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Everything in one place. Articles argue from the research; papers are longer original work; research documents are kept whole; concepts and open problems are what the research turned up.

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01Versioning documents that keep changing: git snapshots, the Darwin variorum, scholarly version rules, and the reasons only an author can recordSoftware can store every state of a changing document and work out the differences whenever asked. It cannot recover why a change was made or where a moved passage came from, and once an AI drafts the edits, that reason is the author's share of the work.ArticleAI-directed development57 quotes · 3 sources · 16 min19 Oct

02Designing social systems with AI instead of choosing left or right: AI-written tax and redistribution rules, Community Notes, and who sets the objectiveAI can now draft tax schedules, redistribution rules and compromise statements, and some of them win votes against the familiar ideological designs. Each one still needs someone to decide what counts as better, and outside the lab pricing software, engagement-driven feeds and pollsters' synthetic respondents are already making that decision.ArticleEconomics68 quotes · 4 sources · 15 min18 Oct

03Toronto's 2026 federal housing partnership: which of the 18 projects were already announced or under way, and why announced homes cannot be added upMost of the 5,605 homes Ottawa and Toronto announced in August 2026 were in projects the city had already announced or where site work had begun. Each government counts a building at the stage it pays for, so announced totals keep growing while Toronto's construction starts fall.ArticleHousing35 quotes · 3 sources · 15 min18 Oct

04Portraiture as a research method: Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot's "painting with words", how it differs from ethnography, and the case against itPortraiture puts the researcher's own judgement at the centre of a study and measures success by whether readers recognise the truth of the portrait, not by whether anyone could repeat it. Its sharpest critic says that leaves no way to check the portraitist; its founder's answer is that a visible self demands more discipline, not less.ArticleVideo & design48 quotes · 1 source · 9 min11 Oct

05How investigative YouTube video essays are built: the cold open, the late turn to meaning, and the channels that borrow the form without the evidenceThe strongest forensic video essays open on an artifact, walk through evidence in the order a viewer would experience it, and say what it all means only late in the video. That delayed turn is what persuades, which is why the same structure works just as well for channels whose evidence does not hold up.ArticleVideo & design46 quotes · 1 source · 9 min11 Oct

06Paying to reach curious readers in 2026: ChatGPT ads, feed ads, paid newsletter recommendations, and the labelling rulesChatGPT now sells self-serve ads, but they cost about 3–8× more per impression than feed ads and are hard to measure, so the cheapest curious readers are still on Meta and Reddit. An ad can be the whole useful answer and still carry its label: the rules draw the line at fake people and hidden sponsors, not at ads that are worth reading.ArticleAttention & feeds66 quotes · 1 source · 11 min11 Oct

07How Canada's public-sector employees vote: the Canadian Election Study evidence, Ottawa's ridings, and the union endorsementsPublic-sector workers in Canada lean modestly left of private-sector workers, and most of that lean belongs to unionized professionals and managers. The city crews whose unions endorse the NDP vote much like their private-sector counterparts, and no released poll gives a party-by-party split to settle it.ArticleCanadian economy & policy49 quotes · 1 source · 11 min11 Oct

08Paying yourself to do your own tasks: what the incentive trials show, and whether an earn-back subscription could workFinancial incentives move behaviour while they run, and losses move people more than equal gains. Paying yourself a wage from your own pocket removes most of what the trials rely on; a subscription you earn back by doing the work is a loss-framed stake, and the research rates it the version most likely to work. Nobody has tested it.ArticleADHD & attention37 quotes · 1 source · 8 min10 Oct

09Canadian recessions and the mortgage channel: rate decisions, CMHC, and five decades of housing-led downturnsEvery major Canadian downturn since 1980 carries a monetary-policy fingerprint, and housing is how the decision reaches people. The clearest case is 1990, where the campaign overshot its own target and Toronto prices did not pass their 1989 peak until 2002.ArticleHousing61 quotes · 1 source · 10 min10 Oct

10Temporary foreign workers and Canadian innovation: what the automation evidence shows, and the study nobody has runThe research that says immigration drives innovation studies points-selected skilled migration. Canada's intake since 2016 has been mostly temporary and low-wage, and the causal work on cheap labour runs the other way — a 1% rise in low-skill wages lifts automation patenting 2–5%. The Canadian version of that study has never been done.ArticleCanadian economy & policy57 quotes · 1 source · 11 min10 Oct

11Whey protein in hot black coffee: why it curdles, what the heat-stable versions cost, and what is comingCollagen disappears into a hot cup; whey turns it into pale lumps that smell of sulfur. Coffee's acidity sits almost exactly where whey is least stable, and it is served above the temperature that unfolds the protein. The heat-stable ingredients that exist solve it by cutting the protein up, which makes it bitter.ArticleHealth & self-care49 quotes · 1 source · 11 min10 Oct

12Bill C-11 and Canadian creators in 2026: what the CRTC has actually imposed, and what is still a predictionCreators were told the Online Streaming Act would cost them their foreign audiences by teaching recommendation systems that Canadian videos go unwatched. Three years after royal assent the regulator has imposed no discoverability requirement on anyone, the money is stayed by a court, and no study has measured the harm.ArticleCanadian media42 quotes · 1 source · 9 min10 Oct

13Topping up low wages in Canada: the Canada Workers Benefit, employer capture, and the workers who never fileCanada already runs the alternative to a basic income — a refundable credit that tops up low earnings automatically. Two things decide whether it works: employers absorb part of any wage subsidy where no floor exists, and about 9% of eligible earners never file a return.ArticleEconomics46 quotes · 1 source · 9 min10 Oct

14How YouTube, Instagram and TikTok rank video in 2026: satisfaction signals, AI content understanding, and penalties for repostingRecommendation feeds have stopped scoring behaviour alone. A language model now watches the content and judges it — better than the crowd-sourced raters it replaced — while reposting is penalised in the ranking itself. Much of what creators are taught describes the system of a decade ago.ArticleAttention & feeds43 quotes · 1 source · 8 min10 Oct

15Measuring the economy with new instruments: scraped prices, card-spending trackers and satellite imageryFour old arguments explain why an economy resists being computed, and none of them have gone away. What computation did change is measurement — scraped prices, card records and satellite images that report what is happening weeks before the official numbers do.ArticlePrices & markets57 quotes · 1 source · 9 min10 Oct

16Immigrants, temporary residents and Canada's job growth since 2020: what the Labour Force Survey can and cannot showNearly all of Canada's post-pandemic job growth went to immigrants and temporary residents. But no Canadian government table publishes that split the way the American one does — every version of the figure is built by hand from an annual series that undercounts the very group it counts.ArticleCanadian economy & policy36 quotes · 1 source · 7 min10 Oct

17Missed workouts and broken streaks: how fast strength, mood and habit actually decayTwo weeks away from the gym costs almost nothing in muscle — strength holds and the body keeps a record that makes the regain fast. What drains in that time is mood, dopamine tone and the automatic habit, which is exactly what restarting runs on.ArticleADHD & attention57 quotes · 1 source · 10 min10 Oct

18Alcohol blackouts: how ethanol blocks memory formation, and why drinking speed decides itIn an alcohol blackout the drinker is awake, talking and deciding, while the brain's ability to save the night is chemically held shut. Nothing comes back afterwards because nothing was stored — and how fast the drinking goes decides whether it happens at all.ArticleHealth & self-care39 quotes · 1 source · 9 min10 Oct

19Fred Hutch's HSV gene therapy in 2026: mouse and guinea-pig results, no human trial, and the antivirals arriving firstA gene therapy clears up to 97% of dormant herpes in mice. In the animal that relapses the way people do it clears above 30%, nobody has filed to test it in a person, and the drugs arriving first suppress the virus rather than remove it.ArticleDrugs & public health20 quotes · 1 source · 6 min10 Oct

20Job guarantees in Austria, France and India: employment effects, cost per job, and the designs that trap peopleA job for anyone who wants one sounds utopian. It has been tried — in an Austrian town, in 83 French territories and across rural India. It works, it costs money, and the design decides whether it is a springboard or a trap.ArticleEconomics49 quotes · 1 source · 8 min10 Oct

21Language models and idea diversity: homogenisation within a session, across users, and between companiesAsk a language model for something new and it pulls toward what everyone else would say — across companies, over long sessions, and across everyone using it. Real novelty has a shape the models do not reach for on their own.ArticleAI-directed development39 quotes · 1 source · 7 min10 Oct

22Opioid deaths and overdose calls in Hamilton: why the two counts moved in opposite directionsHamilton's opioid deaths have fallen every year since 2021, while paramedic calls for overdoses more than doubled. The death count is measuring a drug supply that no longer exists.ArticleDrugs & public health45 quotes · 2 sources · 7 min10 Oct

23Canada's short-term rental rules: supply, prices, and the mid-term rental tier that never formedShort-term rentals add flexible supply, and competition lowers prices. Canadian cities banned them anyway — and cut off a tier between a hotel and a lease just as it was forming.ArticleHousing24 quotes · 2 sources · 5 min10 Oct

24Canada's short-term rental bans and rents: what returned to the long-term market, and what actually moved pricesCanadian cities restricted short-term rentals to bring homes back to renters. Few came back, rents fell for other reasons, and the bans squeezed a new kind of housing that sits between a hotel and a lease.ArticleHousing41 quotes · 2 sources · 7 min10 Oct

25Why people keep scrolling: habit, infinite feeds, and the evidence against the dopamine explanationThe best evidence says people keep scrolling because of habit and a feed that never ends — not because of a dopamine jackpot. And engagement-ranked feeds keep showing people what they say they do not want.ArticleAttention & feeds38 quotes · 1 source · 8 min9 Oct

26Unverified hunches in AI-assisted software work: the certainty handoff and one-sided memoryA hunch that feels right gets handed to a collaborator as if it had been checked. When the collaborator is an AI that starts every session blank, nobody checks it at all.ArticleAI-directed development49 quotes · 2 sources · 10 min9 Oct

27Fixed times versus flexible routines in exercise habits: what the paid-to-exercise trials foundPaid to exercise at a set time, people did less than those paid to exercise whenever they liked — and quit faster afterwards. What helps is a fixed start and an open workout.ArticleHabits & maintenance38 quotes · 1 source · 8 min4 Oct

28Self-extinguishing maintenance: treatments that stop because they are working, and the relapse that followsSome problems only stay fixed while you keep treating them — a gap between two teeth, toes pressed too tight. The treatment works, the problem vanishes, it looks cured, you stop, and it comes back. This research named the cycle and the mistake behind it.ArticleHabits & maintenance37 quotes · 1 source · 10 min4 Oct

29Personalised pricing software and the return of haggling, run from the seller's sideFrom the middle of the nineteenth century everyone paid the number on the tag. Pricing software is bringing the bazaar back — except this time the seller reads you, and you see nothing.ArticlePrices & markets48 quotes · 9 min3 Oct

30Who will count an AI assistant's influence: advertising attribution after the agentEvery shift in how advertising is paid for happened when a new party could count a new event. The agent that now does the buying can count the one that matters — and reports it to no one.ArticleAttribution & credit50 quotes · 11 min2 Oct

31The counter-irritant spiral: McLuhan, Hans Selye, and relief that deepens the need for reliefIn 1964 McLuhan, reading the stress researcher Hans Selye, described relief that deepens the need for relief "like a drug habit." What users stop noticing is not the drug but their own shifted baseline.ArticleMcLuhan & media theory24 quotes · 8 min1 Oct