It's Lake Ontario, You Toddler

I'm a (recovering) software engineer by trade, an electronics hobbyist and amateur guitarist by night, and a house-rabbit enthusiast and ambassador all the time.

I live in the windswept prairies of Canada.

I like fixing things and taking things apart to figure out how they work. I volunteer at the local Repair Cafe and enjoy helping others with their broken stuff.

#RabbitsOfMastodon #rabbit #OpenSource #FreeSoftware #RodentsOfMastodon #electronics #retro #1970s #70s #blinkenlights #repair

RetroFutureTech - build and own a piece of 1970's future. The future used to be cool...: https://retrofuturetech.ca./
Spirit Animal: Beaker, from The Muppets
Free Software: https://github.com/ccazabon?tab=repositories

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npub1tsa6e35egxn7ct0tdwvxcn9pa9zacee3ezw4nn29daql9qt4awwsgfqgs4

NIP-05 Address

cazabon_at_mindly.social@momostr.pink

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relay.damus.io

nos.lol

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npub1tsa6e35egxn7ct0tdwvxcn9pa9zacee3ezw4nn29daql9qt4awwsgfqgs4

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Published at

2026-09-01T07:24:10Z

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Last Notes

2026-06-28 04:43:19 UTC

This new "tags.pub" instance that just blasts out boosts of anything with a matching hashtag is ... annoying.
Pointless.
Practically abuse.
It just boosted a post of mine with *seven* different accounts. Didn't ask for permission to follow/do things with my content.
Its account overviews say "You can opt out!", which is absolutely *not* how bots should be interacting with people in the Fediverse. This should be opt-*in* only.
How is this okay? Frankly, I think it should be completely defederated, it's not operating in good faith.
#Fediblock #OptOut #consent

2026-04-27 03:04:25 UTC

I've been having "fun" with George. Another trip to Saskatoon because I couldn't get him into our local vet in less than 5 days, and driving home in that nasty storm Edmonton sent us ( 😉 ) with icy roads and reduced visibility and high winds and drifting snow...
The good news is, they did a CT and it did not find any of the major problems they wanted to eliminate from the diagnosis. And while he was under for that, they were able to get a swab from deep in his nasal cavity, and it's at the lab for culturing, identification, and drug-sensitivity testing. I still hadn't managed to convince the vet here to actually do the labs 🤷 after 3 visits 😬 . Results from that will take a day or two, not sure exactly.
So for now, he's just on metacam for inflammation and pain. And with perfect timing, my partner is out of town, so I'm having to try to do it alone 😆 . George has been wearing a lot of the first few doses, but I think I finally managed to get a technique working that gets almost all of it into him. It involves a tight bunny burrito, and owner sitting cross-legged on the floor, the burrito on its back in the owners' lap, with one hand steadying the burrito *and* pulling up on his cheek to let me find the mouth with the syringe in my other hand...
Any of my bunny people on here have a better one-person medicating technique?

2026-04-20 18:31:11 UTC

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Happy birthday, Ceno!
(it feels like we just did this a couple months ago... getting old sure messes with your sense of time passing)

2026-04-20 00:14:05 UTC

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> Hares don’t burrow, but dig out shallow scrapes called “forms”. They’re very
> shallow hare-shaped indentations.
... or, if they're lazy, they find a roughly hare-shaped depression that happens to already exist 😆
I looked out my front window just now and saw this one enjoying the late afternoon sun while lying in an improvised form where the paving blocks have shifted and sunk, up against the edge of the poured concrete driveway. The stone and concrete were quite warm from sitting in the sun.
Sorry for the lousy photo - this was taken through a dirty window, and he sat up when I tried to snap him through the open door.
[Edit: forgot to attach the darn picture]
#wildlife #SK #prairies #hare #jackrabbit #rabbit #WhiteTailedJackrabbit #RabbitsOfMastodon #Canada #UrbanWildlife #lazy #LazyBunny
https://a.mindlycdn.com/media_attachments/files/116/434/145/457/547/159/original/b17dfd82eb2ffa21.jpg

2026-04-18 23:27:04 UTC

So, just finished this month's Repair Cafe in #Regina.
There's a depressing pattern where small #appliances, typically #kitchen stuff, fail after just a year or so. The warranties are invariably one year. Nobody, especially the manufacturer, offers service - "Just buy a new one, it's cheaper" is the refrain. Of course, we're trying to "reduce, re-use, recycle" and keep this stuff out of the #landfill.
Even trying to service them is a pain, and sometimes impossible. The cases/shells of modern stuff are frequently absolute b*stards to take apart, and really new stuff now features "one-way clips" - there's literally no way to unclip the shell after it's been clicked together at the factory. You can't access the latching bit, so you have to force it and break the #clip, and then #bodge it back together somehow.
Mandating a longer #warranty, like in the EU - two years, three? - would help, because stuff would have to be designed better.
The two most frustrating from today:
1) A Keurig coffee maker, used twice, a year old. Got it apart, it had leaked water onto the back of the (massively #overcomplicated) CPU board, and shorted it out. Poof, magic smoke gone, tears in the rain, time to die, etc. Who puts the CPU directly under a join in the #water pipe?
2) A gas-powered leaf blower. Fuel line rotted, but to be able to feed new one through from the carburetor to the fuel tank, you have to take the shell apart - which requires disassembling the engine!
#RepairCafe #SK #EWaste

2026-04-18 12:55:39 UTC

The local white-tailed jackrabbits (a species of hare, not a true rabbit) are now well into their change-from-white-to-brown cycle, but the snowstorm earlier this week is not making it easy on them.
#jackrabbit #hare #rabbit #wildlife #Canada #SK #YQR #UrbanWildlife
https://a.mindlycdn.com/media_attachments/files/116/425/807/978/190/352/original/d8ea32079aa6ecb9.jpg

2026-04-16 23:49:39 UTC

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The storm seems mostly over; it was 20cm of heart-attack snow. I was out with the snowblower for about an hour and a half. It may have been the second-biggest storm of the winter.
It's not unheard of in April on the prairies - in the time I've lived here, I've seen snow on the ground in every month of the calendar except July - but this much is definitely mostly unwelcome. We traditionally start saying things like "... but the farmers will appreciate the extra moisture" when this happens.
#farming #prairies #moisture #snow

2026-04-16 18:50:06 UTC

We appear to have gotten 15-20cm of snow so far, and it's still coming down heavily. The recycling truck was spinning its wheels in the street in front of my house.
It's turned into an honest-to-goodness snowstorm / blizzard.
:no-emoji-for-snow-shovel:

2026-04-16 01:35:01 UTC

Bunnies doing crimes, part 37:
George turned over his (full) water bowl today.
Twice.
He was looking me straight in the eye when he did it.
#HouseRabbit #rabbit #bunny #RabbitsOfMastodon #crimes #BunnyCrimes

2026-04-08 17:44:06 UTC

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The pattern on the fabric in front of her makes her whiskers look 2 feet long.

2026-04-05 16:44:19 UTC

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You could say she's ... hanging with her peeps.
YEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH... <puts on sunglasses>

2026-04-04 23:30:48 UTC

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Firefox has long been the most resource-efficient browser I've seen. I can have a ton of tabs open in multiple windows (on Linux) and it used to only get the main process to a few gigabytes of address space and a gig or less resident in memory. When not actively using it, CPU usage was moderate, with the main process using between nothing and 20 or 30%. It was fast and responsive.
And now, it's jerky as hell.
The main process has allocated 16 GB and the resident size is varying between 2 and 3 GB. It'll go down, and then suddenly another 300-500 MB of memory is resident, while the browser is doing basically nothing. CPU varies from 25 to 150+%.
Killing off some of the sandbox processes, the ones that are taking 100+% CPU, helps a little, for a bit, but it keeps getting worse.
We all knew they were dropping their focus on the important stuff by focusing on "AI" bullshit, and this is the result. It'll end up driving me to Vivaldi [1] if it doesn't improve.
[1] Or servo, if it becomes a usable daily driver.
2/2
#AI #LLM #GenAI #bullshit #LostThePlot #MBA #ChaseTheRainbow #LineGoesUp #CSuite

2026-04-04 23:24:50 UTC

#Firefox just keeps getting worse.
I don't know exactly which version this started with, but for the last few months Firefox has been a #CPU hog for me. Even when not interacting with any browser windows, the CPU usage of various processes - the main firefox #process, the content-sandboxing #processes, the WebExtension processes - will be taking significant CPU in bursts. There's frequently an Isolate... process using ~100%, and the main process will sit at 90% for a while before jumping to 160%.
It's significant enough that it makes actually using the #browser #annoying. Pauses for one or two seconds while typing or scrolling as it does ... whatever it's doing while chewing CPU, and these happen every few seconds. Like 3 or 4 times for each line I'm typing in this window right now.
There's nothing obvious to account for this workload. There are no videos playing, or animations, or sound. There are no continuously-updating pages or web apps running. I have uBlock Origin (adblocker) and Privacy Badger running, which significantly reduces the amount of work the browser does because there's no ad scripts to screw around in the background. The only thing I'm actively doing in Firefox at the moment is typing this toot. And yet still it pauses constantly.
1/2
#CPUHog #hog #slow #jerky #pause #Mozilla #NobodyWants

2026-04-03 21:12:43 UTC

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Of course, you need to be sensible when you're first starting out. Don't mess with #dangerous things. You don't start repairing hydraulic systems or mains-voltage gear or machines that can take your arm off if you sneeze wrong.
Start with simple stuff, and basic safety precautions.
You can try #electrical stuff, as long as you unplug it and short any big capacitors (large cylindrical things) it has, in case they don't have a bleed resistor on them.
Even better is to start with something that plugs in with an external low-voltage plugpack - it's much harder to kill yourself with a tower fan that runs from 24 VDC than one that runs directly off the mains.
Maybe do a brief web search on the device if you're not sure about it, just to see if there are warnings about working on it.
Surprising (in some sense) things to avoid working on:
Microwave oven. This is the object in your house that is trying hardest to kill you. High frequency, high-voltage AC will kill you dead if you get it across your body.
Old-fashioned CRT (TV/monitor) tubes. Very high voltages, and frequently hold a charge for a long time.
Gas-powered equipment. You can't "unplug" them, and there's always a chance there's enough gas hidden in the carburetor or the removed spark plug wire bumps into the plug that it could puff to life if you turn the crankshaft. One revolution is enough to maim or kill you.
Have fun!
2/2
#danger #DangerWillRobinson #DIY #fixit #DarwinAward #NaturalSelection

2026-04-03 21:01:14 UTC

I like #fixing things and have since I was a kid. Friends and relatives give me #broken things, I mostly try to give them back #working things. It's fun, it can be a challenge, and sometimes you learn something new, which is exciting.
I #volunteer at my local #Repair Cafe. It started up a year or so ago, and I joined it when I heard about it a few months later. Now I get to fix things in "real time", no advance planning, and an audience! Well, 90% of the time it's fine.
Over the years I've heard numerous comments from people that "Oh, I'd like to be able to fix things" or "I don't know how to do that" or the more direct question "How do you learn to fix stuff?"
There isn't a big "secret" to it. It's simple.
1. Take something that's broken, and take it apart.
2. Look at the bits and see if you can guess at why it isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing, or why it is doing something that it shouldn't.
3. If you have an idea from (2), try fixing it. Maybe it's "lube this" or "un-jam that" or "that hidden fuse looks burnt".
4. Put it back together. Even if you didn't find anything to try fixing it. You learn a lot from this.
(You can repeat 2 and 3 multiple times if you want.)
At the end of this, you either have a working thing, or a broken thing. If it's working, congratulations, you fixed your first thing!
And if it's broken, well, it was already broken. Nothing lost. No need to feel ashamed or embarrassed or like you failed.
1/2
#HowToFix #RepairCafe #skill

2026-04-03 03:16:05 UTC

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It's not tobramycin or tobradex (which is tobramycin with dexamethasone, is that different from tobradoz?). The vet has annoyingly put the great big labels right over the branding information, but this eye gel is chloramphenicol.
The probiotic is the one you mentioned - a yellow gel? Good to hear it's not nasty, maybe he'll take it nicely then.
The NSA is gonna think this group is an illegal underground pharmaceutical company or something.
Edit: typo

2026-04-02 19:41:53 UTC

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George saw the vet this morning. Well, I did too.
Mostly good news: it's still only in his "upper respiratory tract" aka a sinus infection, not in his lungs. So we're going with a different antibiotic (azithromycin) and antibiotic eye drops and meloxicam, and oh ya, a probiotic...
She's "looking into" what the lab can do with a culture. She wasn't sure if an applicable PCR test exists, or which drugs they can test against if they do get a sufficient culture grown. To do it right, they need a swab from all the way in the back of the sinus cavity, which means sedation, so she really doesn't want to do that without knowing exactly what we could get out of it. Sigh... I really wish I could just know exactly what he's got, even if I can't do anything about it.
Oh, and as a "can't hurt" measure, we're to try environment improvements - specifically air purifier and humidifier. My partner jokes that he's going to have better conditions than the humans do.
[heard in background: "You're going to be grabbing me and force-medicating me twice a day again?"]

2026-04-02 02:03:56 UTC

Rabbit folks...
George started displaying symptoms of his upper respiratory infection coming back. The vet had previously said that he might live the rest of his life with a low-level infection, but I don't know if this counts as low-level, so I'm taking him back to the vet tomorrow, the soonest I could get him in.
I'm wondering if any of you are particularly knowledgeable about antibiotics in our buns? I've always heard from vets that there were only "a couple" that were appropriate for rabbit use, but the House Rabbit Society - rabbit.org - has this article which lists a bunch more (it also includes a bunch you can't use). Anyone have any opinions on this?
https://rabbit.org/health/appropriate-use-of-antibiotics-in-rabbits/
George has already been through enrofloxacin ("Baytril") with steroids when he was at the Small Animal Clinic in Saskatoon last fall, and then oral ciprofloxacin ("Ciloxan") and injected penicillin from two more rounds from our vet here in town. Obviously getting a culture done to confirm what drug will affect it will be best, and I'll try for that, but I'm wondering whether I should be pushing for any of the other medications from this article if they just want to do more of what he's already had so far.
[argh: hit some key combination which lost long message I'd typed; apologies if this re-write sounds frustrated]
#HouseRabbit #antibiotic

2026-04-01 21:05:26 UTC

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I didn't tag you for that reason, but I thank you for thinking of it. You're demonstrably a good human being, unlike many respondents in the thread.

2026-04-01 19:57:02 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@adamndsmith/116328215860941572
This is a perfect demonstration of two different issues that @npub1lq6…nf7e talks about.
First, the post itself:
A simple, everyday action that predictably occurs in the real world, because #people are messy and imperfect and make mistakes and bad decisions. A 14-year-old boy does something stupid related to hormones: boy, that's never happened before! Why would we expect that?
Google's #algorithms detect it as CSAM or similar - you can argue this is a false detection or not. Predictable and predicted.
#Google immediately locks not just the account that the kid was using, but every other account that uses the same device. Call it what you will - collateral damage. The whole family loses #access to everything - photos, business stuff, website, email, and more. Again, #predictable and #predicted.
The users find themselves trying to #appeal to recover their access, and Google's systems make it impossible. You can't contact a human. There is no #escalation from the machine's judgment. If you don't know someone inside Google and can't get your story on the front pages, you're just #boned. Lauren *rails* against this dereliction by Google, demonstrated time and time again.
Then, the thread of replies is chock-full of presumably-technophile people laughing at the #victims and saying "You had backups, right? Ahahaha" and "Why would you give all that info to Google, stupid?" and similar. Near- #sociopathic lack of #concern for others. Lauren's right here, too.
We must do better.
#note1p44…av4l

2026-03-28 18:31:44 UTC

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Is getting up on the watermelon a definite "time for snacc" hint, or just coincidental? You've shown a lot of her on it regarding snacc.

2026-03-27 04:44:59 UTC

+16C a few days ago, and -19C right now.
Gotta love the prairies.
(Also: thanks, #Edmonton, for all the snow you sent our way...)
#Canada #prairies #SK #weather #AB

2026-03-25 21:11:16 UTC

Pete Hegseth is an illusion; it's really just three war crimes in a trenchcoat.
#USPol #PeteHegseth #Hegseth #PeteKegbreath #Kegbreath #Trump #war #crimes #WarCrimes

2026-03-23 03:05:38 UTC

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Can confirm #1 - see any of the films DeForest Kelley was in between the end of ST:TOS production and its resurgence in reruns. He wears neck kerchiefs in many of them, and damned if it doesn't look mighty silly to today's eyes.
(happened to watch "Night of the Lepus" (1972) tonight, which is definitely one of them)

2026-03-18 02:07:10 UTC

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Have you been into the clover, Skye?

2026-03-15 00:01:10 UTC

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Very cute, Sitara!
This actually reminded me of the old Coyote & Road Runner cartoons, where the road runner zips into frame from the side and stops dead, then looks around.
#LooneyTunes #RoadRunner.

2026-03-14 23:42:12 UTC

A local white-tailed jackrabbit (actually a species of hare, not rabbit) is in solar-charging mode, having found a bit of sunbeam passing between our house and the neighbour's in the mid-afternoon.
#rabbit #hare #jackrabbit #SK #YQR #wildlife #RabbitsOfMastodon #SolarCharging #sunbeam
https://a.mindlycdn.com/media_attachments/files/116/230/163/352/020/049/original/5459fa0928fd6423.jpg

2026-03-12 03:36:48 UTC

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Looks pretty primed! bink bink...

2026-03-06 22:35:11 UTC

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Several of our bunnies really liked the Meadow and Orchard ones. I don't think the berry ones were a hit. I should get some and see if George likes them; I don't know why I haven't bought them in several years.

2026-03-06 21:49:04 UTC

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How could you not?
(Is that a "Meadow Loop" treat? Can't remember the company...)

2026-03-06 00:31:08 UTC

Absolutely delusional. Mango Mussolini starts a #war with #Iran by taking out a big chunk of their leadership structure. And now he says he gets to approve who gets to be their next leader.
https://www.axios.com/2026/03/05/iran-leader-trump-khamenei
It's war, you #moron. They don't report to you, no matter how hard you imagine being Boss of the Whole World. If you want them to obey your orders, you have to get them to #surrender first, and that ain't gonna happen. You can do whatever you like, but the absolute most you will accomplish is creating another insurgency you can't suppress in a country that has great reason to hate your guts. You won't be able to contain it without putting millions of American soldiers into that country, *forever*.
So ya, it's either a forever war, or another grade-A clusterfuck from the same folks who brought you #Afghanistan and #Iraq 2.0, along with other supporting features.
#USPol #Trump #SwissCheeseBrain #SwissCheese #dementia #delusion #MangoMussolini #Iran #ForeverWar #USA #invasion #bombing #WarCrimes

2026-03-04 17:36:20 UTC

Re: Ars Technica's incident with the "AI"-written article that they silently yanked instead of transparently correcting ...
Ars did publish a separate, mostly-opaque "Yes, the article was AI-written, and we've dealt with this internally" article a few days later. That is not up to the transparency standards that good journalistic outlets demand.
Over the weekend, another website carried a story including quotes from the "reporter" at issue, revealing he had in fact been dismissed from Ars. I feel bad for the guy, but this is the minimum a media org can do in a situation like this, and it's the natural outcome of his actions. It's not like he was randomly laid off.
But Ars has still not been transparent, so... I have no regrets cancelling my subscription at Ars. The quality of their journalism, particularly deep technical stuff, has been suspect and declining for years, and this was really just the last straw.
#ArsTechnica #ethics #NewsEthics #journalism #JournalismEthics #AI #LLM #transparency

2026-03-03 17:33:32 UTC

I'm pissed off and disappointed.
I just received a #telemarketing phone call on behalf of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, #soliciting #donations.
It sounded pretty human-ish -- I believe it was using actual recorded sentences of a human being - but they were edited/glued-together in a slightly unnatural way. I believe it was an #IVR system.
So in the middle of one of its speeches, I interrupted with "You're actually a #recorded announcement, aren't you?"
And it replied with some meaningless interjection followed by "No, I'm a real live #agent". And it wasn't. It definitely wasn't. I tested it further and it immediately failed, giving nonsensical replies and then suddenly switching to a "thank you for completing..." (which I hadn't) announcement and disconnecting.
Legitimate #charities shouldn't be employing telemarketing #robots which lie and claim to be #humans. Full stop.
#Shame on the CNIB.
#CNIB #CanadianNationalInstituteForTheBlind

2026-03-02 22:28:09 UTC

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mine
mine
mine
mine
mine
mine
mine too
mine
mine
...
I wonder if they ever run out of chin-scent...

2026-03-02 02:26:43 UTC

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I'm guessing she won't let you rub that tummy?
🛑 🚫

2026-03-01 04:10:04 UTC

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We are. I know she's a polarizing figure. A lot of people seem to dislike her because of her plainspoken comments on a lot of prestigious physicists' work, particularly her dislike of elegant mathematics with absolutely no predictive power.
I don't have the maths to be able to say "She's wrong when she analyzes this paper and says the author got X wrong".

2026-03-01 04:03:02 UTC

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I'm with you on hoping to hear Sabine opine on this.
I've read some more of the stuff in the repo - text and code. It's still just about all over my interested-layman's head. But I want it to be true, or at least true-ish enough to point the way to additional threads to pull on with other researchers.
I really hope that this isn't just a big joke, and the text isn't just LLM jibberish from a model trained on physics papers.
> I personally don’t think of an observer as a person but rather then entanglement
> of systems and how it spreads.
I've never liked the term "observer" or "observe" as used in theoretical physics (the waveform collapses when the observer looks at the result, etc), because it does seem to imply an intelligence or an id, though that might just be linguistic baggage.
I tend to think of it more like Einstein's relativity. An observer there can be thought of more as just a vantage point. There doesn't need to be a person there to do the looking, but if you happened to stand there, you would see a particular "view" of the universe. From another vantage point, a theoretical observer would "see" a different view of the same events. But what do I know, I'm no physicist.
#LLM #AI #hoax

2026-03-01 03:09:10 UTC

This is way above my pay grade, and I've only read the article, not the actual technical work underneath it (because my maths is insufficient to know what it's talking about, so there's not a lot of point). But it sounds really interesting.
https://muellerberndt.medium.com/how-observer-path-holography-improves-on-the-standard-model-and-general-relativity-c971c376027e
I've never heard of "observer patch holography" (note typo in slug text), but a theoretical framework which has just a single free variable but lets you derive general relativity and the standard model, correctly predicting a bunch of magic numbers that we input as free variables into the standard model, is interesting as hell.
Maybe someone smarter than me has already looked at this and debunked it. Sabine doesn't seem to have done a video on it (or I missed it). And "one guy with four information theory axioms solves all of physics' problems" is definitely on the Hollywood-script end of the plausibility scale, but who knows? Weirder things have happened.
@npub1c4l…wjmw - thought of you, of course.
#StandardModel #physics #GeneralRelativity #GR #ObserverPatchHolography #OPH #quantum

2026-02-27 02:46:48 UTC

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Oh, and also: why do both contain #punctuation in their names? Are we trying to alienate everyone post-GenX? 😁

2026-02-27 01:36:18 UTC

Important question: Jos. Louis, or Ah, Caramel ?
#Canada #dessert #choice #IYKYK #Vachon #JosLouis #AhCaramel #ScrewHostess #NoTwinkies

2026-02-25 21:47:00 UTC

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I don't know if they *actually* have it in stock, but this place will let you add it to your cart as if it was.
https://petsdrugmart.ca/products/flamazine-silver-sulphdiazine-cream-1
I haven't used them, but I looked at their stuff in the past.

2026-02-25 21:23:50 UTC

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I've been watching this for at least 5 minutes now, but Time Stand Still.

2026-02-25 19:17:43 UTC

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I see a really cute face. Where'd the rest of you go?!?

2026-02-23 02:08:09 UTC

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And this year, you have to put them ahead an extra 15%.

2026-02-21 22:15:54 UTC

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This is an *excellent* question.
#omnomnomnom

2026-02-18 03:45:05 UTC

Jayson Blair must really feel like a schmuck, seeing what so many of today's "journalists" can and do get away with daily. And especially seeing what the New York Times now does.
@npub1ry2…ma3q
#JaysonBlair #journalism #journalist #ethics #MainstreamMedia #MSM #NYT #NewYorkTimes

2026-02-18 02:08:15 UTC

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Does that little gap in the floor-is-lava still work to keep her contained? Or does she now just skip across the bare patches?
Cute boss, though.

2026-02-16 17:18:14 UTC

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The vets have told me there's only "a couple" of liquid oral antibiotics suitable for rabbits, and that they both/all taste absolutely awful. And they say that nothing really works to mask the taste. When George was getting them, he'd do the smack-smack-smack mouth/tongue thing immediately after receiving it, obviously trying to get the taste of it out of his mouth.
The injections are for two weeks, so another 10 days.

2026-02-16 05:10:33 UTC

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My partner gave him the injection Friday and Saturday. I gave it to him today. It's not too painful, I think, but he runs away, so catching him is stressful (for him, and me). He's never liked it, and these multiple rounds of having to do it twice daily to give him absolutely awful-tasting oral stuff has made him extremely suspicious of me in particular.
He sits up and gets into ready-for-flight mode anytime I'm near him. I'm trying not to take it too personally, but it's hard. And I feel really badly for him, not understanding why his humans have been so terrible to him lately.
[edit: remove redundant text]

2026-02-14 17:37:19 UTC

You may have seen the story this week about an "AI" (LLM) bot that opened a pull request against the Python #matplotlib library. When the request was closed, the story was that the #bot posted aggressive condemnations of the maintainer(s) in the thread, particularly Scott Shambaugh, and then posted an article to a blog attacking him.
There's a lot of speculation about how much of that action was driven algorithmically vs manually instructed by the bot operator.
Anyway, so far so interesting. Lots of online media coverage of it, because it was novel.
But then, Ars Technica published an article about it. And Shambaugh read it, and posted that the second half of the article contained alleged quotes from him that he never said. The article appears to have been "AI"-generated, without any acknowledgement of that fact, which is not good for Ars' credibility.
Worse, Ars then quickly pulled the #article - silently. No mention of it left, no #apology to Shambaugh, no note to the readers of what they'd done.
That is absolutely #unethical in #journalism. It is unforgivable.
Ars was once a technical site with additional coverage of science and other geek-adjacent topics. Then it went commercial, was bought by a huge publishing conglomerate, and became a lot less technical.
But this is a slide too far. Unless they fix this, quick, I won't renew my subscription.
Mirror of yanked article:
https://mttaggart.neocities.org/ars-whoopsie
#ArsTechnica #ars #ethics #PR #LLM #AI

2026-02-14 03:57:57 UTC

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Aw, that's great to hear, Skye! Glad it's putting a spring back in your step.

2026-02-14 00:27:53 UTC

George's first at-home injection was unpopular. He is not happy with us.
💉 🐰 🩹
#HouseRabbit #medication #injection

2026-02-12 20:37:28 UTC

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This sounds really familiar. I want to say it's an Asimov story, but maybe that's just because he wrote so many (and I probably read them all). I hope the fellow who's friends with Harry Turtledove gets you the right answer!

2026-02-12 20:25:45 UTC

So, my rabbit people here already know George was pretty ill last fall, and ended up in the vet hospital for almost a week, because of an upper respiratory (i.e. sinuses) infection. He recovered ... and then started sneezing again. Back to the doc, a round of (light) treatment, which was over on Monday, and ... more sneezing. It's nothing like how he was in the fall, but that *started* with just sneezing like this, so caution behooves me...
I took him back to the doc today, and he's starting a round of antibiotics by injection. I could really do with him getting fully recovered.
Sorry, just venting / expressing my anxiety about his health.

2026-02-10 19:43:54 UTC

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And a Happy Birthday from George, my partner, and I. Enjoy!
Do you do #binkies on your birthday?

2026-02-10 19:29:41 UTC

#Regina's legendarily terrible drivers, where one will get mad at you for "not letting them in", when they haven't used their turn signals in five years, so you had no idea they *wanted* "in".
#YQR #BadDrivers #TurnSignal #indicator #indicate #SK

2026-02-02 22:03:26 UTC

"... they wear shorts outside in February to shovel snow, and they eat beaver tails! Canadians are either really tough, or effing crazy."
#Canada #Canadian #snow #shovel #shorts #BeaverTail #misunderstanding #tough #crazy

2026-01-28 20:13:43 UTC

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Skye, you meanie 😦

2026-01-22 21:45:11 UTC

Surprising facts [1] about animals, part 1375:
The white-tailed jackrabbit, which is actually a species of hare also known as the prairie hare or "white jack", or simply "jack", in groups is capable of #geometry. It owes this to the fact that hares are territorial and not social.
When multiple jacks are present at a round bowl, a group of 2 will always arrange itself at 180 degree spacing, 3 at 120 degree spacing, and 4 at 90 degree spacing. I don't have a bowl big enough to see if the pattern holds true for groups of 5 or more.
It's pretty neat!
[1] For small values of "fact".
#jackrabbit #hare #wildlife #Canada #Saskatchewan #prairie #SK #WhiteTailedJackrabbit #RabbitsOfMastodon #rabbit #territorial #antisocial

2026-01-18 22:46:34 UTC

I hear there's another swell of newcomers to the Fediverse / Mastodon. I have no idea what "forkiverse" means, but new people means an opportunity for a reminder:
There is no algorithm here. You see nothing but the posts from accounts and hashtags you follow, and things that those accounts boost.
This means: use the boost button! Liberally! Clicking "favourite" just gives a private thumbs-up to the poster, and has no effect on anything else. The boost button is what makes things happen in the fediverse. It's how you get exposed to new things. It's how you find interesting new people and subjects to follow. It's how you learn fascinating stuff about subjects you didn't know existed from people you don't know, half a world away.
Boost. Boost often. If it's interesting, boost it. If you think others should see it, boost it. If it makes you laugh, boost it.
Boosting isn't rude. It doesn't make you like the bloviating arsehole in that workshop who thinks everyone came to hear the sound of his voice. You aren't monopolizing people's feed, or manipulating them.
We need it. Please boost things!
#boost #favourite #fediverse #mastodon #newcomer #reminder #NoAlgorithm

2026-01-18 03:57:12 UTC

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Yay! Glad to hear it, Skye (and Sitara, and Satori, and Ceno).
🐰 ❤️

2026-01-16 20:57:59 UTC

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Is that the East Wing?
#demolition #RabbitsOfMastodon #HouseRabbit

2026-01-14 02:24:07 UTC

I was at #Costco today. Absolutely packed, even though it was late morning on an ordinary Tuesday. I will be happy when they build the second one we're supposed to be getting.
And out of the hundreds and hundreds of customers, and dozens and dozens of staff I saw, I spotted ... zero people wearing masks of any sort. I was the only one.
Lots of people coughing and sneezing and moaning about being sick, with a brutal flu going round, *and* another mystery virus, along with COVID of course.
FFS. It was the same the other day at my doctor's office. No one wearing a mask.
I think humanity - at least the North American varieties - is waving a big "Hey, viruses, we give up" sign.
#mask #virus #COVID #FFS #WearAMask #N95 #illness #sick #flu

2026-01-14 01:31:50 UTC

Anyone know if there's an "Anna's Archive"-type free repository for standards documents, like from UL, CSA, IEC, ISO, etc? You know, the ones that are mostly developed with public subsidies but then are paywalled at absolutely ludicrous prices that mean only big companies can actually get access to them?
Searching a bit didn't find anything for me.
Asking for a friend ... 😃
#standards #StandardsDocuments #download #PDF #archive #free #open #paywall

2026-01-11 03:27:32 UTC

They're heeeeeeeeeeeere ...
Seriously, this is what I see out my front window every night in the winter. Except I was moving and using the blinky-light box when I took this, so they're looking around and trying to figure out how to react to me.
Normally they're all just sitting upright, and all looking directly at me. I'm not kidding.
#wildlife #YQR #Canada #jackrabbit #hare #city #UrbanWildlife #jackrabbits #hares #rabbit #RabbitsOfMastodon #TheyreHere
https://a.mindlycdn.com/media_attachments/files/115/874/319/230/963/273/original/041987ea4f87dd77.jpg

2026-01-09 05:18:00 UTC

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Thanks to all for the good wishes and kind words. George would like you all to know that he is NOT HAPPY having to take medicine again. It's going to be a fun couple of weeks chasing and catching him twice a day again.
I wish he was better about it, like some other buns (of ours, and others).

2026-01-09 00:03:24 UTC

So, George news... don't worry, it's not bad.
George started sneezing occasionally again, with a bit of nasal discharge. Being cautious about a recurrence of his upper respiratory infection from the fall, I took him to the vet today. Minor upper respiratory infection, doesn't need antibiotics for that, though he did get eyedrops and Metacam [1][2] to reduce the inflammation in his sinuses (if that's what you call it in rabbits, dunno?).
BIG BUNNY NEWS ALERT BIG BUNNY NEWS ALERT BIG BUNNY NEWS ALERT
George has now been officially diagnosed with Big Fur Syndrome (BFS). He is apparently only approaching 15 pounds, not 20 pounds as I thought. The vet officially classified his weight as "heavy", which is a step below "obese", so George says we can't ration the snacks any more. 🤷
END ALERT
He's in pretty good health overall. Not bad for a bunny born in the spring of 2018! 🐰
[1] Rabbit physiology / metabolism is very different from dogs or cats. For NSAIDs like Metacam, for example, George needs the same dose as a 30 kg dog would take, despite being 6 kg.
[2] We actually got a generic "Rheumocam" this time. I don't know if that's only newly available or what. The vet in town here still charges twice what I see it at online Canadian pharmacies - about $160, for 100 mL, while one site has it for $88. But I can't wait a week, so...
#vet #veterinarian #rabbit #HouseRabbit #bunny #RabbitsOfMastodon #BigFurSyndrome #heavy #obese #BigBuns

2026-01-07 17:08:03 UTC

New rule: if a device needs an "app" for some functionality to work, treat that device as not having that functionality at all.
Here, Logitech mice have lost basic functionality - like some of the buttons, you know, doing anything, or scrolling not working - because of an expired certificate for the app.
https://www.club386.com/logitech-options-macos-certificate-fix/
At any time, any particular app could stop working due to technological changes, vendor support, OS support, or any of a hundred other reasons, and if functionality depends on that app, you're high-and-dry. In this particular case, Logitech is fixing the app and giving users a way to fix the problem, but you might not be so lucky.
#hardware #device #functionality #app #driver #software #BrokenByDesign #Logitech #oops

2026-01-06 19:29:41 UTC

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I've been thinking about her (and her bun-parents) since you first posted this. Continuing best wishes...

2026-01-04 01:53:51 UTC

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I can confirm that 20+ pound bunnies require a *very* good and strong grip/positioning of hands.
And that they can kick hard enough to hurt if you aren't 100% successful at it.
#BigBuns #LardButt #HowIsLardButtNotAlreadyAHashTag

2026-01-02 05:43:05 UTC

There's apparently not going to be a Repair Cafe in my town this month. I look forward to them, so this is a slight bummer.
To cheer myself up tonight, I spent half an hour replacing the corroded battery spring contacts in a $2 kitchen timer, and cleaned up some crappy wiring and soldering inside it while I was in there. Felt productive. Yes, I could have replaced it for $2 - but I like the feeling I get from keeping it out of the landfill and fulfilling a useful purpose.
Your city may have a Repair Cafe, too.
#RepairCafe #landfill #dump #repair #garbage #reduce #reuse #recycle #Chinesium

2026-01-01 21:51:21 UTC

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Hoppy New Ear's Skye & Sitara! And your humans, too!
I still think it's neat how you ended up with one white bunny with black patches, and one black bunny with white patches.

2025-12-29 21:30:03 UTC

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If you mean liability for the corporations running the models that generate the stuff, section 230 is irrelevant and always has been - 230 only protects online publishers for things posted by their users without editorial oversight by the publisher.
The user themselves, or whoever worked with them to create an infringing work, have always been liable for posting it.
Edit: not aimed at you, Lauren, just the toot you quoted.

2025-12-28 04:46:39 UTC

There's a courier service here that handles last-mile delivery of most of my orders from AliExpress (so, a lot of packages).
Every time a package from their international courier finishes clearing customs and is then handed over to this last-mile courier, I get an automated email with the subject "We have your package!".
It always makes me think they're holding it for ransom or something 😆
#package #courier #note #demand #ransom

2025-12-26 17:42:31 UTC

I did a basic image search from StartPage yesterday, for "Sisyphus".
Wow.
I guess it's been a while since I tried this. There are lots of famous paintings and drawings around this classic character and his story, but rather than getting a lot of those, 95% of the results were very obvious "AI" slop. Awful, shitty slop. Stuff that jumps off the page saying "No human intellect or feeling was used in the production of this image".
A few big landowners are really letting their flocks shit all over the village commons. Not gonna have much of a commons left at this rate.
#commons #AI #slop #diffusion #image #search #village #VillageCommons

2025-12-25 02:34:33 UTC

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Awfully cute! Ours are just starting to get over the worst of their skittishness. When I was shovelling snow yesterday, one of them came running down the street and sat about 20ft away from me while trying to decide if he could make it to the bowl without getting closer to me.
I wonder if Edmonton jacks are related to Regina jacks, and if so, whether ours are considered the hillbilly redneck cousins no one talks about.
#hillbilly #jack #jackrabbit

2025-12-24 17:13:06 UTC

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George is the first bunny we've had who's really not into paper. He'll chew cardboard, but doing the nibble-all-along-the-edge thing of a piece of paper held in front of him holds no attraction.
So I opened it for him.
Lola was a near-perfect letter opener, getting only the envelope and not the paper inside.

2025-12-24 04:14:24 UTC

Today George received a letter in the mail. Actual paper - kids, ask your grandparents about this. It's the first time George has received mail addressed directly to him, and I think he's quite chuffed about it.
George is a house rabbit.
#mail #post #letter #DeadTree #HouseRabbit #RabbitsOfMastodon #rabbit #bunny #chuffed

2025-12-23 02:52:40 UTC

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Thank you for this. It expresses how I feel better than I have been able to.

2025-12-22 06:18:32 UTC

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Sitara looks like she's about to serenade us with her alpenhorn.
#alpenhorn #toot

2025-12-22 06:17:28 UTC

I haven't said this in a while, so for anyone new following me:
You need a little nonsense in your timeline. Some good, natural fun, with no motive, no agenda, which does nothing but make you smile or laugh. Maybe you have some in your feed already. But you probably don't have enough.
And so, you should follow @npub1rn9…uvnk . I get more smiles out of their posts every day than I know what to do with. Consider this a formal endorsement.
#nonsense #fun #feed #timeline #smile #laugh #enjoy #recommend #recommended

2025-12-21 07:22:11 UTC

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Complete liability on the operating / owning company along with *personal* liability for the members of the board would probably get them off the road until they actually were properly safe and behaved correctly in these circumstances. Yes, that might be "never". And that's okay. No company has a dog-given right to a business model.

2025-12-20 18:49:43 UTC

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I suspect the LED backlight will outlive the membrane switches ...
I switched to a Kinesis Ergo (the two-soup-bowls-a-foot-apart one) many years ago due to injury, and still use the current (renamed) model that's the same design. I have worn out one ... maybe two? ... but in 25 years, I'll call that acceptable durability for using it sixty-plus hours a week.
If you don't mind me asking, what specific damage/injury are you trying to limit?

2025-12-20 04:58:53 UTC

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Good plan! I've run into the situation 3 (!) times now where I decided I really liked an input device I was using, only to find the manufacturer stopped making it, replacing it with something inferior but with lots of pointless frippery added.
I'm kind of surprised you don't use fancy / heavy-duty / etc keyboards, though.

2025-12-19 21:35:42 UTC

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Am I the only one whose brain immediately jumped to:
Two roads diverged on the yellow wood ... [1]
?
[1] Okay, it's brown. Maybe before it was stained.
#poetry

2025-12-18 06:22:25 UTC

So here in southern #Saskatchewan, we were predicted to get the " #Alberta #clipper " blizzard earlier today - the one that hammered #Edmonton (Hi, @npub1d8x…2t0r !). It didn't arrive when predicted. Instead we got freezing rain for most of the day, and then the storm rolled in after dinner tonight.
Because my neighbourhood is on the edge of town, in the direction of the prevailing winds, and because my street faces that direction, and I'm at the end of the cul-de-sac, the wind brings snow for miles, drives it down my street, and dumps it in my driveway. If a storm dumps 5cm of fresh snow, it is not uncommon for my driveway to be hip-deep in snow. [1]
Well, this storm is supposed to dump 10 to 20 cm by morning, with "potential higher local amounts".
So tomorrow I expect I will be spending several hours outside with the snowblower, trying to manhandle it around on a slope with a solid coating of ice under the snow. Sheesh.
[1] The day we moved into this place, as we're carrying boxes in, a neighbour came over to introduce themselves, but the first thing they said wasn't "Hello" or even their name. It was "You have a snowblower, right?" I thought it was funny, until the next two neighbours did exactly the same thing.
#AlbertaClipper #storm #blizzard #snowblower #SnowedIn #YQR #SK

2025-12-13 23:11:41 UTC

I did it! I did it!
I finally got a picture of George doing his eating-out-of-his-bowl-without-getting-up without him reacting to me and ruining the pose.
He will frequently eat most of his breakfast or dinner this way, fully laid out on the carpet, almost splooted, with his head over the edge of the bowl into his salad.
This is probably one of the reasons George is so blobular.
#rabbit #RabbitsOfMastodon #HouseRabbit #blobular #TheBlob #lazy #salad #mutt #large #BigBun #BigBuns
https://a.mindlycdn.com/media_attachments/files/115/714/770/039/697/758/original/647b90dd936a8bad.jpg

2025-12-04 19:10:02 UTC

LWN is apparently feeling a little passive-aggressive after the holiday break.
#LWN #LinuxWeeklyNews #PassiveAggressive #PassiveAggression #snark #sneer
https://a.mindlycdn.com/media_attachments/files/115/662/866/291/725/811/original/cfdf5776fabd4fba.png

2025-12-02 05:31:00 UTC

Do not fear the night; be a shining star in the inky blackness.
Live long, provide light, and be at the centre of things.
Become enormous and bloated as you age,
then explode and take out everyone and everything around you as you die.
⭐
#poetry #philosophy #fear #night #shine #explode #nova #supernova

2025-12-01 20:32:57 UTC

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Is that actually an F-350? It looks like just the current F-150 to me. The 350 is a *lot* bigger.

2025-11-26 02:38:38 UTC

All meals can be one-pot meals if you don't care how they look or taste when done.
#DeepThoughts #DeepThought #OnePotMeal #OnePot #philosophy #lazy

2025-11-24 03:45:52 UTC

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(well, that initial blank posting was special - damned fine hand movements...)
Do you hear a pair of little voices in the background yelling "WE'RE NOT RODENTS WE'RE LAGOMORPHS!" ? 😉
#rodent #lagomorph

2025-11-17 19:04:06 UTC

So yesterday, the #Roughriders won the Grey Cup for the fifth time.
And today my partner tells me that on this big pile of dirt beside a road construction/repair site, someone has climbed to the top and planted a flag.
A Pilsner flag.
How very #Saskatchewan.
#CFL #football #Pilsner #SK #Riders #SKRiders #flag #GreyCup

2025-11-17 02:54:00 UTC

Well, *that* game was certainly exciting.
Yay, #Roughriders! Grey Cup number 5!
#GreyCup #CFL #football #gridiron #championship #SK

2025-11-16 23:15:18 UTC

Let's go, Riders!
#SK #Roughriders #GreyCup #CFL #football #gridiron #Winnipeg #championship #Riders #SKRiders

2025-11-14 02:55:06 UTC

I just found George, asleep with eyes open, head hanging over the edge of the food bowl, face-down in his salad. Scout's honour!
#HouseRabbit #rabbit #bunny #pet #RabbitsOfMastodon #elegant #elegance

2025-11-11 05:49:24 UTC

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Roberto, do you also go stand in front of peoples' houses and yell at them about not playing Monopoly by the rules you want them to use?
Do you enjoy haranguing strangers over things that don't concern you?

2025-11-11 01:16:48 UTC

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Going by traditional interpretations of the law, yes.
But one would have thought it would take an amendment to grant the executive absolute, unquestionable criminal immunity, and that didn't seem to impede the supremes.

2025-11-10 19:45:01 UTC

Tail end of latest #Canadian poll #results:
[...]
39. The skateboarding dog.
40. Small child trips over own feet, does a header, and screams for five minutes.
41. Flaming bag of dogshit left on front porch.
42. That important guy who died in, what, 2018?
43. None of the above.
44. Pierre Poilievre.
(Why, "Who would you trust to run the Canadian government correctly?", of course.)
#AngusReid #survey #poll #CanPol #Canada #politics #Poilievre #PierrePoilievre #PP #CPC #trust #politician #POS

2025-11-10 19:13:20 UTC

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How much do you want to bet that at some point in the next three years, this administration asks the Supreme Court to rule that the president *can* pardon state charges?