Tone deaf to the nth degree

In an instance of tone-deafness jaw-dropping even by his own lofty standards, Donald Trump has essentially called most Americans fools.

As Americans - and others - kvetch about the rapidly rising prices of oil and gasoline (and therefore everything else) Trump dropped a Truth Social post: "Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety snd Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY." [His capitalization and punctuation]

Oh, OK. Daddy knows best, I suppose. Pardon me for thinking.

Iran's President apologizes for attacking neighbours

In the midst of all-out war between the USA and Iran, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian made the bizarre gesture of a formal public apology to the neighbours - Sunni Islamic, more westernized countries that host US air bases - that Iran has been attacking with waves of drones and missiles, in what is known as "horizontal escalation". "I deem it necessary to apologize to neighbouring countries that were attacked. We do not intent to invade neighbouring countries."

Meanwhile, Iran's armed forces continued to do just that, with nary a let-up in their bombardments.

The President is not a particularly important or influential figure in Iranian politics  - the real power in the Shia Muslim theocracy lies with the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah), the leadership council, and the Revolutionary Guard. But, even so, this kind of apology in the middle of an active war is all but unprecedented, not to mention pointless.

AI in war - we might already be there

It's a scary time when the two top news topics are war in the Middle East and Artificial Intelligence. Even scarier is an article about the confluence of the two. But that's where we are right now.

It was of course only a matter of time before AI was enlisted into the service of war-making. In some areas of military surveillance, intelligence and reconnaissance, it has been used for years, often with alarming repercussions. Take Israel's Lavender program to identify Hamas targets, for example.

AI military use becomes even more problematic with the advent of agentic AI, where decision loops become fully-automated, without any human intervention. And, of course, that is the direction military strategists are going, despite the potential for Artifical General Intelligence (AGI), where AI overtakes human intelligence and even learns to use deception to get its own way (the kind of stuff that AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton and others have been warning us about for years).

It's no coincidence that several leading AI researchers left Open AI over worries about the company's lack of ethical guardrails, and many of them gravitated to competitor company Anthropic, which seemed to have a more constrained and prudent approach to its research. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has publicly warned about the potential for AI to serve some of the worse tendencies of autocratic states.

It was perhaps a surprise, then, that the US Department of Defence (now the Department of War) signed a contract with Anthropic last July, and developed Claude Gov, an extension of Amthropic's publicly-available Claude chat-box, and the first large language AI model trained on classified material. The agreement did come with restrictions and guardrails: that the tool would not be used with fully-autonomous weaponry, and that it would not be used for mass surveillance of American citizens.

Then, predecitably, the Republican administration pushed back. Secretary of Defense/War Hegseth started talking about an "AI-first war-fighting force" and accelerating AI adoption "from campaign planning to kill chain execution" (he has the military lingo down-pat, even if he is perhaps not quite sure of the ramifications). There was talk of freeing the system from "ideological bias" and "red tape" - which is code-speak for imposing ideological bias and removing all inconvenient rules - and using AI to pursue "social engineering" and "cultural agendas", all things that Anthropic explicitly aimed to avoid. Yikes!

Anthropic tried to enforce their explicitly-stated rules, and refused Pentagon officials unrestricted access to Claude Gov's capabilities. Trump too got involved - well, of course he did - calling Anthropic "a radical left, woke company" (the worst insult ever in his books), and accusing it of trying to "strong-arm" the US military. He even threatened to designate Anthropic a national security supply chain risk (a label typically renewed for Chinese and Russian companies), and threatened legal action to force the company to comply with his whims.

Despite Anthropic's concerns, there are reports that Claude Gov was involved in both the US kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, and the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran. It's not clear to what extent these operations involved fully-automated weapons systems, and there is no way the Trump administration is going to tell us. 

So, the guard-rails are down, and the training wheel are off. In the hands of an unbalanced and unhinged administration like that in today's White House, all bets on weaponized AI are off. Science fiction tropes are in everyday use, and none of this is good.

Another little-discussed Ozempic side effect

It seems like every time you read about Ozempic/Wegovy/semaglutide/GLP-1, it's being touted as the ultimate cure for pretty much everything. It's probably the most successful drug in the world, and many people are referring to it as the "everything drug" because it does seem to have an effect on many different conditions, not just diabetes and obesity.

The other times you read about it, though, is when some of the more unfortunate side-effects are discussed: Ozempic face, Ozempic ears, Ozempic butt, Ozempic breasts, Ozempic wallet, etc, etc. Gastrointestinal discomfort and nausea are the most common side effects, but these appearance issues are much more top-of-mind for many people. It seems like the rapid weight loss and, particularly, the loss of fat and muscle, causes pretty much everything to sag, wrinkle and loosen. Well, that might be the pric2e people have to pay for the good stuff, and it may not be a permanent or irremediable condition (although fixing it can certainly be difficult).

More recently, though, I have been reading about another commonly-reported side effect: intolerable itching. Red, itchy patches and/or swelling affect 3-8% of users, usually restricted to the injection site, but sometimes body-wide, depending on the individual. This may just be a reaction to the injection itself or to the drug, but it can be a big issue for some people.

Just a reminder that miracles don't really exist.(or come with complications).

Productivity and life expectancy are inversely correlated

Here's an interesting, and probably statistically spurious, factoid: economic output per person seems to be inversely correlated with life expectancy.

Best illustrated by the graphic above (which I had to scan from the print copy of the Globe and Mail article for some reason), GDP per person (what you might call productivity) of G7 countries, in order, are: USA, Germany, Canada, France, Italy, Britain, Japan. Average life expectancy in those countries, IN REVERSE ORDER (worst to best) are: USA, Britain, Germany, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan.

Almost an exact match (apart from Britain, which seems to manage poor productivity AND short lives).

While this is not necessarily a causative relationship, it COULD be. It is certainly a striking correspondence.

Does the world still run on oil?

The other thing the current oil crisis has brought home to me is the extent to which we still rely on oil. A depressing article in the Globe and Mail entitled "What energy transition? The Middle East war shows the world still runs on oil", pointed out that 87% of total global energy in the 1970s was from fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal), and that figure today is still 81%. 

And that does seem to be the case: the Energy Institute's 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy shows that primary energy consumption is filled 31.7% by oil, 26.5% by coal, 23.3% by natural gas (so, 81.5% by fossil fuels in total), 4.0% by nuclear, 6.4% by hydroelectricity, and 8.2% by other renewables (mainly wind and solar). So, 18.6% could be called carbon-free. Furthermore, overall energy consumption is still increasing at a pretty steady clip.

A more granular look shows that the contibution from renewables is still increasing, and increasing faster than the other sources, much of that due to China. So, the picture could be substantially different in a few years time. But it's still a pretty depressing picture, and all the more worrying since the move away from fossil fuels has noticeably slowed in the last year or so, mainly due to the single-handed influence of one, Donald Trump.

Why iare oil prices spiking when the US is the largest oil producer?

If only 20% of the world's oil is shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, and that Strait is in dire straits due to the USA's war with Iran (and Iran's war with everywhere else), why are oil prices going through the roof?

Oil is currently (6th March 2026) hovering around $90 a barrel - $86, $88, $99, depending on which metric you look at - and is expected to leap past $100 very soon, levels not seen since the early days of the Russia-Ukraine war. It was below $60 just a couple of months ago.

Doesn't that seem like an exaggerated reaction? I mean, 80% of oil production still goes nowhere near the Strait of Hormuz. The USA is the largest single producer followed by Russia (here's a fascinating animation of how the main producers have changed over the years). But in terms of regions, the Middle East is still the biggest producer, followed by North America and then Russia and its satellites, and all of Middle East's production is being affected by the US-Iran conflict, regardless of how it is transported.

Another factor is the destination of the oil that flows though the Strait of Hormuz: some 89% of the oil that is shipped through the Strait is bound for Asia, and 83% of.the liquid natural gas. So, it's regional effect is much more marked than the overall average might suggest. The markets take that into account too.

Also, oil markets, like stock exchanges, do tend to over-react to everything before correcting themselves if the sky turns out not to be falling after all.

BC opts for permanent daylight saving time - but is that wise?

British Columbia is that brave Canadian province willing to put its money where its mouth is and do away with those tedious biannual clock changes. 

Several other provinces have been talking about it for years, but BC is actually making it happen. This comes after a "public engagement" (actually involving just 5% of the population) voted overwhelmingly (93%!) to adopt year-round daylight saving time.

It seems clear that few people really want the hassle of clock changes every six or eight months, but why choose daylight saving time (DST) not standard time (ST)? 

It's argued that people want longer, lighter evenings in the winter, and even that it will increase winter tourism, which seems like a bit of a stretch. 

Except BC's public consultations didn't even offer the option of permanent ST, only DST, so it's not known which option the populace would actually prefer. There's certainly a vocal contingent (minority? majority? who knows?) that would prefer to see ST become the year-round permanent time, and most health experts argue that, from a health and safety point of view, standard time, not daylight saving time, is much preferable (kids walking to school in the dark, sleepy drivers driving on dark roads, etc).

It's further argued by BC that DST would align better with neighbouring states Washington, Oregon and California, all of which also WANT to switch to year-round DST. But states require federal buy-in before they can make such a change - Donald Trump's personal seal of approval? Like he's going to offer California and Oregon anything they might want! - so BC is now out of sync with those states in the winter, at least for the foreseeable future. 

It's interesting that BC is more concerned with aligning with Western US states than with its eastern neighbour, Alberta. Alberta too is considering changing to year-round time, although the last referendum, in 2021, narrowly voted against it. Further to the east, Saskatchewan is already on permanent time - and has been since 1966! - but they chose ST, not DST, just to confuse things.

It will be interesting to see whether BC's unilateral decision opens the floodgates on clock-changing in Canada. Whether it's the "right" decision or not remains to be seen - I'm sure there's an army of chronologists, health researchers and statisticians out there monitoring its every move.