‘Hooray Massad’

Human cost of AI bubble outweighs tech’s potential

Despite the title of his new book, Cory Doctorow isn’t against artificial intelligence (AI). At least, not exactly — although, admittedly, the “Before It’s Too Late” of the book’s subtitle sounds ominous.

A self-described AI critic, Doctorow is against the scammy story tech companies are selling investors and bosses: that AI can replace workers, cut costs and keep tech companies growing forever.

Doctorow introduces the idea of “centaurs” and “reverse centaurs” to expose power relationships between people and AI. In automation theory, a centaur is a person who is helped by a machine. A reverse centaur is a person who is forced to help a machine. The difference, Doctorow argues, is whether the person gets to choose when, where and how to use the tool.

He wants readers to stop being dazzled by AI and start asking who uses it, from it and gets used by it.

Foster mom pleads guilty to assault that left six-year-old-girl paralyzed

A Winnipeg foster mother has admitted to violently assaulting her ill foster daughter and leaving her paralyzed after the girl resisted the woman’s efforts to provide her with medication, a court has heard.

Marilyn Keno, 26, pleaded guilty Friday to one count of aggravated assault.

Keno remains in custody and will be sentenced at a later date following the completion of a court-ordered pre-sentence report.

The maximum sentence for aggravated assault is 14 years in prison. Crown attorney Alanna Littman and defence lawyer Jeremy Kostiuk did not disclose what sentences they will be recommending.

Trailblazing Western Scrap Metals heavy-equipment operator relishes role at massive crane’s control

Less than five per cent of heavy-equipment operators in the country are women but that number is trending upward, according to a study conducted by trade magazine Crane & Hoist Canada.

It was reported that in Ontario roughly eight per cent of jobs in the transport and heavy-equipment field are currently held by women. Furthermore, in 2024 almost 20 per cent of graduates at an Edmonton-based heavy-equipment operator training school were female, the article stated.

That brings us to Harmony Guspodarchuk, the first female crane operator in the 70-year history of Western Scrap Metals, a family-owned business at 18 Sutherland Ave.

Three years ago, Guspodarchuk literally stepped into the driver’s seat of a 27,500-kilogram, Liebherr C 924 Heavy Lift Litronic crane. The 29-year-old hasn’t looked back much since.

Manitoba supports MAID delay: Asagwara

The number of Manitobans receiving medical assistance in dying in 2026 is on track with previous years while the plan to extend it to those suffering from mental illness is delayed indefinitely by the federal government — a move Manitoba’s health minister supports.

“There’s so much more work that needs to be done,” Uzoma Asagwara said.

The parliamentary committee that issued its recommendation in June was the third special committee of Parliament struck to assess the eligibility of people with mental illness since 2021, when MAID eligibility was expanded to include people who were not at the end of their lives.

A key condition for MAID eligibility is that a patient must be suffering from a grievous and irremediable medical condition.

WRHA directs three care homes to accommodate surge of hospital patients

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority has directed three long-term care centres to make space for hospital patients, citing “exceptionally high demand for care across the health-care system.”

Big Loser’s latest a winning mix of country, folk

The yellow trucker hat for sale on Facebook Marketplace said “Selkirk Lumber,” so Adam Wayne Brown knew he had to hammer home a deal.

Like the other millennial members of Winnipeg folk-country band Big Loser, the bassist has an affinity for the nostalgic, taking every opportunity — through music, through lyrics and through wardrobe — to recall the unique circumstances of growing up in a changing Interlake.

“I remember the matte yellow trucks driving around — the lumber trucks — and so I’ve had this strange memory of something disappearing from my youth and then persisting,” says Brown, who, like the band’s frontman Alex Paradoski, moved to Winnipeg more than a decade ago.

“I have a photo of the Lockport Bridge in my dining room,” chimes in Paradoski, whose first job as a teenager was bunning wieners and chopping fries at Skinner’s, a drive-in mainstay since 1929 along Highway 44.