue to enjoy the advice of that trusted advisor is…nothing. That’s it. Simply don’t change anything.

One final note, addressing the people who are worried that the IRS will cheat innocent taxpayers by not giving them all the benefits they’re entitled to. Allow me here to simply tap the sign that says “between 13 and 22 percent of EITC benefits are gulped down by tax prep companies.” In other words, when you fret about taxpayers being ripped off, you’re thinking of Intuit, not the IRS. Just calm down. Why not try using fluoridated toothpaste? You’ll feel better, and I promise I won’t tell your friends at the Gadsen Flag appreciation society.

Your secret is safe with me.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/17/free-as-in-freefile/#tell-me-something-i-dont-know

[Image ID: A vintage drawing of Uncle Sam toasting with a glass of Champagne, superimposed over an IRS 1040 form that has been fuzzed into a distorted halftone pattern.]