A Funkaoshi Production

In a curious quirk of early 21st century post-hobby production, they have alienated themselves from their labor, with almost no help from the larger capitalist system.

The post focuses on writing indie RPG games, but is more broadly applicable to any amateur labour of love.

Black Lives Matter TO—a group led by several queer and trans women, also the guests of honour at Pride—staged a sit in during the parade and people lost their shit. Of course they did. This is Toronto and there is no crime greater than inconvenience. Still, Black Lives Matter TO protests and they get shit done. The video of the sit in is amazing to watch.

Anil Dash writes about the excellent Prince Be of P.M. Dawn.

A great overview of the banhammer that is likely making it’s way to Britain.

This is also nuts. They flooded the stage. What?

His speech at the BET music awards is something you have to watch. Straight fire.

This whole article is so thoroughly quotable I don’t know where to start.

This vote is also the grimmest of reminders of the power still held by the older generation, not only in the UK but around the world. Young Britons—the multicultural generation which grew up in and of Europe, the people who have only ever known European passports—voted overwhelmingly to remain. They’re the generation that just lost its future. Meanwhile, Britons over the age of 65, fed a diet of lies by a sensationalist UK press, voted by a large margin to leave. Most of them did so out of a misplaced belief that doing so might reduce immigration, or make them better off, or save them from meddling bureaucrats. In a couple of decades, most of those voters will be dead. But the consequences of their actions will resonate far beyond the grave.

Toronto’s good at that.

It seems like there’s simply nothing more important than for the mayor to be able to say, two years hence, that he’s building a subway in Scarborough. Even if it’s a subway that will make the Sheppard line look like a paragon of savvy planning. Even it doesn’t make one damn bit of difference to local transit service in the long run. Nope, Tory is going to get that wretched thing built, even if he has to waste every last dollar the city has to spend on such investments. In for a penny, in for a billion, and all that.

Our city council continues to impress with their general level of stupidness.

This free style is nuts. It just gets better and better and never ends.

This is my shocked face :o

This series of videos is so great.

Since this article was published last week there was another pedestrian death: an SUV hopped a curb, struck two street vendor trucks, killing one of the vendors. John Tory’s comments on the tragedy: “I would also ask cyclists and pedestrians to obey the rules of the road.” Fuck that guy.

Harsh. Tony Fadell is out at Nest, the company he started and sold to Google. Sounds like they have done a terrible job of things since being bought. I switched from my Nest to a (Canadian) Ecobee3 recently. That company seems to be doing more interesting things with smart thermostats.

An incredible essay on addiction, the rust belt, AIDS, apathy, existential angst, Donald Trump …

This video is so sweet and cute, and features my ex-girlfriend Gillian Jacobs.

“Everyone seems to be becoming slowly aware of how overwhelmingly white everything is.” A solid article all about what it’s like to be a minority in hollywood. The interactive feature that accompanies the article is great as well.

An interesting look at how modern cinema often leans too heavily on fan service.

Amazing.

Former mayor Rob Ford may be gone, but his vision of public service on the cheap is still here. Where Ford promised to respect “taxpayers,” Tory similarly vows to protect “homeowners,” whom he recently claimed are “stretched to the limit,” and cannot afford to pay more in property taxes.

Tory is the mayor Toronto deserves. The bar for our mayor was apparently, “not addicted to crack-cocaine,” but Toronto should set its sights higher.

It’s interesting to see how Instagram has morphed from cellphone photography to something quite different. I changed my Instagram usage up several months ago so that the captions to my photos were all fictional synopses of a show about my life on Netflix. (As a socially commentary on how fake everything on Instagram is: get it?!)