DavidM_yeg

Just saw Premier Smith in full teary-eyed self-pitying bleat: … sniff sniff … does Canada even want us anymore? 😭 ‘Alberta sends twice as much money to Ottawa as we do the provincial coffers’ 🤮 Talk about unearned and unexamined privilege: we sit on a mountain of natural resources and even though Smith et al can’t give it away fast enough, the leavings are still enough to pay for half of what we do in this province Boo hoo we have billions in O&G royalties to spend! #ABPoli #CdnPoli

I keep seeing comments about how we are at a tipping point only barely (or not quite) containing fascists in countries around the world. It is right to be concerned, but this framing contains an important implied falsehood: that fascists will soon out number us. So this is my reminder that even in times of peril like today: fascists are *always* a minority. They only win when we - the majority - cannot or will not stand in solidarity against them. #fascism #politics

@CatherineBabault@mastodon.social “Once an old-growth forest is logged, it will require millennia before it has the structure, composition and function of the forest that was logged” So let’s call it what it is: forest mining. Strip-mining vast swaths of land for a resource that cannot be replaced. Forestry flies under the public radar sheltered by the fiction that forests are renewable resources. They are not.

The SAVE act (and the Alberta counterpart that the UCP seem to be preparing for) involves a bait and switch that most people don’t seem to recognize. They take an inherent right that you are entitled to based on who you are - I am entitled to vote because I am a citizen - and trade it for a credential that can be taken away - I can only vote if I can produce document X. This puts all the power into the hands of the government… which seems a bad deal to me.

@mason@partychickens.net @dbattistella@mstdn.ca A poem written in *2014* by a jewish poet about children killed by Israel in Gaza, because the state of Israel has been killing children in Gaza for a very long time.

@broadwaybabyto@zeroes.ca Not masking in healthcare settings is *profoundly* irrational.

@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org A Canadian treasure. I think it’s pretty funny when people want to sing Halleluia at church, or weddings. A couple weeks ago I heard a Spanish youth choir sing it with thick accents even though the Italian cathedral hosting the concert insisted on ‘appropriate’ music and dress 🤣 (read the words if you haven’t yet… moderately sacrilegious text by a mostly secular Canadian jew)

@woozle@toot.cat @inthehands@hachyderm.io I’ve spent my entire life hearing the idea that private businesses are inherently more efficient than government presented as established fact, and I’ve always thought it was the most ridiculous, counter-factual and easily disproved assertion.

I’m not sure it was ever true, and it should have been clear at least a year ago, but *now* surely it must be glaringly obvious now to anyone that the USA is no longer a “safe third country” and Canada has an *obligation* to adjust our various laws, policies and agreements to account for this reality. #CdnPoli #USPol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada–United_States_Safe_Third_Country_Agreement

@adub@beige.party If the concerns are that landlords will raise rents, then rent controls are in order. If the concerns are that landlord’s can’t make enough profit, then boo-hoo … get out of the business. If the concern is that units will be removed from the market, pass bylaws forbidding that. If the concern is that landlords will dump now unprofitable properties, be ready to hoover them up into tenant owned and focussed co-ops or municipal housing banks.

Heard pundits today talking about the proposed pipeline as ‘ensuring energy independence’ … BULLSHIT All a pipeline does is make exports easier, more profit for oil&gas… it doesn’t help Canadians dealing with energy insecurity. #CdnPoli

@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org Oops… looked to check their back catalogue and realized they’re still making records, with revolving members now. Gotta say, the eclectic “rock band with horns” model works really well for me. @grumpasaurus@infosec.exchange @stuartl@mastodon.longlandclan.id.au @chunshek@prettyaweso.me

@azonenberg@ioc.exchange @whitequark@social.treehouse.systems @0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange But you *can* become the Premier of a province even if you drove drunk and killed someone as long as enough numpties in that province are willing to vote for you and your party … cf Premier of Saskatchewan.

So, I’ve never been one to pay much attention to influencers, because as far as I can tell they’re just propagandists - maybe sincere, more likely for hire. Whether old school like Oprah or new school on line, it seems people have been handing their brains over to propagandists for a while now, in accelerating volume… … which kind of explains the pickle we’re in now doesn’t it?

#yeg #yegwx

@benroyce@mastodon.social The more appropriate comparison is to catch the similarities between *Russia and *1938 Germany: after consolidating and entrenching power within, making the (re)transition to expansionism. But Russia has been stuck there since 2022. Putin’s trouble is that he thought he would roll up a mostly indifferent Ukraine like a replay of the Austrian Anschluss, and then move on to the rest of the former Soviet empire at his leisure. But Ukraine became something else: surprise!

I’ve often heard the (maybe not accurate) wondering of “What was that Easter Islander thinking when they cut down the last tree?” but I don’t need to wonder what the rest of the people of Easter Island thought as the last trees went down… It’s exactly what I’m feeling as big energy and big tech collaborate in the data centre explosion: massively increasing resource use in water and pollution just as we are at a pinch or tipping point.

@chunshek@prettyaweso.me @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org @grumpasaurus@infosec.exchange @stuartl@mastodon.longlandclan.id.au I know Chicago from their last album “Chicago 17” … hearing it in the mid 80s from my older sister’s radio. Good stuff. I’ve always meant to check out their older stuff, thanks for the reminder.

@randahl@mastodon.social When you show it like that, it sure looks hopeless, but the real situation is that there are always more anti-fascists than fascists… make common cause and don’t let the systems defeats you.

How it’s going in Alberta: The government recently expanded eligibility for mail in ballots, so now ballots are arriving in people’s homes with this declaration to sign 👇 “I declare that I am unable to vote at an advance voting place or a voting place on Election Day.” Which is not longer required, so Elections Alberta is telling people to just “cross it out” and then sign, despite the dire threats below. … what a two-bit tin-pot gong show this province is 😞 #ABpoli #CdnPoli

@crispius@mstdn.fname.ca @chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.ca @anderspuck@mastodon.social @LynnD@cosocial.ca “the US has not really won a war since 1945” … a distressing number of Americans don’t quite literally don’t know that. Even more think that somehow the US defeated the Soviet Union, when instead they only sort held the line for 45 years and let the Soviet system crumble on its own.

@crispius@mstdn.fname.ca @anderspuck@mastodon.social @chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.ca The logic is *supposed* to be that your stockpile is there to be a deterrent, *and* to provide you with time to ramp up domestic production to the scale so that you will be able to continue the fight unimpeded as a war continues. It seems like today’s ‘generals’ are so enamoured of the idea that they can shock and awe any enemy into submission in weeks or months that they have forgotten to do the second part?

@ariarhythmic@ohai.social @dbattistella@mstdn.ca In an imperfect world UBI is better than no UBI, but you are also right that UBI doesn’t “fix” capitalism.

@RedRobyn@mastodon.nz Yes, that story was never as simple as the common narrative makes it seem, but the civilization-collapsing levels of short-sightedness all around us is real.

@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io @renardboy@mastodon.social My provincial government (a long-ago captured petro-state) has doubled down on CCS as the “solution” … it pays for them and the industry to “invest” $M to be allowed to increase extraction and maximize their yacht money before it all collapses and they run off to leave us with the clean up. #ABPoli

@GeofCox@climatejustice.social That’s my point: if it seems close, it’s only because the system we are viewing it through distorts the reality and usurps the power of the majority.

@ZDL@mstdn.social @uncoolmouse@retro.pizza Repetitive and overlapping questions have been an (often intentional) part of survey methodology since long before the age of AI. 🤷‍♂️

@Dennis@beige.party This is really a sub-toot about the current trend to meaninglessly short and vague low effort #altText, isn’t it?

@stephanie@ottawa.place Beautiful, I do wish I could grow them here.

@obtener@mastodon.world Absolutely… I’ve lived through a number of droughts more severe than the dustbowl 30s …without the dust. Of significant note: many of the policies, practices, and norms that made America a great place through the 20th century were demanded and won after business interests ran the country into the ground. Time to do it again, and this time not let even a world war leave the job unfinished.

@joyousjoyness@mastodon.social “I was going for a luminous look!” Success!! 🎉

#yeg #yegwx

@ombialik@mastodon.world Because here we truly are the algorithm. Mastodon *is* people in a lovely and very direct way rather than the crewed up and regurgitated Soylent Green method of algorithmic social media and AIs. In my mind a ‘like’ is for the author, and a boost is for my community.

@avilewis@mstdn.ca My response is similar to the one I use if someone calls me woke: Gee thanks! I’m not sure always live up to it but I try.

@woozle@toot.cat @inthehands@hachyderm.io Companies that have great profit-to-value ratios have done a great job of externalizing cost onto governments, or society generally. When that’s the gambit, operations don’t need to be streamlined or efficient to rake in boatloads of cash for the decision-makers.

@tasket@infosec.exchange I see what you mean … I think it’s a combination of the fisheye lens and a slope to the left @dbattistella@mstdn.ca

@Nonilex@masto.ai “It is deeply damaging to the fabric of our republic for President Trump, in the midst of a historic presidency, to have to take his focus away from his singular and unique duties as chief executive to continue fighting against decades-old, false allegations” said his attorneys to the court. Basically: he’s too special to follow rules like an ordinary person… a literal definition of toxic entitlement.

@faithisleaping@anarres.family This is not inherently a feature of suffering abuse, but a failure of those communities to properly and fully come to terms with the reality of an abuser in their midst.

@me “Do you have a source to back this up” … which part? I have never encountered a survey or study that put the proportion of voluntary sex workers at more than 25% with the rest being made up of persons experiencing forces ranging from extreme economic desperation or compulsion through outright violence or threat of violence. ps I’m not arguing against decriminalization, in case you somehow thought I was… 🤷‍♂️ @alice@lgbtqia.space

@alice@lgbtqia.space @farooqkz@mastodon.bsd.cafe I don’t disagree with any of your points and can’t see the OP, but I think we need to maintain the awareness that - much like with drug use - the vast majority of men and women who end up in sex work are coerced into it by people or circumstances. I do long to build a more just world in which sex work is done only by people who want to do sex work. In the absence of that criminalization just adds violence on top of violence.

@jrconlin@mindof.jrconlin.com @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org The only reason there are recordings of older Cohen singing his songs/poems is because he needed the money… “Leonard Cohen faced massive financial ruin in 2004 when he discovered his longtime manager, Kelley Lynch, had embezzled over $5 million from his retirement accounts and sold his publishing rights, leaving him with just $150,000. Cohen never recovered the stolen money. To rebuild, Cohen launched a global concert comeback in 2008”

@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot @pluralistic@mamot.fr I would thing the history of DHS in the US over the last 2 decades would be a cautionary tale for folks, that you can’t surveil just one group of people. Requiring platforms to spy on kids means spying on everyone, because surveillance is the dragnet fishing of the digital world: scoop it all up and worry about what to with most of it later.

@AccordionBruce@mastodon.social Yes. The attitudes, ideas, and movements that created our residential schools are still around, still animating people and policy, still doing their destructive work; most often hiding behind their veneer of do-good-ism, righteous excuses, and other shitty framing. At home is definitely the best place to bring the fight. @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io

@sundogplanets@mastodon.social Edmonton blew past our previous June precip record by 20%… so many flooded basements, and half my veggies haven’t grown since May - but the other half are *very* happy. With all this moisture in the environment, it’s going to be a stormy summer on the prairies I think. Thank you for posting the Land Sharing Network, you’ve reminded me that enrolling our church’s property is on my to-do/wish list.

@adub@beige.party At least one indoor living space besides the bathroom “with a “safe indoor temperature of an average of 26 C” between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m - ie overnight. Is a pretty low bar, and doesn’t address daytime temperature spikes, but it’s a start.

@corbden@defcon.social @zompetto@mastodon.art Wait, the goose is people? … I thought Soylent Green was people 😵‍💫

@igimenezblb@oldbytes.space @fae2535@mstdn.social This is a situation in which actively ventilating with a fan will make a big difference. A fan pointed out about 50cm from a window will push hot air out, and the resulting low pressure will pull air in through other windows even if they are on the same side. Good luck!

@Jeneric@mstdn.ca Oh, I just found out he’s gone while searching to share my usual Hansard earworm: Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy RIP https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/obit-ireland-hansard-9.7288673

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange @sun_addict@mastodon.social @maggiejk@zeroes.ca It’s still the fan blowing out that does most of the work