Martin Grasdal 🍁

I know who won hands downs for best weather: The Roots and Blues Festival in Salmon Arm. Not in the running, I know. To borrow a slogan from a much-loved radio show, it may not be big, but it's small.

Love this!

uh, so if I have this right, Tesla sent a Cybertruck owner a cease and desist for rapping about the truck, and then deactivated said truck on the side of the road until he signed it??

In which we learn that Ukraine's constitution prevents Zelensky from accepting any deal that requires ceding land to Russia and that Trump will use Zelensky's refusal to sell out Ukraine. Great analysis from the guests and host.

NOW at backgroundbriefing.org | @andersaslund.bsky.social - Yet Another Sellout by Trump to Putin? | @olgalautman.bsky.social - Since Zelensky Will Have to Reject Trump's Peace Deal, Will That Be Trump's Excuse to Abandon Ukraine? | @noupside.bsky.social - Gabbard's Ridiculous Revisionist History

Anas al-Sharif among 4 Al Jazeera journalists killed by Israel in Gaza City Al Jazeera staff killed in what appears to be a targeted Israeli attack on a tent housing journalists.

The HORROR just won't end in Gaza. "Anas al-Sharif among 4 Al Jazeera journalists killed by Israel in Gaza City. Al Jazeera staff killed in what appears to be a targeted Israeli attack on a tent housing journalists." Netanyahu needs to stand trial for his crimes! www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/...

BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen has confirmed that the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City has been killed.

F*ck off. Corporations already pay low taxes. How about this? Corporations that have union members on boards and pay employees a living wage with generous benefits will not have their tax rates raised as high as corporations who do not.

No, he’s not giving Putin Alaska, but he is giving Putin a huge gift: the legitimacy of touching down on US soil at the invitation of a US president. A reward for the full-scale invasion of a sovereign, democratic country that the United States and its European allies support.

The justification that the measures were taken to "improve government operations and reduce red tape" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. What measures has the government taken to make it easier to get COVID shots? Seems to be a dramatic increase in red tape & inefficiencies for this.

Yet Another Sellout by Trump to His Handler Putin Background Briefing goes far beyond the headlines and deep under the radar to bring forward truths unheard elsewhere in American media. Background Briefing features international and national news, ex

We’re joined by @andersaslund.bsky.social discussing the upcoming Trump/Putin summit next Friday in Alaska. soundcloud.com/user-8304426...

Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle.

"Among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates, 6.1% and 7.5% respectively ...

That is more than double the unemployment rate among recent biology and art history graduates, which is just 3%"

My degree in English literature and Philosophy is the foundation for my career in IT.

A mythical creature that occupies the same space as chimeras, griffins, basilisks, faeries, and hobgoblins.

Misleading leaked information about key witness in dodgy health care contracts probe smacks of political interference - Alberta Politics If the already constrained investigation by a retired Manitoba judge into allegations of dodgy health care contracts pushed by influential figures in the Alberta Government is now beset by leaks from ...

Misleading leaked information about key witness in dodgy health care contracts probe smacks of political interference. albertapolitics.ca/2025/08/misl...

Russia, along with the UK, US, and Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 that guaranteed Ukraine's independence and sovereignty in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons. Under the agreement, Ukraine would be free from economic or military pressure. Russia broke the agreement.

Old computer users like me can relate to what I’m about to say, which is that UI/UX design hit its apogee maybe in the first few years of the 2000s, and it has been a disastrous downhill shit show ever since. There used to be very well-understood conventions by which to abide.

One of the truest and most representative pictures of the Premier ever.

Good luck with that. Based on the relatively brief time AI has been forced on an unsuspecting public, we have seen a mass delusion of many who treat AI as intelligent and start to give it a meritless reverence. Turns out we are easily fooled by text prediction engines.

A Gross-out Book for a Nauseating Russia Nothing is sacred in Vladimir Sorokin’s ‘Blue Lard,’ a stomach-turning swirl of repugnant excess.

"None escapes whipping in Sorokin’s hellbent romp, and one senses the immensity of the challenge he set himself, even if the result proves rather too exorbitantly repugnant and even something of a bore in the end." www.thebulwark.com/p/a-gross-ou...

Good morning! Is the sky really bluer here? Let's find out!

Don Jr posted a meme of Trump on the White House roof throwing a green dildo at WNBA players

dancelightly_
Dana 🜄 Soul • Surf • Self

Insecurity through obscurity.

"Unpacking the attack took work, because much of the JavaScript in the .svg images was heavily obscured using a custom version of “JSFuck,” a technique that uses only a handful of character types to encode JavaScript into a camouflaged wall of text."

The Alberta Advantage.

Alberta youth unemployment hits 20%. I wonder if the UCP is doing anything about this. It seems like a problem. 🤨

South Park

It Looks Like a School Bathroom Smoke Detector. A Teen Hacker Showed It Could Be an Audio Bug A pair of hackers found that a vape detector often found in high school bathrooms contained microphones—and security weaknesses that could allow someone to turn it into a secret listening device.

Everything from military radios to AI can be hacked. At the Defcon hacker conference, researchers showed how they hacked into these systems—not for gain—but to point out vulnerabilities.

First, a student who found that vape detectors installed at his high school could be used for surveillance: 🧵

Three Priorities for a New Age of Electricity Load Growth - RMI Electricity demand growth is being caused by more than data centers, and rising electricity costs call for system solutions

"Wholesale electricity prices in the United States and Europe have risen by 30–40 percent in the past year alone, largely due to higher gas prices." Increased demand is also an issue, with data centers one major cause of increase.
rmi.org/three-priori...

A lot of people apparently don't know that "Artificial Intelligence" is a marketing term that has no basis in reality.