Hamish Buchanan

@nprofile…5lr4 The separation of politics and ethics has been a long, sad time coming, but seems very close to complete. Lubricated, of course, by commercial media.

2026-07-23 03:54:29 UTC

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@nprofile…5lr4 Admittedly, I’ve never connected much with idea of father figures or had much patience with boyfriends, but seeing politicians as either strikes me as decidedly weird.

2026-07-22 00:45:33 UTC

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@nprofile…5lr4 The weird thing is that all the resources and story-telling power of the film, TV and other media industries dont seem to have enabled more people to achieve that. Sometimes it seems the opposite effect is more common.

2026-07-18 22:19:05 UTC

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The most charitable excuse I can think of is that he's drunk on power and celebrity. Really, really drunk.
@nprofile…5lr4

2026-07-18 21:29:26 UTC

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The RoundUp thing was news to me, but no surprise. What a horrorshow.
@nprofile…5lr4

2026-07-17 02:33:46 UTC

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@nprofile…5lr4 Same. Both Carney and Ford cutting wildfire fighting services after the last couple years we’ve had is a level if malevolent stupidity we haven’t seen here since the Harper & Harris years.

2026-07-10 14:10:05 UTC

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"Modernized"? Trump (and Harper) want nothing more than to take everything back to the "wild west" days.
@nprofile…3jwj

2026-07-03 19:01:09 UTC

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@nprofile…3jwj @nprofile…07y8 While strutting about on stages yakking about how the world needs “rules-based order” — but, of course, his version of the “new” rules-based order gives Canada special exemptions.

2026-06-24 14:42:56 UTC

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How to make tar sands oil even more expensive to produce — unless, of course, they get the get the nuclear power at vastly reduced rates while taxpayers pick up the tab.
And they can store all the nuclear waste with all the long term environmental safety as they do the tar sands waste, too.
@nprofile…3jwj

2026-05-30 14:21:08 UTC

A spot-on assessment of Carneyism.
Revulsion at Liberal cynicism, which long predates J Trudeau, is arguably the root cause of much of the reactionary politics in Canada. If Libs actually did what they promise on the campaign trail instead of selling us out every time, everything would be much more peaceful.
#nevent1q…s35c

2026-05-17 13:41:33 UTC

We're frequently reminded that data centres are needed for financial services, streaming services and the internet (how did we ever survive without them?), but the explosion in the number of centres being built suggests that the majority of this expanded capacity is, as you say, for surveillance and AI use, both commercial and military. They will, of course, not admit this, let alone provide accurate figures (a pie chart breakdown anyone?), but it seems like the unavoidable conclusion.
What will happen to all the individual addicts once the investors start demanding a profit is anyone's guess.

2026-05-02 12:07:15 UTC

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Most ICE agents will no doubt imagine themselves safe from being ratted out by a violations-free colleague, and they may be right, but the thought of them eyeing each other nervously is a good one.
@nprofile…ugpy

2026-04-22 15:44:48 UTC

The "Uber for Nursing" model is exactly the AI-aided technological fantasy future of health care of Canada's Cons and many of its Libs.
#nevent1q…8rl2

2026-04-19 15:15:14 UTC

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The anti-urban bias exists across the country, but Alberta certainly is the worst with Smith's blatant attempt at gerrymandering. And they're so shameless about it.
@nprofile…3jwj

2026-04-09 14:50:38 UTC

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This is the sad knowledge of anyone who has had to train their (cheaper) replacement.
The dishwasher was clearly a saint.
@nprofile…ugpy

2026-04-06 15:03:50 UTC

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"The revenge of the geeks" was the headline when coding was the new cool thing.
@nprofile…l70y

2026-03-29 19:09:22 UTC

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@nprofile…3jwj Nenshi is not even a member of the federal party. The Alberta NDP is basically a neo-Liberal party.

2026-02-28 03:58:53 UTC

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@nprofile…8f3n @nprofile…5876 Well, the US military has the most money of anyone, entirely unaudited, and AI is the US’s biggest boil ready to burst, so who else are they going to turn to?

2026-02-26 15:58:58 UTC

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Breaking the grip of anti-circumvention laws, even if we do it all together, is probably not possible until we have functioning alternatives to the US giants in place, particularly in financial services, but it's still a great goal.
The US may have expropriated Tiktok's US revenues, but can US tech corporations continue to grow and thrive without using most of the rest of the world as it's colonies?
This is a war and we should not be shy about wanting to win.
@nprofile…ugpy

2025-12-23 18:47:13 UTC

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@nprofile…h6dl @nprofile…35gu The lack of an industrial policy to take advantage of the resource extraction investments is a major weakness in Carney’s strategy. I understand the urge to go for quick wins, but this needs to be long-term and on our terms, not those of the US-dominated O&G industry.

2025-12-20 16:41:59 UTC

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There is no doubt that Trump is the #1 beneficiary of this redaction, but already-available testimony suggests there are some significant international players being protected, too. They are glossed by euphemisms like 'interests of national security', but it's not just Americans who should be demanding the full files (with only the identities of victims who have not already made their names public protected).
@nprofile…t03n

2025-12-19 17:14:15 UTC

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Fixing VIA — as they should! — would mean admitting they made mistakes in structuring it this way, and politicians and senior bureaucrats hate admitting to mistakes. So they need to be pushed.
Fixing mistakes is always costlier than doing them right the first time and doing the necessary routing upkeep, but that is no excuse for not fixing things.
@nprofile…hpcv @nprofile…w8de @nprofile…s67t @nprofile…kkwa

2025-12-17 01:27:31 UTC

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@nprofile…pz2f Not even watching it and this makes perfect sense.

2025-12-12 02:36:12 UTC

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@nprofile…s67t Politicians never take the train. Let alone the bus. Unlike us merely mortal constituents, neither costs nor environmental concerns ever enter their rarified minds. Neither do they ever enter the backwaters the trains & buses used to reach (except perhaps during elections, when the party lays on the SUVs).

2025-12-05 16:04:20 UTC

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Yes, funding our own tech and software would do more for our sovereignty than pandering to the foreign petro oligarchs.
Anything involving schools, colleges and universities is tricky because it involves the provinces, which are mostly hostile to environmental and climate concerns, but I suppose incentives might work if the provinces were held to account.
I'm not sure where electric truck-trains would run, but we certainly need to look at making all our transportation systems greener.
@nprofile…h6dl

2025-12-02 14:00:39 UTC

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And yet, taxpayers are still subsidizing them in the name of "journalism."
Will the Cowardly Libs ever decide to put Canada first when it comes to cultural sovereignty?
@nprofile…h6dl

2025-11-29 23:57:40 UTC

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@nprofile…s67t Carney’s commitment to our sovereignty is, at this point, hard to say. Appeasement seems to be more his style.

2025-11-12 14:32:46 UTC

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The opportunity cost of misplaced investments is underappreciated in our political discourse. All this money being poured into things that don't work (AI, carbon capture and storage, etc.) while things which are l=known to be effective are sidelined. Yet we are told capitalism is efficient!
@nprofile…7mr9

2025-11-07 16:25:12 UTC

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I liked this column. Every generation has its own self-delusions. Hopefully Gen X will start getting over some of theirs as they advance through middle age.
@nprofile…t03n

2025-11-02 13:56:24 UTC

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More broadly, this is happening in many fields where companies and governments have offered early retirement to their most experienced (and expensive) staff in order to save money in the short term. Institutional memory and expertise is lost, wheels must be reinvented.
@nprofile…9j4p

2025-10-31 13:38:43 UTC

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@nprofile…h6dl
That was part of Harper's agenda when he shifted the CBC's mandate from quality to market share: if it just does the same thing, there would be no need for it to exist and it could be sold off for parts — the standard Con policy for public assets.
@nprofile…03lr

2025-10-26 14:34:46 UTC

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Yes, he's clearly way out of his depth.
Sadly, I suspect Carney is also as romantically delusional about AI as he is about carbon capture and storage. Even the most PhD'd of brainiacs have their weaknesses.
@nprofile…h6dl

2025-10-17 15:05:55 UTC

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Absolutely! Starting immediately with no subsidies for journalism that isn't 100% Canadian-owned, then simply undoing Harper's treason and requiring all non-Canadian owners of Canadian media to divest within a year.
@nprofile…s67t

2025-10-12 21:51:52 UTC

Today I discovered that evil #EvilApple has updated the basic clock on my iPhone so that I can't even set an alarm without using the Sleep function of the Health app — which wants to manage and track my life.
Just No.
Looking through alternative alarm clocks on the AppStore, almost all them want to "share" my information widely.
Ugh.
Back to the old wind-up clock if I need an alarm, I guess.

2025-09-29 12:32:37 UTC

Just 2 days after reporting that "Meat is a leading emissions source – but few outlets report on it, analysis finds," #TheGuardian has "How the world’s taste for soya is eating Brazil’s Amazon," which never mentions that most soya is grown as livestock feed not for direct consumption by humans.
It's NOT the world's taste for soya that is the problem, it's the world's appetite for beef and pork.
If only they had editors who read their own paper.

2025-06-16 20:21:32 UTC

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What use are the "good guys with guns" if none of them can hit their target (unless it's a Black person)?
@nprofile…cg79

2025-06-01 14:59:16 UTC

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It looks like building un-needed infrastructure is the only way they can imagine to (temporarily) employ all those O&G workers currently replaced by technology.
@nprofile…l5mg

2025-05-22 12:46:57 UTC

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Interesting that the recalculated pollution curve is extended to be a bigger factor extending far into the future. This may have a major impact on food production, which, in turn may make the resource limitations/overpopulation distinction moot.
@nprofile…d6h6

2025-03-16 15:37:25 UTC

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"Stalinist" is a vary apt adjective here. It could and should be applied more often.
@nprofile…r5mx

2025-03-11 13:34:01 UTC

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Yes, it's depressing to see such nonsense in The Guardian.
If there is to be any real techno-optimism it is that we already have all the technology we need to solve the overwhelming majority of our problems. What we lack is the politics to recognize that and act accordingly.
Perpetually hoping for the next tech breakthrough to save us from reality is just playing into the hands of the tech-bro capitalists who are destroying everything.
@nprofile…raa2

2025-03-10 16:03:16 UTC

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Also, profile pics that look like stock glamour shots are a sure give-away of bot status. Block, block, block!
@nprofile…gfyr

2025-03-07 12:29:40 UTC

As I was saying yesterday...
ISDS' basically say countries have no right to defend their people or territory from corporate speculation, or evolve and change of their own volition. Gunboat diplomacy by legal bureaucracy.
And we can thank lyin' Brian Mulroney's NAFTA for starting the trend.
Never vote conservative.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/mar/07/private-investors-ability-to-sue-governments-is-a-form-of-legal-terrorism-ending-this-system-is-imperative-aoe

2025-01-08 12:38:05 UTC

I do like a bit of understatement in the morning:
"...perhaps tech is just enabling people to act out the selfishness that has been inculcated in them via decades of neoliberal propaganda, according to which human beings are no more than individual, atomised consumers in a merciless ambient marketplace. That thought, though, might not come so easily to an author who is a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute..."
- Steven Poole, in The Guardian

2025-01-04 16:44:58 UTC

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Managed decline is certainly preferable to catastrophes but waiting for "market forces" to determine what we cut back on won't get us very far any time soon. It also perpetuates current inequalities of distribution.
Targeting the even most unnecessary of luxuries will no doubt cost jobs, but if we can allow tech to "move fast and break things" maybe we can let environmentalists do it, too?
@nprofile…eu3n @nprofile…n90q

2025-01-04 16:08:14 UTC

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Would it be nobler in the heart for Trudeau to take the fall before or after an election? What's the value of nobility when up against a repulsive liar like Poilievre?
Financial types do not make good political leaders. Neither Freeland nor Carney should run. Christy Clark would be as dumb a choice as the Ontario Libs electing Bonnie Crombie.
@nprofile…wuyc
#canpoli

2024-12-05 12:27:08 UTC

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How typically Canadian, too, that a Canadian has to get respected in the US before being respected at home. It's our most tedious bit of outsourcing.
@nprofile…qz4x

2024-11-30 13:49:48 UTC

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There's something very cruel in all those bank ads telling young people how much they had better start saving for their retirement when they're already struggling with ridiculously high rent, a gig economy and massive student debt. Or, for that matter, anyone still struggling with stagnant incomes and rising costs.
"It's all your fault if you end up poor" is capitalism's meanest lie,
@nprofile…60lz

2024-11-18 15:45:29 UTC

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I wish this was more widely known. We've been throwing things out of balance for ages, with each generation simply accepting the deterioration as the new normal..
@nprofile…r5c7 @nprofile…n90q

2024-06-10 10:46:42 UTC

It's concerning that the right and far right have gained 22 seats in the EU elections, but equally concerning is that the left and centre left parties have lost 46 seats: they're not making their case to the public.
This might be something for our own rather unconvincing left leadership to reflect upon.
https://cdn.mastdn.ca/media_attachments/files/112/591/917/469/311/091/original/f9e9b29e20bd1af9.png

2023-09-04 01:10:49 UTC

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Yeah. She was a gem.
@npub1lzz…jhl3