Bathroom Rumblings

The author of the quoted piece, Mr Sophie Molly, aka Sophie Sparkles, aka Euan Weddell, is, you’ll be shocked to hear, one of those weird, cross-dressing men. The ones that women and girls should welcome into their toilets and changing rooms. His activities include boasting of demanding needless bra fittings from lingerie department shop assistants, and sharing photos of himself wearing only a ball gag and improvised nipple-clamps.

So, hey, nothing to worry about, ladies.

On changing rooms, cross-dressing, and the marking of territory.

Cry Me A River

I assume his political and cultural views are pretty similar to his old man’s, so I’m surprised he didn’t cancel the US tour out of spite. I had no idea he even had musical talent in the first place, and even if I did I doubt I’d be rushing to get show tickets.

Kiefer Sutherland is the latest artist to be struck down by the so-called ‘Blue Dot Fever,’ cancelling his upcoming U.S. tour over poor ticket sales.

Sutherland has been playing shows overseas in support of his new album, Grey, and posting videos documenting his experience to social media.

Empty Piggy Banks

Here’s something these folks need to ponder: over 40 years of falling interest rates, often hovering near zero, have made defined benefit pension plans nearly impossible to maintain. The go-to “solution” is to get that magical entity known as “others” to make up any shortfall. But those “others” are growing tired of handing over their capital to be consumed.

Fed into the performance-based formula, those figures have meant former Queen’s employee Gordon Crawley has received no increases since he retired in November 2021. Meanwhile, the consumer price index (CPI) has risen by more than 16 per cent over that time frame, according to Bank of Canada data.

He says it’s been difficult, especially knowing he won’t get any additional payments to top up his pension and help deal with inflation until the fund’s returns have made up for lost ground.

A Speech In Davos

Turns out, cheap talk has a price;

On Monday morning, the Pentagon’s senior defense strategist suspended the oldest bilateral defense institution in North American history and pointed the announcement at Mark Carney’s Davos speech — a four-month-old address the Canadian prime minister’s admirers had called Churchillian, and that Washington now treats as a case study in the gap between rhetoric and reality.

Elbridge Colby, Under Secretary of War for Policy and the principal architect of American defense strategy under the Trump administration, announced that the Department of War is pausing the Permanent Joint Board on Defense to “reassess how this forum benefits shared North American defense.” The board was established by Franklin Roosevelt and Mackenzie King at Ogdensburg, New York in 1940 and has operated continuously for 86 years.

“A strong Canada that prioritizes hard power over rhetoric benefits us all,” Colby wrote. “Unfortunately, Canada has failed to make credible progress on its defense commitments.” In a subsequent post, Colby attached a map of North America and wrote that “delivering on shared continental defense begins by recognizing our shared geography.” A third post revealed that Colby had recently hosted US Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra at the Pentagon, and that the two are “working closely” to ensure Canada reaches the Hague Summit’s 3.5% of gross domestic product defense spending target.

The implications for Canada are potentially generational.

Things You’re Gonna See On The CBC

Lindsay Shepherd;

The CBC “prank show” deception scandal is getting so much worse.

The producers (operating under fake identities/fake company names with fake websites) told a number of RCMP veterans – people who dedicated their lives to serving on the frontlines – that they were invited to film for a show called “Life After Service.” A ceremony to thank them for their service would follow, and they were told dignitaries would be present. This would take place at the CBC Vancouver studio. They were told to come in uniform.

When the RCMP vets arrived at the CBC Vancouver studio on March 25th and 26th, the “pranksters” took their phones away, which they claimed was CBC Vancouver studio policy. The former RCMP officers were also placed in front of an audience of what they were told were about two dozen “journalists.” And it was sprung on them that this was a “live broadcast”, with “media availability” afterwards!

Then the producers switched up the whole session to be not about life after service, but the historical wrongs committed by the RCMP against indigenous peoples – to berate these vets for being part of the RCMP.

Would you like a little ointment for that ratio?

I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords

ChatGPT Is Rewriting Fact.

In this video, I sit down with ChatGPT and quiz it on guitar pedal history – the Tube Screamer, the Big Muff, the Maestro FZ-1, DOD, JHS, Jimi Hendrix’s rig… the works. And what you’re about to watch is kind of alarming. It hallucinates pedals that don’t exist. It agrees with things I KNOW are wrong when I push back. It confidently states dates it can’t actually source. And then when I ask it to prove anything… it can’t.

But here’s the part that really gets me: these aren’t just random errors. There’s a feedback loop happening. AI reads what’s on the internet, people repost what AI tells them, and AI reads that too. So the misinformation compounds. In 40 years, when someone wants to know who actually designed the first fuzz pedal – or what year the DOD 250 came out – this is what they’re going to find.

The Carbon Racket

A real conservative would have pointed out the absurdity of essentially having to pay protection money to get a pipeline built. It’s a dead loss for every Canadian, not a victory.

At least, that’s how much Alberta taxpayers could be asked to pay in order to prop up Smith’s new memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Ottawa that, among other things, promises to ratchet up carbon taxes to $130 per tonne by 2040. Under Friday’s agreement, Alberta and the feds promised to spend up to $1.2 billion toward that end, splitting the cost equally between both parties.

 

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