Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

this fucking video is permanently at the top of my Recommends because, I assume, it's his only members only video and they really think if I see it every day for a whole year I'll eventually change my mind. It is a constant companion. Now I can never become a member, or it will go.

screenshot of Teo's 'Unreleased Monstrum Video', desperately declaring 'members only'

November 22, 2025 at 11:39 PM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

I can't find a good archive of Mouth of the Rat issues! These are the few fragments I can find easily on the internet. I wanted to make a little collection of Donna Lee Parsons art, if anyone has a good resource. I am led to believe she fully hand lettered most of these!

SMEGMA feature in MotR #14, tightly handwritten

November 3, 2025 at 7:47 PM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

her name is Book and one day she will be as big as one
everyone say Welcome, Book

a tortoiseshell kitten next to a copy of Infinite Jest, for scale

October 28, 2025 at 1:03 AM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

Ontario! Show your solidarity with the college support staff, and show the Ford government that we stand together as a community against this pilfering of our education system. Join the practice picket in your area this Wednesday. Sign up: docs.google.com/forms/d/11OX...
#OnPoli #SaveOurColleges

Join the practice picket
Weds Sept 10 @ Noon

You come for one, you come for all of us

It's about harnessing our collective power in the moment it matters most.

September 9, 2025 at 1:31 AM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

Now, who are they?

● From 2022-2025, the funding window, Scale Hospitality Group retained a lobbyist from Atlas Strategic Advisors – the very same firm founded by Amin Massoudi, Doug Ford’s principal secretary from 2019-2022, and chair of his 2022 electoral campaign.

● Colleges across the province – Confederation, St. Lawrence, Loyalist, Fleming, Niagara, Fanshawe, Centennial Colleges have all suspended culinary and/or hospitality related programs related to high-demand employment sectors with labour shortages.

Yet from 2022- 2025, over $20 million in SDF funding went to just two corporate Toronto-based hospitality and food service training projects – despite the 12 GTA-based public and private colleges already delivering dozens of programs in this field.

In fact, according to the government’s own data, more than half of projects receiving SDF funding in 2025 went to recipients in the resource-rich GTA.

● Agnico Eagle Mines partnered in the first SDF funding round with Northern College. In 2025, Agnico Eagle Mines cut the college out – and was awarded $10 million in SDF funds, while Northern College posted a $6 million deficit.

But Agnico Eagle Mines never left Northern College. The Northern Training Division became the Corporate Training Division, while Agnico Eagle continues to use support staff to run training on site, rent-free, and tailor the facilities for their use.

These private trainings won’t set our kids up for a real future: they’re more expensive to run, diluted, with no education standards.

Choices for everyday Ontarians – be they young workers, or adults requiring re-skilling – are narrowing by the day.

The government will say that these SDF-funded projects are mandated to fulfill labour market needs. But many SDF-funded projects – for Northern Ontario, in particular – don’t line up with the province’s job needs.

Instead, money is funnelling into projects that subsidize Ford’s rich corporate friends.

This isn’t a crisis. This isn’t blameless. This isn’t even a partisan issue.

It’s the sell-off of public education and our children's futures for Ford’s personal gain.

You deserve to know. So do your co-workers and neighbours.

Send this email to someone you know doesn’t know the truth about what’s happening to our colleges.

We know we can reverse the Ford government's attempt to gut college education - unions and communities in Australia did just that.

After a coordinated fight back against funding, job and program cuts, the Australian government stopped handing out college funding to private sector experiments and restored funding to the public system.

First, we get the word out.

Then – we’re going to fight back. That’s a promise.

September 5, 2025 at 8:42 PM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

This is the letter from OPSEU President JP Hornick today about the state of education on Ontario. The Ford government is taking money from our kids and our future. #OnPoli #SaveOurColleges

We’ve been told a story about our college system in “crisis” for a long time – but a story is only as true as it is complete.

The real story is about stealing. Resources getting sucked out of our communities – all in a scheme to buy votes and endorsements by subsidizing private companies with your public dollars.

Ford is gutting public education, stealing taxpayer money from our colleges and replacing a full education with 6-12 week knock-off programs that won’t make our kids employable anywhere else.

It’s selling off their future to the employer that trains them – creating the next generation of company towns.

It’s the exact same model disastrously rolled out in Australia, which exploded into a debt crisis.

We are watching an accelerated agenda to gut public education and privatize post-secondary education for good – a project Doug Ford will complete by the end of this term. If that happens, we can all kiss our jobs goodbye.

The 10,000 jobs cuts across the system, plus 650 programs shuttered to students, we’ve seen already are just the beginning.

The seeds of today’s college “crisis” were planted in 2019, when the Ford government split the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities in two.

On one side, colleges and universities, and on the other, a new Ministry of Training and Skills Development.

Having a second ministry in place also charged with job training served two purposes:

1. Creating a privatized training ecosystem that could duplicate and compete with colleges for funding;

2. Creating a pool of money – which would grow to $2.5 billion in committed funds by 2025 – that could be spent to fulfill Ford’s personal and political goals.

In 2020, Doug Ford set up a fund dedicated to “non-college training providers, businesses, and associations training apprentices” – what would become the Skills Development Fund.

By 2021, a report by the Auditor General already warned that the Ford government had failed to develop “a strategic plan for the [college] sector to help mitigate the risk of a sudden decline in international students.”

But by that time, Ford was busy with a new project: rolling back support for outcome-driven colleges which have graduated countless proud workers, in favour of a new system.

It’s a system that operates in the dark. Unlike our colleges, which are subject to reporting, there is virtually no public data available on the funding, training goals, or outcomes of SDF-funded projects.

The SDF is an expensive experiment – a black box slush fund.

By 2023/2024, the Ford government covered only 25% of college operating expenses – while other provinces fund about 60% of public colleges’ operating expenses.

The Ford government has increased spending on private training by 800% since 2020 – an amount far beyond what the government’s own expert Blue Ribbon Panel says is needed to restore funding for colleges.

Amongst hundreds of SDF recipients, and what data is publicly available, we’ve seen larger sums awarded to only a few hands:

● $11.1 million to Scale Hospitality Group, 2023-2025;

● $10 million to Agnico Eagle Mines, 2024;

● $10 million to Ontario Shipyards Inc, 2024;

● $5.5 million to Canadian Niagara Hotels, 2023-2024.

The SDF grants to these four private businesses alone are big enough to fund a small public college for a year. In 2024, five of Ontario’s public colleges received $25 million or less in provincial funding transfers.

September 5, 2025 at 8:41 PM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

If you're nearby and want to join the flight attendants in solidarity
#UnpaidWorkWontFly

Flight Attendants United Across Canada. Sunday, August 17, 2025.
Join us at: YYZ (Toronto) 9AM-11AM ET Terminal 1
YUL(Montreal) 9AM-11AM ET Air Canada-Headquarters
YYC(Calgary)10AM-12PM MT Door 17 Departures
YYR(Vancouver) 10AM-12PM PT Chester Johnson Park

Who: All flight attendants across Canada, House of Labour, supporters, friends and family

Why: The Air Canada component of CUPE invites you to join us for Nationwide demonstrations to tell Air Canada and the Liberal Government that Air Canada Flight Attendants deserve fairness and the end to unpaid work!

Stand together. Be heard. Make a difference. #UnpaidWorkWontFly

August 16, 2025 at 10:24 PM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

manifesting it tbh

♡♡♡

Create this Picrew of yourself: picrew.me/en/image_mak...
Then take this quiz: uquiz.com/quiz/eTdXoU/...

Post the results to see what you'd be like as a fictional character!!!

Quiz result: Dead/Going to Die. You're just a little too likable to live. From the moment you were introduced, we all knew you were a goner, no matter how many wanted to keep you. You are the subject of so, so, so many fix-it fics written by crying fans who just want their blorbo back, but you're still dead in cannon.

July 18, 2025 at 1:40 AM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

settling in at night with the bonnet and the monsterporn

Is there anywhere that has a comprehensive Beardsley collection? This one is from the RA

The Billet-Doux by Aubrey Beardsley, a black and white print of a person in bed with a book and a tit out

July 17, 2025 at 9:46 PM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

Scare the locals!

Visit Marfa, the Jonestown of Minimalism by John Waters, a carnival style poster

July 14, 2025 at 12:16 AM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

that's my baby and I'm really proud.gif

Iron Man from The Ultimates #13 by Deniz Camp and Juan Frigeri. He says "Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming to this virtual teach-in. I'm Tony Stark, member of the Ultimates. Your identities have been obscured for your protection. You're safe here. We're keeping it basic today--let's leanr to make a Molotov cocktail from common household items."

July 9, 2025 at 6:43 PM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

It is known that Ryan North is really good at Tony, but it's still a pleasant surprise when he's SO annoying and weird (affectionate)

Panels from One World Under Doom #5 with art by R.B. Silva. Thor is trying to explain his position and Tony cannot shut up.

July 6, 2025 at 7:43 PM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

Both of these from MUNCH's collection

Model by the Wicker Chair by Edvard Munch. Oil on canvas.

July 6, 2025 at 4:50 AM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

New build available for rent in Toronto. 0 bed/0 bath. $3400/month.

A tiny little doll house sized tea room. The front opens to reveal a table with cakes and shelf of goods inside. The light turns on!

June 30, 2025 at 10:19 PM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

This cow came hurtling through the crowd at us at the Toronto Drag Ball. What should we call her?

A brown plush cow. I'm pretty sure it's a dog toy.

June 29, 2025 at 3:06 AM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

🥬🥬🥬

Both of these from the William Morris Gallery

Poems Chosen out of the Work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1896)

Love is Enough, or the Freeing of Pharamond (1897)

June 24, 2025 at 4:33 AM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

for personal reasons, I am studying these issues again
everything about this conversation...thank you Gail Simone for my life

James Rhodes and Tony Stark with his bots 'the smiths' in Tony Stark: Iron Man #12, art by Paolo Villanelli

June 24, 2025 at 3:31 AM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

How are we not talking about how skinny he is?
I'm going to bite him in half

Panels from Iron Man #8 with art by Julius Ohta. Tony Stark and Vishte Taru are grooming in a locker room. Tony is skin and bones.

June 20, 2025 at 2:08 AM

bear

@ytilaer.bsky.social

happy fathers day to these kings
it was an honour and a pleasure to celebrate the final drag king brunch with them at Glad Day! And apparently every Gemini in the city. We do appreciate the fine art of transformation.