This is a sad example of the criminal Trump era we are living through.

My youngest (18) and their friend tonight

all homemade, very proud.

100 years to the day since Houdini died, on Halloween 1926. Escapologist, magician, movie star, skeptic, debunker of fraudulent mediums, and all around absolute madlad.

Just got home from a fun night at Midway Massacre hosted by 1D Studios. We went for the 'double feature' - two different haunted house walks that were very well done - and there was a party with a DJ and bar and stuff. The wait to get in was something though. Our tickets were for 10:30pm but we didn't get past the line-up until 11.

Here's a couple random photos I took while there.

#Ottawa #SupportLocal

You know, that's probably the biggest advantage a Linux desktop has over Windows: Not needing to constantly monitor your installed applications to make sure some garbage corporation hasn't come along and installed something completely new as an 'update' to something you use.

What the shit is this?

The only Adobe product I use is the reader, for work reasons, because our stupid government insists on using their proprietary PDF extensions on their documents, thus making it impossible to interact with them from any of the 1 billion free, open source and non-predatory PDF tool kits and readers out there.

Now I've got some invasive AI thing, Adobe Photo Express, that promises it will be collecting and sharing data on my desktop and running automatically on boot? Look at how it tries to hide itself on the list of installed apps by using a faded logo, just lol.

Skeevy, skeevy, skeevy, skeevy, skeevy.

And deleted with extreme violence and anger.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/30/canada-european-union-alliance

hahaha oopsie https://www.nbcnews.com/business/markets/tech-stocks-nasdaq-ai-boom-fears-deepen-rcna606512

Anthropic in talks to lease massive data centre campus outside Edmonton, sources say
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/economy/article-anthropic-ai-talks-to-lease-beacon-data-centre-near-edmonton-alberta/

https://unwall.app/www.theglobeandmail.com/business/economy/article-anthropic-ai-talks-to-lease-beacon-data-centre-near-edmonton-alberta/

"The government also wants to help consumers take advantage of more affordable plans, noting cellular plan prices are down 49 per cent compared with 2019."

49% eh? 🤣

Ottawa launches telecom road map to improve competition, consumer choice
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2026/10/29/ottawa-launches-telecom-roadmap-to-improve-competition-consumer-choice/

RE: https://mastodon.scot/@kim_harding/117531162568683916

This would seem to support my suspicion that the real play with all these datacentres and artificial scarcity of computer hardware is to steal the means of computing from people and instead make them dependent on centralized, cloud based, subscription model serfitude.

'What could be largest cryptocurrency theft ever' - not including cryptocurrency itself, of course.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/binance-north-korea-9.7402446

Welp, that's gonna sting a certain lame duck 😆

Canada-EU alliance inspired by NAFTA, Mélanie Joly says https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/ottawa-inspired-by-nafta-as-it-pursues-a-new-canada-eu-alliance-joly-says/

Anthropic Visual Studio Claude Code extension on Cursor has malware in it, which creates a remote access Trojan to desktops.

https://phorion.io/blog/offical-claude-code-vsx-compromise/

RE: https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7tifd4spofliqucctr6wyeo2/post/3mz4c2xam3z26

Lol, and also 'non transferable' 😏

I'm always throwing my unexpired parking tags at people. "Here, this one still has half an hour on it."

RE: https://flipboard.com/@cbcnews/british-columbia-i8sdok9nz/-/a-LDUNiQL4QvCD2C0qPtq9qg%3Aa%3A107108217-%2F0

What people polled didn’t and don’t understand is that the time change we had was about spring and fall light. Keeping us on PDT means winter mornings are going to be very dark and very dangerous.

Democrats Demand Answers on What Trump Is Telling AI Chatbots

Trump has spent hours running massive political decisions
—like the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro
—past artificial intelligence chatbots like Elon Musk’s Grok.

Now Democrats are demanding the records of his chats.
Representatives Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia, the top Democrats on the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, wrote a five-page letter to President Trump on Wednesday
pressing for answers on his chatbot use, whether it be Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or any other such tool.

“We are writing to ask whether you have actually been soliciting advice from Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Grok, in order to help you carry out your official duties as President of the United States.
If so, we are writing to inform you that any prompts that you, your staff, or advisors in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) have submitted to AI chatbots …
are the sole property of the United States and legally must be preserved for posterity.”

It was reported earlier this month that Trump and then-adviser Elon Musk “spent hours” asking Musk’s Grok chatbot questions about Trump’s legacy.
At one point, Trump consulted Grok about how Venezuelans would react to the U.S. capturing Maduro.
Grok told him that Venezuelans would celebrate the move, and a month later the U.S. did exactly that.
According to Time, Trump thought the chatbot was ingenious.
Raskin and Garcia called the episode “troubling.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/217342/democrats-demand-answers-trump-ai-chatbot-grok-national-security

RE: https://merveilles.town/@lrhodes/117530326479684777

#USExpansionism #USImperialism

#CDNPoli #LakeOntario

"Ironically, Andreas was coming to London to speak at our event about the unprecedented attacks on free speech unleashed by the proscription of Palestine Action, including the effective ban on Sally Rooney’s books, but he has now been banned himself."

Climate academic Andreas Malm barred from entering UK https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/oct/30/climate-academic-andreas-malm-barred-from-entering-uk

RE: https://mastodon.online/@newsthump/117529822571693462

The problem with these modern times is that News Thump, much like The Onion, isn’t really satirical any more and rather just factual with the thin patina of “journalistic neutrality” removed.