Author | Lightnews

Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Sep 29

Found at 8:23 pm on Sept. 28 on Alejandro Kirk's Wikipedia entry. You know it's gonna get removed as the baseball obsessives scour everything for clinical rigor, but in the meantime, let's enjoy life's little editorial grand slams. #bluejays #toronto #kirk #grandslam

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Sep 14

Highest compliment from daughter, 5y: "I wish we had another dad so you could be a kid like us and we could play with each other like kids and you didn't have to tell us to do things."

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Aug 24

Some people go the convertible route; others, a boat. But my midlife crisis is the mildly deflating realization that Star Trek: Voyager might actually be the best post-TNG Star Trek series.

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Aug 13

It feels like the random and arbitrary nature of this is entirely the point -- to keep people off-balance, and to increase their feelings of vulnerability. At this point, what does an average foreign national entering the US believe their own risk of detainment to be?

Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · Aug 13

New Zealand woman and six-year-old son detained for three weeks by Ice in US enduring ‘terrifying’ ordeal
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

New Zealand woman and six-year-old son detained for three weeks by Ice in US enduring ‘terrifying’ ordeal

Sarah Shaw, who has a US visa and lives in Washington state, was detained after attempting to re-enter US from Canada

www.theguardian.com

Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Aug 12

Fires have started in Nova Scotia. Painful memories from 2023. Many friends and family in the area. Besides COVID, few things have united Canadians in the 2020s, from coast to coast, like wildfires. It's not synchronicity -- it's an actual pattern.

Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jul 25

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jul 25

Next up: queue

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jul 24

All 37 remaining people who talk on phones exclusively do so by holding it in front of their mouth, bellowing as if mic technology was in its infancy, while the interlocutor bleats back on speakerphone -- because holding a phone up to your ear while talking would be a humiliating defeat.

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jul 24

Cars are the ultimate risk mitigator: if you kill someone behind the wheel, you are basically given the "airbag" of relative immunity.

I'll never understand the 20th and 21st century's obsession with the car, and the relentless need to pattern our lives and ethics around these fucking things.

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jul 23

Can journos stop referring to shootings as "brazen"? Unless it is accidental, any intentional (and especially any public) shooting is inherently brazen. The number of "surreptitious" shootings per year has got to be vanishingly small; most of the time, the brazenness is the point.

Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jul 17

Nice. Is their side hustle an in-house therapist to deal with the inevitable cases of psychosis that will emerge when their patients go full Lawnmower Man in the middle of having their vas deferens lasered? Why not offer LSD or mushrooms on top of the nitrous? Make "tripping balls" a reality.

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jul 15

I'm in awe at Valerie Bauerlein's "The Devil at His Elbow". As a true crime fan (I'm basic; don't judge), I was familiar with the Murdaugh saga; had seen the Netflix specials, etc. But this book is on a whole other level. Meticulous, Gothic, relentless. Author as True Detective, not law enforcement.

Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jul 14

I would characterize the air quality in Toronto today as "umami".

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jul 12

Bless the Park Attendant and his Water. Bless that he gets breaks in the shade. May his chemicals cleanse the pool. May he keep the wading for his People, Ages 0-12.

Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jul 12

"Baba, it's so hot my butt is melting." #withrowpark

Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jul 7

I have been silently dreading the 20th anniversary of 7/7. The full impact of what I witnessed that day only fully manifested within the last 5 years -- an unwelcome visitor. It has taken work to accept that this event changed me, and that seeking support to address this was not a sign of weakness.

When the bombs went off, I just ran

On London's streets, movement became a kind of salvation, a solution to help absorb the horrors around me

www.theglobeandmail.com

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Reposted by Alex Willis

Tabatha Southey🇨🇦 @tabathasouthey.bsky.social · Jun 22

It’s not just that the President of the United States has announced on social media that the US has bombed Iran, it’s that the President of the United States bombed Iran so that he could announce it on social media.

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jun 20

As a late Gen Xer, I am fascinated by our sandwiched role between our neighbours' respective pathos.

Boomer: Something bootstraps! Forever jobs! Fuck the world!
Millennial: *pops pill* I guess we'll have to work forever to clean this up
Gen X: *long exhale, puts down bong* that's a bummer, man

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jun 18

I'm confused. Did the IRS stop collecting income tax information? Or perhaps this is a Freudian slip, reflecting that the Crypto Barons in Washington are now just fully avoiding fiduciary responsibility of their own interests relative to the public trust?

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jun 17

LinkedIn in 2025 is All AI, All The Time. If you're not looking at AI slop images hastily assembled by motivational "thought leaders", you're reading anxious posts about AI taking all our jobs. I can appreciate the ontological dimensions of the AI threat, but the site is just too sweaty right now.

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jun 15

My 5yo son this morning, acting as waiter, holding paper and pen, approaches me in bed and asks, "For your father's day breakfast, would you like: coffee, alcohol, milk, or water?"

(For the record, my response was "yes.")

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jun 7

City of Toronto garbage bin, High Park

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jun 7

It might be fashionable to dislike mothers in law, but when your Chinese MIL makes you a ready supply of homemade jiaozi for on-demand lunches, you remain eminently unfashionable.

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jun 5

I was nearly dethroned as the editor of my undergrad newspaper for over-playing this in the newsroom, just after it was released. Persecution!

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Alex Willis @alexjwillis.bsky.social · Jun 3

The most grating sound in the world is Democratic voters breathlessly defending themselves with some version of "I didn't vote for this". Yeah, well, technically neither did the other side, but in balance, it doesn't seem too disruptive to either group.

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