Rowan Wiebe

DOGE shitheads went barging into the government looking for fraud, waste, and abuse, and found jack shit because the fucking morons ignored contracting (the thing they wanted to get in on) and actually every fucking penny is accounted for by normies who don't want to waste taxpayer money.

I once knew a Federal bank examiner, and one time someone asked him why we had to KEEP inspecting banks over and over. He basically said every new batch of business school grads invents bank fraud from first principles.

Every technology problem is three social problems in a trench coat

Please hear me when I say that

1) these anti-medical woo birth movements have been a primary feeder into anti-vaxx eugenic movements

2) they pre-date the age of social media

3) they exist because we have not addressed medical sexism and specifically obstetric violence

I cannot read this without blood-curdling rage

Toronto deliberately killed apartment construction in the early 1970s, after a generation-long building boom.

Almost all of that housing was built by “the market.”

He’s right, you know. Not infallible, but right on this one at least. (Let’s get an ex cathedra statement on AI!)

Thank you again to everyone out there! Another year down, another million raised, and so many people who will be helped because of what you've done with us this year and every other! We couldn't do this without you, and through all the laughs and the tears, we wouldn't want it any other way...

I still can't believe we raised a million bucks and had so much fun doing it. (I'm gonna gloat about this for weeks)

Happy "let's circle back to this after the holidays" season to all who observe

"Why does the devil get all the good music"

Day making a face standing in front of the program monitor at Desert Bus For Hope, the donation velocity flames taking up a huge chunk of the screen

Insane energy at the moon base, the system can’t keep up with the donations for the Buster Sword giveaway. We have no idea how big engineering will allow the flames to get.

We’ve 100% lost the war on using phones while driving and it’s the worst.

Good luck

After bussing for 156 hours of at least 162, @desertbus.org has raised at over 845 000 USD for @childsplaycharity.bsky.social #DB2025

We need to borrow Great Depression tactics and start calling encampments Ford/Smith/etc.-town

We need to borrow Great Depression tactics and start calling them Ford/Smith/etc.-town

Ah, the problem is not that we fail to provide everyone with adequate housing or services for people with addiction, the *real problem* is that the rest of us are forced to see the results of these things, under the label "social decay". Got it.

People who use this technology do not want to be taught about a topic; they want the end result of having learned, without learning. I would guess for many this describes a feature, not a bug, of the technology.

On this Trans Day of Remembrance, I particularly want to stress that the violence we talk about trans people experiencing isn't just murder or domestic abuse or assault.

There is also legislative violence—far too much of it. And we lose lives to that every year too.

It was a highlight of AF for me

That's just my D&D group.

🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️ Huge crowds are out tonight at McDougall Centre in Calgary to rally against anti-trans Bill 9 and the Notwithstanding Clause.
#transrightsarehumanrights #ableg #abpoli #canpoli

transactionalberta.ca
savethecharter.ca

I have a fun hypothetical for the technical among us! (For certain values of fun, heh.) The scenario: You run a website. It doesn't have a mobile app: the only way to access it is in-browser. You are deeply, morally opposed to any form of invasive tracking or data-gathering on your users.

Excerpt from a BBC article: ""We usually work, 10, 11 or 12 hours a day," says a 49-year-old woman from Jiangxi unwilling to give her name. "On Sundays we work around three hours less." She is in an alleyway, where a dozen people are huddled around a row of bulletin boards. They are reading the job ads on the board, while examining the stitching on a pair of chinos draped over it. This is Shein's supply chain. The factories are contracted to make clothes on order - some small, some big. If the chinos are a hit, orders will ramp up and so must production. Factories then hire temporary workers to meet the demand their permanent staff cannot fulfil. The migrant worker from Jiangxi is looking for a short-term contract - and the chinos are an option. "We earn so little. The cost of living is now so high," she says, adding that she hopes to make enough to send back to her two children who are living with their grandparents. "We get paid per piece," she explains. "It depends how difficult the item is. Something simple like a t-shirt is one-two yuan [less than a dollar] per piece and I can make around a dozen in an hour.""

The people who make Shein's clothes labor for ten to twelve hours per day (in violation of China's labor laws), some up to seven days a week, and earn as little as 15 to 30 cents per t-shirt.

I think about how big tech openly and frictionlessly scrapes/steals everything to train AI models every time I have to work through a multi-part, multi-month research ethics review process to interview a half dozen people who actually want to talk to me about their work.

⚠️ BREAKING ⚠️

This afternoon, country music artist @corblund.bsky.social headed to #Edmonton to submit his application to Elections Alberta for a petition to prohibit coal mining in the #EasternSlopes of the Rocky Mountains.

#MountainsNotMines #WaterNotCoal #Calgary #YYC #Alberta #AbLeg #AbPoli

They're not even hiding it. Resolution #29 at this month's UCP AGM promises to roll back reproductive rights.

Don't think they'll use the notwithstanding clause to do it?

I've got a lab testing contract and boatload of Turkish Tylenol to sell you.

Waiting for all the "tough on crime" premiers to actually fund the courts.