iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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The hundreds of Toronto Police that have been deployed to ensure #bikelane removal goes ahead in the face of strong opposition provides a clear indication of who gets served and protected in this society.

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Conor Curtis @conorcurtis.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Carney has never taken the U.S. threat seriously: "share of fed. contract dollars heading south went from one-fifth in the 16 months before Carney took office to nearly a third under his watch.... IBM & Microsoft charged Ottawa more than $1 billion each for software license fees & IT..." #CDNpoli

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Liz Johnston @lizjohnston.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Deeply grateful for this review!

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@bookhugpress @bookhugpress.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The Fall Down Effect "takes readers deep into a richly described world, while encouraging them to consider whether they could also do more than just hope.” Michelle Sinclair reviews @lizjohnston.bsky.social's debut novel for @thetemzreview.bsky.social. www.thetemzreview.com/sinclair-joh...

thetemzreview.com

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Reviewed by Michelle Sinclair

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Ian Coldwater 🧊🚫 @lookitup.baby · 30/09/2026

BREAKING NEWS: “Do geese see God” is a palindrome

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Jessica Ellis @baddestmamajama.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I have separated the art from the artist and am now whipping the art to stiff peaks, after which I will gently fold it into the artist before baking at 350 til golden and puffed

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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 28/09/2026

The lie that privatization will reduce wait times is already being exposed, but that won’t stop political leaders from continuing to try to destroy our public healthcare system.

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Liz Johnston @lizjohnston.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I do get the frustration with people who claim not to know a song that’s always on in the grocery store, or what have you, but truly, I don’t think I’d ever heard this one before my mom played it for me, despite it breaking records. My mom, though, has heard it often enough to love and share it.

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@bookhugpress @bookhugpress.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

"At what point do we admit that the crisis is growing worse, and nothing we do is working?" The Fall-Down Effect by @lizjohnston.bsky.social is reviewed by Adam McPhee. adamsnotes.substack.com/p/the-fall-d...

adamsnotes.substack.com

The Fall-Down Effect

Adam’s Notes for September 10, 2026

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Michelle Cyca @michellecyca.com · 25/09/2026

bizarre to me that so much reporting on housing fails to interrogate the assumptions that homeowners (1) should always get to approve of changes to their neighbourhood (2) should be protected by government from any possible decline in property values www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

cbc.ca

Toronto needs more homes. These neighbours say they're paying the price | CBC News

An elderly downtown couple says they’re shocked and upset that the city has approved a duplex next door to their three-story Victorian home that they say will tower metres above their chimney and rend...

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Liz Johnston @lizjohnston.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Oh, wow! Thank you so much. Will it be in their fall issue? I'll keep an eye out for it!

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Liz Johnston @lizjohnston.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I'm never going to get over the pleasure of seeing another writer engage so deeply with my novel. So grateful to Michelle Sinclair for writing about The Fall-Down Effect (@bookhugpress.bsky.social) for the TEMZ review. www.thetemzreview.com/sinclair-joh...

thetemzreview.com

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Reviewed by Michelle Sinclair

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Sarah Jane Cervenak @sjcerv.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

“Gravity and flight are persistently unspoken twins.” Dr. Tina Campt, “Gravity” from ‘Thinking from Black: A Lexicon”, (book arrived today!!) edited by The Practicing Refusal Collective @hystericalblkns.bsky.social

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Liz Johnston @lizjohnston.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Getting excited for Toronto WOTS September 26 & 27! On Sunday, September 27, I'll be at @bookhugpress.bsky.social's booth from 1:30–2:00 p.m., signing copies of The Fall-Down Effect, then, at 2:30, I’ll be on a Debut Novels panel with Tyson Stewart and Jinwoo Park on The Neighbourhood Stage. Woot!

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Mary Gillis @marygillis.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The fact that he views public assets as belonging to the government is the problem. They don't belong to the government. They belong to the public. They belong to us. Not the Liberals, not Parliament, not him. Us. He's a caretaker, not an owner.

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Also, let's be quite clear about this: generative AI is not conscious and cannot become conscious. It is not actual "artificial intelligence." That is bullshit.

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

If a generative AI CEO is telling you something, take it with a grain of salt the size of an iceberg. So if they want regulation now, it is more likely something to do with finances than an immediate existential threat. These dipshits do not care about existential threats other than going bankrupt.

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Liz Johnston @lizjohnston.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Huge thanks to Lola Opatayo for having me on Journey of the Art Podcast to discuss The Fall-Down Effect (@bookhugpress.bsky.social). What a privilege to be asked such deep, thoughtful questions that I came away new insights into my own writing! youtu.be/i36erZ2xG1o

youtu.be

Ep 47 | The fall-down effect of climate change | Liz Johnston

YouTube video by Journey of the Art

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Liz Johnston @lizjohnston.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Big thanks to all the readers who’ve borrowed The Fall-Down Effect!

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@bookhugpress @bookhugpress.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Thank you to all the library users who borrowed and read Canadian independently published books in August, including The Fall-Down Effect by @lizjohnston.bsky.social and Olga Ravn's The Employees and The Wax Child!

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Liz Johnston @lizjohnston.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Oh yeah! That’s a fantastic magazine rack/shelf!

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andrea bennett (they/them) @akkabah.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

so much of the time what's meant disparagingly by "woke" is accepting broadly established historical facts & asserting that some measure of justice or change should now take place

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Matt Bell @mdbell79.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

“I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth. The only truth I can understand or express is, logically defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor.” ―Ursula K. Le Guin

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Liz Johnston @lizjohnston.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Only met Soraya once, but what a warm and friendly person. Such sad news.

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@bookhugpress @bookhugpress.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

The Fall-Down Effect is "constructed like a piece of Shaker furniture. The point-of-view shifts throughout the book dovetail so smoothly that readers wouldn’t feel a joint if they could touch them.” Julia Lichtblau on @lizjohnston.bsky.social debut for The Common. thecommononline.org/what-it-take...

thecommononline.org

What It Takes To Save the Trees and the Birds: Review of The Fall-Down Effect and Field Notes from an Extinction

JULIA LICHTBLAU <br> The story is told through several narrative devices, primarily Green’s notebook entries, interspersed with newspaper clippings, which feed the mystery at the center of the book. T...

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The Narwhal @thenarwhal.ca · 20/08/2026

“We really have to get off fossil fuels.” Wildfires this summer have displaced many in Canada — and even burned down entire communities. Fire scientist Mike Flannigan spoke with us on data he’s collected about wildfires in B.C. — and what we can do in both the short- and long-term.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 20/08/2026

I will keep posting these videos on bike lanes that Ford is threatening to remove daily until morale improves. Today we are on Bloor at Brunswick, during afternoon rush hour on a Wednesday. No congestion to be found. 38 bikes and 25 cars over 2 light cycles.

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rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

if avoiding an AI future constitutes a ‘generational L’ then christ just let me take the L www.patreon.com/raxkingisdea...

If an Al future is what I'm getting left behind from, then Christ, just leave me behind.
A girl can only pivot so much, hoss, and I hung up my pivotin' boots some time ago. I don't make videos even though that was supposedly the future of writing ten years ago — I mean, I guess I do, but they're little banjo practice videos for my friends, not expressions of a desperate careerist impulse. I use social media with the attention-crazed dopesickness of an addict, not the care and forethought of a professional, as any cursory read of my posts will confirm. I'm a writer by trade — a creative, as you might say — and here you are, running a business you don't even understand into the ground, deskilling my trade and expecting a thank you when you explain how you're doing it. If I don't devalue myself the way you continually devalue me, you warn, l'll be left behind. Okay, says I! Quit making it my problem and go! The dust you leave me in will settle, and in the meantime, I will keep doing my work in much the way I've done it since | first became literate.

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Liz Johnston @lizjohnston.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

So grateful to Julia Lichtblau for this brilliant reading of The Fall-Down Effect alongside Eoghan Walls's Field Notes from an Extinction. (cc @bookhugpress.bsky.social, @riverstreetwriting.bsky.social)

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Liz Johnston @lizjohnston.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Thanks to Kerry Clare for this review!

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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

When you read a book only a fraction of what you get from the experience is the information in the book. The vast majority of what comes from reading is a new experience of yourself that comes to exist in relation to the book’s unique patterns.

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Liz Johnston @lizjohnston.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Hurray! Just received the new issue of @thenewquarterly.bsky.social, which includes my swimming essay, “Individual Medley,” alongside work by pals and so many writers I admire. What an incredible lineup of contributors! Excited to dive in this weekend, preferably by a lake.

Cover of The New Quarterly, blue on top third, bottom two thirds a black-and-white photo of a person dressed in black, their head stuck in the sand or in a hold or crevice in a rocky landscape.

Table of Contents of the latest issue of TNQ, "Inside This Issue" with my essay listed under "Writer At Large".

Title page of my essay "Individual Medley" in The New Quarterly

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Mary Gillis @marygillis.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Like all Canadian government surveys on AI, this is hilariously pro-AI. But it only takes like 5 minutes to fill out, and at the end you can make it clear that the only focus of the government when it comes to AI and culture is that Canadian artists need copyright protections from AI scraping.

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@bookhugpress @bookhugpress.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

"Whatever grew back would not equal what had been lost.” The Fall-Down Effect by @lizjohnston.bsky.social is reviewed by Grace Henkel for the Literary Review of Canada. reviewcanada.substack.com/p/bookworm-n...

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Heather J. Witchy🧙 Wood @rollwithheather.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Apparently biting, snarky comments on rigged surveys can sometimes sway the powers that be.

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Shawn Micallef @shawnmicallef.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Every letter. Every post. Every sign. Every call. It all counted.

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Liz Johnston @lizjohnston.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

You're making a losing investment and selling our future. Shame.😡

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Liz Johnston @lizjohnston.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Yes, same. So mad and heartbroken.

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Denise Balkissoon @balkissoon.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Yesterday it felt like 40+ C in Toronto. Today it's cooler... because smoke from the wildfire that has obliterated Collins First Nation in northern Ontario is blocking the sun. Seems like time to re-up my column from last year on the summertime blues. thenarwhal.ca/seasonal-dep...

thenarwhal.ca

I have seasonal depression in the summer now | The Narwhal

Extreme heat, wildfires and pests — fuelled by climate change — threaten to make summer the worst season in Canada. It’s time to talk about it

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Brick, A Literary Journal @brickliterary.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Zadie Smith's obsessions. Read more in Brick's Summer issue! brickmag.com/obsessions/

On a pale pink background with large white lettering in the background (snippets of the letter O and N, part of the word "obsessions"), a quote from Smith.

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