She's right. The gradual closing of the internet with "save the children" as a wedge issue is progressing and will only serve authoritarians. We need more political organization around these issues - not just targeting Discord, but targeting the governments that encourage and enable this behaviour.

I’m glad to see people protesting Discord forcing IDs for age verification, but what I need everyone to understand is that there’s immense bipartisan pressure to make the entire internet like this, and they are likely going to succeed unless something drastic happens

„The consultation was widely criticized for its prioritization of business interests, lack of attention to human rights & labour concerns, disregard for deliberative dialogue: the 30-day window & specialized knowledge required to answer many of the questions posed barriers to public participation.“

I find "American Progressive Democrats" and "Progressive American Democrats" being distinct very amusing.

Complaining works but mass cancelling Nitro is even better. They can theoretically ignore the yelling but they don't really have a choice but to pay attention to that.

I really want people to think about this. After all the insane lawsuits, all the threats, all the bullshit weve seen from this admin and the targets who kneeled in fear, an average Joe called the president a Pedophile protector to his face and didn't get touched. That's the Power of a union.

Listening to Cross Country Checkup's very good conversation about Alberta separatism and it's striking to me how often COVID health measures or the convoy come up as a motivating factor for separatists. Post pandemic politics strike again. www.cbc.ca/listen/live-...

The BC Green Party has announced it will not be renewing an accord with the governing NDP when it expires next month.

NDP MP @heathermcpherson.bsky.social has a petition in the House of Commons calling on Canada to cancel subsidies, grants & public funding to Canadian companies who have contracts w #ICE, revoke permission for ICE to operate offices on Canadian soil, etc: www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en... #cdnpoli

Democratizing the arts looks like universal income, low-barrier grants for both emerging and working artists, well-funded municipal arts & recreation programs, vibrant third spaces, and a well-funded public school system with progressive curriculum. Not a free pass for corporate-owned slop engines.

On a similar note, as Mamdani continues to notch W after W you’re going to start seeing opinion pieces about how this could never work in any city other than New York, etc., etc. Do not engage! It’s just entrenched power bullshit and that’s all! Don’t let them make that a conversation!

Our signatories were proud to sign the #ForeverCanadian petition in public.

Something I hope we can come to understand on the other side of this all is that private companies - news media, social platforms, etc. - can engage in censorship and propaganda in the same way as the state, and should be fought on those grounds in the same way as we'd fight state efforts.

Either the government needs money or it doesn't. If it needs money, Carney could simply bring back the capital gains & luxury boat taxes he cancelled. But simultaneously cancelling taxes on the wealthy while trying to bankrupt poor people for taking assistance during a pandemic is legitimately evil.

watcher in the leaves for sale: ko-fi.com/s/8232e64ece

Looks even worse in this framing.

Ongoing deep integration by any other name. These are not the actions of a government with any intention of substantively distancing Canada from US influence. Words v actions. www.thestar.com/opinion/star...

Europe already contributes a major share of global open source talent. Members of the European Open Source Academy say fragmentation, not skills, is holding back EU's sovereignty ambitions.

EU: “The Commission preliminarily finds TikTok’s addictive design in breach of the Digital Services Act (#DSA). This includes features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications and its highly personalised recommender system.”

it's easy to spin a narrative about epstein that sees him as a central diabolical villain, the hub around which all of this cohered. but the reality is much more mundane: every narrative in those emails simply reflects a broader consensus among our elites about who is worth protecting and who isn't

Aquamancer 🐳

The ski season is so bad that the Grouse Grind has opened 😫 #canada #vancouver #weather

Yikes. If this is accurate, given open-source is perhaps the best democratic alternative to the megacorporate proprietary development models that are eroding our society, this may be one of the most fundamental structural dangers of AI. It would undermine a key tool in counteracting AI's creators.

I'd like to add that like in all industries, when we stop understanding how our tools work, we become entirely dependent on the corporate entities that own the mold. We are trading the ability to build and repair for the convenience of being permanent tenants in someone else's infrastructure/subs.

Glad to see some of our politicians are starting to make the shift. We need way more of this.

My story on the BC Human Rights Commissioner report that finds press access was blocked/delayed in a way that violated human rights. And the city's assertion that the commissioner is wrong. Despite the rigourous evidence-gathering process conducted by the inquiry. thetyee.ca/News/2026/02...

BC Human Rights Commissioner says the media exclusion zone established by the Vancouver Police Department while dismantling the Hastings encampment in 2023 unjustly restricted press freedom It unjustly restricted press freedom and compromised transparency, per the new report

hey remember when I got shit on for years for trying to warn people that GamerGate was just Nazis and not just about harassing women and not just about some “consumer revolt”

reading about organisms that aren’t your specialty is like margins of the quorbus eplungulate, ploobular processes bent posteriorly towards the foobulum define term “eplungulate” - lacking plungae. synonym: thubulous

It continues to alarm me how much of this stuff seems to go through Gamergate. I remember watching that happen in real-time. That was my first inkling of the intersection of far-right politics and tech culture; and now here we are.

Except if you're, I dunno, a scientist who was muzzled & whose research was destroyed by Harper Government. Ask them how they feel. Let's not memory-hole what a fucking disaster he was for Canada. Oh, and HARPER killed laws that prevented the USA from owning our print media. Fuck Stephen Harper.

I know and struggle with the frustration and anger we can feel at people who support harmful systems. But while those systems, organizations, and misinformation must be relentlessly fought, I think dismantling them requires approaching supporters of harm as humans, and engaging with their humanity.

Long toed salamander painting. I love small critters in lichen filled forest scenes. 🎨🦎🤷🏼‍♀️ Courtship acrylic on wood panel, 12"x14" www.antlerpdx.com/products/mic... #animalart #natureart #contemporaryart

New report from me + @poliscirish.bsky.social Bill 11 brings US-style two-tier health care system with a private health insurance market for care covered under the Canada Health Act It appears that the insurance industry ITSELF has shaped the legislation www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...

Far-right Americans want you to believe that having nice things is impossible, and that serving billionaires is the only thing you can do. This is a lie. The rest of the world has solved many problems Republicans pretend are impossible.

Every day Mamdani comes out and is like "hey guys, I turned off the orphan-crushing machine. Literally just had to flip a switch. Took less than 5 minutes." After decades of dem leadership pissing and moaning and fundraising about how complex an issue it is and how difficult the process is etc

Biologist here. The 'reality of biological sex' is that in humans & many species do not have a binary expression of sex-linked traits. Some (fungi!) more than others, but even humans are complex in genotypic & phenotypic origins & expression.

NEW: QA workers at Blizzard Albany and Austin have ratified a union contract with Microsoft after three years of negotiations. The contract delivers protections against generative AI tech in the workplace, wage increases, disability accommodations, crunch restrictions, and much more.

Nothing to see here… Just the reeve for the largest county in Canada using a municipal office for collecting separatist signatures. In a different time the Minister of Municipal Affairs would condemn this. In Alberta tho, it’s Dan D Williams. So… #abpoli #ableg #cdnpoli

New #portfolioday post, I'm a palaeontology student (about to start 4th year) and do various detailed illustrations of animals (both extinct and living), landscapes, and technical illustration. Contact for commissions is [email protected]

Do you remember when people were saying "I think my phone is listening to me, i'm getting ads for stuff I spoke about" and people said "They arent listening to you, they're just this good at predicting your interests"? Well, it happens they were doing exactly that. www.cbsnews.com/news/google-...

This is a serious concern I have, not only for the United States but for all the ailing democracies of the world. We need deep, proactive reforms and engagement. Democracy is not preserved by allowing the system to decay until authoritarians are elected and then just punishing the authoritarians.

Some charming little Lithophragma leaves, also called "woodland stars." #plant #lithophragma #bcparks #okanagan #inaturalist #britishcolumbia #canada #plantphotography #macro

#Vancouver peeps, if you want to meet fantastic NDP leadership candidate Tanille Johnston, she's stopping by Koerner's this Friday!

This is a good overview of the problem. It's not that Carney is doing nothing at all; he is making trade deals and boosting military spending. But nothing he's doing is geared to decoupling from or deal with the US; it's all just reshuffling priorities within the existing status quo.

A cute little plant from the Okanagan, Hemizonella minima. #hemizonella #plantphotography #plant #macro #inaturalist #bcparks #britishcolumbia #okanagan #canada

Vancouver birders got a Christmas present yesterday when someone spotted a vagrant Taiga Flycatcher (Ficedula albicilla). I went to find it this morning (with a crowd of 30-40 birders) and got some okay photos, considering the terrible lighting. #bird #birding #vancouver #inaturalist #canada

I came across quite a few of these charming little flowers in the Okanagan. These are Collinsia parviflora, the small-flowered blue-eyed Mary. #flower #plant #collinsia #macrophotography #inaturalist #bcparks #okanagan #britishcolumbia #canada

A cool beetle, probably Ptomister! #ptomister #beetle #insect #invertebrate #macro #macrophotography #inaturalist #bcparks #okanagan #britishcolumbia #canada

Some plump little tufts of Sedum (stonecrop) up on a mountain in the Okanagan. #sedum #stonecrop #plant #macro #macrophotography #inaturalist #bcparks #plantphotography #okanagan #britishcolumbia #canada