The NHL season began Tuesday, and the Leafs have already lost. Classic. The PWHL is also in the news, despite their season not starting until December, thanks to their upcoming Hockey Night in Canada partnership – a thrilling development for Sarah Nurse fans everywhere. Most exciting of all, my own rec hockey season has begun. Maybe this is the year that my decade-old goalie pads – which fall apart just a bit more each season – will disintegrate completely.

– Amarah Hasham-Steele, Staff Writer

The takeaway: A tough week all around. The TSX slid more than 300 points on Monday due to a weak materials sector. Higher oil and bond yields weren’t helpful to the markets, either, with the 30-year Treasury hitting a 24-year high on Tuesday and climbing ever higher on Wednesday, even with softer PCE inflation than expected. That data helped the Nasdaq stay mostly steady through the week. On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that Anthropic is looking to IPO as soon as November, eyeing a valuation of up to US$2 trillion.

It’s pipeline time in British Columbia, but that may be easier said than done.

Yesterday, the Carney government declared its new Alberta-to-BC oil pipeline a project of national interest, meaning it will get fast-tracked through the regulatory approvals process. And on Tuesday, Shell PLC announced it would proceed with a $30 billion expansion of its LNG Canada export facility in Kitimat, BC. That liquefied natural gas terminal is supplied by TC Energy’s Coastal GasLink pipeline; also on Tuesday, TC gave the green light to a massive expansion project of its own.

The name ‘Coastal GasLink’ should ring a bell for anyone following the non-pandemic-related Canadian news in 2020. That’s the pipeline whose initial construction sparked a land rights protest by members of the Indigenous Wet’suwet’en group in Northwest BC, whose traditional territory includes the pipeline’s route. They put up a dogged fight against the project, sparking nation-wide protests and a three-week solidarity blockade of the CN Rail line in eastern Ontario by members of the Tyendinaga Mohawk territory.

Both the Wet’suwet’en and Mohawk protests were put to an end by force. But some Wet’suwet’en leaders continue to oppose the line and its planned expansion, and other Indigenous leaders have already expressed concern over the lack of consultation around Carney’s oil pipeline, as well as the Alberta-Ontario one proposed this summer. If those nations choose to fight back, rushing these projects could backfire big time.

What this means…

The bottom line: Conflicts around Indigenous rights dredge up centuries of colonialism, resistance, and constitutional law. These aren’t things most infrastructure developers are experts in, and the same can be said for central bankers-turned-Prime Ministers. Carney may want to build stuff – but he’ll have to confront history to do so.

by Amarah Hasham-Steele

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

When Taylor Swift releases new music, I am seated. I went to the Fearless tour when I was seven years old, and I’ve been a fan ever since. And, like many fans, I consider her most recent album, Life of a Showgirl, the lowest point of her songwriting career so far. When the album came out last October, the Guardian gave it two stars, and Pitchfork wrote that “her music’s never been less compelling.” The album’s ‘encore’ (the cute, Swiftian term for its deluxe edition) dropped last Friday, and it didn’t do much to redeem the original tracklist. (Telegraph critic Poppie Platt said it best: “I’m a Swiftie, and even I think these new songs are terrible.")

But I’m not here to rant about why Swift failed to sell me on Ohio’s second-largest city or why she failed to sell basically anyone on any of these songs. What I am here to rant about: Even though the new music has fans begging her to take a break, the chart-predicting platform Talk of the Charts has forecast Swift taking four of the top five Billboard Hot 100 spots next week. They’re predicting that 'Patient Zero' (which is accompanied by a dramatic music video starring Dakota Johnson and Colin Farrell) will snag the top spot, dethroning Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” after 24 weeks. 'Patient Zero' has already broken a Spotify record: Within a day of its release, the song became Spotify’s most-streamed song by a female artist in a single day in 2026. And, as of Monday morning, the new songs reportedly occupied the top four spots on Spotify’s Top 50 - Global list. (At the time of writing, the songs no longer occupy the top four spots but are all still in the top 50.)

So even if Swift can't sell us on her new music, she’s having no trouble selling it to us. The original album, too, broke sales records and charts records alike. Her ability to set a new sales standard with each album, regardless of the album’s quality, is a trait that the public used to begrudgingly admire; many headlines have been written about Swift’s business acumen. But with TLOAS: Encore, the public’s patience with her sales stunts seems to be wearing thin.

Read more

Amarah Hasham-Steele, Staff Writer: Last month, the New Yorker’s Becca Rothfeld wrote about the iconically terrible movies of trash auteur Neil Breen. Waxing poetic about why we’re drawn to bad art, Rothfeld writes that ‘trash’ is “jarringly personal. Its failures are human failures.” It’s an antidote to a “tragically, unbearably competent” AI-induced future.

And look, I love trash cinema. I watched Dragon Fighter (2003) last night, which is basically dragon-themed Jurassic Park made on a budget of maybe $12. But I’ve seen this argument a lot lately – that, in an era where ChatGPT can make anyone competent, something uniquely bad has more value than something unremarkably good.

I agree that there’s merit to engaging with bad art. But I disagree that competence is something robots own and humans should resist. Bad grammar is a telltale sign of a human writer, sure, but I’m depressed by the notion that the only thing separating humans from chatbots is our penchant for misplaced modifiers. 

If humans dismiss competence as automated and boring, human-made art will become, well, less competent. The best art, in my opinion, is “jarringly personal” and high-quality. No need to pretend these things are mutually exclusive.

From The Margin group chat:

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: Tyler Haw (audience engagement), Amarah Hasham-Steele (staff writer), Shazia Khan (social media strategy manager), Anthony Milton (content lead), Martin Molpeceres (social video producer), Kat Angus (deputy editor), and Eric Wainwright (editor in chief).

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