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Eric Kennedy

@ericbkennedy.bsky.social
4.8K followers 143 following 100 posts

Associate Prof of Disaster & Emergency Management at York University. Trying to improve use of evidence, science, data, and wisdom in wildfire. Editor of Canadian Journal of Emergency Management.

PostsRepliesMedia
Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Modest proposal that we should immediate pass laws that fine companies 10% of their annual revenue for per "drone ad" they run, doubling for every subsequent offence.
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James Andrew Smith @drsmith.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
And note the argument being made here, in the open, by the AI companies: Thoughts that existed before LLMs are better than thoughts that exist after LLMs.
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 24/07/2026
As an economic pathology, AI is *extraordinary*. AI boosters have spent a baffling and terrifying sum of money - over $1.4T, most of that in the past year - on the promise of making as many workers unemployed as possible, while lowering the wages of the meager survivors of this jobspocalypse. 3/
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Never could; never should. International collaboration on wildfire is so critical. This is a problem that knows no borders, and we're better when we collaborate and learn from each other in tackling it, rather than threatening and antagonizing.
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Ontario School Safety @onschoolsafety.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
CO2 and PM2.5 monitoring helps us understand the quality of the air we're exposed to indoors and outdoors. They also inform us about the strategies to mitigate exposure, such as wearing an N95, running an air purifier, closing windows and doors, and using MERV13+ furnace filters. #cleantheair
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Advocates of a national Canadian firefighting force need to explain how this is better than equivalent investment into the provinces/territories already doing this work, and media needs to ACTUALLY ASK THIS instead of repeating this line unquestioned.
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Adina M. Yoffie @adinayoffie.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
The “writing is thinking” posting will continue until a single freaking person in Silicon Valley has figured this out
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Bragging about using AI in your studies is like bragging about using a robot to lift your weights at the gym.
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babs ✨ @itsbabs.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
even if you *just* wore a respirator in public indoor spaces when you're not engaged in activities involving your mouth (ie: not actively eating/drinking), the airborne landscape—the lives of high risk people especially—would be *drastically different*
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Dr. Stephanie @punkrockscience.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
It is *fascinating* to me how quickly some people have gone completely from “we all must work in the office! human collaboration is vital and only happens in person!” to “I can replace all these pesky people with chatbots!” Definitely some commentary there about our society and who gets to choose.
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Jessica Ellis @baddestmamajama.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
As I’ve been saying for six years, you cannot decide to shut off empathy in just one lil area (all of disabled and vulnerable people.) Endangering people for your convenience and comfort is a drug you do not do recreationally.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
@swanboatsteve.bsky.social Do you happen to have any data for real-world headways at York Uni station during rush hour? I feel like the last couple months I’ve been routinely arriving on the platform to the screen showing a 7 minute wait during PM peak.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Hard to overstate how antisocial and corrosive this Tylenol ad campaign is. “Take our product so you can go out while contagious and make more customers for us… er, make more people sick!”
A large advertisement on the subway with two photos, one above the other. The top photo shows a man visibly ill in bed, surrounded by Kleenex, with the text “Sick…” written over the image. The bottom photo shows the same man in a crowd at a hockey game, cheering on his team.” The text over this photo completes the phrase as “to SIIIICK” in large cartoon letters. Below is a picture of a package of Tylenol and the text “relief from your worst cough, cold, and flu symptoms.”
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 28/11/2025
I don’t know if anyone else notices or cares, but when I see a presentation in which the speaker uses obviously generated-AI images to illustrate their slides, it makes me immediately less confident in whatever other content they’re presenting.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
!!!
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
Fun example of "AI" being not just bad but dangerous: Google "AI" is happy to say that Toronto currently has 7 µg/m³ of PM2.5 and is "well below the threshold generally considered healthy." But, the source it links says Toronto is currently actually at PM2.5 of 38µg/m³, which ain't great.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
I’d be much more open to double spacing if I had literally ever seen a document by a double spacer that wasn’t riddled with an inconsistent pile of single, double, and triple spacing.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
Let's check in on how abandoning the whole of idea of public health is going...
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
**Taps sign** It ain’t “Artificial Intelligence,” it’s a low-accountability statistical model with a good marketing campaign.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
ChatGPT: How do I tell my professor colleagues that LLM drivel they share with me is no more valuable or okay to normalize than the LLM drivel students submit on assignments?
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
You should absolutely wear a respirator (N95, KN95, etc) when in large crowds to protect yourself and others. But, hot take: if a protest is the only time you’re wearing a mask, you’re making it easier for anti-mask folks to stigmatize and ban. Show solidarity by wearing them elsewhere, regularly.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
159 Canadian Forces members were killed in Afghanistan, a higher per-capita fatality rate than Americans. At least five of those were killed by Americans in so-called “friendly fire” incidents.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
One of my pet peeves with wildfire coverage is when media outlets uncritically parrot bad understandings of emergency management and how different levels of government work together to manage wildfire. So, I want to highlight CBC doing it well! Brief 🧵 (1/n) www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
cbc.ca
Why hasn't Sask. called for military help? The province says it needs wildfire expertise | CBC News
Despite facing one of its earliest, most aggressive fire seasons, Saskatchewan has not asked the federal government for the military's help. Why not? Provincial officials say the military doesn't have...
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
This is how I start the conversation about LLMs with my students: it’s like going to the gym and riding an e-bike on the treadmill. Then, we figure out how to co-create a class where it’s safe to struggle at workouts together.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
Perpetual subtweet on people using AI in academia: if you can’t be bothered to do the analysis or write it yourself, why in the world should I be bothered to read it, let alone trust it?
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
I continue to hold firm to my position that “if you can’t be bothered to write it, why should I be bothered to read it?”
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
Jumping. I think quizzes that suggest who you vote for like "vote compass" are awful... but this new one from Leger, which gives you likely party alignment based on things about you, your 'lifestyle habits,' and not a single questions about values, is just downright dangerous for democracy.
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Brenna Clarke Gray @brennacgray.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
I like paying taxes. Genuinely. Not grudgingly. I can’t pave a road, I can’t build and staff a hospital. $200 in my pocket won’t pay for my kid’s daycare but if we all pool our money it might. I really wish someone on the left would be brave enough to be like, “Taxes are good, actually.”
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C.H. Romatowski @chromatowski.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
This is why we say that popping on a mask when you go to the grocery store is a chance to resist creeping fascism. It’s a simple way to refuse this training to abandon others.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
Every accusation is a confession.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
Here's the thing: you can say it's a 'constitutional crisis' all you want, but the playbook here (and tbh, I'm referring to multiple situations) is to simply deny there's a crisis + assert their power is absolute & right. The crisis only exists if you make it, rather than accepting their take.
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David Fisman. @dfisman.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
This new work from @blakemurdoch.bsky.social is spot on. Denial of airborne transmission was the great crime (yes, crime) of the pandemic. It changed, and broke, everything healthydebate.ca/2025/03/topi...
healthydebate.ca
How denial of airborne COVID transmission broke the world - Healthy Debate
Five years later, the greatest basic science failure in generations caused the pandemic harms highlighted by people across the political spectrum, and broke our social cohesion.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
If you can’t be bothered to write it, why should I be bothered to read it?
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
Cannot overstate how much this gutting of expertise is going to impact wildfire response. NOAA’s work to support (fire) weather forecasting; capacity for staffing incident management teams; ability to move firefighters and gear to where it’s needed… absolutely all being decimated.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
Theme of the last two weeks: Tell me you don't know what "soft power" is without telling me you don't know what soft power is.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
One of the things I'm so down about right now is how long it takes to build strong institutions that quietly do the work to make all our systems run, and how quickly certain folks are committed to burning them down entirely.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
Whelp, that's one way to put a water bomber out of commission... (One of the Quebec tankers in California was hit by a small drone)
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The Media and Democracy Project @mediaanddemocracy.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
Why I'm quitting the Washington Post by @anntelnaes.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/anntelna...
open.substack.com
Why I'm quitting the Washington Post
Democracy can't function without a free press
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
I'm sorry what now? "Priority access... for players and VIPs" is not a "requirement" we should even entertain. Woof. www.torontotoday.ca/local/health...
torontotoday.ca
FIFA asks that players, VIPs get priority at hospitals in 2026
Internal Ministry of Health documents call ‘priority access’ to hospital care for FIFA players and VIPs a ‘requirement’ of the tournament — a concept one bioethicist says is 'very disturbing and ethic...
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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
🚨Extremely important for everyone to understand that this is the policy that has prevented ICE from showing up at community disaster shelters and other relief distribution sites, etc. Emergency managers must make new contingency plans for how to meet the needs of undocumented people in response.
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Taylor Lorenz @taylorlorenz.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
I wrote about the trash media coverage about the loss of "civility" and "respect" online in the wake of the UnitedHealth CEO's death www.usermag.co/p/yes-we-wan...
usermag.co
Yes, "we" want insurance executives dead
No, that doesn't mean people should murder them. But if you've watched a loved one suffer and die from insurance denial, it's normal to wish the people responsible would suffer the same fate.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
As I once heard someone say, “if you can’t be bothered to write it, why should I be bothered to read it?”
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 06/11/2024
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 21/10/2024
Advertise your account with just one image.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 02/10/2024
The next step in the campaign to hide a pandemic: make it impossible to test, so no one can know if they have COVID, so no one can make informed decisions. “Personal choice” never was. It’s an intentional effort to prevent anyone from making any choice that isn’t blind denial.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 01/10/2024
I can - very unfortunately - report that while the SSHRC grant submission website was basically non-functional until at least 11:30pm yesterday, if you set a 3:00am alarm, it is downright snappy and can indeed export the PDFs your grant office requires.
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 10/09/2024
Highly recommend watching this video on algorithmic wage discrimination: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEXJ...
youtube.com
We Put 7 Uber Drivers in One Room. What We Found Will Shock You.
YouTube video by More Perfect Union
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David Zipper @davidzipper.bsky.social · 01/09/2024
The Economist has published a deeply-researched story about car bloat -- and it's very, very damning. "For every life that the heaviest 1% of SUVs and trucks save, there are more than a dozen lives lost in other vehicles." Well worth your time: www.economist.com/interactive/...
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 05/10/2023
COVID offers three possible paradigm shifts. If they’re true, and if we actually accept them, so much changes: - Much of disease transmission is airborne - The biggest impact of viruses is chronic disease - Virus exposure harms, not helps, immune systems publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/is-the-...
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Eric Kennedy @ericbkennedy.bsky.social · 04/10/2023
Potentially hot take: I’m very nervous about how quick Canadian EM academics/practitioners are to say “we should have a Canadian FEMA!” Like, we recognize that FEMA has a… checkered history, right? And that, at the very least, a Maple FEMA isn’t going to automagically solve our complex problems?
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