Mattea Roach
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mattearoach.bsky.social
Mattea Roach
@mattearoach.bsky.social
2.7K followers 130 following 68 posts
host of Bookends on CBC Radio/podcast platforms everywhere, former 23x Jeopardy champion, slowly also writing // everything that happens will happen today
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Reposted by Mattea Roach
adamserwer.bsky.social
Great piece by Zadie Smith. When the right talks about classics or "Western" culture, these works are only important to the extent that it demonstrates their superiority, they have no interest in art in and of itself beyond that www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
You know a country by its values. By what a country values. And it turns out that what a country values can change over time. Sometimes, though, there’s a sort of cognitive delay between the country you think you are in, and the country you’ve actually become. For example, you can keep selling yourself, to foreigners, as the country of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, and luring busloads of tourists to Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath, and put a statue of George Orwell in front of the BBC, and imagine yourself a cultured and literate nation, which the rest of the world admires for its devotion to the written word – but if you then chronically underfund your cultural institutions, and treat your cultural workers with contempt, many people will suspect you of being full of it. And as the decades pass – and fewer and fewer Shakespeares and Austens and Orwells emerge from your little island – even more people will begin to suspect that in truth you do not value culture at all, and are in fact running a giant heritage museum in which the only cultural workers you respect are the dead ones.
November 12, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Reposted by Mattea Roach
jeetheer.bsky.social
This isn't a closing election argument, it's Vidkun Quisling explaining why surrender is better than resistance.
November 4, 2025 at 3:00 AM
Reposted by Mattea Roach
brucearthur.bsky.social
They say baseball breaks your heart, and the Blue Jays are a Hall of Fame what if team, now. So what does it mean to watch your team lose the World Series in one of the greatest games ever played? It means you got to feel something; you just didn’t get to choose what. www.thestar.com/sports/blue-...
Bruce Arthur: These Blue Jays are a Hall of Fame ‘what if’ team. The World Series loss just makes the heartbreak worse
This World Series will echo across Canada for decades, because Toronto lost the MLB championship in one of the greatest baseball games ever played.
www.thestar.com
November 2, 2025 at 9:41 PM
Reposted by Mattea Roach
normcharlatan.bsky.social
CBC presents This Hour has 22 Innings
October 28, 2025 at 6:02 AM
mattearoach.bsky.social
Alejandro Kirk is a Scorpio and this is his season let’s GO
October 28, 2025 at 1:22 AM
Reposted by Mattea Roach
evystadium.bsky.social
YOU READY SHOHEI??????????????
October 21, 2025 at 3:04 AM
Reposted by Mattea Roach
graphicmatt.com
My @thestar.com column this week: after Toronto Council requested reports on potential new rules for activities like raves, jet ski riding and pickleball, I’ve got an important reminder: it is a very good thing that people are having fun in the city.

Fun is good.

www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...
Matt Elliott: Now, Toronto has noisy pickleball games in its crosshairs. Are we becoming the City That Fun Forgot?
Tending to the whims of grumblers might make for good politics in election season, but it often makes for lousy governance.
www.thestar.com
October 21, 2025 at 3:54 PM
mattearoach.bsky.social
Every day is a beautiful day to live in Toronto but TODAY MOST OF ALL!!!!!
October 21, 2025 at 3:26 AM
Reposted by Mattea Roach
markkersten.bsky.social
“One day we will be brought to the [International Criminal Court in the Hague], not because of Gaza, because of what happens in the West Bank and we will have no good defence. Because it happens in front of our eyes and no one seems to care.” - former Israeli PM Olmert: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Canadian charities complicit in helping fund Israeli settlement movement in West Bank, critics say | CBC News
Tax deductible donations made by Canadians to groups that financially support West Bank settlements that are illegal under international law are continuing in the face of escalating attacks on Palesti...
www.cbc.ca
October 19, 2025 at 8:01 PM
mattearoach.bsky.social
Any time I have to drive anywhere to run an errand I start to understand within about ten minutes why so many regular drivers’ views on municipal politics seem to be entirely informed by shit like traffic and parking. I don’t think it’s right but I get it!!
October 16, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Reposted by Mattea Roach
lukelebrun.ca
Between the purge of late night comedians, Trump allies buying up TV networks, Hollywood studios and social media platforms, and news organizations getting slapped with multi-billion dollar lawsuits, there is a full-court press to dismantle the information systems propping up American democracy
ABC Suspends ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ “Indefinitely” Over Charlie Kirk Comments
The network’s decision comes after affiliate group Nexstar said it would pull the late-night show, and the chairman of the FCC suggested he might take action against ABC.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
September 17, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Reposted by Mattea Roach
graphicmatt.com
Trying to come up with an equivalent to this speed camera story but for transit riders. Imagine if, in wake of hypothetical reports of people getting mad about fines and vandalizing Presto readers, the gov was just like, well, I guess we should stop fare enforcement. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
'We are prepared to help get rid of them,' Ont. government says after 16 speed cameras vandalized | CBC News
Sixteen Toronto speed cameras were found damaged on Tuesday morning, only two days after the Parkside Drive speed camera was cut down for the seventh time in less than a year.
www.cbc.ca
September 10, 2025 at 1:46 PM
mattearoach.bsky.social
Tried to do a good deed by letting my brother borrow my carry-on suitcase to go back to NS bc his is broken… now I have to go to NS as well so guess who’s stuck using the busted suitcase 🙄
August 27, 2025 at 3:37 AM
Reposted by Mattea Roach
amybrown.xyz
this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like
Why should I write better when a machine can do it for me? Because actually no one can do it for you, because your voice is unique among all the people on earth. Siri never petted a horse's neck. Alexa has never been ghosted by the captain of the football team. But you have lived, your heart is beating, you have suffered, and you have something important to say. It's a human's job, to use words, and whatever job you give to a machine, that part of your brain goes dark. Maybe it's worth it when it comes to remembering phone numbers and directions, but when that part of your brain that uses words goes dark, that's a vast area that's very close to your soul. Don't let some internet platform convince you that what you have to say and create isn't worthwhile. Words are the echo of your soul. Honing that echo matters.
August 22, 2025 at 2:20 PM
mattearoach.bsky.social
Last weekend I injured my calf in a manner befitting someone at least twice my age, and now my biggest concern is whether I can hobble to Oasis NEXT weekend without incurring permanent damage… it’s a hard knock life
August 14, 2025 at 11:12 PM
Reposted by Mattea Roach
ashtonpittman.bsky.social
The five brave Palestinian journalists whom Israel targeted and killed today (left-right):
-Anas al-Sharif (correspondent)
-Mohammed Qreiqeh (correspondent) -Ibrahim Zaher (camera operator)
-Muhammad Al-Khalidi (photojournalist)
-Mohammed Noufal (camera operator)
-Moamen Aliwa (camera operator)
a young man holds a young boy and girl in front of rubble a man holds a microphone with an al jazeera logo while wearing a vest with the word press on it a young man in glasses wearing a protective vest with the word press on it leans against a car a collage shows three young men smiling
August 11, 2025 at 3:17 AM
Reposted by Mattea Roach
aaronwherry.bsky.social
Good post by Fred DeLorey, pushing back against complaints (from non-Nova Scotians?) about Nova Scotia's fire prevention measures.

freddelorey.substack.com/p/nova-scoti...
August 8, 2025 at 9:09 PM
Reposted by Mattea Roach
parismarx.com
A journalist with Canada’s public broadcaster was not allowed on the Canadian plane air dropping aid into Gaza because of Israeli restrictions.

When she made it onto a Jordanian plane, she was not allowed to film what she saw on the ground in Gaza because Israel forbids it from being shown.
August 5, 2025 at 4:06 AM
Reposted by Mattea Roach
phdhurtbrain.bsky.social
Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller” (1936)
A picture of two paragraphs from Benjamin’s The Storyteller about how modernity has removed death as a public process and component of life. “Today people live in rooms that have never been touched by death, dry dwellers of eternity, and when their end comes they are stowed away in sanatoria or hospitals by their heirs.”
August 3, 2025 at 2:30 PM
mattearoach.bsky.social
How many books do you need for a weekend at the cottage - probably five or six, surely? How many pairs of socks? Two should be enough
July 31, 2025 at 7:22 PM
mattearoach.bsky.social
Bought a new air conditioner from (redacted big box store) and immediately started getting instagram ads from the same store for the exact air conditioner I just bought… great work, all involved
July 9, 2025 at 12:31 AM
mattearoach.bsky.social
Missing basically everything to do with Pride this year bc I have to move apartments but on the bright (?) side I am spending the day of the dyke march cruising around in a uhaul… very on theme
June 28, 2025 at 8:06 PM
mattearoach.bsky.social
A real toxic trait of mine is I will compare any location I ever visit in terms of how much I like it compared to Cape Breton
May 25, 2025 at 3:25 PM
mattearoach.bsky.social
Love to watch Jeopardy Masters and hear proper nouns I’ve never heard before in my life
May 22, 2025 at 12:40 AM
Reposted by Mattea Roach
jm-mcgrath.bsky.social
cheer up Toronto, they've set the precedent that mid-size Great Lakes metros can also have Cardinals that become Popes, we'll get it next time
May 8, 2025 at 5:58 PM