"Flaherty, already pushing 40 when SCTV got underway, was the brainy litterateur of the cast, and the early cheapo seasons of the show bear his stamp in this way. If there’s a joke about Chekhov, or a Masterpiece Theatre sketch taking the mickey out of BBC costume dramas, Flaherty probably wrote it. But eventually the show developed as a self-regarding critique of television with its own family of characters, and Flaherty was, like the rest of the cast, a superb impressionist."
"At a minimum, [the PWHL's] noble experiment should gain attention and formal study from other sports leagues and especially the NHL. Even if you have never set eyes on a hockey game in your life, the cure for tanking may be coming one day to your own favourite sport."
"It’s an astonishing story that would have been written off as inherently unfilmable if there weren’t a plucky, sympathetic crusader [...] at the heart of the whole thing. But the scandal deserves attention from governments and the governed everywhere. It’s a case where everything that could go wrong with a public-private contracting partnership did go wrong, with horrifying effects on utterly innocent people."
"I have given only the lightest overview of Super Dave’s comic, commercial, and technical accomplishments here, but I hope you will pass on from this column with one thought: “Damn, that Einstein guy was brilliant.”"
"This is something worth keeping in mind if you have hopes of collaring AI software and putting it to work on cognitive tasks in a workplace setting. You shouldn’t trust one with an assignment you wouldn’t give to a smart but insane person."
"[S]sometimes a new dimension in political space appears out of nowhere, and traditional alliances and affiliations get thrown into chaos. [...] The issue of AI safety has created a new split between AI “doomers” and AI “accelerationists,” and your other political opinions may not help anyone predict what side of the divide you will stand on."
"On Thursday a Federal Court judge, the Hon. Angela Furlanetto, startled the Dominion by essentially sweeping aside the Liberal government’s ban on a short list of single-use plastic items, including grocery bags, cutlery, takeout containers and drinking straws."
#ColbyCosh explains that the ban was based upon a law allowing the feds to restrict "toxic" substances. But are #plastics toxic? The judge, a biochemist, wasn't convinced.