And so the Canadians are warning, not just Canadians, but Americans returning to the US. Here’s a link to a CBC article interviewing several immigration lawyers and consultants about travel between the US and Canada —
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/canadians-travel-to-united-states-advice-1.7498326
In the meantime, a bit of sky.
Wherein, a day we dare not trust what we read…
April has come. And with it, perhaps a little warming, altho’ here it is snow broadcast for tomorrow.
I once read that sheepherders hate April, for that is when the lambs are usually born and the weather is usually so unpredictable that there is a great risk of them being born “in the wild”, not found, and freezing to death. A terrible month of extremes, especially for sheep.
And then, of course, the pranks of April Fool’s Day — I learned of a new one: wrapping the toilet with clear plastic wrap, then leaving the seat down. Surprise!
With this, we enter the second quarter of the regime’s madness. Tomorrow promises to be interesting, although perhaps no more so than the previous two and half months have been. In like a lion and out like a lamb?
All I know for sure is be sure to check the toilet first.
Writer Warren Ellis publishes a weekly newsletter called “Orbital Operations” and I do recommend it, if you have any interest in writing, reading, comics, the wider world at large. It offers a small window into the creative mind of a writer who has been involved in a number of multi-facted projects, ranging from traditional story-telling and comics (“NORMAL”, “Transmetropolitan”), televisions (“Castelvania”) and radio drama podcasts (“The Department of Midnight).
Here’sa referral link to get the newsletter, every Sunday:
https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/subscribe?ref=FhPBjOzXlm
… and here’s a recent image to amuse in the meantime!
Quoting part of the story so my friends can read it on Facebook — due to the spat the Zuck has with the Canadian government, it isn’t possible to directly link to “real” news stories. Which is pretty interesting as to what their algo defines as a “news story”.
“Université de Montréal has issued a series of guidelines to students and staff who will be travelling to the United States for academic purposes.
Rector Daniel Jutras says the guidelines were issued on Thursday in response to numerous questions from students and staff about U.S. travel concerns amid a number of reports of detentions and denial of entry into that country in recent weeks.
Jutras says while there’s no specific incident involving the university community, it felt the need to respond to concerns raised.
The university advises students and staff to tell the institution when they are travelling and discuss potential risks before leaving to the U.S.”
Link to the full article here:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/udem-guidelines-travel-to-u-s-1.7497089?cmp=rss
… because someone needs to.
An evolving list of thte hijinks of the Felon-in-Chief, updated as needed.
Here is are two links to a long list of non-US alternatives for digital platforms, one specifically European in focus and the other more general, from email apps to TikTok alternatives:
https://github.com/anitwek/alternatives-to-us
https://european-alternatives.eu/categories
… you’re welcome!
Facebook has some rules about sharing what it deems to be news sources, when posting from Canada.
In the interest of sharing information widely concerning the clampdown being experienced in the US by the current regime, I am sharing an URL from The Guardian UK concerning the recent denial of entry of a French researcher in to the US so that my friends on FB can access it freely…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-musk-french-scientist-detained
.. et voilá!
On this anniversary of their murder by guillotine at the hands of the Nazi Volksgerichthof (22 February 1943), we reflect on the need for resistance to tyranny taking place in the US right now. It behooves us to read about “die weiße Rose” (The White Rose) and their efforts at resistance to the Nazis.
The US military (and many of the civilian public servants) swear an oath to uphold and protect the US Constitution, not to any other entities or personalities. It is one of the unique aspects of the operations of the US military.
Firing the people who make the judgements of what constitutes a “legal” order (the JAG, or Judge Advocate General’s Corps, basically high level lawyers for all the US military) is a step towards martial law, or worse. Such an actions allow all manner abuse by redefining what constitutes a legal order. After all, one of the unsuccessful defenses used by the Nazis in the Nuremberg trials was that they were simply following orders.
When an individual is running around claiming that “they are the law” and also happen to be the Commander-in-Chief of the entire US military (yep, got the finger on the nuclear button), one feels a certain amount of alarm concerning what is happening next — especially when it’s done on a Friday evening, at the end of the news cycle so it gets buried over the weekend. Mondays are a feint, designed to distract by presenting new crises to discuss over the rest of the week.
And that’s where we are. The mainstream media are systematically being overwhelmed by the actions of the coup leaders (yes, it’s a coup — no other way to talk about what has been happening since 20 January 2025), with the aim of frustrating any attempt at an organized resistance against them. But we must resist, even if it is only with the smallest gestures. We must not allow this to continue. It must not come to this:
There are many ways in which to resist. I hope to be able to share more in the coming days and weeks. Let us hope that it will not be an exercise of months or years.
The link below provides a “recipe” for how to disentangle from, and reduce your data exposure to, All Things Meta.
Of course, for many, this means Instagram or Facebook in particular, but there are a few other suspects in the crowd. Hopefully, these steps will help.
https://buttondown.com/practicaltips/archive/how-to-grey-rock-meta/
Here’s an image to amuse you along the way —
Just finished uploading a few audio morsels that you may enjoy. Do check out the link to the Bandcamp website and give a listen. Individual tracks are available as well as, of course, the album.
For the nerds who might want more context:
The tracks were recorded entirely in “software” using the Wotja Generative Music System with zero audio output, using only the MIDI output to drive either/or software synths or hardware. Currently, the hardware synths environment consists of a MODAL Argon8M, an Arturia MicroFreak, three Empress Effects Zoias, a norn shields, and a Behringer Crave are available for use. Due to my current geopolitical situation, no guitars were harmed in this recording session and only software synths were utilized.
On the software side of things, I used Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack to collect the audio output of Arturia Pigment 6 and ROLI Equator 2 softsynths. That output was recorded in WAV format, edited in Audacity to apply compression, fades, reverses, and panning before outputting to FLAC format for upload to Bandcamp.
If you are curious about the equal length of each track, this was a result of having set Audio Hijack to only record files of 254MB in size, creating roughly 5 minute long tracks. The actual timing worked out to 5 minutes, 49 seconds. Both Wotja and Audio Hijack can be set with timers and Audio Hijack has the ability to record to specific file sizes. It’s a handy aspect of both these tools and I use it from time to time.
Is this AI music? Well…
A simple answer is that “it’s complicated”. In effect I have used the software to generate a MIDI skeleton, that drives a software synth, which I am manipulating in real time and then doing a fair bit of post-processing, making decisions about panning, combining raw tracks (there are at least two tracks here that comprise multiple original WAV files), or applying reversals. So I hesitate to just call it “AI” music; rather, I have used the generative nature of Wotja to perform as an ensemble member wherein I am both fellow performer and conductor (as well as editor in the end).
Enjoy!
