The news in general is pretty awful so I hope you can enjoy this little story from Toronto. Our transit system, the TTC, has been getting progressively more awful in the almost 30 years I've lived here. Whenever you need to travel by TTC, you have to give yourself an extra 30 minutes to an hour just in case it breaks down. Despite this reduction in service, fares continue to increase well beyond what an ordinary working class person can afford. This in turn forces more people to rely on personal vehicles, fuelling far-right politics.

With this background on mind, what did the TTC do with their paltry budget this year? Improve vehicles so that they don't stop working when they get wet? Fix the signal issues they have multiple times a day? Reduce the fare to match the reduced service?

Nah, this is Toronto. They rebranded the fare inspectors, which shall henceforth be known as...

...drumroll...

Provincial Offences Officers!

I swear I saw like 3 people post about this before I clicked the link and realized it wasn't parody. Anyway. People reacted exactly how you'd expect, and the TTC's response, rather than saying "oopsie!" (or "poopsie!") was to chide its own customer base for being so childish.

Personally I think POO is a lateral move from what most people I know call them, which is "fare pig," and probably that money could have been better spent on almost literally anything else.

 It can be no other than Wizards & Spaceships' "Against Hopepunk ft. Nick Mamatas." I complain a lot here about a certain type of book that is very popular right now in SFFH spaces, and has been basically for the past decade (albeit the earlier attempts were more interesting than the publishers' attempts to chase that wave) and yeah. It is not the biggest problem in the world, that the dominant trends in the genres I like do not align to my particular tastes. But. It's still something I enjoy talking about and reading about and listening to podcasts about, and there is no one more qualified than Nick Mamatas, the most cynical bastard in genre fiction (complimentary), to talk about it.

This is less a condemnation of individual authors and their work (in fact, it is not that at all!) but an exploration of why the economic models of the publishing and music industry work the way they do. It's a wide-ranging and I daresay fascinating discussion and Nick is extremely funny. Also there's a lot about 80s post-punk in there if that's your thing (it's mine).

You are not prepared.



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I finally processed these. They're all from St. John's and Ferryland.

( cut for photos )