We hope you enjoyed the day off on Wednesday, and that wherever you are this week, you find a way to stay cool (literally and figuratively 😎). This week’s issue is a shorter one due to the holiday – plus, I recently adopted a kitten and I wanna go hang out with her instead. Just look at her face! Hell, if she wanted to, I’d let her commit securities fraud.

– Kat Angus, Deputy Editor

The takeaway: Tech experienced the epic highs and lows of Wall Street this week. After last week’s disastrous tech run, the Nasdaq clawed back some of its losses earlier this week, helped in part by a Magnificent Seven rebound and Alphabet (Nasdaq:GOOGL) joining the Dow Jones Industrial Average. That momentum stalled on Thursday, though, when chip-related stocks got hammered and dragged the Nasdaq with them. Meanwhile, thanks to Canada Day, the TSX had less trading time this week, and didn’t have the best time: Although Shopify (TSX:SHOP) jumped more than 5% after settling its copyright lawsuit against Shopline, that wasn't enough to keep the TSX out of the red, even as Wall Street ended the week strong.

Just some Timbit-sized news items this week – we’ll be back with the usual Context next week.

by Louisa Eunice

This is an excerpt of an article originally run in full on The Margin.

For a while, at least, Stephanie Kennedy was good at her job as a human resources manager. But over time, she started struggling. She'd prepare obsessively for meetings and go blank the moment they started. She’d push herself to finish piles of work, then burn out and feel incapable of a single task for weeks. Too much, then nothing at all.

With nothing else to compare them to, Kennedy first assumed her problems were personal failings – many women do. But when her struggles worsened, she finally sought medical help, receiving an ADHD diagnosis at 39 and autism at 41. By then, autism burnout had already cost her: she’d lost skills, become selectively mute, and when she did speak, the words came out disjointed and wrong. Her career was collapsing around her, and getting help turned out to be an obstacle all its own.

Once Kennedy understood her own neurodivergence, she started viewing her HR job differently. She now saw things like performance appraisals and disciplinary processes as punishments for people with cognitive differences, rather than addressing actual performance problems. Eventually, she couldn’t reconcile her values with the job requirements or handle the burnout, and she had to quit. That meant she needed to apply for government support in the form of the Disability Tax Credit (DTC).

But somewhere in the middle of the application process, Kennedy received a letter from the CRA asking for "clarification" – they needed more information from her before they’d move her application forward. If she missed the 30-day window to respond, the entire process would stall. Unfortunately for Kennedy, the letter arrived during what she describes as a total shutdown; she was barely leaving the house. By the time she finally built the capacity to respond, the CRA’s window had closed and she had to start over, adding months to an already gruelling wait.

"A lot of people deal with burnout because the system is burning them out," says Kennedy, who today works as a professional neurodiversity coach.

Executive dysfunction isn’t laziness; it’s a neurological difficulty initiating tasks, remembering multiple steps at a time, and managing time under pressure. A person with ADHD or autism can completely understand what needs to be done and still find it impossible to do, especially when the stakes feel overwhelming. And the steps required to get government support are often directly in conflict with the conditions that need it.

Read more

Shazia Khan, Social Media Strategy Manager: On July 1, many of us observed Canada Day. But there’s a smaller, deranged-baseball-dork segment of the population that also celebrated ⭐️Bobby Bonilla Day⭐️, the magical day when the New York Mets pay US$1.19 million to a guy who hasn’t played a single inning for the team since 1999. If you follow us on Instagram (hint, hint), you’ve already seen our breakdown of the bonkers deal.

It was good timing, because the same week we filmed our clip, the Mets went viral for something else: The team fired manager Carlos Mendoza after a string of losses and embarrassing field blunders pushed the Mets to the bottom of their division. It’s a pretty routine midseason move… except that most of us found out like this:

A highlight for anyone who doesn’t want to hit ‘play’ on the video:

This, right here, is why I’m hopelessly obsessed with this team. Don’t get me wrong – I’m Canadian, and will never root for anyone harder than my Torrano Beisbol Birds. But there are really two kinds of joy in sports: the “we won!” kind, and the “we lost in such a spectacularly creative and unexpected way that I can’t stop laughing” kind. NO ONE does the latter better than the Mets – there’s literally a whole book about it – and that’s beautiful in its own right.

I have watched this clip of Mr. Met dancing, conservatively, 817 times. I have had ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” stuck in my head for days. It is a worthy entry to the #lolmets cannon and a welcome addition to my “YouTube Comfort Watch” playlist, somewhere between Bartolo Colon's only career home run (“The impossible has happened!”) and Bobby Valentine sneaking back into the dugout with a fake mustache after getting ejected.

Yes, the Jays are struggling this season, too. But if the Mets have taught me anything, it's that a team doesn't need to actually win to be worth watching, as long as their losses are equally glorious and fun to watch. The tragicomedy of sports is really the whole point. So, I guess the takeaway is: no matter what happens, dance like no one’s watching. Or like your manager was just fired. Seems to work for Mr. Met just fine.

If you liked this newsletter, hated this newsletter, or are totally indifferent to it, hit the reply button and tell us why! We’re so lonely.

This week’s contributors: Louisa Eunice (writer), Tyler Haw (audience engagement), Jenna Zaitchik (senior creative designer), Shazia Khan (social media strategy manager), Kat Angus (deputy editor), and Eric Wainwright (editor in chief).

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