Martin L Martens

And Canada.

I live close enough to hear them but far enough that it isn't disruptive.

The award for best press release goes to....

#canpoli #chillax

LIVESCIENCE TRENDING Health 'Rectal garlic insertion for immune support': Medical chatbots confidently give disastrously misguided advice, experts say

AI is out there telling people to put garlic in their buttholes. Just thought you'd want to know.

They are noisy but I think it is a pleasant background noise. Some have been staying around almost all year in Deep Bay.

screenshot of press release from four nations with their logos: Tla’amin Nation; Homalco Nation; K'ómoks Nation; Klahoose Nation. March 11, 2026 Chiefs from four First Nations communities are urging the public to please approach Aaron Gunn with no caution whatsoever. He is completely harmless, though momentarily unsettled by the alarming possibility that someone might acknowledge the land before a meeting. Yesterday on social media, the MP appeared to crash out and demand to speak to the manager of land acknowledgements, a position that observers confirm does not exist. Chiefs whose territories make up the riding had two words for the MP - Chillax, Bud. Land acknowledgements have never seized private property, cancelled a mortgage, repossessed a pickup truck, or altered a single title deed anywhere in Canada. They are simply people recognizing the history of the place where they are standing. No one is going anywhere. Canada will survive the brief moment of honesty. Until then, Chiefs across the region continue to reassure the public that land acknowledgements have not, to date, resulted in any land back. Hegus John Hackett, Tla’amin Nation Chief Darren Blaney, Homalco Nation Chief Nicole Rempel, K'ómoks Nation Chief Kevin Peacey, Klahoose Nation

Posted by the Tla’amin Nation on Facebook. This is epic.

𝗠𝗣 𝗰𝗿𝗮𝘀𝗵𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗹𝗲𝗱𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀
𝙇𝙤𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝘾𝙝𝙞𝙚𝙛𝙨 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝘼𝙖𝙧𝙤𝙣 𝙂𝙪𝙣𝙣: “𝘾𝙝𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙖𝙭, 𝙗𝙪𝙙.”
www.facebook.com/tlaaminnatio...

A sandy spit surrounded by calm ocean waters. At the top of the photo are a few homes and yards. The center is a grassy and bush covered area, followed by a U-shaped beach. The edge of the beach has several dozen sea lions resting on shore and a group of sea lions just off shore in the water.

A drone photo of the sea lions on the end of the Deep Bay spit. (photo by my neighbour)

A woman is standing on a sandy beach, a few meters away from a large group of sea lions. The lions are moving around and becoming alarmed at her approach.

The unusual sight has made the news and thousands of people are showing up to see the sea lions. It's a rural area, with a one lane, dead end road to the spit beach. Traffic and noise from the tourist/gawkers has been far worse than the sea lions. Too many people do not follow distance regulations.

A large group of sea lions are resting on a sandy beach. The foreground is a sloping sandy beach, rising from left to right. The sea lions are in the middle. The background is a rising range of snow topped mountains with the slopes covered by green fir trees.

A large fishing boat is cruising by a rocky beach that has a large group of sea lions resting on the shoreline.

I live on the east coast of Vancouver Island, BC. It's herring spawning time and, as usual, 1000s of sea lions are in the area feasting. For the first time, sea lions have decided to rest on the beach at the end of the spit where I live. It's interesting to see and as noisy as you might imagine.

Snippet from a CBC news article about how birdwatching may build better brains according to a recent study.

Birding isn't just a great hobby - it may also help keep your brain sharp!

In a recent CBC article, Bob McDonald discusses the results of a new study where MRI scans compared expert birders with beginners.

Is the USA going to remove the mines they placed?

Accusations by Trump are admissions.

And Canada is missing the opportunity to take advantage of it.

Trump was helping out his buddies who knew the market would rise after he made the comment.

Not even 4 generations ago. I'm a Boomer, both of my parents worked full time in middle class jobs and received financial support from their parents.

Read the comments and quit posting myths.

It wasn't even happening in 1976.

61 years ago today at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma, Alabama. Look familiar?

COSAR members busy during first week of March It’s been a busy start to the year for Central Okanagan Search and Rescue (COSAR), and the first week of March continued that tren...

COSAR members busy during first week of March

The search and rescue team has responded to 21 calls through the first 65 days of the year.

Details:

www.kelownanow.com/watercooler/...

'He wouldn't have made it another 12 hours.' Stories of racing against the clock Podcast Episode · Now or Never · March 5 · 53m

If you get lost in B.C.'s wilderness, search and rescue volunteers, knowing they are in a race against time that can mean the difference between life and death.

podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/h...

#BCSearchandRescue
#SearchandRescue

TIL: Cancer patients have a 14% increase in willingness to commit a crime in the decade after their diagnosis than someone without cancer, according to a recent EU study. 🎁📰
economist.com/graphic-deta... #BreakingBadEffect

Tell B-Corp as well.

FINAL NeilLegacy YouTube video by Ian Maslin (talkingtrauma)

I'd like to share this video of my friend and colleague Neil Brewer on the anniversary of his death. Most people outside of the Search and Rescue community will never have heard of him, but his impact on how we do things in British Columbia was huge.

youtu.be/WnaWlp5fTZ8?...

PRICELESS! #ABleg #ABpoli #CdnPoli

"That's insane": Sea lions take over Deep Bay beach An estimated 300 sea lions have hauled out on the sandy spit in Deep Bay, presumably as they wait for the herring run.

It's getting noisier each day in my neighbourhood.
cheknews.ca/thats-insane...

The web we weave.

People tend to think that European War Three will be nuclear, with vast irradiated, uninhabitable landscapes.

EW3 is much more likey to involve vast landscapes rendered uninhabitable by killer drones and the millions of kilometres of plastic fibre-optic cables they leave behind.

The political effects of X's feed algorithm https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 4 January 2026 Published online: 18 February 2026 Open access • Check for updates Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right.

Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement.

This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.

One hundred accounts are behind the majority of conspiracy theory content in Canada Researchers analyzed more than 14 million social media posts from accounts in Canada and found that 87 per cent of conspiratorial claims come from influencers, with just 100 users responsible for near...

One hundred accounts are behind the majority of conspiracy theory content in Canada #Propaganda #Canada

According to the report, just 100 users are responsible for almost 70 per cent of all online conspiracy claims in Canada.

/1 thread

www.nationalobserver.com/2026/02/25/n...

This is who Carney is protecting.

bsky.app/profile/lale...

Frontiers | Association of SARS-CoV-2 infection with long-lasting increase in circulating IL-32 levels Background & aimsSevere Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has a wide spectrum of clinical presentations ranging from asymptomat...

Direct link to the article mentioned in the post above:

Association of SARS-CoV-2 infection with long-lasting increase in circulating IL-32 levels (Feb 5, 2026)
www.frontiersin.org/journals/imm...

[ FREE PDF available ]

Charlie Kirk repeatedly pushed the white supremacist Great Replacement Theory and regularly made racist comments in his public statements.

If we can't call someone so explicitly racist "a racist" without getting fired, who else is off limits?

Donald Trump? Nick Fuentes? David Duke?

People saying OpenAI reporting a user it banned for posts about gun violence would be mass surveillance are fucking idiots.

The tech industry *is* mass surveillance. There is no genAI or ChatGPT without mass data collection on everyone.

Don’t like mass surveillance? Stop using fucking chatbots.