The Walrus Magazine

I enjoy the act of writing, with revisions and cringeworthy phrases dotting the long arc to eloquence. It’s all “productive friction”: the struggle makes the writing itself better. I’m Sheldon, the newest member of The Walrus’s board of directors, and a strategist who’s been focused on the ethics of AI for a decade now.

Romanée-Conti made history in 2018 when a bottle of Pinot Noir from its vineyard fetched nearly $600,000 (US) at a Sotheby’s auction. The bottle was one of only 600 produced in 1945. That year was transformative for the estate. The Nazi occupation of France had ended the summer before, and while wine production continued throughout the occupation, bottles from that period are exceedingly rare. The vineyard was uprooted shortly after producing its epic vintage and replanted two years later.

I enjoy the act of writing, with revisions and cringeworthy phrases dotting the long arc to eloquence. It’s all “productive friction”: the struggle makes the writing itself better. I’m Sheldon, the newest member of The Walrus’s board of directors, and a strategist who’s been focused on the ethics of AI for a decade now.

Le sujet des Jeux olympiques de Montréal de 1976 évoque souvent le fameux gouffre financier ou le célèbre toit du Stade olympique… ou plutôt son absence. Pourtant, il y a énormément de choses à célébrer dans ces Jeux. Certains des plus grands athlètes de l’histoire ont brillé sur la scène internationale, dont Nadia Comăneci, Bruce Jenner, Sugar Ray Leonard et bien d’autres.

The 1976 Montreal Olympics are often remembered for their infamous cost overruns and the Olympic Stadium’s iconic roof—or rather, the lack of one. But there’s much more to celebrate about these Games. Some of the greatest athletes in history shone on the world stage, including Nadia Comăneci, Bruce Jenner, Sugar Ray Leonard, and many others.

I enjoy the act of writing, with revisions and cringeworthy phrases dotting the long arc to eloquence. It’s all “productive friction”: the struggle makes the writing itself better. I’m Sheldon, the newest member of The Walrus’s board of directors, and a strategist who’s been focused on the ethics of AI for a decade now.

Everybody knows poets are weird. The turtlenecks, the notebooks, the opium, the daffodils: it’s all a bit much. But even by poetic standards, Margaret Avison was an odd duck. Acutely self-conscious and often physically fragile, she lived with such intense inwardness that even other writers were perturbed. A self-described hermit, she travelled infrequently. She had few indulgences beyond cigarettes. Devoted to her parents, she was rarely more than a train ride from them.

Africa Ignored Michelle Shephard’s “Silence over Sudan” (May) could well have been titled “Silence over Africa.” As recently as this March, at the United Nations, the United States voted against recognizing the trafficking of enslaved Africans as “the gravest crime against humanity.” This indifferent attitude is just a small example of how Africa has been ignored in epidemics, famines, and genocides, to name a few of the atrocities and humanitarian crises during the past century.

Finalist for the 2014 Walrus Poetry Prize What next? When I was half the age I am now, I watched a man pick blackberries in brambles across the road. Juice …

Travelling home recently from a business trip— I run a Canadian polling firm specializing in political and public opinion research—I tried to describe to myself, as objectively as I could, what the Mark Carney Liberal government actually is. Not what it says, but what it has done and put into motion: the legislation, the budgets, the orders in council, the deals with premiers and foreign capitals.