Maria Dobrinskaya
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mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
Maria Dobrinskaya
@mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
360 followers 430 following 140 posts
Politics and books. Cooperative overlapper. Hopeful collapsnik. She/her.

#bcpoli #cdnpoli #vanpoli
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mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/...
The period of the year from spring to fall, when clocks in most parts of the United States are set one hour ahead of standard time, is called daylight saving time, and its beginning and ending dates and times are set by federal law. The human biological clock is regulated by the timing of light and darkness, which then dictates sleep and wake rhythms. In daily life, the timing of exposure to light is generally linked to the social clock. When the solar clock is misaligned with the social clock, desynchronization occurs between the internal circadian rhythm and the social clock. The yearly change between standard time and daylight saving time introduces this misalignment, which has been associated with risks to physical and mental health and safety, as well as risks to public health. In 2020, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) published a position statement advocating for the elimination of seasonal time changes, suggesting that evidence best supports the adoption of year-round standard time. This updated statement cites new evidence and support for permanent standard time. It is the position of the AASM that the United States should eliminate seasonal time changes in favor of permanent standard time, which aligns best with human circadian biology. Evidence supports the distinct benefits of standard time for health and safety, while also underscoring the potential harms that result from seasonal time changes to and from daylight saving time.
November 2, 2025 at 11:01 PM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
Affirmation
by Assata Shakur
AFFIRMATION I believe in living. I believe in the spectrum of Beta days and Gamma people. I believe in sunshine. In windmills and waterfalls, tricycles and rocking chairs. And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts. And sprouts grow into trees. I believe in the magic of the hands. And in the wisdom of the eyes. I believe in rain and tears. And in the blood of infinity. I believe in life. And i have seen the death parade march through the torso of the earth, sculpting mud bodies in its path. I have seen the destruction of the daylight, and seen bloodthirsty maggots prayed to and saluted. I have seen the kind become the blind and the blind become the bind in one easy lesson. I have walked on cut glass. I have eaten crow and blunder bread and breathed the stench of indifference. I have been locked by the lawless. Handcuffed by the haters. Gagged by the greedy. And, if i know any thing at all, it's that a wall is just a wall and nothing more at all. It can be broken down. I believe in living. I believe in birth. I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth. And i believe that a lost ship, steered by tired, seasick sailors, can still be guided home to port.
September 26, 2025 at 8:58 PM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
The selective and enforced outrage over Kirk’s murder reflects a fundamental truth: violence is never judged only on the basis of lives lost or individuals harmed. It is judged—and narrated—according to whether it sustains or threatens a particular social order. What counts as “violence,” and what counts as “order,” are always political determinations made by those in power.
September 24, 2025 at 6:36 PM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
post from britt.monet dated 09/06/25 that reads “The real cause of Autism: Autistic people be fucking”
September 22, 2025 at 10:20 PM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
Black and white kitten sitting on top of a large Snorlax bean bag.
August 6, 2025 at 2:57 AM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
But a frustrating process made sweeter but a young community member and their parent walking the line offering people ice tea. People are good even if our systems suck.
Picture of fold out wagon with a large cooler in it and a yellow sign taped to it that says “Democracy? Yes, please with ice tea!”
April 6, 2025 at 2:41 AM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
I find this completely insufficient. Asking nicely & “hopefully they will be true to their word” #cdnpoli #cdnexln www.cbc.ca/news/politic...
Chief Electoral Officer Stephane Perrault told reporters on Monday that he has reached out to social media sites such as X and TikTok to "seek their support to making this election a secure election." He said he has been satisfied with the response so far. "We'll see what action actually takes place during the election. Hopefully they won't have to intervene, but if there are issues, hopefully they will be true to their word," he said.
March 25, 2025 at 4:10 PM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
#bcpoli vancouversun.com/opinion/op-e...
The premier’s claim that “rapid responses” require bypassing the legislature is unconvincing. The legislature can be recalled on short notice when necessary. History proves this. It ensures timely, considered responses that allow for broad public support. There is no justification for B.C. to temporarily become an autocracy.
March 20, 2025 at 6:30 PM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
“It would be missing the point entirely to fight Trump’s unhinged behaviour with more unhinged behaviour.” #bcpoli vancouversun.com/opinion/op-e...
It would be missing the point entirely to fight Trump’s unhinged behaviour with more unhinged behaviour. Trashing our environment, making greenhouse gas emissions worse, and sparking new conflicts in the courts and on the land will only lead us further down the dystopian path Trump and his allies have laid out for us.
February 14, 2025 at 3:44 PM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
Finished this remarkable - chaotic, unhinged - book last night, which felt like perfect timing given blue Monday and that other thing that was going on. Loaded with layers and layers of apt metaphor, this is a book for this moment, on a number of levels.

#booksky
Cover of Yasmin’s Zaher’s novel, The Coin, with a yellow background and a woman wearing heels and a trench coat, kicking one leg up, her head leaning back and face obscured.
January 22, 2025 at 2:02 AM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
Given the recent interest in moose on here, prompted by @theferocity.bsky.social, I’m reminded of this wonderful poem by John Steffler, The Night We Were Ravenous.

canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca/steffler/poe...

#MooseProof
THAT NIGHT WE WERE RAVENOUS John Steffler Driving from Stephenville in the late October dusk -- the road swooping and disappearing ahead like an owl, the hills no longer playing dead the way they do in the daytime, but sticking their black blurry arses up in the drizzle and shaking themselves, heaving themselves up for another night of leapfrog and Sumo ballet -- some trees detached themselves from the shaggy shoulder and stepped in front of the car. I swerved through a grove of legs startled by pavement, maybe a hunchbacked horse with goiter, maybe a team of beavers trying to operate stilts: it was the landscape doing a moose, a cow moose, most improbable forest device. She danced over the roof of our car in moccasins. She had burst from the zoo of our dreams and was there, like a yanked-out tooth the dentist puts in your hand. She flickered on and off. She was strong as the bible and as full of lives. Her eyes were like Halley's Comet, like factory whistles, like bargain hunters, like shy kids. No man had touched her or given her movements geometry. She surfaced in front of us like a coelacanth, like a face in a dark lagoon. She made us feel blessed. She made us talk like a cage of canaries. She reminded us. She was the ocean wearing a fur suit. She had never eaten from a dish. She knew nothing of corners or doorways. She was our deaths come briefly forward to say hello. She was completely undressed. She was more part of the forest than any tree. She was made of trees. The beauty of her face was bred in the kingdom of rocks. I had seen her long ago in the Dunlop Observatory. She leapt from peak to peak like events in a ballad. She was as insubstantial as smoke. She was a mother wearing a brown sweater opening her arms. She was a drunk logger on Yonge Street. She was the Prime Minister. She had granted us a tiny reserve. She could remember a glacier where she was standing. She was a plot of earth shaped like the island of Newfoundland and able to fly, spring down in the middle of cities scattering traffic, ride elevators, press pop-eyed executives to the wall. She was charged with the power of Churchill Falls. She was a high explosive bomb loaded with bones and meat. She broke the sod in our heads like a plow parting the earth's black lips. She pulled our zippers down. She was a spirit. She was Newfoundland held in a dam. If we had touched her, she would've burst through our windshield in a wall of blood. That night we were ravenous. We talked, gulping, waving our forks. We entered one another like animals entering woods. That night we slept deeper than ever. Our dreams bounded after her like excited hounds.
January 21, 2025 at 12:01 AM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
I love beets & every time I’m eating or preparing them I think of this fantastic Tom Robbin’s quote from Jitterbug Perfume.
The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious. Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets. The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip... The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies. The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes. Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
January 19, 2025 at 4:46 PM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
vancouversun.com/news/could-v...
What L.A. is showing us is that major cities can burn spectacularly, and Vancouver is not exempt from that…we were capable of generating a heat dome. So, imagine if it had been 37 C with 40 knot winds. The whole west side would have gone. All the Pacific Spirit Park would have gone, no problem. And that’s what L.A. shows us, is really how vulnerable we are, and it’s a very stern invitation to reevaluate the flammability of our neighbourhoods and how we engage with fire and how we measure fire risk, because it’s not 1990 anymore. We don’t live in a rainforest anymore. We’re living in something new, and it’s not as wet as it used to be.
January 17, 2025 at 4:51 PM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
#BookSky
#BookChallenge

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

💙📚

Day 10
Cover of Jia Tolentino’s book Trick Mirror: reflections on self-delusion
December 16, 2024 at 2:42 AM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
#BookSky
#BookChallenge

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

💙📚

Day 9
Cover of Joy Kogawa’s novel Obasan. A young Japanese girl looks out of a window.
December 15, 2024 at 3:17 AM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
#BookSky
#BookChallenge

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

💙📚

Day 8
Cover of Patrick Radden Keefe's book Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.
December 13, 2024 at 10:53 PM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
#BookSky

#BookChallenge

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

💙📚

Day 7
Cover of Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel One Hundred Years of Solitude
December 13, 2024 at 2:11 AM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
#BookSky

#BookChallenge

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

💙📚

Day 6
Cover of Rebecca Solnit’s book Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
December 11, 2024 at 10:24 PM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
#BookSky

#BookChallenge

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

💙📚

Day 5
Cover of Rohinton Mistry's novel A Fine Balance
December 10, 2024 at 10:28 PM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
#BookSky #BookChallenge

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

💙📚

Day 4
The book cover of The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
December 10, 2024 at 3:16 AM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
#BookSky #BookChallenge

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

💙📚

Day 3
Book cover of Elena Ferrante novel, My Brilliant Friend
December 8, 2024 at 8:50 PM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
#BookSky #BookChallenge

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

💙📚

Day 2
Book cover of Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem
December 7, 2024 at 6:31 PM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
Okay, joining in on the #BookSky #BookChallenge

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

💙📚

Day 1
Cover image of Jesmyn Ward’s novel Sing Unburied Sing
December 6, 2024 at 7:48 PM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn’t Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, or Alice in Chains
Album cover image for The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
November 20, 2024 at 7:40 PM
mdobrinskaya.bsky.social
Appreciated this John Horgan obit from Rod Mickleburgh, especially this part. #bcpoli
Under Mr. Horgan, the NDP reversed a policy of the previous government that drastically affected hospital workers, allowing hospitals to contract out their services and drastically reduce workers’ pay. Last week, Mr. Horgan told a small group of friends about a hospital worker who recognized him when he went in to wash the former premier’s back. The worker said he never thought he would get a chance to thank Mr. Horgan for what his government did for hospital workers, and yet there he was washing his back. They both cried.
November 13, 2024 at 4:35 PM