I guess the CUSMA negotiations are going well?
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 4h agoTrump: "Canada is nasty. They're nasty."
Martin Grasdal 🍁
@mgrasdal.bsky.social
Old IT guy, nearing retirement. Living proof that a degree in Engl. Lit & Philosophy is far from useless. Lover of fiction (including sci-fi & fantasy), history, classics, etc,. Classical music lover.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 4h ago
Canadians overwhelmingly demand wealth tax after Kevin O’Leary says it will make him move away
Canadians overwhelmingly demand wealth tax after Kevin O’Leary says it will make him move away
OTTAWA - Pollsters report a split among Canadians over the idea of higher tax on the assets of wealthy individuals, though support skyrockets after noting that Kevin O'Leary has vowed that he will res...
thebeaverton.com
Forget "Don't be evil"; Google's true motto is a form of vulgar spidermanism: "With great power comes no responsibility." The internet's *de facto* boss is an absentee landlord. 1/
This sucks ass. When I start my car I want to be able to put my foot on the pedal and drive off. I dont want to watch an ad. A distracting ad. Right in the middle of my console. Again. This sucks ass.
Alberta propaganda push suggests UCP is encountering stiffer opposition to AI data centres than it expected. albertapolitics.ca/2026/08/albe...
Alberta propaganda push suggests UCP is encountering stiffer opposition to AI data centres than it expected - Alberta Politics
The United Conservative Party Government must be encountering stiffer opposition than it expected to its plan to make Alberta North America’s dumping ground for the Artificial Intelligence data centre...
albertapolitics.ca
Funny how authorities never ask your permission to invade your privacy. They just do it.
Progressive News Service@prognews.bsky.social · 3d agoTexas state police bought 4 cell tower simulating SUVs. "An emergency procurement filed by the Texas Dept. of Public Safety... in March 2026 authorized $4,487,500 for surveillance equipment from Cognyte – ...four 2026 Chevrolet Tahoes outfitted with FalcoNet..." www.yahoo.com/news/politic...
NEW: I attended today's protest against Meta's proposed hyperscaler data centre in Sturgeon County. People are not pleased. open.substack.com/pub/theorcha...
Guillotines, Dinosaur Costumes and Broken Trust: Alberta's Data Centre Revolt Begins
Critics warn of fossil gas reliance, power price hikes and wasted water as officials approve massive Meta facility with scant public debate.
open.substack.com
variety.com/2026/tv/news... Very sorry to hear this Maybe it’s because I’m an actor but this was my personal favorite superhero show and I’m really disappointed it’s not going forward
‘Wonder Man’ Not Returning for Season 2 at Disney+ (EXCLUSIVE)
"Wonder Man" has been canceled at Disney+, Variety has learned.
variety.com
Doctor here-Story time: I received a call today from a sick friend in another state, & I recognized it as a neurological emergency sent him to ER. Likely diagnosis: Giant Cell (Temporal) Arteritis, which can cause blindness. 1 of the authors of original 1990 diagnostic criteria: Anthony Fauci MD🙌🏻🫡
Screw the big three. I felt they were more or less doomed to a slow and painful death when I acquired a Datsun 510 in the 70s. Now I own an EV manufacturered in Asia. It's a beautiful car to drive and was competitively priced to an ICE vehicle. Unlikely to go back. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/15/m....
The American E.V. Has Been Crushed. Will It Take the U.S. Auto Industry With It?
The largest U.S. automakers have backed away from electric vehicles, even as global sales are booming. The decision may make them obsolete.
nytimes.com
Dr. Abdul El Sayed explaining to the Detroit Free Press that he believes military assistance to Ukraine is consistent with international law and therefore qualitatively different from military assistance to Israel and Egypt.
Leon English@leonenglish.bsky.social · 3d agoAnd here he is staring pretty unequivocally that he sees aid to Ukraine as different from aid to Israel (or Egypt), so please update your priors or fuck off with claims to the contrary.
Perimeters, not parameters. An excursion, not an incursion. Six genders, not cisgender. Insane asylums, not asylum. Transgender mice, not transgenic mice. The IQ of a potato.
Neoclassical econ assumes rationality. The corollary of, "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" is "you're rich, so you must be very smart!" Thus, people assume that if powerful, well-compensated CEOs insist that "AI is changing everything," well then, *AI must be changing everything*. 1/
What having French players on your #WNBA roster looks like.
OMG That poor young woman. 💔 Treasury worker, 26, killed herself one day after anonymous complaint www.msn.com/en-us/news/o...
Jaysus. Content warning. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
‘I felt sick that he was near my mum’: a top amputation surgeon had his own legs removed due to a fetish. Were his patients safe?
Neil Hopper was celebrated for continuing to do his job despite the loss of his lower limbs. But what the people he was treating didn’t know was that his injuries were self-inflicted. Now they and the...
theguardian.com
"I have no interest in creating or reading AI generated text." Many share this sentiment.
Kat Tenbarge@kattenbarge.bsky.social · 4d agoSo I woke up this morning to find out that Ozzy Osbourne’s son made a video falsely accusing me of using AI to write a Rolling Stone article about the Tate brothers.
I am closely monitoring the fires threatening the Spokane region. Eastern Washington, PLEASE listen to local authorities and do everything possible to stay safe and look after your friends and neighbors.
'Never seen it this bad': Thousands evacuated in north Spokane as wildfire crosses river into city
A wildfire driven by high winds jumped the Spokane River Saturday afternoon, burning homes and quickly moving into the Indian Trail Neighborhood.
spokesman.com
Guess whose side the governments are on? "Nothing is safe from the billionaire assault on humanity. None of our rights, however ancient and familiar, are impregnable. Fight for them now or lose them, perhaps for ever."
Stephen Leahy@stephenleahy.bsky.social · 4d agoA must-read: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
🚨 After 40 years of research, Brazilian scientist Dr. Mariangela Hungria wins the World Food Prize for pioneering a $2 nitrogen-fixing bacteria treatment that replaces costly fertilizers, saves farmers $25 billion annually, and cuts 230 million tons of CO₂ emissions.
A GOP Congressman, Griffith Morgan (Virginia), has introduced a bill to strip people in Guam, Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and every other US non-state territory of their birthright citizenship. www.congress.gov/bill/119th-c...
congress.gov
Google's new motto: Don't be good.
Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 5d agoNew from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles. This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused www.404media.co/google-earth...
Kotsko’s gloss on Heraclitus is very good: Neoliberalism loves to hide.
I used to do some work on the ethical use of satellite and drone imagery for aid and disaster response, and it is genuinely hard to express in words what a dangerous, stupid thing Google is doing by making it easy to use GenAI to create faked satellite imagery:
How to plant a nuclear plant in Iran
The question is: what on earth is Google doing?
digitaldigging.org
Radix malorum est cupiditas. Hard to overstate how much AI will enable the excessive and unnatural greed of a few that will make everyone's life more expensive and harder.
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 7d agoWith "surveillance pricing," businesses have finally found something AI can do way, way, *way* better than people: price gouging. 1/
This is a well-produced segment. I encourage you to watch so you can hear the noise for yourself. The professor of environmental health science that they interviewed called it an “unprecedented new noise source.”
Neighbors say noise from Michigan data center is 24/7 and upending their lives
One Michigan community has been experiencing the reality of a data center next door for a couple of years now, and they say the sound has changed their lives.
wxyz.com
