Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

On this #CanadaDay I'm struck by how few Americans know their government and the Russians are involved in a psyop in Alberta to incite a separatist movement. The goal: force a populist referendum to leave #Canada and join the #USA.

Albertans are being swayed by glitzy YouTube influencer videos, many of which are #AI generated abroad,, to suggest their lives would be better in the US. You know, Florida mansions, control over immigration, pristine health care, high valued US dollar, and other grass is greener lies. Very #Brexit-esque, Cambridge Analytica playbook.

As the US under this administration seeks to capture and manipulate oil internationally, Hormuz and Venezsudentenland are not enough. They are coming for the Canadian oil fields not with arms, but with algorithmically amplified #disinformation and millions of corrupt dollars to influence an election in their favor. For Russia, cracking Canada means destabilizing yet another Western democracy in the international illiberal project, plus Canada recently signed an agreement to provide drones to the #Ukraine.

How can you help?

I wish I could say call your Congressional Rep, and that might still work in some districts. However, this is digital guerilla warfare, and we still don't have good innoculation against it.

Any information you can get out there on social media --about what it is really like to live in the US (maybe more about how actually likely it is to own a mansion or paying for your health care!), about how disinformation campaigns work, about what happened to democracies that voted to shoot themselves in the face based on peddled lies and are now dealing with the consequences (hello #UK), would help. Please tag Alberta separatism to ensure the message gets out.

And tell your friends. People need to know this is going on.

#elbowsup

Receipts:

https://thewalrus.ca/alberta-separatism-fuelled-by-russian-networks-and-us-influencers/

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/co-ordinated-network-of-fake-youtube-channels-pushing-alberta-secession-and-us-annexation-narrative-report-finds/

https://www.cdmrn.ca/slopaganda-the-inauthentic-youtube-network-selling-secession-to-albertans

https://thetyee.ca/News/2026/04/21/Dishonest-Online-Campaign-Support-Alberta-Separatism/

https://disifnowatch.org broke this story with international journalists' help: see: https://disinfowatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Alberta-and-Foreign-Interference-Report-Final-052026-web.pdf

Evolutionary speaking, an ass with sweat glands makes no sense. I'd rather be panting or splooting.

"ChocoPoc malware delivered via trojanized exploits on GitHub"

"[...] Multiple weaponized proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits on GitHub delivered a Python-based remote access trojan (RAT) called ChocoPoC that can execute commands and steal sensitive data."

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/chocopoc-malware-delivered-via-trojanized-exploits-on-github/

#Python

The Private Equity Stakeholder Project has found that private equity firms now own some 3 million apartments nationwide.

As AvalonBay and Equity Residential move toward a $69B merger, housing advocates warn that Wall Street landlords are consolidating power.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/real-estate-monopoly-equity-residential-avalon-bay

Right now, the only thing holding back most police from deploying armed drones and robots is the policies of companies and the social stigma surrounding the issue. Neither of these will hold forever. We need regulation. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/lawmakers-must-act-now-prevent-armed-police-drones

“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?”

This July 4th week, revisit Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech on liberty, hypocrisy and the “gross injustice and cruelty” hidden beneath national celebration.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/frederick-douglass-4th-of-july-sham-american-slave

Who's in the Reflecting Cesspool? https://www.patreon.com/BrianMcFadden

@NatureMC @stragu @ecosia @futurebird @doomsdayrs Any approach to search by AI-brained folks is going to be garbage in exactly the same way modern Google is: interpreting and second guessing your query in a probability space of likely questions rather than doing actual text indexing and search.

During July 4th week, Eugene Debs’s 1901 Independence Day speech still cuts through the fireworks:

“What is wanted is not a reform of the capitalist system, but its entire abolition.”

https://inthesetimes.com/article/fourth-july-eugene-debs-socialism-flag-independence-day

This is your regular reminder that even if you “dispassionately” assess LLM tools purely in economic terms, they are a complete and utter failure. Massive costs and capital expenses (chips, training, datacentres) that deprecate rapidly, all for a negligible boost in economic productivity

Using them also makes you a dickhead for all of the usual ethical and moral reasons, but people who put undue weight on “economic” reasoning have long since made their peace with being assholes.

We all like to joke about July being "Gay Wrath Month" but it's actually Disability Pride Month, so have the Disability Pride Flag from VGAPride and my AST Premmia LX MS-DOS machine

“The people have the eternal right to rebel against and overthrow” institutions that enslave, rob, and oppress.

For Emma Goldman, independence meant more than flags and founding myths.
https://inthesetimes.com/article/emma-goldman-a-new-declaration-of-independence-socialism-july-4

LGBT Q&A: you asked - what do data companies in the UK collect when verifying users' ages on digital platforms? The answer? A lot. Find out more here. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/lgbt-qa-what-data-are-companies-uk-collecting-when-verifying-my-age

A few thoughts on why people say shit like "I know AI's generate falsehoods but here's some slop" based on a few interactions at work.

https://tante.cc/2026/06/30/trying-to-manufacture-permission/

Community call - Friday July 3rd
Newsmast Foundation - Apps for change: Our socials, not our trap

Michael Foster (co-founder) and Saskia Welch (head of community) will talk about the Newsmast open-source platform for community-first, ethical social media. Newsmast was awarded Grand Prize in the Open Social Awards at the June 2026 Public Spaces conference 👏

12:00 CST/ 11:00 BST in meet.coop BigBlueButton https://de.meet.coop/b/rooms/5pp-jj1-vrg-dvv/join
Hosted by the Free Knowledge Institute. Working to buuild a Democratic Tech Fund. #FKI

Ford motor company... went all in on AI and it backfired, costing them billions.

They've admitted they mistakenly thought that introducing AI and feeding it their design requirements... that it would spit out good designs.

They're now desperately rehiring hundreds of engineers after the company became the laughing stock of the industry... and the AI they've been using is to blame for the most recalls in US history... 51 recalls covering more than 11 million vehicles in the first half of 2026.

🤔 😂

#Ford
#NoAI

Open source game engine Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions: 'We can't trust heavy users of AI to understand their code enough to fix it'

At risk of drowning in AI slop code, @godotengine is firming up its contribution requirements.

🎮 https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/open-source-game-engine-godot-will-no-longer-accept-ai-authored-code-contributions-we-cant-trust-heavy-users-of-ai-to-understand-their-code-enough-to-fix-it/

#gamedev #aicoding #godot #opensource #godotgameengine #dev #aicoding #aislop

I haven’t seen much coverage yet of the fresh round of layoffs at Bandcamp?

From the linked Bluesky post:

> my 13 years at bandcamp are coming to an end - i’ve been laid off along with most of the remaining engineers. best job i’ve ever had, working with the best people you could ever work with. unceremonious end to quite a ride.

https://bsky.app/profile/grmnygrmny.bsky.social/post/3mpgvo7l2v22t