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Here’s what most Canadians don’t know: Canada is one of Palantir’s top funders.

The company that built the system ICE uses to terrorize innocent people and tech in Gaza potentially used in war crimes is already here: ricochet.media/labour/billi... @ricochetmedia.bsky.social @terraloire.bsky.social

Recently in the headlines for selling armoured vehicles to ICE, this Brampton-based company is pursuing procurement opportunities with both Canadian and international governments for its multi-purpose armoured vehicle.

Volatus are ‘innovators of aerial intelligence solutions (surveillance and data capture) which uses existing technologies to optimize their offering of Surveillance as a Service.’ currently interested in procuring government contracts for its drone surveillance program.

Doug Ford loves surveillance technology. He loves it in the car, he loves it in the air, Doug Ford loves it near, and far, wherever you are – as long as it is North Americans getting rich from spying on us.

For no particular reason here are five surveillance companies cozying up to Doug Ford as we speak. pt 1/2

A woman in a red dress sings to a couple at a prom, we only see the back of the couple’s heads while the spotlight is on the singer and other students look on.

I didn’t realize until my late twenties that the ‘Josie’ band is lead by Letters to Cleo singer Kay Hanley and Letters to Cleo was Kay’s fave band in 10 Things I Hate About You. Truly an icon.

Homelessness is a policy choice.

Nearly 85K people homeless in Ontario, up 8% in 1 year: report | Globalnews.ca Homelessness is getting worse across Ontario with an estimated 85,000 people who were without a home in 2025, a new report from Ontario's municipalities shows.

I cannot stress enough that homelessness is caused by policy levers primarily at the provincial level.

And AMO's new report shows it: homelessness in Ontario rose 8% last year, with 85,000 people becoming homeless. 20,000 were youth and children.

Horrifying.

globalnews.ca/news/1161124...

The city thought Conrad the raccoon deserved a memorial plaque. Now Toronto’s best-known trash panda has become a different kind of symbol A plaque commemorating one of Toronto’s most famous trash pandas has been singled out as an example of government waste, more than 10 years after its death.

The Canadian Taxpayer Federation getting upset about a $2000 plaque that wasn't taxpayer-funded rather than the austerity that led to a dead raccoon lying on the sidewalk for days without pickup is so indicative of their whole deal.

Questioning information presented to you especially during these times is always a good first step, luckily there are second and third steps one can take to verify and contextualize information. I believe in you! 💕

I literally gave you the paper trail? From CPP? I can’t read and comprehend it FOR you and automatically upload that understanding to your brain, the technology isn’t there! Unfortunately you have to read it yourself.

Woefully uninformed completely by design.

CPP Investments’ US$229-million investment in controversial data firm Palantir raises questions about pension fund’s ESG principles - The Logic The value of the pension fund’s investment has tripled since Palantir’s IPO

I’m also far from the first person to talk about it, The Logic has been covering this since 2020: thelogic.co/news/cpp-inv...

The structures that hide surveillance Here's what most Canadians don't know: Canada is one of Palantir's top funders. Both the Public Sector Pension Investment Board and the Canadian Pension Plan are major shareholders with non-voting shares. When the CPP invests in Palantir, it uses your retirement money to finance a company with a documented record of human rights abuses. This creates a structural incentive for governments to look the other way. Jeopardize oversight? That might hurt pension returns. The infrastructure is also built to exploit democratic attention patterns. We're designed to handle visible crises, not slow processes.

In the article I wrote for Ricochet it is about half way down. It is also publicly available information here: www.cppinvestments.com/wp-content/u...

Hello Tim Cook I worked at Tumblr when you gave us 48 hours to get rid of all the consenting, adult boobs. Up all night at your whim, out of the blue. But you're still cool with Twitter and its CSAM and revenge porn and whatever the fuck this is? Why do you even HAVE guidelines?

When a company names itself after a mythical foreboding object — take it as a warning Peter Thiel’s Palantir borrowed its name from The Lord of the Rings, and two decades later, it’s living up to the metaphor by quietly embedding itself in the machinery of government

Canadians mad about ICE:

Know that we are complicit and we are vulnerable.

Canada is one of Palantir’s biggest funders, our pensions are tied to Palantir’s business. Which includes supporting ICE, profiting off genocide in Gaza, and human rights violations.

ricochet.media/labour/billi...

I have spent the last four years in professional spaces trying to be a voice of reason in the rushed adoption of AI.

No matter how measured my delivery, when I spoke about the proliferation of CSAM already happening with AI people rolled their eyes, told me I was over-reacting, or negative.

Woman felt 'dehumanised' after Musk's Grok AI used to digitally remove her clothes - BBC News The BBC has seen several examples of it undressing women and putting them in sexual situations without their consent.

Meanwhile Canada is doing nothing and Canadian officials continue using a sex image generator website:

“A Home Office spokesperson said it was legislating to ban nudification tools, and under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tech would ‘face a prison sentence and substantial fines’”

Tunku Varadarajan: Will you ask New Yorkers who voted for you to give Zohran Mamdani a chance? Curtis Sliwa: Absolutely. He won a majority. He has a mandate. The Masters of the Universe, the billionaires, did everything they could to make sure he wasn't the mayor. It didn't work. He's a great organizer. I'll give you an example: Melinda Katz, the current District Attorney for Queens County, New York. She's the mother of my two youngest sons. She was running for DA in 2019. She had the institutional support. Moderate Jewish mother. Loyal Democrat. Queens borough president. Perfect résumé. She's running against Tiffany Caban, who wasn't even in elective office at that time. Very radical. You know, "do away with jails, don't arrest anyone." Tiffany Caban won on election night. But she lost the race on the absentee ballots, but only by about 20 votes. You know who the street organizer was for Tiffany Caban? Zohran Mamdani. So, when they talk about him as a trust fund baby, I say no, no, no, no, no.

You don't like it when people call him a "nepo baby." He's earned his stripes. He had 100,000 volunteers going door-to-door, and I experienced that in some of the neighborhoods where you would never have seen anybody liberal or progressive go. Howard Beach! In conservative Howard Beach, they're going block to block. They were everywhere. 100,000. I call them Zohranistas. This was the secret to his election, not TikTok. It was good, old-fashioned retail politics. Frankly, Cuomo and not Mamdani was the nepo baby in this race. Born on third base. Felt entitled. Knew the political process, but mailed it in. He didn't have the stomach to actually go out and do retail politics. And shame on him. Do you think Mamdani will make a better mayor than Andrew Cuomo might have done?

How would you describe Mamdani's politics? He's not a communist. People call him that. That's ridiculous. He is a democratic socialist. David Dinkins [New York mayor from 1990-93] was a democratic socialist. We've had a long history in New York City of socialism. What's the biggest challenge Mamdani faces as mayor! I don't think the Zohranistas totally understand the fiscal irresponsibility we just went through with the Adams years and how little money there's left. There's not enough money to do all the things that Zohran wants to do.

A last question. All through our interview you pronounced Mamdani as "Mandami," transposing the "m" and the "n" in his name. Are you aware of the mispronunciation? Many people, Cuomo included, mangle his name. In the debate, Zohran brought that to my attention, my mispronunciation. I didn't do it on purpose. There's no disrespect. I have a hard time with it. It took people about 10 years to pronounce my last name correctly: "Sleewah.'" They pronounced it Silva, Saliva, Slywah. In the streets, we would have given Zohran a nickname, like I did for all the Guardian Angels. "Z Man" would have been perfect for him. That would have been his handle. Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at NYU Law School's Classical Liberal Institute.

this is the most incredible interview i’ve ever read. the aei guy tries so hard to get sliwa to trash mamdani and he simply won’t. he also brings up flaco (rip) unprompted.

www.wsj.com/opinion/free...

Oh my gosh the completely conceivable and thinkable has occurred!

We are going to become friends in 2026 for sure.

How this for profit company is ‘gamifying’ plasma donations in Toronto Toronto’s new paid plasma donation clinics pay a ‘bonus’ of $100 if an individual gives blood plasma 100 times in a calendar year. Advocates say ‘gamified’ incentives put donors at risk

Part 2 of 2: www.torontotoday.ca/local/health...

People are making money selling blood plasma. Isn’t that illegal? Paying for blood is illegal in Ontario, but a for-profit company recently opened two new paid locations in Toronto thanks to a Canadian Blood Services exemption

Ebenezer Scrooge, a plasma story.

Part 1 of 2: www.torontotoday.ca/local/health...

a man with a beard is wearing a helmet and armor and has his mouth open . ALT: a man with a beard is wearing a helmet and armor and has his mouth open .

Its the hubris of these folks constantly naming themselves after the losing team for me.

I have to wonder if the technocrat class obsessed with stories like Lord of the Rings have actually read it.

Central to LOTR is the undeniable fact that ‘ordinary’ beings can make profound change. Kings and wizards can be corrupted, but fellowship endures.

ricochet.media/labour/billi...

In high school and in college.
It’s like they signed up for every philosophy or social science course so they could casually bring this up.

Power Up Your LinkedIn Content — Terra Etc. I’ve inadvertently read four thousand five hundred and eighty five top performing LinkedIn posts and I’ve got the jargon down pat. Use this to generate your own super authentic LinkedIn content.

It's been almost a year since I launched my business, and I've had to spend a lot more time on LinkedIn. Here's what I've learned about making viral posts: www.terraloire.com/notes/super-...

This thread is a good reminder to write your MPP. Some good bullet points here.

Doug Ford is trying to push this mega-bill through this week, email your MPP using this template (feel free to add your own spin on it, including 'WTF'???? if you want): win.newmode.net/fightbill60

8. Public infrastructure is commandeered by provincial agencies, and government retroactively immunizes itself from legal accountability for past harms

7. Surveillance infrastructure is normalized through immigration verification systems that disproportionately target racialized communities.​