piped.video/watch?v=S4-2pRMg… This "soldier of love" is the very definition of a happy warrior. He's Porthos in the Three Musketeers -- good-hearted, loyal, and brave, with an enormous appetite for life (and everything). He's wonderfully affectionate, and full of energy. We're determined to find him the very best home, because he deserves it, and because he'll repay your love a hundred times over.

😳 Trump snaps at another reporter: "Hey! I don't know who the hell you are but you better be careful"

Land doesn't vote. People vote. 80% of the population of Alberta lives in urban areas.

I have no referendum hot takes except to say that the market never priced in any risk to the Canadian oil and gas sector, never regarded the separation scenario as credible, and therefore shrugged off the Alberta referendum both before and after the vote. Market movements consistent with ordinary energy-sector volatility.

Spectacular Nature piece on why AI is not conscious and probably will never be. Three arguments: 1) Intelligence is not consciousness. Intelligence is about solving problems. Consciousness is about having subjective experiences. AlphaFold can solve super difficult problems. By contrast, our brains performs complex operations entirely outside awareness. Problem-solving and consciousness are two separate things. 2. Biology is essential. Our brains are alive, down to every cell. Their activity is inseparable from the living tissue that produces it. The idea that consciousness can be reproduced simply by running the right computations on silicon components who do not fight for their life is a very far fetching and, I would add, almost religious, assumption. 3) The physical organization may matter more than the computation. According to integrated information theory, consciousness requires specific causal relationships between a system’s physical components. The computer architectures running today’s AI lack this organization. The comparison with AlphaFold is particularly revealing: Almost nobody things AlphaFold is conscious, despite its inner working is very similar to an LLM Why? Because it does not speak. LLMs do speak like us and therefore we fall into an illusion: Since they speak like us, they must be like us. But this inference is wrong. LLMs are just a series of matrix multiplications. They are not conscious, and they will never be. * Paper in the first reply

Evidence that the Kremlin helped fan the flames of the French riots in order to help the political fortunes of Marine Le Pen -- a Putin stooge who has promised to take France out of NATO and who will do Russia's bidding as president of the France. saltypolitics.substack.com/p…

True, but of course, nobody has a more superficial picture of "The Real Alberta" than disillusioned Ontarians. It's a "no zealot like the convert" phenomenon.

It looks like there is a quarter of the vote still to be counted and much of it is in Edmonton and Calgary.

Maybe the U.S. and E.U. countries should join Canada. This country works better. Just look around. Column. calgaryherald.com/opinion/co… #ableg #abpoli #yyc #yeg #cdnpoli

After decisive defeat, Alberta separatists turn their attention to Smith and the UCP, @alexboutilier reports globalnews.ca/news/12109085/… Find out more at nationalnewswatch.com

Donald Trump has spent forty years telling us he's the greatest dealmaker alive, and the evidence is a book he didn't write. Armed with that, he marches into century-old conflicts with the preparation of a five-year-old at a chess tournament and the confidence of a man who's never lost anything except casinos, an airline, and the popular vote twice. The results speak for themselves. He's sold out America to Russia, pitched beachfront hotels on the rubble of Gaza, and signed a diesel deal with Moscow while the war it's funding is still going. He got Greenland, triumphantly, and never noticed he'd been handed the same 1951 defense agreement the US already had, rewritten in a bigger font. The best bit is what the actual author said afterwards. Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter, called the book lipstick on a pig, said he'd title it The Sociopath today, and admitted he invented the phrase "truthful hyperbole" to dress up the lying. The man has a black belt in lying, and it's the only one he's ever earned. The one deal Trump ever closed was getting someone else to make him sound clever.

Ukraine was winning the war, so Trump kneecapped Ukraine to help Russia. I wish it weren’t that simple, but it is. Our president is in bed with our enemies.

This is a regressive and anti-democratic move by the separatist premier. Paul St-Pierre Plamondon is depriving Quebeckers of the protective distinction between the state and the government – between the Crown and the province – with this reckless act. cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/…

"As bad as Trump is, there’s something almost more disturbing about the way that JD Vance and Marco Rubio both explained the mechanics of the Trump con perfectly before deciding to become the two leading succession options." "And the answer, to be clear, is not to say that the bad guys are so vicious and opportunistic that we need to beat them by any means necessary! It’s to try to rebuild an ethic of basic probity, honesty, and factual accuracy from the ground up." slowboring.com/p/our-culture…

Smith asked a bunch of loaded, hot-button questions she thought would pass easily. At best they passed narrowly; some may even have failed; most Albertans took a pass on them altogether.

Many AB separatists cite equalization as a factor behind their position. And indeed the Q10 leave vote correlates very strongly against the 2021 EQ vote. (Note: this isn't perfect, since the EQ vote wasn't at the district level so this tries to merge them together.)

Got it got it need it got it need it got it got it need it need it got got it got it need it got it got it got it need it got it need it got it need it need it got it need it got it got it got it got it need it got it need it need it got it got it need it got it need it got it ….

🍁Alberta Voters Choose Canada 📊And most pollsters called it right. 338canada.ca/p/alberta-voter…

Picking up a fight with Canada and allying with Russia ahead of the mid-terms seems totally in line with U.S. public opinion.

"The results ought to demonstrate Albertans for what they truly are — a mostly sensible and pragmatic people, if occasionally very slightly insane. God bless." readtheline.ca/p/jen-gerson-…

Exclusive poll shows Chow’s lead over Bradford now within margin or error ctvnews.ca/toronto/article/e…