I’m really excited this article I wrote for the newest issue of @sftpmag is now online! It details the history of watermills in long 19th century Ontario and their role in deforestation & salmon population collapses as lumber suppliers for British military vessels.

Immigration Canada: We recognize migrant contributions Also them: We are going to scapegoat migrants for housing crisis; deport 2.3 million of them in 2 years and increase racism; tell people they shouldn't come here as refugees. #InternationalMigrantsDay

I'm still trying to figure out how to use Bluesky and find people on there. Feel free to send me your handle so I can follow you there.

The United Church of Canada has sent a letter to Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly urging Canada to prioritize human rights and support the resumption of peace negotiations in the #Philippines. Find out more and take action: https://t.co/0oPDLL5K6i #UCCan

Today is St. Barbara's Day, an important celebration for Christians in Palestine and neighboring countries. @ruwaidaamer8 made this video for @intifada in 2017 about how it is celebrated in Gaza, with a special dish called burbara

Today marks 22 years of the Grassy Blockade! Leanne Betasamosake Simpson shares why it is such an important refusal. "The blockade at #GrassyNarrows is modelled after the work Amik, the beaver does. It is a refusal of everything that destroys life..." #FreeGrasy

🫱🏿‍🫲🏽 Giving Tuesday is on December 3, 2024. Donate today to help support IFCO'S work in 2025! Visit https://t.co/WLZqSnq9au

Join us Dec. 7th at 6:30 PM @ Saint Stephen-in-the-Fields for a benefit show supporting typhoon relief in the Philippines! 🎶 Performances by Cutsleeve, D Badua & Parallel Play, plus local vendors & baked goods! Proceeds go to Sagip Migrante 🌟🌱 #Fundraiser #TyphoonRelief

As an interesting historical aside, St Luke’s has its origins in Primitive Methodism, which birthed a number of radical chartists, the occasional socialist, but most consistently, it's been associated w working class trade unions. Hobsbawm in Primitive Rebels described them thus:

St Luke's does so much important work in Toronto. They also host @ICHRPToronto who organize in solidarity with anti-imperialist & environmental activists, organizers, and political prisoners in the Philippines. A great space to volunteer at.

And there is of course a watermill outfitted with a vertical waterwheel in Probošt's mechanical Christmas crib: https://t.co/5kbzOEYrek https://t.co/b4vKSGf6bC

I love the mechanical nativity scene juxtapozed with an emblematic material artifact of bureaucracy — the desk — but fashioned as a sort of technoscientific mechanism or machine enacting political recompartmentalizations & overturnings like Rota Fortunae.

The one above was by a Czech carpenter in 1906. The Amerika excerpt below reminds me of Rota Fortunae as well as Walter Benjamin's chess-playing automaton powered by "small and ugly" theology. For Kafka's protagonist it is a mechanical desk that reminds him of the Christmas crib.

Reading Kafka has become an Advent tradition for me, bc he writes about waiting, in/justice, apocalypse & eschatological judgement, through capitalist bureaucracy & arbitrary asymmetrical power so well. In Amerika he talks about a mechanical Christmas crib

ICHRP calls for global solidarity to support typhoon-stricken Filipinos Donate to typhoon relief efforts: https://t.co/lNT3696wDg

CUPW Picket Line Locations https://t.co/qS0fOmSVPI #SupportCUPW #canlab #cdnpoli @CanadianLabour

NEW: 100+ 🇨🇦 companies are manufacturing critical components for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jets. These warplanes are being used by the Israeli Air Force to bomb residential neighbourhoods, hospitals, and refugee camps in Gaza and southern Lebanon.

Next Thursday! Join us in Toronto for the Making Space for Indigenous Feminism Book Launch. We will be joined by editor @GStarblanket and authors @ebaans_ , Megan Scribe, & Cara Peacock. Register at https://t.co/PMCzY8mNJu Hope to see you there!

this is a recent metabolic network model of E. coli Nissle 1917: https://t.co/7P9WpKGgoY (i am personally very interested in the analogues between metabolic pathways and commodity chains, which i see stemming from a common perceptual framework)

I have a gastrointestinal condition, which I was diagnosed with about a decade and a half ago, and one of the main probiotic treatments is this strain of E. coli that was taken from the feces of a German soldier in 1917:

Someone introduced me to Hannah Landecker's work and Elizabeth Wilson's book Gut Feminism back in June 2023, and I've been really interested in contemporary scientific literature on metabolism since then. I want to start a thread of things I encounter here...