The Stochastic Game

“Inside the Far-Right Push to Influence Canadian Political Parties”: whatever is happening in the US can definitely happen in Canada (and in Europe for that matter), and some people are very intent on making that true.

“He Leaked the Secrets of a Southeast Asian Scam Compound. Then He Had to Get Out Alive”: holy shit, what an absolutely amazing and harrowing story.

Shocking absolutely no one, unsealed court documents show that “teen addiction was Big Tech’s top priority”. Facebook/Meta and Google are basically like the tobacco companies of the 1960s.

“How Alberta Plans to Kill Public Health Care Across Canada”: conservatives always try to privatize health-care as the first step towards a US-like corp-owned society. And once again in Canada, the UCP and Danielle Smith are the first in line to this kind of idiocy.

I obviously have opinions about this whole “age verification” bullshit, but none of the “teen-mode by default” limits will actually impact me? Soooo 🤷🏽🤷🏽‍♂️

Unrelated: when can we go back to good old forums and mailing lists, already?

I see a bunch of people applaud Mozilla’s announcement of a “AI kill switch” in Firefox but they seem to miss it’s a kill switch FOR THE AI FEATURES THAT MOZILLA IS PUTTING IN FIREFOX IN THE FIRST PLACE. It would have been better if they just didn’t do any of that shit!

Researching for a 17th century New France Call of Cthulhu scenario, I’m coming across the story of a guy sentenced to death for (I think?) involuntary manslaughter, but the executioner died shortly after so he was told to either wait for a new executioner, or become the new one. Obviously he choose the latter!

Players: (coming up with subtle plans to handle the evil NPC in the room)

Wizard: (casts a minor spell to help but rolls a critical and sets the room and everyone in it on fire)

Players: Well that works too

I knew about the special Zeiss lens that Kubrick used on Barry Lyndon but I didn’t know about the special candles! Anyway, here’s Jan Harlan talking about the whole affair.

Oooof. The Notepad++ website was compromised between September and December 2025, so if you installed or updated it during that time, you may want to… err… do something, like re-upgrade it or, you know, replace it with Vim 😅