Illness, Intimacy, and Artificial Intelligence

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

I was left unsatisfied and frustrated after reading Cathrin Bradbury’s “What is Sex?” (January/February). No mention was made that a healthy sex life relies on not just affection, attraction, and chemistry, but also intensity. As a heterosexual sixty-seven-year-old woman with a vibrant sex life, I believe sexual intercourse is reliant on getting to a point where you and your partner feel so close emotionally and physically that you lose your sense of individuality, sometimes your ability to speak, and meld into each other. Here is one quote about sex I have tacked to my cork board, from Northern Exposure, when Joel says to Maggie: “I always wanted more. Not frequency; I am not talking about frequency—although that would have been great, too. I wanted more intensity. I wanted to be out there, outside myself, outside my skin. I wanted sex to be like robbing life out of the jaws of death!” They are sitting outside in minus-twenty-degree weather and Maggie breaks out into a sweat.

Vivian Moreau Victoria, BC

What may be universal for a boomer, a millennial, and a Gen Z is the unmitigated joy of an intimate long-term partner who understands the difference between making love, having sex, and just plain old fucking. And knowing when each is to be initiated or surrendered to—the total package.

Debra Dolan Vancouver, BC

Contagion Nation

Thank you for publishing Monica Kidd’s powerful investigation into “Why Measles Is Back” (December 2025). In medical school in the ’60s, I watched the deaths of two children in the ICU. Soon after that, measles vaccination began to make such deaths a thing of the past. The measles virus has evolved the most powerful reproductive system. It is highly invasive: breathe in someone’s cough and the virus invades. It quietly reproduces in the body for about two weeks. Then, initial symptoms appear: fever, cough, runny nose. Maybe just a cold? The virus-loaded coughing lasts another week before a rash appears. The airborne virus can remain infectious for up to two hours in closed, poorly ventilated areas, so can easily spread from one person to another. Fortunately, unlike the flu or COVID-19, measles has not evolved any new mutations to survive. Its stable form means that the same vaccine continues to work its magic.

Willam P. McKay Halifax, NS

Can Pros and Can Cons

In “Cohere Is Canada’s Biggest AI Hope. Why Is It So American?”, Julie Sobowale posits a Canadian purity test that Cohere should pass in order to qualify to do work for the federal government and, in doing so, ignores the derivative nature of the technology. There is no such thing as an AI that is not dependent, at some level, on international technology developed outside of our borders. We are facing a critical moment. Perhaps it would be best if we got out of our own way and let our best and brightest move us forward without having to apologize for not being Canadian enough.

Dan de Souza Collingwood, ON