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  RE: https://mstdn.ca/@JEmphatically/117226240726379350 With less than 30 days to go before the Alberta referendum, and after the deadline to request a special ballot had passed...Mom's seniors residence has figured out that their mobile polling station is probably going to be a nightmare on Oct. 19. So, they delivered a single sheet of paper with the list of questions to each resident encouraging them to read them ahead of time and decide how they're going to vote. If you've read...

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  My mom lives in a seniors' home. Now that she's received her special ballot package, she has been telling other seniors about how many questions there are, etc. They didn't believe her so she brought out her 10 ballots to show them. The reaction ranged from astonishment, to anger to bewilderment. They had previously questioned her as to why she even needed a special ballot since they usually have polling station right at her residence building. Try to picture 100 seniors with vari...

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  Just heard the government's referendum ads on the radio. I do believe the taxpayers are paying to support the separatists with this campaign. There's no mention of voting to stay, Ottawa is repeatedly accused of wrongdoing and the government is telling people to vote for a stronger (er, sovereign?) Alberta. The message seems clear. This was probably the plan all along. If they can't outright tell people to vote to leave, they'll make sure the other 9 questions lead you to th...

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  New Wonder Valley story coming out later this evening. Just finished editing and waiting for production! Listening to MD of Greenview council meeting turns up the darnedest things sometimes.

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  Data centre protest tomorrow (Sept. 20) at 10 a.m. at the Sturgeon County Centre in Morinville. https://albertatransparencyproject.ca/public-notice

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  With the public clamouring to have a say in data centre projects in their communities. The federal government thought it WOULD BE FINE if they didn’t ask for public input on its “responsible data centre principles.” So they got together with a bunch of mayors and a bunch of big tech companies this past summer to come up with principles meant to reassure the public. I can’t tell you how many times I heard AI and data centre proponents talking about the need to build public trust at the AI even...

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  Greenview Reeve says council doesn’t have time to “spoonfeed” information to residents. The Greenview media relations team did not acknowledge or reply to my questions. It seems like there may be a transparency problem. But Paul Palandjian, CEO of O’Leary Digital says his company is committed to Canada’s new data centre principles at the same time as they’re taking new legal action to block a court case brought by Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation. And then there’s the 59-page purchase agreement tha...

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  Well, this is a blockbuster of a document leak. So, the goal is more revenue for government coffers and too bad that Albertans will have to empty their wallets. Huh. Great work by The Narwhal bringing this to light! https://thenarwhal.ca/alberta-ai-data-centre-takeover-cabinet-doc/ #ableg #cdnpoli #AIdatacentres

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  We're burning up. I've spent so many summers in the Okanagan, such a beautiful, peaceful place. Fire has always been a part of the story, but not at the scale, frequency and ferocity we're seeing now. Politicians in Canada have decided to double oil and gas production using data centres, approve a major thermal coal mine expansion and declare a bitumen pipeline in the national interest. Smith and Carney are the reckless partnership we all feared, working together to ensure Big Oil...

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  I bought a small pop-up tent that lights up from the inside in different colours and my 5-year-old grandson loves it so much that he's been begging his mom and dad to come over to my place. We've been "camping" now three afternoons, with fake campfire (real marshmallows have been consumed though), a raucous thunder storm soundtrack via Soundcloud (camera-flash-created lightning) and kid-friendly* ghost stories. *don't want to give him nightmares! We also added Northern L...

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  The Alberta NDP wants to hear where you stand on AI data centres. They are in St. Albert in Sturgeon County tonight (where Meta’s data centre is going) on a “listening tour” 6 p.m. at Red Willow Place, 7 Tache Street. I had questions about the tour…I’d like to say I received answers but I did not. And they backed out of an interview with me until after they finish their consultations. https://www.albertandpcaucus.ca/ai-data-centre-consultations #ableg #cdnpoli #AIDataCentres

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  Only about half of the data centre decision-makers surveyed said they were holding public forums or investing in local initiatives, while recent national polling shows that only 33% of developers are addressing grid reliability, and only 29% are responding to water consumption concerns. The report authors suggest “a disconnect between engagement efforts and community priorities.” You’d think data centre developers would pay attention to communities…but, no. I guess at least $64 billion, 18 st...

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  My 81-year-old Mom, who's a widow and has no current photo ID was rejected today when we tried to get her a photo ID card. She's been living in Alberta since 1978 and has no current passport. She had her birth certificate but because she changed her last name when she got married in 1964, they could not issue her an ID card without her marriage certificate. We did not know where she may have stashed her marriage certificate since she moved into a senior's residence three years ago...

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  “Hot people hate AI” - Photos from the Anti-AI protest in Calgary at the end of June. https://open.substack.com/pub/jodymacpherson/p/protest-featured-pokemon-llms-explained #protest #streetphotography #photography #AIDataCentres #AIDataCenters #ableg #cdnpoli #artificialIntelligence

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  A guy in Florida posts on Threads about the decline in visits to Disney World wondering why...he's inundated with Canadians (and others around the world) commenting about boycotting the state and the U.S. He ignores every one of those replies and likes only the ones that suggest it has to do with weather or prices or anything but Trump, ICE or MAGA. This captures the mindset of some Americans, I guess. They don't want to accept that perceptions of the country have fallen so low with t...

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  Danielle Smith says there’s no way Alberta’s oil and gas will be part of the trade negotiations with the US. Despite Carney’s statements that ties to the US are “weaknesses” that must be corrected, Smith is focused on “strengthening our trading partnership with the US, selling more energy in all directions.” “We are prepared to sell them more energy. We're prepared to sell them more natural gas. We're prepared to sell them critical minerals and make sure that we continue to sell them th...

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  Read my recent story about the Olds data centre/power plant controversy, if you haven’t already, and get caught up on some new developments… For example, Synapse has hired a public affairs agency and registered lobbyists in Alberta. Who are they and what government departments are they targeting? Behind-the-scenes of this story: Find out who didn’t answer my questions and who’s on-the-hook for 680 local interveners’ legal costs. AUC explains the process they use to figure out how much Synapse...

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  Priorities... #ableg #Alberta #healthcare #fossilfuels (from the Everything GP newsletter)

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  ICYMI: Trump is a human wrecking ball but even his damage pales in comparison to this… “The report paints a devastating picture of severe food shortages, price rises, migration, political destabilisation and possible war, resulting from the collapse of ecosystems, fuelled by the human-induced climate crisis and over-exploitation. Food shortages could result within five years.” https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jul/08/uk-report-ecosystem-collapse-national-threat-food-security...

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  There’s a vacuum of accurate information around AI data centres, and misinformation/disinformation is filling that void…to the detriment of local communities and governments. Canada’s Foreign Interference Commission said it was an existential threat to democracy. “What we’re seeing across all democracies, in Canada and across the world, is a high level of distrust in government, a high level of distrust in journalism and in public institutions.” But the federal government is lagging behind o...

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  RE: https://mstdn.ca/@JEmphatically/116931674609108584 Now with the YouTube link! Glubish: "So the data centre is the digital refinery, the fiber is the digital pipeline. This is essentially a way for Albertans to benefit from their natural resources at a time when the rest of Canada is making it very difficult to build pipelines to move the hydrocarbons themselves." (Carney's MOU's and Major Projects promises don't even register...) #AIDataCentres #AIDataCenters #ableg...

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  Today's Alberta @ Noon on the CBC was a call-in show about data centres. It's not listed yet on the podcast page, but it was overwhelmingly negative callers. Someone needs to fact-check Nate Glubish because he tried to downplay the number of large data centres being proposed...1 or 2 is what he said and that is totally incorrect. WonderValley, Meta, Beacon AI, Crusoe, e-Struxture, Data District are all investing billions in data centres in Alberta according to the government's own...

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  One of my articles for The Energy Mix makes a cameo appearance in this excellent video by the Breach! https://youtu.be/kp_R1vja1bg?si=Gg6FhucXFhsuTJY4

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  The MD of Greenview council, which would be the location of Kevin O'Leary's Wonder Valley, just deferred second reading of a new Disclosure Bylaw. No timeline for the bylaw to come back to council was decided. The vote was 9 in favour of deferral and one opposed. The purpose of the bylaw is "to establish a formal and consistent process requiring Councillors to disclose certain personal, financial, and organizational interests that may reasonably be perceived to influence their deci...

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  I've been reading reports...several of them...about data centres (of course!). What I discovered is coming out in my next article for The Energy Mix tomorrow. In the meantime, check out this excellent article that I was reading while writing my compiler story. "AI is turning out to be more expensive for businesses than paying their workers. And that could be one of the many triggers that collapses the fragile economic edifice that the dreams of AI are propping up." https://pro...

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  RE: https://mstdn.ca/@JEmphatically/116909385851551481 And now the Edmonton Journal has quietly and totally rewritten the story, new headline even, and did not note the changes. Original article is here: http://archive.today/sPDOG This is highly questionable behaviour on the part of Postmedia. #media #cdnpoli #ableg #abpoli

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  Wow there's something very strange going on with this Edmonton Journal article: https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/meta-sturgeon-county-olds-data-centre According to this article, the Olds website was a Meta project all along and the application has now been closed. It says the reporter confirmed it with AUC but the Olds power plant/data centre project is still listed on the AUC website: https://www2.auc.ab.ca/proceeding/30732 (may need to log in to see this?) Anyway, people i...

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  The US is now making Trump accounts mandatory for every child born there. The account is bundled with the application for a social security number, with no opt-out option. Trump has already taken control of the data collected from the account creation and probably the accounts themselves. So, with a $1000 investment on your behalf, you have to surrender the most personal data about your child to the executive branch of the government. It is scary to consider how that data and the money in...

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  I've got a new article coming out tomorrow (posted overnight) and I could get into some trouble over this one... We had a robust debate about whether to run the story, but the editorial team is throwing caution to the wind. It relates to AI data centres and the electricity grid. I sat through a 3-hour session (and a massive slide presentation) to catch something that no one else has... Stay tuned. #ableg #abpoli #cdnpoli

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  Someone on Threads argued that I shouldn't have published the story until I heard back from AESO...with confirmation of what their own staff member said. If I waited to hear back from everyone who doesn't respond to my questions, I would never be able to publish any stories. Never mind that a senior person at the grid operator is quoted directly from a recording that anyone can watch (if they're patient) if they want to fact check my comprehension skills. Link provided. So to summ...