Alain Létourneau

Professeur, philosophie pratique, U. de Sherbrooke. Mes opinions; je relaie des connaissances scientifiques; climat, environnement, politiques.

[Alain Létourneau @AlainLetour]

« Le gouvernement allemand devrait mettre en garde Israël contre de telles actions. On n’est pas pour Israël, on n’est pas pro-israélien, si on soutient ce gouvernement israélien et cette politique israélienne. C’est une contradiction en soi. Justement avec ce passé allemand, on doit veiller scrupuleusement à ce qu’Israël se comporte comme on doit se comporter quand on a tiré les leçons de l’histoire jusqu’en 1945. Et pas l’inverse, soutenir ceux qui imitent en réalité le national-socialisme. » traduction machine

[Nurder Koch @NurderK]

„Die deutsche Regierung müsste Israel für solche Aktionen warnen. Man ist nicht für Israel, man ist nicht israelfreundlich, wenn man diese israelische Regierung & diese israelische Politik unterstützt. Das ist ein Widerspruch in sich selbst. Gerade mit dieser Vergangenheit der Deutschen muss man schön aufpassen, dass auch Israel sich verhält, wie man sich verhalten muss, wenn man die Lehren aus der Geschichte bis 1945 gelernt hat. Und nicht umgekehrt, die zu unterstützen, die eigentlich den Nationalsozialismus nachahmen.“

Moshe Zimmermann bei #Lanz

[Nathalie Grandvaux 🇨🇦 @NGrandvaux]

@MOBeaudoin1 🎯

[Nicolas Tenzer @NTenzer]

Thank you to the Prime Minister & my Swedish friends.
This short film shows that Ukraine is fighting for all of Europe—and for our principles.
Thank you for the Gripen jets: I hope they destroy many russian targets in Ukraine and russia itself, and help secure the final victory.

[Alain Létourneau @AlainLetour]

Une contribution essentielle à la discussion sur les LLM, alias AI, alias IA, alias Chat GPT, Claude, etc.

[Erika Guevara Rosas @ErikaGuevaraR]

Generative AI doesn’t run on magic. It runs on massive data pipelines built on privacy violations by design.

Our new @Amnesty report exposes how big tech’s AI systems are powered by surveillance, data extraction, and abuse of people’s rights, at scale.

We researched the models powering some of the most popular publicly available standalone generative AI tools, including GPT 3 by Open AI, Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama, DeepSeek and tools by Midjourney and Stable Diffusion.

This is not innovation at any cost. It comes at a high price: our human rights.

Read the report: https://t.co/MGRonqai7o

[Alain Létourneau @AlainLetour]

Évidemment l'Iran et le Koweit n'y échappent pas, ni le Pakistan.

[Extreme Temperatures Around The World @extremetemps]

50 DEGREES 🌡️2026 WORLD HOTTEST DAY 🌡️
50.5c today at Jacobabad Pakistan:
Australia was just dethroned.

An extraordinary heat wave is ongoing in MIDDLE EAST:
Tomorrow we might see 50C in Kuwait and Iran and lots of records allover the area.
Stay tuned.

[Alain Létourneau @AlainLetour]

Félicitations à Jérôme Dupras pour cet immense mandat! Et merci @SciChefQC sortant Rémi Quirion pour votre travail de pionnier!

[Rémi Quirion @SciChefQC]

Hier, moment chargé d’émotion à l’Assemblée nationale. J’ai eu le privilège d’accompagner Jérôme Dupras pour sa nomination comme scientifique en chef du Québec et PDG du FRQ.

Plus de détails :
https://t.co/ZiMkIMvsRi

[Alain Létourneau @AlainLetour]

Belle représentation du dôme de chaleur sur l'Europe, la France mais aussi l'Angleterre, l'Allemagne...

[Peter Dynes @PGDynes]

Wow! Records keep falling with this heat dome.
#Portugal has now recorded its hottest May day ever: 40.3°C in #Mora. 40°C is the sort of temperature you would expect in the height of summer, not in May.
The climate is changing before our eyes, the warning signs can't be ignored.

[Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf 🌏 🦣 @rahmstorf]

📣 Just out: our new study on the 'cold blob' in the Northern Atlantic. Is that due to ocean currents bringing less heat there, or due to more heat being lost through the sea surface?
Our data analysis strongly suggests it's due to #AMOC slowing.

https://t.co/Po7mmOSiGC

[Alain Létourneau @AlainLetour]

Certains minimiseront cela en disant, on est presque en juin. D'autres ne savent pas ce qui arrive en Inde dans le même temps. Bref, la course des lemmings vers le précipice se poursuit...tant que cela ne fera pas mal aux plus riches, aucun changement important n'arrivera malheureusement.

[RS Archer @archer_rs]

Apparently climate change is a myth.

[Peter Dynes @PGDynes]

A huge heat dome is sitting over France, with temperatures that might hit 40°C. It’s still spring. It’s still May. What was once considered “extreme” is increasingly becoming normal across Europe. Heatwaves are earlier, longer, & pushing ecosystems and health beyond limits.

[Bruno Brezenski @bbbrezenski]

Eai, quem disposto a ir pra Índia nos próximos dias? 🇮🇳🥵
Boa parte do país terá sensação térmica acima de 50°C, alguns pontos chegando nos 55°C.

Pensa na loucura.🫠

Detalhe, essa região que atingirá a sensação de 55°C, significa também que vai atingir 33°C do bulbo úmido.
Lembra do que eu sempre falo sobre o bulbo úmido letal?

Acima de 35°C do bulbo úmido, quando a umidade está saturada e a temperatura do ar acima de 35°C temos o BULBO ÚMIDO LETAL. Nesse nível NENHUM ser humano resiste por mais de 2 horas, idosos e bebês cerca de 30 minutos para entrar em colapso térmico.

A Índia é um grande exemplo de uma nação a beira de uma catástrofe, e estamos falando do país mais populoso do mundo, quase 1.5 bilhão de pessoas.

Com o aumento na média da temperatura mundial em 3°C até 2050, essa região irá atingir o bulbo úmido letal várias vezes, significa que teremos migração de milhões de pessoas nas próximas décadas, isso só falando da Índia.

Esse é o caos que muitos analistas geopolíticos não estão incluindo nas suas análises sobre a mudança na ordem global.
Eu incluo porque é o fator principal, estamos falando em colapso civilizatório global, isso conta muitos mais do que as loucuras dos EUA em desespero pelo seu declínio hegemônico.

Os países precisam correr para conseguir fazer adaptações climáticas profundas, com o atual modelo de governança assimétrico e imperialista, não está sobrando dinheiro para as nações investirem nem na transição energética para reduzir a velocidade em que o planeta aquece.

É uma loucura ver isso e saber que um país está tentando sabotar a sobrevivência de várias nações e a estabilidade internacional.
Insanidade pura.

[Zeteo @zeteo_news]

“I think it’s really, really clear where Jews of conscience stand [on Palestine].”

Canadian Party Leader @avilewis explains to @mehdirhasan why he identifies as anti-Zionist and believes most North American Jews feel similarly.

[Alain Létourneau @AlainLetour]

C'était vraiment pas une bonne idée de se laisser charmer par le chant des sirènes. Dit autrement: puissance des algorithmes et des machines d'influence.

[🇺🇸 Edward T. Winslow @EdwardTWinz]

NOBODY IS TELLING YOU HOW FUCKED THE FARMERS ARE IN AMERICA RIGHT NOW.

The Agriculture Secretary just confirmed it publicly.

1 in 4 American farmers has NO fertilizer secured for spring planting.

No fertilizer. No crops. No food.

Farm bankruptcies are up 46% in 2025.

160,000 farms closed since 2017.

Less than half of all farmers will even turn a profit this year.

They're not struggling. They're being wiped out.

And the media is busy covering everything else.

The real story behind this hasn't been told yet.. follow me because i'm about to tell it 🚨

[Alain Létourneau @AlainLetour]

Le peuple américain qui chante l'hymne national du Canada à Buffalo. Wow!

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

The mic cut out during O Canada at the Sabres game.
Buffalo filled every single second of silence.

Sang it word for word.

This is how you tell your neighbors you see them.
We love Canada. Don’t listen to the noise.

[Alain Létourneau @AlainLetour]

@BigBrainPhiloso It would be great to know who is the commentator discussing Dewey.

[Alain Létourneau @AlainLetour]

Commentaire: c'est une excellente idée de ne pas mêler la bousculade et les coups de bâtons dans la clôture avec la discussion normale et respectueuse.

[Scott Robertson @sarobertson_]

Bob Rae: "I wouldn't talk about Mark Carney and Howard Lutnick in the same sentence if I were you. Mr. Carney's tone was respectful. And it was intelligent. I'll let Howard Lutnick’s comments stand for themselves."

[Alain Létourneau @AlainLetour]

Continuez l'excellent travail @PikettyWIL !

[Thomas Piketty @PikettyWIL]

New on https://t.co/uxtt5054xt

The Global Justice Platform: Distributional Pathways, the Global Justice Fund and the New Democratic International Order, 2026-2100

More to come in the Global Justice Report
World Inequality Conference, June 4-6 2026

https://t.co/g37FlCvC82

[Alain Létourneau @AlainLetour]

I question what he calls culture. He seems to forget that Shakespeare, Descartes, Pascal, Dewey and Carrère are what I call culture, along with Cassirer. He is discussing "Cultural Industies". Did he ever read Theodor W. Adorno?

[Mateus — eu/acc 🇪🇺 @im_Mateus_]

Terence McKenna: "Culture is not your friend."

Few thinkers put it as bluntly and few diagnoses of modern life cut as deep.

McKenna's argument is simple and devastating: culture was never designed for your benefit. It was designed for the benefit of institutions.

"Culture is not your friend. Culture is for other people's convenience and the convenience of various institutions: churches, companies, tax collection schemes."

The indictment doesn't stop there. Culture doesn't just fail us passively. It actively diminishes us.

"It insults you. It disempowers you. It uses and abuses you. None of us are well treated by culture."

What makes this especially sharp is the contradiction he exposes. We collectively understand that the individual matters. We "glorify the creative potential of the individual," we believe in "the rights of the individual," we recognise that "the felt presence of experience is what is most important."

And yet we let culture pull us in exactly the opposite direction.

"The culture is a perversion. It fetishizes objects. It creates consumer mania. It creates endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding in the form of swirly religions and silly cults. It invites people to diminish themselves and dehumanize themselves."

McKenna's critique isn't a counsel of despair. It's a call to clarity. Because beneath the machinery of false comfort, he saw something real: the actual resources exist to do better.

"You can stand back and look at this planet and see that we have the money, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific knowhow, the love, and the community to produce a kind of human paradox."

The paradox being: everything needed to build something genuinely good is already here. The obstacle isn't resources. It's leadership or the lack of it.

[Alain Létourneau @AlainLetour]

En espérant que le message passe!

[Patrick Déry @Patrickdery]

« Nous avons hérité d’une culture politique irresponsable qui consiste à faire semblant d’être riche, quitte à condamner les générations futures à vivre dans une province qui tombe en ruine. »

💯
https://t.co/zm6c0AUVPJ

[Alain Létourneau @AlainLetour]

Le genre de problème qui arrive quand tu mets aux commandes un individu (et sa clique) qui ont au mieux une compréhension du 19è siècle des processus économiques et sociaux.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

What was meant to be a show of force has spiraled into a full-blown agricultural disaster. T.r.u.m.p’s latest potash tariffs were designed to pressure Canada, but instead they detonated inside America’s own farming heartland. In an emergency meeting at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a senior Trump adviser reportedly admitted the unthinkable: the policy had backfired so badly that American farmers may not survive the growing season.
Canada wasted no time. As the world’s largest potash supplier, Ottawa redirected exports to Asia and Europe within days, locking in billion-dollar contracts and tightening its grip on the global fertilizer market. One Canadian official mocked the situation bluntly, saying that if the U.S. doesn’t want Canadian potash, the rest of the world gladly will.
On the ground in Iowa, the consequences turned personal. A U.S. farmer broke down during a live interview, explaining that without Canadian potash, crops simply cannot be grown at scale. The result is stark: Canada posts record profits and cements its status as the undisputed “fertilizer king,” while the United States loses control of a critical supply chain at the worst possible moment of the planting season. Analysts are already calling this the worst trade failure of Trump’s year — a pressure tactic that ended up crushing the very people it claimed to defend.