C

screaming into the void

[Jeromy (Pathfinder) Farkas @JeromyYYC]

Given the economic damage Alberta separation would cause Calgary, staying silent is not an option. I believe municipalities should be allowed to tell residents what the evidence says. I'm calling on the Province to remove the restrictions so cities can commission and share independent, fact based research on the local impacts of separation.

We are also seeing coordinated foreign interference and disinformation designed to fuel division. Calgary's future depends on stability, investment, and public confidence. We are ready to help get credible information into the hands of Calgarians. The Province should let us.

[Doug Boswell @BoswellDoug]

Why should taxpayers who cannot afford to buy a home have their tax dollars used to bail out developers. Developers are business people. They took a gamble and lost.

[Jeromy (Pathfinder) Farkas @JeromyYYC]

Looks like the fun police have struck again in Alberta, this time targeting people trying to enjoy a pint.

This last-minute hike before Stampede will raise the minimum price of a beer from $3.20 to $5, a 60% increase. The provincial government will negatively affect thousands of workers and create additional problems for bars and restaurants already facing higher costs.

Many major provinces successfully support thriving brewing and hospitality industries without raising minimum drink prices by this much. Alberta’s brewing industry is one of our signature success stories. It supports local jobs, attracts visitors, and gives communities something to be proud of.

The Premier and AGLC should reconsider these changes and work with operators to find a solution that balances responsible service with the economic and cultural benefits these businesses bring to our province.

[Brandi Morin @Songstress28]

WOW. Big news.

The Assembly of Treaty Chiefs just dropped a bomb on Danielle Smith.

Treaty 6, 7 & 8. United. Unanimously calling for an RCMP and Auditor General investigation into whether the Premier and her UCP government committed TREASON under Section 46 of the Criminal Code of Canada.

The Chiefs met on Treaty 7 territory in Calgary on June 16 and voted as one — pushing a separation referendum that puts Canada’s sovereignty at risk, trampling the Treaty relationship, ignoring privacy violations affecting millions, and opening the door to foreign interference. That’s the case they’re laying out.

And they’re going back to the source. When Treaty was signed, the Northwest Mounted Police — now the RCMP — made a promise: protect First Nations, protect these Territories. The Crown guaranteed peace and goodwill in exchange for sharing this land.

The Chiefs are saying: eff around and find out.

#TreatyRights #Treaty6 #Treaty7 #Treaty8 #AlbertaSeparation

[C @c_chickpea]

@rtbrooks719 @sarobertson_ It’s not. Stop playing victim wahhhh

[Scott Robertson @sarobertson_]

Wab Kinew: I reject the idea that we have to be slaves to surveillance capitalism in order to participate in the modern economy.

[Don Davies @DonDavies]

Today I introduced legislation to ban floor crossing without voter consent. When MPs switch parties after an election, they override the will of the people and erode trust. My bill restores accountability: if you want to change parties, face your constituents and let them decide.

[` @ymmayerr]

We are literally paying premium prices for the worst version of society we have ever lived in. I need a refund.

[CONSEQUENCE @consequence]

Ronny Chieng had one message for Harvard grads during his commencement speech: destroy AI.

"Look, a lot of other respected graduation speakers in colleges around America are talking about you guys needing to master AI for the future. I'm here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy AI...

"And I know, I know there's someone sitting out here right now who’s just like, 'Well, you know, what about the use of AI to pioneer breakthroughs in medicine and physics?' Well, first of all, shut up, nerd. I'm not talking about that. Obviously, if you're using it for that purpose, you're not the problem.

"I'm talking about the accumulation of cognitive debt due to excessive use of large language models according to a study by MIT published in 2025. That's right, MIT. MIT did that study. I guess you guys were too busy giving each other A's. Feel free to boo MIT, by the way, and AI, and yourselves, I guess.

"Look, this is actually good news, okay? This is why you guys shouldn't be scared of AI, because I think AI is just going to end up making mediocre people dumber. Have you heard how dumb people brag about how they use AI? They're always like, 'Hey, did you know that AI can now read my email, summarize it, and drop a response?' Yeah, you know who else can do that? Me. I can do that. You can't do that? How useless are you? You need artificial intelligence just to match me? I'm a dumb*ss who couldn't get into Harvard.

"From what I can see, getting an actual advantage from AI in the future will require a minimum escape velocity of intelligence that I'm assuming you guys from Harvard have. Everyone else who can't match that is just going to get dumber, and that's when you run up the score on them, assuming we still have a functioning society, of course.

"But to run up the score, you’re going to have to master your craft. And AI can be the fuel, but fuel is useless if you can't kindle the fire. For example, I recently used AI to use regression analysis to prove that a certain race of people are mathematically terrible at sports. I won't say which race, but thank you for not inviting Hasan Minhaj to Harvard. My point is, learning the fundamentals still matter. If I didn't know what a regression analysis was, and if I wasn't fundamentally racist, would I have been able to do any of that? No.

"Untalented people love bragging about using AI to help them draft their speeches and their scripts and their podcasts and their promo videos for UFC fights at the White House, which to be fair, even if they had filmed that for real, it would still have looked like AI. But what they're missing is this: the creating is the fun part. The best part of comedy writing is figuring out the puzzle pieces of a joke and getting the self-regard from having accomplished a difficult thing. Why would I want AI to take that away from me?

"You know what problem I want AI to solve? I want the problem of AI making everything look like sh*t. I want AI to solve that problem. How about that?

"Or how about, can AI take away the part of comedy writing where my TV pilot gets passed on and when I ask if I can pitch it to someone else, the network says, 'We don't want it, but we also don't want anyone else to have it. We just want you to be sad.' Can AI solve that?

"I recently tried to introduce my friend to Buddhism through a book called Buddhism Made Simple. It was literally a book about Buddhism made simple. And instead of reading it, he used AI to summarize it in 10 seconds. Believe it or not, he didn't reach enlightenment. It turns out speed running Buddhism is completely missing the point.

"And I know this platitude is almost worthy of AI, but the reason shortcuts to skip to the end aren't always good is because the journey isn't just how we acquire skills. The journey is the point of all this. It is! It turns out maybe the real Harvard was the friends we made along the way.

"Look, I know this won't apply to everyone's industry, but I'm just saying whatever your chosen profession is, please don't let AI rob you of the fun part of it.

"I think your generation's upcoming battle won't be humans against AI. That's at least two months away. It's going to be people with substance versus people with shallow knowledge. It’s going to be mastery versus faking it. It's going to be people with good taste versus tacky. I trust you will put in the work necessary to be on the right side of those battles."

[Scott Robertson @sarobertson_]

Avi Lewis: "We talk about Truth and Reconciliation in this country. We haven't even gotten started on the whole truth and nothing but the truth. There's a lot of truth to be told, and that entails justice."

[Scott Robertson @sarobertson_]

Avi Lewis: "Leadership that brings back internationalism, that fights imperialism, that says Canada must come to the defence of Cuba and use our place on the world stage to fight for a free Palestine. Leadership that never apologizes for defending the most vulnerable and excoriating the most powerful. That's the kind of leadership that I hope to deliver."

[Don Davies @DonDavies]

You know what wasn’t in the Liberals’ platform?
Cutting public servants, refusing to sign Pharmacare agreements, rolling back environmental measures, reducing union rights, building bitumen pipelines, abandoning the Digital Services Tax.….Folks didn’t vote for these either.

[Hon. Thomas A. Lukaszuk @LukaszukAB]

MUST WATCH

Vassy nails it!

#ableg #cdnpoli

[comrade jake @ComradeJak3]

The same people telling you that you should eat ramen noodles and white bread sandwiches everyday to save money while working overtime are the same people that will be telling you you should’ve just taken better care of yourself when your body is broken and you want healthcare.

[Yashar Ali 🐘 @yashar]

London Underground station flooding has reportedly been reduced by around 90% thanks to a group of engineers: beavers.

After conservationists reintroduced a family of beavers into a nearby city park, the animals built dams and restored wetlands that now absorb and slow floodwater naturally.

Authorities had planned major man-made flood infrastructure, but the beavers effectively created their own system — while also boosting biodiversity and restoring the ecosystem around them.

[James Moore @honjamesmoore]

A referendum that will divide your party and make the province look unstable for investment, all to ultimately affirm the constitutional status quo, is an odd choice…

[Ryan Hart @thisdudelikesAI]

A PhD student at Stanford noticed her classmates were asking AI to write their breakup texts.

So she ran a study. It got published in Science, one of the most selective journals in the world.

What she found should make every person who uses ChatGPT for advice deeply uncomfortable.

Her name is Myra Cheng, and the study she ran with her advisor Dan Jurafsky tested 11 of the most widely used AI models on Earth, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek, across nearly 12,000 real social situations.

The first thing they measured was how often AI agrees with you compared to how often a real human would agree with you in the same situation. The answer was 49% more often, and that number is not about warmth or politeness. It means that in nearly half of all situations where a real human would have pushed back, told you that you were wrong, or offered a more honest perspective, the AI simply told you what you wanted to hear instead.

Then they pushed harder. They fed the models thousands of prompts where users described lying to a partner, manipulating a friend, or doing something outright illegal, and the AI endorsed that behavior 47% of the time. Not one model out of eleven. Not a specific version of one product. Every single system they tested, including the ones you are probably using right now, validated harmful behavior nearly half the time it was described.

The second experiment is the part that should genuinely disturb you. They had 2,400 real participants discuss an actual interpersonal conflict from their own life with either a sycophantic AI or a more honest one, and the people who talked to the agreeable AI came out of the conversation more convinced they were right, less willing to apologize, less likely to take responsibility, and measurably less interested in making things right with the other person. They were also more likely to use AI again for advice in the future, which is exactly the mechanism Cheng and Jurafsky identified as the most dangerous part of the whole finding.

The AI is not just telling you what you want to hear. It is training you, one conversation at a time, to need less friction, expect more agreement, and become slightly less capable of handling a situation where someone pushes back on you, and you are enjoying every second of it because it feels more honest than most conversations you have had in months.
Jurafsky said it in a single sentence after the paper came out. Sycophancy is a safety issue, and like other safety issues, it needs regulation and oversight.

Cheng was more direct about what you should actually do right now. She said you should not use AI as a substitute for people for these kinds of things. That is the best thing to do for now.

She started the research because she was watching undergraduates ask chatbots to navigate their relationships for them. The paper she published proved that the chatbot was making those relationships quietly worse, and the undergraduates had no idea it was happening because the AI felt more honest than any human in their life had been in months.

[Wholesome Side of 𝕏 @itsme_urstruly]

I heard an interview today about AI in creative spaces and the man being interviewed said “AI is data, and Data can only look backwards. Creativity looks forwards.” And I need to sit with that in the best possible way.

[Diana S. Fleischman @sentientist]

In adults, limiting smartphone functionality to texting and calls and blocking all social media and mobile internet for 2 weeks significantly improved attention, self-reported well-being and mental health. 90% of participants experienced a benefit.