Wren

The accessibility of email might allow you to answer your boss from the cottage dock, but it has also destroyed what was once a boundary between work hours and the rest of life. We are, most of us, beholden to the almighty ping or ploop, signals that can trigger both a reward response (dopamine) and a stress response (cortisol); and if that sounds a lot like a toxic relationship, that’s the point.

Sheila Regehr, Chair of BICN told rabble.ca:

“While ‘polycrisis’ might not yet be a common word, people around the globe know it well because we all live it daily in many ways — the impacts of AI and social media, floods, drought, fires, health problems, insecure jobs, inflation, racism, steep inequality, war and other interconnected crises that can’t be solved in siloes, or one puzzle piece at a time. It’s a dangerous direction for people and planet.

Basic Income is a key to averting that dystopian future. It is a common denominator solution, a foundation of economic democracy where we all — humans, not corporations or robots — use our income every day to vote on how we spend our money and time on what makes us healthy, gives meaning to our lives, and helps us solve problems together. The BIEN Congress is a gathering of people working for that better future.”

Despite the adage “seeing is believing,” what you see isn’t always what you get. Consider the viral dress photo of 2015 that split viewers into two camps: one who said the dress was white and gold and one who said it was black and blue. More than just a fun optical illusion, the phenomenon highlighted how multiple people can look at the same image or event and walk away with strikingly different interpretations. Such differences in perception can take on far greater weight when the stakes are high. To some viewers, police body camera footage can show blatant use of excessive force, while others watch the same clip and see an officer acting responsibly. Whose reality is the “real” one?

American manhood is a fragile and precarious thing, shattered by the slightest deviation from ever-shifting norms—eating the wrong taco, tasting tofu, not eating meat, or maybe eating too much meat. Or at least, that is what right-wing commentators have suggested by their attacks on the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Texas, James Talarico.

Archive link: https://archive.fo/20260728110903/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/07/masculinity-scam-manosphere-talarico/687999/

From hugs and handshakes to high fives and fist bumps, humans routinely use physical touch to comfort one another and reinforce social bonds. Now, new research suggests that our ape cousins behave in similar ways.

Semi-wild bonobos and chimpanzees hug, hold hands and pat each other during stressful situations. These friendly touches may help ease tension and potentially prevent conflicts from arising among group members, scientists report in a study published July 22 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Ontario Parks called it “one of the most destructive weather events,” in the park’s history, complete with intense lightning, torrential rain and powerful winds. Some of the most beloved spots in the 2,550-hectare park, the size of more than 4,700 football fields combined, were affected. The hardest-hit areas were the Jingwakoki campground, looking out over Moore Lake, and the area of the Canadian Ecology Centre next to it.

Nearly a year after Air Canada flight attendants forced unpaid work in the airline industry onto the national agenda, the issue is once again at the centre of a brewing labour dispute.

More than 4,400 WestJet flight attendants, represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 8125, have delivered an unmistakable rebuke to the company. On July 15, the union announced that 99.4 per cent of workers voted to authorize a strike, with a turnout of 97.3 per cent. As was the case with Air Canada flight attendants last summer, this is one of the strongest strike mandates in recent Canadian labour history.

SEATTLE (AP) — Police searched for a second suspect Monday after gunfire erupted at a crowded food festival beneath Seattle’s Space Needle, leaving three people dead and four others wounded, including a toddler. Another suspect was earlier arrested.

Archive link: https://archive.fo/20260726022444/https://www.newscientist.com/article/2581311-one-of-nasas-crucial-links-to-deep-space-is-at-risk-of-burning-down/

I work in the Art Department at HarperCollins, where I have a front-row seat to the conversations that shape how books appear in the world. What kind of cover art reads as “literary” versus “commercial,” what signals a “book club book,” what feels “serious” versus “friendly,” and increasingly, how to make a cover socially legible online. Covers today are expected not only to attract readers in bookstores, but to circulate fluidly through Instagram posts, TikToks, Substack photos, and carefully curated apartment interiors. Books are now asked to function simultaneously as texts and as lifestyle objects, and designers are now tasked with imagining multiple scales of reach simultaneously, from the bookstore table to the phone screen.

In a highly unusual move, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) committee voted against FDA staff’s own advice in a meeting on July 23 and 24, recommending that six peptides be added to a list that will allow certain specialty pharmacies to dispense them. Currently, those peptides are in a legal gray area. The committee voted against adding to the list one of the peptides being considered, emideltide.

In November, the B.C. Supreme Court found the pair guilty of three counts of drug possession for the purpose of trafficking—one count for each of the substances they sold to members of the compassion club. In response, Nyx and Kalicum launched the constitutional challenge, in which they are arguing that the law violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Kalicum and Nyx’s convictions are suspended until the outcome of the Charter challenge, which will conclude in Vancouver on Friday, July 24. The judgement will be announced in the following month.