The Weekender: In Trump’s America, the Press Must Stand Together, or Fall Alone

It took literally no time for the first presidential press conference with Donald Trump to get hostile. The damn thing opened with incoming press secretary Sean Spicer attacking CNN and Buzzfeed for telling two different stories about the very same concerning topic: the possibility that Russia has compromising information about the President-Elect. Somewhere between Trump’s non-announcement about not-divesting himself from his businesses and presenting a big pile of folders filled with nothing, the 45th President of the United States took things a bit further by calling a major media outlet “fake news” for reporting a story about him he didn’t like. But then something more remarkable happened, a roomful of that reporter’s colleagues did nothing. Continue reading “The Weekender: In Trump’s America, the Press Must Stand Together, or Fall Alone” →

Open Sources Show Notes for Thursday January 12, 2017

It’s time to catch up on some punditry on this week’s edition of Open Sources Guelph. With Scotty back from his trip to the dentist, we’re going to dive back into the latest news and come up with some opinions about the same. For instance, the prime minister gave his cabinet a shuffle this week as he’s tries to get the new year started on better footing than he ended the year with. We’ll then look at the Conservative leadership race, where at least two people are in a race to see who can be the more Trump-like. Speaking of the President-Elect, we’ll check in on his doings and then examine how a beloved film actress taught us all to rebel again… Continue reading “Open Sources Show Notes for Thursday January 12, 2017” →

Adam’s Award Winners for 2016

By the time this article posts, our annual year end awards show will be over. In case you missed it, or you want to save the results for posterity, here’s the breakdown of how the Open Sources Guelph team saw the year that was… Continue reading “Adam’s Award Winners for 2016” →

The Weekender: What Just Happened? A Year in Review-ish.

I was watching Batman Returns the other night (it’s a Christmas movie, okay!), and it seemed like it was rubbing the past year in my face with all the big budget gothery that Tim Burton is famous for. The plot sees the Dark Knight caught between a powerful woman trying to assert dominance in a male-crowded field with an annoying habit of coming back just when you think she’s gone, and a gross trust-fund brat whose disgusting inside and out, openly misogynistic, and wickedly obsessed with his own revenge and self-satisfaction who cons a beleaguered people into thinking he’s their hero. Sound familiar? Continue reading “The Weekender: What Just Happened? A Year in Review-ish.” →

The Weekender: When is a Promise Not a Promise?

After the Liberals won election last year, some civic minded web builders thought, “Hey, Justin Trudeau and his party made a whole lot of promises in this campaign, why don’t we measure their success?” There’s been so much talk lately about promises broke, and promises seeming like they’re bring broken, I decided to check out the TrudeauMeter, and the score is 90 not started, 68 in progress, 37 achieved and 28 broken. It’s easy to understand the compunction. It’s only natural that we want to measure things according to their success or failure. It’s another way of saying something is good (successful) or bad (failure), but should be using something as subjective as campaign promises to be the judge of a government’s success? Continue reading “The Weekender: When is a Promise Not a Promise?” →

Open Sources Show Notes for Thursday December 1, 2016

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we say goodbye to a dictator. Or maybe that’s goodbye to a working class hero. There’s a lot of controversy there as the prime minister knows, and we’ll keep serving up the controversy as Justin Trudeu’s Liberals seem to be hedging on that electoral reform he so vehemently promised last fall. Speaking of flip-flops, we’ll head to Toronto where the mayor there now thinks that tolls aren’t so bad, and we’ll round up the week by talking about everyone’s favourite President-Elect whose wrath we expect to feel on Twitter any day. Continue reading “Open Sources Show Notes for Thursday December 1, 2016” →

Open Sources Show Notes for Thursday November 24, 2016

Here on Open Sources Guelph, we can’t guarantee that we’ll always get them right, but also promise not to intentionally mislead you. It’s an important distinction this week as we dig into the phenomenon of fake news, and whether or not it had an effect on the U.S. Presidential election. Also this week, we’ll talk about how if you can walk and talk, you can go to Brock, and get elected to Queen’s Park as we look at the Ontario by-elections. We’ll also look ahead to the 2017 British Columbia provincial election, and how in another 13 years, Santa won’t be able to leave coal in your stocking anymore. Continue reading “Open Sources Show Notes for Thursday November 24, 2016” →