No DST - what's the plan, Mark?

Many Canadians like to the news that, late last night, Mark Carney summarily rescinded the Digital Services Tax (DST), the tax - announced way back in 2020, but scheduled to come into force today - on profits made in Canada by foreign Internet-based companies like Amazon, Netflix, Google, Uber, AirBnB, etc.

The reason? Because Donald Trump doesn't like it. And that is no exaggeration. The threat of the tax has been hanging around for years now, and the USA (including Joe Biden and the previous Democrat administration) has taken particular exception to it because, although the tax applies to any non-Canadian tech comany, a good 90% of them just happen to be American, and the US considers it unfair and discriminatory, even if it's not. 

In the last few days, Trump seem to have belatedly discovered it and lashed out at Canada all over again, specifically ending all further trade negotiations with Canada until the planned tax is removed. Carney moved quickly to do just that, arguing that it was necessary in order to keep the negotiations going.

But many Canadians are incensed. The tax was expected to bring in about $2 billion, given its 2-year retroactive clause, and now we have nothing to show for it, no tax income and no leverage in the ongoing tariff negotiations. It does seem like we gave in to Trump's bully tactics with no advantage gained, and we are still back at square one with the tariff negotiations, but with one fewer bargaining chips.

As some of the comments express, what are we to do with our elbows now? Elbows up or elbows down or neither (just sit quietly and politely at the table)? Maybe Carey and his team know more about negotiations than we do - well, of course they do! - but what is the plan, Mark?

Hungary dares to show its Pride

Kudos to Hungary's beleaguered LGBTQ+ community for the massive Pride march they held through the streets of Budapest this weekend.

Toronto and other Canadian cities too saw huge Pride Parades, but the difference is that here such expressions of same-sex affection and trans and other queer lifestyles are allowed, even encouraged.

In Victor Orbán's Hungary, LGBTQ+ rights have been severely curtailed over the last decade or so, culminating in a law passed just a couple of months ago that explicitly "allows" cities to ban Pride marches, supposedly in the interests of protecting the nation's children and "family values".

Well, that didn't happen. Indeed, the March turned into a mass anti-government rally in the run-up to a crucial national election next year. Ignoring the potential for facial recognition technology and huge fines, and explicit warning from Orbán's justice minister that "the Pride parade is a legally banned assembly", an estimated 100,000 revellers and protesters took over the streets of the nation's capital, with the blessing of Budapest's radical Green Party Mayor Gergely Karácsony.

Are the fascist-adjacent days of Orbán and his henchmen numbered? It would be nice to think so. Paradoxocally, the main opposition to Orbán comes from the Tisza party, which has deliberately ignored LGBTQ+ issues in the country, describing them as a "trap" set by Orbán, in an attempt to gather a more broad-based opposition to Orbán's Fidesz party.

Americans not so proud to be American

America, as a country, runs on patriotism - love of country - perhaps more than any other state. The image of flag-waving patriots, chanting "USA! USA!"at any opportunity, including some quite inappropriate ones, is part and parcel of the country's image.

However, the percentage of those  who are extremely proud or very proud has been falling steadily since the start of the 21st century, regardless of which party is in power. There was a slight uptick when a thankful populace saw Joe Biden take over from Donald Trump in 2021, but even this was just a minor blip in the scheme of things.

The percentage of Americans who were "very proud" or "extremely proud" to be called Americans was over 90% in the early 2000s, particularly after 9/11. By 2023, this was down to 67%. It would be interesting to know where this stands today after a few months of Trump 2.0. Those whom are extremely proud" has fallen from 70% to 39% over that same period.

Harvard's Youth Poll of 18-29 year olds gives a window onto another facet of this trend. In April 2025, a few months into Trump's second administration, just 41% would claim to be proud to be American, while 29% say they are embarrassed to be American. As might be expected, political affiliation is the single main factor behind these figures, with 76% of Republicans saying they are pround, but only 24% of Democrats. 54% of Democrats are embarrassed to be American, but only 8% of Republicans are.

None of this is entirely surprising, at least to us Canadians, but it's nice to see it in black and white. Huh, there's a thought: pride in America broken down by race. I think we can probably guess.

Run It Straight not a sport but glorified ultra-violence

And talking of stupid, I was introduced today to the "sport" of Run It or Run It Straight. It seems to be a mainly Australia/New Zealand-based idea, and most popular among Pacific Islanders for whom rugby is just too tame. 

At its simplest, one contestant holding a rather superfluous rugby ball has to run full tilt towards a defender who is also sprinting directly towards the other. They are not allowed to duck, jump or side-step each other, so, obviously enough, there is a huge body collision, because these are big guys. One of them, of course, comes off worst, or the ball is dislodged, and the winner goes through to another round. Proponents call it a "game of strength and skill", and gush about the footwork involved. The leagues insist there are safety protocols in place to minimize injuries (blood tests and a physical exam - what are they going to help?), but essentially it is just glorified ultra-violence.

It grew up in the back streets of poorer neighbourhoods, where there is nothing better to do that doesn't cost money, but there are now full-blown leagues, principally the Run It Straight Championship League, where the prize money is up to A$200,000. It has also attracted sponsors, and a rabid following, both live and on the Internet. Here's some footage on YouTube.

See what I mean about stupid? Each run take about 2 seconds, and one is pretty much identical to the next, except where there is a serious injury, which incites the crowd to deranged baying. It's not a great spectator sport if you ask me, but those that like it like it a lot. And to be fair, I probably wouldn't find a Roman gladiator contest particularly good spectating either. Ditto boxing. Ditto professional wrestling. Ditto mixed martial arts.

Certainly, it attracts a similar macho, testosterone- and adrenaline-fueled fanbase. And now there is a backlash from the medical community. Because, obviously, there are injuries - broken bones, concussions, longer-tern brain injuries, and yes, even deaths. Mental health workers have warned about the culture of toxic masculinity it encourages, and the lifestyle of violence and toughness it promotes. The leagues say that this sport is "not for the backyard, not for the streets", and caution "do not try this at home". But what do they really think is going to happen?

Possibly the biggest stupidest lie in American military history?

Few people outside of President Trump's closest aides expected the appointment of a Fox News host with an alcohol problem to be a solid performer in the position of Secretary of Defense of the richest and most powerful nation on earth. Pete Hegseth has met most people's expectations.

It's uncertain whether he still has an alcohol problem, although he clearly has an anger problem, and is modelling himself on his idol, Donald Trump, in the way he treats the national and international news media (his latest outburst being an example). When he appears with Trump, he gives the impression of an insecure dog, desperate for his master's approval. Elon Musk - another Trump experiment doomed to failure from the get go - didn't last long, and it's hard to see Trump being able to stand Hegseth for much longer. My guess is he will be a convenient scapegoat to be sacrificed for the next major gaffe by the administration.

But you can't fault the man for effort and for throwing himself into his role with gay abandon. In defence of Mr. Trump's bombing raid on Iran (in which Iran's entire nuclear program was obliterated - obliterated, I tell you! - or possibly not), Hegseth came out with one of the howlers of the entire Iran débacle:

"President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history."

OK, so not the Battle of Waterloo, not the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not the D Day landings in Normandy, not the US bombing raids over North Vietmam, not the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, not even Mossad's coordinated exploding pager operation of last year. No, the most complex and secretive military operation ever, in the view of Mr. Pete Hegseth was a single bombing run through a non-existent Iranian air defence, which was broadly warned of and broadcast in advance.

Poetic license? Not really. Hegseth is perhaps the least poetic politician I can think of. An excess of nationalistic fervour in the heat of the moment? Well, probably. 

But to attribute the directing of this awesome military achievement to Donald Trump is rich indeed. The US military probably bristled a bit when they heard Hegseth say this, having had such a plan designed and rehearsed for many months, probably years. Even I have seen it discussed and described in the media for some weeks before the event. Trump's contribution may have amounted to one word - "Go!" - or possibly two or three, in his usual eloquent and loquacious style.

The biggest stupidest lie by a Secretary of Defence in American history? Ah, now we might be getting close.

Bezos' Venice wedding - much ado about very little

I'm not sure that I should be elevating this to the heady heights of "important news", but Jeff Bezos' inpending wedding to Lauren Sánchez has captured the public's attention, mainly for all the wrong reasons. 

When I first heard about it, it was couched in terms like "Jeff Bezos has booked all of Venice for his wedding", and I too was suitably incensed (well, slightly annoyed, truth be told). It seemed cheesy, over-the-top, and just the kind of stunt you would expect a billionaire recently-converted Trump-lover to pull.

There have been the predictable protests against the Amazon boss and his journalist/newscaster fiancée, including by Greenpeace Italy, Everyone Hates Elon, and a new group calling itself No Space For Bezos. There are threats to fill the canals with inflatable crocodiles. Venice is already a city suffering from over-tourism, and the locals are quite sensitive on the subject.

Most recently, these groups are boasting of an "enormous victory" when the venue for the culminating event was suddenly moved from the sumptuous Scuola Grande della Misericordia to the Arsenale, which is supposedly further from the centre. How this is an "enormous victory" I'm not sure, and on consulting a map of Venice, I'm not even that sure it's further from the centre, if the centre is defined as the Piazza San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale (the Arsenale looks closer to me, if anything). It may be more easily secured, but that's another matter.

That being said, the wedding seems to be far from taking over the whole city, as we have been led to believe. Yes, private jets are expected to jam up the city's airport and mega-yachts to block the harbour for a day or two, and five whole hotels have been booked out in their entirety, even though the guest list is limited to a relatively modest and exclusive 200 guests (including the usual famous-for-being-famous types, like Kim Kardashian, Mick Jagger, Ivanka Trump and Leonardo diCaprio, who are almost certainly not bosom buddies with either spouse-to-be). There are unconfirmed reports that Bezos has booked ALL of the water taxis in town for the event, which could be a bit awkward for other visitors, I guess.

Local officials and councillors actually seem to be quite favourable towards the weddding, which they say will bring major economic benefits to the city, adding that the events are all being held in privately-owned venues, not in publicly-owned palaces or galleries.

Now, I'm no fan of Mr. Bezos, and I routinely try as much as possible to avoid Amazon (which, as an organization, has a whole bunch of legitimate concerns). But it's kind of hard to object too strenuously to a 200-person wedding held on private property, which most of the locals seem generally in favour of. Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing was actually set in Messina, Sicily, not Venice, but I think the sentiment probably still applies.

The lime green apparition

Who was that green apparition at the NATO summit photo op the other day?

Rocking a lime green jumpsuit with a plunging neckline, that was Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, 54 years old and Argentinian by birth.

Talk about standing out from the crowd!

Canada will struggle to meet its new NATO defence spending committments

With military hawks like Donald Trump and Mark Rutte in charge (Rutte is a big Trump fanboy, his cringey fawning performance at the NATO summit has to be seen to be believed), it's no surprise that NATO is now calling for members to spend 5% of their GDP on military and defence spending (3.5% on direct, or core, military spending, and 1.5% more on industrial and infrastructure-related military investments). 

This is partly to counter the treat of Russian expanionism, but it is mainly to keep Donald Trump happy, and to keep the USA in NATO. So, 5% is the new 2%. It is due to be reviewed in 2029, the year Trump's presidential term comes to an end.

A few members, like Spain and Slovakia, are balking at that, saying out that such a target is just impractical and unachievable. In fact, Spain has bravely drawn a line in the sand at 2.1% and, amazingly, obtained an exemption from the 5% target. Slovakia has gone down another route and basically declared that neutrality is a better option for it than bankrupting the country with a 5% promise (other NATO members are still trying to process what that actually means). But there is a lot of pressure on countries to go along with it.

Canada's Mark Carney may be trying a perilous third route, and is apparently relying on some creative accounting to get the country through it. Canada - which has only just accepted the need to achieve the old 2% target, and still has one of the lowest defence expenditures in NATO - has in fact signed up for the 5% target, to be reached by 2035, which would amount to a massive $150 billion bill each year that the country can ill afford. 

But it seems that Mark Carney thinks that "dual-use technologies" like AI and cybersecurity will be acceptable expenditures towards the target, which would surprise me, frankly. He seems to think that much currently planned spending - on "ports, airports, infrastructure to support the development and exportation of critical minerals, telecommunications and emergency preparedness systems" - would be accepted, at least as part of the 1.5% component. But can you imagine Donald Trump (or even Mark Rutte) accepting that for one moment?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of spending such a huge amount on the military. But if we sign up for these things, we have to accept what it really means, and not just fudge our way through.

It's not at all clear what Trump's Iran strikes actually achieved

I've been fixating a bit on this whole US Iran bombing thing recently, with a series of posts on how it's far from certain that Iran is actually close to having nuclear weapons (as Netanyahu and Trump claim), how attacking Iran's nuclear facilities may actually make nuclear proliferation worse not better, and the rather muted international reaction to America's emtry into the conflict. But it's kind of a big deal in world security terms, wouldn't you say?

Just one more thing, though, before I leave it alone. Trump, JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, and pretty much every member of the Trump administration that was allowed to speak on the subject, were all in agreement in their official scripted speeches that the operation was a "spectacular military success", and that "Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated", and variations on that theme.

Thing is, though, there is no real proof, and those sweeping claims are starting to be increasingly questioned. Just a day after the initial claims, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, was much more circumspect in his analysis, suggesting it was "way too early" to assess the damage done by the strikes. Even the usually ebullient JD Vance would only say that the strikes "substantially delayed [Iranians'] development of a nuclear weapon".

You've probably seen those before-and-after photos of the Fordow enrichment site purport to show the devastating effects of the US's famous "bunker-buster bombs". This is supposed to be proof that the facility is "damaged beyond repair", according to some experts. My first reaction was: "You can't see any devastation at all!". All that can be seen are a few neat circular holes near the main building; otherwise, the "before" and "after" are pretty hard to tell apart.

Even more telling for me is the report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that "no radiological release has affected the public". Toxic chemicals and radiological contaminants MAY have been spread inside some of the facilities, they say, but there was no recorded increase in radiation levels around the sites. Shouldn't there have been some release of radiation from such an obliterating strike?

Indeed, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has claimed that the highly-enriched uranium in question had already been moved and is being stored at other secret faculties. Of course, we're not obliged to believe the IRGC, just as we're not obliged to believe the Trump administration. But it really wouldn't be that surprising, would it?

And now, we are reading about satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies, an American geospatial intelligence company, that appears to show 16 trucks arriving at Fordow just a couple of days before the US bomb strikes, suggesting that substantial materials may well have been moved.

So, what exactly did Trump's high-risk gambit achieve. Hard to say, but it's definitely not as cut and dried as the Orange Menace himself claims.

UPDATE

Oh, look, quelle surprise! Even the Pentagon is now saying that the much ballyhoo'd US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities did not in fact destroy its nuclear programme at all, but maybe set it back by "a few months, tops". 

The White House is still calling the report "flat out wrong", and is sticking to its story that, 'The sites that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it. Only the Fake News would say anything different." Right! 

Trump and Hegseth launched a withering diatribe against the doubtful press, and his Middle East envoy Steve Wifkoff is calling the Pentagon leak "treasonous". But it's looking more and more like the doubtful press was indeed correct, and Trump wrong.

Well, I hate to say I told you so....

Muted reactions to US attack on Iran

Reactions to Trump's latest overreach in bombing three Iranian nuclear lear sites has been muted to say the least, mainly because most countries are shit-scared of the madman in the White House (and probably with good reason). 

I was a little disaappointed with Canada's public reaction. Mark Carney essentially gave Trump the benefit of the doubt, but was characteristically unwilling to expand on his views: "The resolution of the Iranian crisis should lead to a broader de-escalation of hostilities in the Middle East". Well, yes, but is that it? 

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand was a little more forthcoming, but just as disappointing: "Iran must not possess nuclear weapons as they are a threat to international security". Well. yes, all weapons are a threat to international security, whoever possesses them. Take North Korea, take Israel, take the USA, for God's sake! 

None of this is helpful, and merely amounts to platitudes, pablum. And none of it takes the USA to task for its high-risk brinksmanship.

France was one of the few countries that was even vaguely critical of Trump's actions, and even it was uncharacteristically restrained: "France has taken note with concern of the strikes carried out last night by the United States of America ... urges all parties to exercise restraint to avoid any escalation rhat could lead to an extension of the conflict".

But where's the outrage? Where's the indignation?

Attacking Iran's nuclear program may make everything worse

I have already thrown some substantial doubt on whether Iran was (or is, or ever will be) on the brink of being a nuclear weapons power. But even if it is, it's by no means clear that dropping bombs on it is going to help that.

I don't see that Iran poses any more of a threat to security in the Middle East, certainly no more than Israel itself, which, remember, unilaterally attacked Iran, calling it an "existential threat" in its usual overblown language, and then persuaded their buddies in the USA to join in. Israel would just as happily erase Iran (just as they are trying their best to do in Palestine) as Iran would erase Israel. And, remember, Israel is reported to already have over 90 nuclear weapons, even if it doesn't admit it, whereas Iran has ... zero. But you don't see the US bombing THEIR secret nuclear program. Or North Korea's. Or Pakistan's.

There's valid case to be made that Israel and the USA's provocation of Iran may even worsen nuclear proliferation, both in the Middle East and elsewhere. Like or or not, nuclear weapons are a deterrent of sorts, and Iran has just proved that, if you don't have nukes, you run the risk of being bombed. However, things pan out in the current conflict, Iran is probably more, not less, like to try to arm itself with nuclear weapons in the future.

Nuclear proliferation expert Professor Robert Kelly warns that attacks on Iran may lead directly to both "vertical" and "horizontal" proliferation, as non-nuclear states look to acquire them, and existing nuclear states look to expand and improve their stocks. For example he can easily see Saudi Arabia acquiring weapons of mass destruction if Iran feels the need to do so. 

North Korea will see Iran's experience as a ringing endorsement of their nuclear program, and there is talk that South Korea might pursue their own program in defence, all the more so if the US withdraws its "nuclear umbrella". Even Germany and Poland are considering nukes, even - believe it or not - Japan.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, a great friend of the Iranian regime that has provided him with countless drone weapons for his illegal occupation of Ukraine, may get dragged into this new conflict. Blasting the US attacks, which he says have "no basis and no justification", Putin has already met with Iran's foreign minister, and Deputy Head of Russia's Security Council Dmitry Medvedev claims that "a number of countries" are ready to supply Iran with nuclear weapons following the US strikes. So where this may go is anyone's guess.

The threat of nuclear proliferation has not been so profound for decades, possibly ever. Unilaterally picking on Iran's nuclear program may actually make everything worse.

UPDATE

Incidentally, just while we are talking about it, I have read many times that "there is no civilian use for 60% enriched uranium", or variations thereon, the implications being that Iran is necessarily engaged in the production of nuclear weapons.

Well, not so. It turns out that uranium enriched to 60% DOES have some civilian uses. It can be used in certain research reactors, and it can be used to make certain radioisotopes for medical use, such as tc99 (the most common medical isotope used for medical imaging). Uranium enriched to 80-90%, however, cannot be used for anything other than a nuclear weapon. 60% enriched uranium is not practical for weapons production.

Now, I'm not saying that Iran is suddenly going into the nuclear medicine business, but it helps to be clear and accurate in the claims made.

A nod's a good as a wink (but why?)

"A nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse" is one of those good old English phrases whose origins are murky,  and whose meaning is generally well understood but perhaps not all it seems.

It is usually assumed to mean that a subtle signal is usually sufficient for someone who is open and ready to understand or undertake something. Thus, you can nod or wink or make any other small gesture: I will still understand your meaning.

To me, that doesn't really make any sense, although it does seem to be the most likely meaning of the earliest-known use of the phrase, dating back to William Goodall's 1740 ballad opera The False Guardians Outwitted. 

It seems to me that perhaps that would make sense for the commonly-used shortened version of the phrase, "a nod's as good as a wink", but not when the "blind horse" is added in (or "blind bat", as Monty Python would have it). A blind horse can see neither the nod nor the wink, so each gesture is equally useless. So, to me, a better meaning would be: it doesn't matter how you present it, a person who is not ready or willing to understand will never take your meaning.

A Quora response by someone with a PhD in applied linguistics suggests that either meaning may be true, but the first meaning is probably more true (or more English, she suggests). Now, I'm no linguist, but I still disagree. Because, after all, a nod's as good as .... well, you know.

Trump is not much of a peacemaker

Donald Trump's bid to be remembered as a "peacemaker" just took a big hit as American forces bombed Iranian nuclear sites, notwithstanding Trump's promise to wait two weeks to see whether Iran would "come to its senses".

Trump hailed the bombing operation as a "spectacular military success" (well, of course he did!), although Iran claims that there was only minor damage (well, of course they did!) Either way, Iran has promised "everlasting consequences" and "irreparable damage" in return, whatever that may mean, and Trump has warned of "far greater" attacks in the future.

This, then, is war, however you want to spin it, and many have warned that it represents a real Pandora's Box for the USA and the world 

In addition to the repercussions on global security and international relations - as well as the minor quibble that it was against the UN Charter and international law - Trump's unilateral move may also bring him trouble at home. Most Republicans are praising his proactive response (response to what?), because that is what they are expected to do these days. But Democrats, and even some Republicans, are pointing out that he does not actually have the authority to launch consequential military action without congressional approval,with some calling it grounds for impeachment all over again. If Iran responds with cyber-attacks, or even physical attacks, on the American homeland, this will of course get mucb worse.

For a guy who was elected on promises of not dragging the USA into "forever wars", and who made a big song and dance about no wars occurring during his first term, this is not a good look.

At least he has one fan, though: Pakistan wants to nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for supposedly mediating a ceasefire between India and Pakistan last month. Trump is desperate for a Nobel Prize, and he has never quite got over arch-enemy Barack Obama receiving his. Unfortunately, India has steadfastly maintained that Trump (and American diplomats in general) had nothing to do with the ceasefire, so that's awkward. It looks more like Pakistan is just trying to placate Trump so that he does not clobber them with tariffs. What a game!

Either way, Trump may well have blotted his copy-book by attacking Iran, and dragging America into a potential forever war. (Less than 24 hours after Pakistan's Nobel announcement, they roundly criticized the US for its bombing of Iran ) Neither has he made any impression on those other wars in Gaza and in Ukraine, despite his repeated claims and promises. 

The jarring juxtaposition of an isolationist president in a red MAGA hat calling on Iran to "make peace", when he was the one doing the unilateral bombing, was not lost on many commentators (nor Iranians). Trump seems to have learned nothing from the past, and to not care about his election promises to keep out of foreign wars. Worse, Bibi Netanyahu seems to have him twisted around his little finger, an alarming prospect indeed.

All in all, not much of a peacemaker, really.

Tulsi Gabbard sees the light

Tulsi Gabbard, the improbable US Director of National Security, seems to have had a Paulian revelation.

Where once she merely repeated what her national security and intelligence team told her - that Iran was not building nuclear weapons - she now fully espouses what her boss Donald Trump tells her, that Iran is months, or weeks, or even days, away from having functioning nuclear weapons.

It's only a couple of months since Ms. Gabbard testified before Congress that, although Iran seemed to have a strangely large stock of enriched uranium (which can also be used to make nuclear fuel, it might be added), it had not resumed its suspended 2003 nuclear weapons programme. "Iran is not building a nuclear weapon", she stated, pretty conclusively.

However, Trump, taking Netanyahu's line, seems to know better, and told reporters he did not "care what she said", and that he somehow knows that Iran is "very close to having a weapon". "She's wrong", blithely asserts Trump, with no evidence or explanation.

Miraculously, Ms. Gabbard completely changed her views, and now believes that Iran "can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months". This was always the publicly-stated excuse for Netanyahu to start bombing Iran, and it remains his official line. It would also be Trumps's excuse if he were to decide to assist with said bombing.

Unfortunately, that's probably not the case. As mentioned, the US intelligence community (which is what Trump is supposed to rely on) says there is no evidence if it. The IAEA says "there used to be ... a structured and systematic effort in the direction of a nuclear device, that is not the case now". The IAEA also says that the enriched uranium Iran has is about 60% enriched, not the 90% needed for a bomb. The US-based Arms Control Association says that Netanyahu "did not present any clear or compelling evidence that Iran was on the brink of weaponizing". The Economist is likewise unconvinced, despite some related nuclear activity.

In fact, there is evidence coming to light that the line about Iran being very close to having nuclear weapons may have been supplied to Netanyahu (and from him to Trump) by the IAEA's "Mosaic" artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm. If it turns out that a war was started by AI, that would be a first... (A major war started based on false information about weapons of mass destruction? Well, that's been done before.) The IA report, dated June 12th, was subsequently refuted by IAEA on June 17th, although "too late", as the Iranian foreign ministry lamented. By that time, Israel had already stated its atracks, and the ball was inexorably rolling.

The actual evidence, if any at all, is very thin. But Trump knows what he knows (i.e. very little), and no-one around him has the cojones to contradict him.

How US Republicans prop up oil and gas, Part 527

If you want to see American Republican grift in action, there can be no better example than what is.currently happening in the US Senate.

Not content with all the bad things in Trump's sprawling Big Beautiful Bill - which would slash tax credits for solar, wind, electric vehicles and hydrogen, among other measures - Republican Senator James Lankford from Oklahoma has proposed allowing oil and gas companies subject to the 15% Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax (CAMT) to deduct drilling costs when calculating their taxable income.

While that doesn't sound particularly important at first blush, the non-profit Tax Foundation calculates that this amounts to a giveaway of over $1 billion over ten years to the oil and gas industry. A bunch of oil companies have been lobbying for it from some time, ever since Joe Biden brought in the CAMT to prevent corporations from using deductions and credits in order to pay little or no tax.

Oh, and by the way, Oklahoma happens to be among America's top oil-and-gas-producing states, and Senator Lankford has received well over half a million dollars in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry since 2019.

Is that all a bit clearer now?

Actually, the US does not have that many public holidays

That Mr. Trump seems to think that the United States has way too many public holidays, and that this is interfering with American money-making. "Too many non-working holidays", he says.

Of course, as usual, he's totally wrong. The US actually has just 10 public holidays (or 11, depending on which source you choose to use). It turns out that is one of the lowest number of holidays worldwide. For example, most of Europe has between 9 and 16 days. South America has between 11 and 18 (although, for some reason, Chile has just 5 according to one source, or 20 according to another). Countries in Asia generally have between 11 and 20 (although one source shows India with just 3, while another source suggests it has as many as 42!) Maybe it depends on your definitions?

Perhaps even more confusingly, Wikipedia lists public holidays by country, but shows two columns, Maximum Number of Public Holidays and Minimum Number of Public Holidays. For what it's worth, the USA has the 9th smallest maximum number (at 11), and the absolute smallest minimum number in the world (at 6)! India, incidentally, has 21, according to their analysis. This is clearly more of an art than a science!

So, I don't know what to tell you. Really, Trump just wants to get rid of the Juneteenth holiday because he disapproves of anything celebrating Black history. But he wouldn't want to come right out and say that, now would he? Back in 2020, he called Juneteenth "an important event", and even tried to take credit for popularizing it. Nowadays, though, he is in full King mode, and does not feel he needs to ingratiate himself with the Black population any more.

Air Canada is North America's best airline - really?

It's not long since Air Canada and WestJet were revealed to be the two worst airlines in North America for on-time arrivals. (This was actually in January 2024. Cirium does not appear to have published figures for 2025 for some reason.)

So, imagine my surprise when I received an email from Air Canada (as a "valued customer") crowing that they had been crowned the Best Airline in North America, not to mention a bunch of other superlatives like Most Family-Friendly Airline in North America, Best Cabin Crew in North America, Best Business Class Lounge Dining, etc, etc.

These accolades were apparently drawn from the 2025 Skytrax World Airline Awards. And, sure enough, there is Air Canada at No. 19 in the world, far removed from the likes of Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific Airways, but still ahead of any other North American airline. Delta Air Lines comes in at No. 22, Canada's Porter Airlines is at No. 44, with United Airlines at No. 51 and American Airlines at a lowly No. 83.

I know the Skytrax ratings are based on more than just prompt arrivals, but, even so, how can an airline that is so bad at getting customers home on time be considered so good overall? In fact, Air Canada improved its ranking from 29th to 19th in spite of its abysmal late arrivals record, and Delta fell from 21st to 22nd, in spite of having the best on-time arrivals record of any North American airline. 

Do these surveys have any value at all?

Canada's largest battery storage facility goes into operation

With everything else that is going on in these crazy times, it has received little public fanfare, but Canada's largest battery storage facility went online earlier this week in Haldimand County, Ontario, deep in the countryside between the city of Hamilton and Lake Erie.

In fact, at 250 MW, the Oneida Energy Storage Project is one of the five largest battery storage facilities in the world. 278 lithium-ion batteries, each about the size of a tractor trailer, are collected together on a site about 10 acres in size, and together they can store enough electricity to power a city of 200,000 (think Oshawa or Sudbury) for an hour. At a stroke, it doubles the province's energy storage capacity.

That might not sound that much, but this is a big deal. It can take a significant amount of surplus power from Ontario's grid during times of surplus, and release it in times of need. This is particularly useful for managing intermittent renewable power sources like solar and wind. It is estimated to reduce Ontario's greenhouse gas emissions by 1.2 - 4.1 million tonnes, about the equivalent of removing 40,000 gas cars from the roads. 

Oneida Energy Stoage LP is also a groundbreaking partnership with the local Indigenous commmunities, being a joint partnership between Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation, Mississaugas of the New Credit Business Corporation, NRStor Inc, Aecon Concessions, and Northland Power Inc. While not actually located within the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve, it is very close to its boundaries, and Oneida's workforce is primarily Indigenous.

This, then, is another step towards reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, and another valuable piece of ammunition to counter the claims of naysayers who keep insisting that those renewables are never going to come to anything because the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow (yawn!)

So, you see, we can build nice things here in Canada.

It must be so hard to be polite to Trump

It pains me to see how nicely politicians of all stripes are treating Donald Trump. 

It's part of the job of a politician to subsume personal feelings in the interests of the state or the party. It has always amazed me how two politicians can engage in endless ad hominem vitriol during an election campaign or a leaders' debate, and then calmly walk over and shake the other guy's hand after the event, full of apparently genuine smiles. I know I couldn't do it.

With Trump, they know they have to perform, and to be on their best behaviour. More than any other politician, Trump goes on feel, on personalities, on whims. Presidents and Prime Ministers, used to being the most important and most powerful individuals in their own countries, know they must stow their egos, and work to pander to the ego of POTUS, because the wellbeing of their entire country depends on whether or not Trump likes them (as Trump himself admits).

It's ridiculous and wrong, but that's how it is. However much they hate the guy, however much they loathe caving to his infantile and annoying quirks, it has to be done. Britain's Keir Starmer is the best at it, the sycophant-in-chief, and it does seem to have paid dividends (although not everyone agrees). At the recent G7 meeting, Mark Carney had to do it too, praising Trump to the heavens and muzzling reflex reactions when the man says something stupid or misinformed of just plain wrong. Elbows up no more!

But, God, it must be hard.

Donald Trump is not in the mood

Donald Trump is perhaps the epitome, the very acme, of callousness and boorishness, at least in the world of politics. But he's always trying to outdo himself, and yesterday he came close.

While looking at a ceasefire and a "deal" between Israel and Iran - or "better than a ceasefire" as he overpromises in his usual way - Trump added in the throwaway comment that "I'm not too much in the mood to negotiate".

Oh, well, that's a shame. The world is waiting on tenterhooks for the King of the World to deign to turn his attention to that little problem on the other side of the world that he could solve in a heartbeat (just like he solved the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours, as promised - remember that?) 

The shamelessness of the man! This is tantamount to him saying, "Oh, I have half an hour between  my last meeting and my next golf game, I can probably fit you in, if you promise to behave and not make my life difficult". It's right up there in the callousness league.

UPDATE

As for the world-shaking possibility of the USA joining Israel in its fight against Iran: "I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do." Well, that's for sure, given that he doesn't know himself. Trump has the typical bully instinct, to keep opponents guessing whether they are going to be attacked or not, but that's not necessarily a good thing for world security. 

And "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!" does not sound like a subtle bargaining initiative to me. Likewise, Trump's calls for the complete evacuation of a city of 12 million, and poorly-veiled threats to take out the country's leader.

This is not a wily politician keeping his cards close to his chest. This is flying by the seat of one's pants, in the worst possible way. This is playing games with people's lives and world peace. This is chaos and disarray disguised as coolness.

Ontario as a province is not faring well

Here's a slightly shocking article about the province of Ontario from TheHub.ca. Assuming that the source data is real, Ontario, Canada's largest and richest province, is also one of the country's greatest underperformers on a whole host of indicators.

(TheHub.ca has a centre-right political bias, but is considered High in terms of factual reporting, according to Media Bias/Fact Check.)

I have seen my province taking the wrong course for some years now under the populist leadership of a grinning Doug Ford. But, although Ford and his Conservatives also get a failing grade, this article suggests that the rot set in much earlier, including under the Liberal governments of Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne.

With its low-carbon power grid, world-class universities, and a diverse and well-educated population, Ontario should be a star among Canadian provinces. But according to this article, it is actually stagnant, slow-moving and structurally stuck.

Among the exhibits of evidence, the article lists:

• In the year 2000, Ontario's real GDP per capita was 5% higher than the rest of Canada; today it is 3% lower. Over that.same period, Ontario's real GDP per capita grew at 0.55% per year, while the rest of Canada grew at 0.91%.
• Real median incomes for young people (25-34) have grown about 9% since 2000, compared to 20% for Canada as a whole, and over 30% in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces. In Toronto, the real median incomes of young people actually fell by 4.5%.
• Ontario's current unemployment rate is currently 7.9%, compared to 7.0% nationally. In Toronto, it is almost 9%, and youth unemployment a staggering 16.3%, up from 10.9% just three years ago. This increase is also higher than in Canada as a whole, and higher than any other single province.

The article goes on to elaborate on the author's explanations for these alarming statistics, which strays into the domain of politics and opinions, rather than straight economics, so I will spare you that. But the bare stats themselves are certainly food for thought (although, annoyingly, the stats and graphs lack credits and sources).

The extraordinary Mr. Ramesh

I'm still trying to wrap my head around how Mr. Vishwashkumar Ramesh, in seat 11A, managed to literally walk away from the horrendous Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad, India, when all 241 other passengers and crew died.

The way he tells it, an "opening" appeared in the fuselage after the plane crashed into a doctors' residence in the busy city, and "I managed to unbuckle myself, using my leg to push through that opening, and crawled out". 

Well, that all sounds quite straightforward. But, hold on, the plane crashed into buildings, exploded and burst into flames! Everybody - and I mean everybody - else died! This guy literally walked away from the conflagration. "I walked out of the rubble", he deadpans. He was not even particularly badly injured, and was only kept in hospital for "observation" (they probably couldn't figure out how he survived either). He seemed more worried about his brother than anything else. (His brother was among the dead.)

If this was a movie, he would turn out to have superpowers, or be an alien or a shapeshifter or something. But Mr. Ramesh seems to be just a regular businessman living in Leicester, UK, of all places.

It's an extraordinary story, but I'm still waiting for some shock revelation to come out of it. I don't think Mr. Ramesh is who he says he is...

Eden Ecology and Indigenous Ecology

CBC recently re-broadcast an interesting Ideas episode called "Healing the Land" (actually in two parts: "After the Fire", and "From Eden Ecology to Indigenous Ecology").

I'm not normally too impressed with what I've heard about indigenous thought on ecology and environmentalism, which I find to be quite often overly simplistic and idealistic, often incorporating a lot of quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo. But this doc, particularly the second part, made me sit up and listen.

For one thing, it introduced me to the concepts of Eden Ecology and Indigenous Ecology, and the differences between the two. Eden Ecology (not particularly well-named) is traditional mainstream ecological thought, based on the idea that, after a catastrophic event like a major fire, a wild area should be returned, as far as possible, to what it was before the fire. So, the same trees, etc, should be replanted, in an attempt to return it to how it was just before the fire, on the assumption that that is how it should be, and how it has always been.

Of course, there is no such thing as "how it has always been", as biomes constantly change over time (hence my quibble with the label "Eden Ecology").

Indigenous Ecology, on the other hand, at least as expounded here,  seems to be more flexible and more pragmatic. It is more concerned with returning the land to something healthy and productive. Whether that is the same as it most recently was is less important. Thus, if a region was ill-adapted to the current (and future) climate in a warming world, then Indigenous Ecology would say re-plant different trees, ones that are better adapted to the current (and future) climate. 

Interestingly, they would even be on board with technology like genetic engineering and CRISPR to make the land more resilient if need be, which surprised me. And, as for maintenance of the land, Indigenous Ecology has always been much more in favour of smaller prescribed forest burns in order to avoid larger catastrophic fires.

Interesting stuff. Maybe I will be less inclined to to write off Indigenous environmental philosophy as hopelessly romantic and idealistic in the future.

Trump's "war on science" summarized

Donald Trump's all-out assault on pure and applied science, and on academia in general, has been widely reported in the news media. But, as it has come in bits and pieces over a period of time, it is hard to get an overall picture of just how bad things are (which I'm sure was an intentional ploy by the administration).

An Economist article tries to collect it all together and put it in some perspective, something that The Economist does so well. The article's title, "Looming disaster", give a sneak preview of their analysis. Without going into the kind of detail the article provides, a quick summary might be the following: 

The US federal government doles out about $120 billion every year to research, of which about $50 billion goes towards tens for thousands of grants and contracts to universities and other higher education institutions, the rest going to public research bodies. Trump's proposed cuts to federal research and grant-making agencies - like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defence (DoD), the Department of Energy (DoE), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCC), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - probably amount to about $40 billion a year, although that could well go up as new features are announced piecemeal (and apparently randomly and/or deliberately chaotically). 

Also, some areas that have particularly attracted Trump's spleen are disproportionately affected, something that these overall figures do not reflect. Trump, and the administration that carries out his every imperial whim, seems to have a problem with science in general, but in particular he wants to clamp down on anything to do with DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), sexual orientation and transgender issues, climate change, misinformation research, COVID-19 and vaccination.

Thus, the NIH and NSF between them have cancelled over 3,000 already-approved grants, some of them worthy projects like cancer research that just happen to mention words like "equity", " sexual orientation", even "Latinx". Anything that appears "woke", even superficially or incidentally, is a target. Any criticism of Israel, or even a perceived lack of enthusiasm in countering "antisemitism" (in its broadest, and often misleading, sense) will also attract financial humiliation, as in the cases of Harvard and Columbia Universities. In some cases, Trump or one of his henchmen may just have a personal grudge against an organization or an individual. And in some cases, it is entirely unclear why projects are being cancelled, and transparency and justification is not a requirement. 

The Economist article gives many more details and examples, and it makes grim reading. Other articles in the same issue look at how the cuts to science funding might affect ordinary Americans, and how all the uncertainty in American research, once the envy of the world, is resulting in a new academic brain drain. Compelling, but chilling, reporting.

Trump's tariffs will not bring in the revenue he expects

In addition to punishing successful foreign countries and supposedly encouraging the USA to produce more of its own goods instead of importing them, the Trump administration maintains that the ever-changing tariffs will bring in a huge bonanza of cash to America's coffers. That seems less likely than the administration would like to admit.

Peter Navarro, Trump's trade guru claims that the tariffs will bring in $6 trillion over the next ten years, or about $600 billion a year. This is based on a back-of-an-envelope calculation - actually, it doesn't even require an envelope - of last year's annual imports of $3.3 trillion multiplied by 20%, which is his guess of where the effective rate of tariffs might eventually settle down.

Such a calculation, however, ignores a whole bunch of economic dynamics and known unknowns, including the fact that tariffs reduce demand for foreign goods, shrink the tax base, depress income and payroll taxes, foment retaliation and levy-dodging by exporters, etc, etc.

Others have tried to come up with a figure for increased tariff revenues, and they are much more modest. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates revenues of about $290 billion a year. The Budget Lab at Yale forecasts $180 billion a year. The Tax Foundation estimates a paltry $140 billion a year.

Well, I say "paltry". These are huge figures, but much less than Trump is counting on, and much much less than the massive income tax cuts he is thinking of offering to his voting base. And in the meantime, he has pissed off the rest of the world and squandered any goodwill they may have harboured towards America, and most countries are looking for any possible avenues to avoid dealing with the US at all.

Requests for unvaccinated blood transfusions have spiked

While we are on the subject of vaccinations, another article brings up the idea - and the problem - of requests for unvaccinated blood for blood transfusions.

Yes, it seems that some people gravely ill in hospital are picky about where their lifesaving blood donation comes from. And, as happened after the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, the COVID-19 pandemic, and all the misinformation swirling around it, has led to a huge increase in requests for "directed donations". 

In the 1980s, this manifested as people requesting blood donations from friends and relatives, because they thought they couldn't trust the general anonymous blood supply. Ironically, as it happens, blood donations from family members actually turns out to pose increased risks for blood safety, but that was not known back then.

Today, directed donations requests mainly stem from misinformation about the safety of COVID-19 vaccinations. Predictably, it has been proven repeatedly that "vaccination status has no impact on blood safety", but you try explaining that to a paranoid conspiracy theorist who believes everything they read on X.

Meanwhile, hospitals and blood transfusion suppliers still have to have these kinds of blood donations on hand in case they are requested. Every directed unit of blood needs to be collected, labelled and stored separately, and may have to be discarded if not used in time. Some transfusion patients have almost died due to the difficulty in getting such directed donations to the hospital in time, despite other (perfectly good) blood being easily and quickly available.

This is just one more example of the way in which medical and political misinformation impacts the health sector, and one I must admit I'd never even thought about.

Kennedy's justification for COVID vaccination changes is just plain wrong

Noted anti-vaxxer and all-around flake Robert F. Kennedy, inexplicably raised to the influential position of Health Secretary of the United States, is at it again.

First, he fires all the government advisors on vaccination and COVID-19, all 17 members of the CDC's vaccine advisory committee. Kennedy says that replacing the sitting committee members (mainly appointed by Joe Biden, as it happens) would help with the "restoration of public trust". What?!

Then, he pulls the longstanding recommendation for pregnant women to get COVID shots. This one he tries to justify scientifically, but fails miserably.

Kennedy has circulated a document on Capital Hill which purports to explain the scientific logic of his decision, and cites "a number of studies" that he maintains support his position. Except that the authors of some of those studies warn that Kennedy's conclusions are misleading, and that "the results of our manuscript were misinterpreted". 

Using the raw study data alone gives a misleading impression of the results, as most scientists understand. After adjusting for factors like age, rurality, income, immigration status, and co-mobidities, the research found "no association between SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and an increased risk of miscarriage". Other studies, including ones cited by Kennedy(!), confirmed this. 

Furthermore, contracting COVID itself definitely IS associated with serious maternal and neonatal morbidity. So, given a choice of risking catching COVID or getting a vaccination shot - which, incidentally, has also been shown to protect the newborn babies - vaccination is most definitely the way to go. 

You would not get that impression from Kennedy's explanatory letter to lawmakers, though. In this hyper-partisan world we live in, Republicans will typically accept Kennedy's explanation, while Democrats (who also tend to be a bit more discerning and critical) will probably not. So, really, the whole exercise is pretty pointless and cynical.

But, of course, without a panel of independent health advisors, there is no-one to contradict Kennedy now (or at least no-one who might be listened to).

Companies pull back from environmental aspirations

Another day, and another outcry that environmental and other regulations must be sacrificed in order to achieve the current categorical imperative: building up the Canadian economy and showing those damned Americans that we don't need them. It's all about 'nation-building" and "fast-tracking" right now.

This one comes from GM Canada, never actually a model of environmental and moral probity, it has to be said. GM Canada President Kristian Aquilina gripes that Canada's electric vehicle (EV) mandate is totally unattainable and therefore should be scrapped. He says that none of his traditional automaker competitors are even close to achieving the targets either, so why should GM try?

The EV targets, brought in back in the heady idealistic days of 2022, call for 20% of new car sales to be battery powered in 2026, rising to 60% by 2030, and 100% by 2035. This, in the interests of, you know, the environment. Where we actually are is that, in 2024, 13.8% of new Canadian vehicle sales were EVs. So, not THAT far off, but still a steep hill to climb.

Sure, these are ambitious targets, but just because something is hard doesn't mean you don't do it, or don't even try to do it. Aquilina blames a lack of infrastructure investments and consumer incentives for the lack of uptake, but that's just him blaming someone - anyone - else. How much effort has he put into achieving the targets?

Demand for EVs, while still increasing in Canada, is increasing slower in recent months, not least because of Trump's anti-EV crusade south of the border, which affects us too for some reason. (On the other hand, EV growth is slowing gravely in the US.)

So, to some extent Aquilina is correct - as things stand, the targets will not be met. But rather than redouble efforts, efforts that have arguably been lacklustre anyway, he chooses to whine, and argue that the targets be withdrawn completely. Aquilina seems to forget that he has some agency too, and that he doesn't have to just sit back and hope that the demand magically appears. 

My feeling is that he (and GM) never really had any intentions of trying to achieve the targets, and was just waiting for a backlash like Trump has engineered to save him from the trouble of even going through the motions. Change is hard, and hard is to be avoided if at all possible.

This is just another environmental initiative that is suffering a perilous set-back in recent months, as the Trump effect takes hold here too. From "postponed" battery plant investments to increased interest and activity in fossil fuel pipelines, LNG plants, etc, there has been a marked pull-back from all things environmental. It pains me to imagine how things might have been right now had Trump lost that election.

On the bright side, Industry Minister Melanie Joly has recently announced that the federal government will bring back the EV incentive program (a $5,000 rebate for EVs and $2,500 for hybrids), but it's hard to see how much effect that will have in a climate [sic] where industry, individuals and governments seem to be looking for any excuses not to make the needed changes.

AI is making us dumber, and there is nothing we can do about it

It comes as no surprise, but some pretty robust research by Michael Gerlich at the Centre for Strategic Corporate Foresight and Sustainability (who comes up with these names?) in Zurich has confirmed what most people already knew: there is a "significant negative correlation" between the use of generative AI (think ChatGPT) and critical thinking abilities. 

So, higher dependence on AI is associated with lower critical thinking scores, particularly among younger people between 17 and 25 years of age. You'll note I say "associated with" rather than "results in", because technically the research does not show causation, merely association, but I think we all know what is really going on here.

This is not the only such study suggesting the same. A KPMG study last year found that 59% of post-secondary students are using AI in their school work, and two-thirds of those students admit that they don't think they are learning as much or retaining as much knowledge. A Chinese/Australian study found that using AI gave students a "short -term boost" but "long-term skill stagnation" (and many participants used the AI to cheat in the study despite being specifically directed not to!) Most teachers and lecturers will tell you the same, anecdotally.

Part of the problem is that many students have a cynical attitude towards university and college education in the first place: they are not there to learn for learning's sake; they just want a qualification to get them into whatever job they have set their minds on, and they will do that in any way they can, preferably with the least effort possible. Imagine teaching in such an environment! "It's terrible to teach in times of AI", remarked one weary professor. But an aversion to putting in unnecessary effort is a general human failing too.

Of course, this debate goes on whenever any new technology comes in, whether it be calculators, computers, the internet, GPS, etc. Hell, it goes all the way back to Socrates, who warned that the newfangled fashion of writing things down would surely erode out memories and our debating skills (although, as the article points out, we only know about Socrates' views because Plato wrote them down!)

But that doesn't mean that the debate is moot. It has been proven that people who regularly use GPS to navigate their way through life have atrophied hippocampus regions in their brains (the hippocampus is the seat of our spatial memories, but also of a bunch of other learning and memory functions). And yes, the generations brought up using calculators are indeed worse at mental arithmetic. (I know, I am one.) It makes sense.

There have been attempts to play down the negativity. Teachers back in the 1970s argued that allowing students to use calculators for rote arithmetic freed up brain-power and time for them to focus on more complex and challenging mathematical concepts, which may have been true, at least in some general sense.

In the same way, researchers and educators have looked for a silver lining in AI. About the best they have come up with is that students could use AI as a kind of intellectual sparring partner, to push for evidence, alternative views and logical gaps before writing up their answers. They can bounce ideas off computers just as they can with their fellow students or professors. But this is not a natural habit, and students would need to be taught this new way of learning. And anyway, what's to stop them from going the whole hog and getting the computer to write the essay entirely?

It's a thorny problem, and not one that's going to go away. AI is being incorporated into everything, whether we want it or not. OpenAI recently gave post-secondary students in Canada and the US access to a premium version of ChatGPT for a limited time. These are commercial companies that want to spread their products as widely as possible. The horse has well and truly left the barn, and the genie is out of the bottle; there is no going back. 

The first step is to recognize that there is a potential problem. But how we deal with it now is anyone's guess - I haven't seen a convincing solution yet.

Trump's latest legal "victory" is a scary development for democracy

In yet another step down the road towards American totalitarianism, two Trump-appointed appeals judges have overruled a lower court ruling in Trump's favour.

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has ruled that the Trump administration is within its rights to pick and choose which news media can access (and ask awkward questions at) media scrums at the White House Oval Office, on the Airforce One plane, and in other (unspecified) "restricted presidential spaces".

The initial lawsuit was brought by Associated Press (AP), one of the world's largest, oldest and most respected news organizations, which was banned from Oval Office for not following Trump's edict of calling the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America". Given that AP is a global organization and the rest of the world still uses the historical and generally-recognized "Gulf of Mexico" label, that seems pretty reasonable to me, but the Trump administration has used this as an excuse to bar AP from Oval Office media events, despite them being part of the White House press pool. AP took them to court over it, and won in a lower court.

The ruling was appealed to a Trump-appointed majority appeals court, which has now reversed that decision, in a 2-1 decision, arguing, unconvincingly, that the Oval Office and certain other areas are "not First Amendment fora" (i.e. that freedom of speech does not apply there), and that the White House can indeed restrict journalistic access "on the basis of viewpoint" in the President's "private workspaces".

The (Obama-appointed) dissenting judge called this "a novel and unsupported exception to the First Amendment's prohibition of viewpoint-based restrictions of private speech", arguing that such a precedent would potentially lead to media outlets self-censoring what they write about Trump for fear of being "uninvited" to subsequent events. 

Which is, of course, exactly what Trump wants. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (whom I am learning to hate at least as much as some of the many objectionable Trump press secretaries of the past) crowed online that "we will continue to expand access to new media ... rather than just the failing legacy media", by which she means friendly right-wing influencers rather than critical (or even objective) professional journalists.

AP say they are reviewing their legal options at this point, although recourse to the mainly Trump-appointed Supreme Court may be pointless, because these supposedly legal decisions have become purely political and partisan. As in so many supposedly legal decisions in recent years, the US Supreme Court is no longer a wholly juridical institution, and decisions are usually made on purely ideological, not legal, grounds. It's a sad truth.

Is Israel carrying out war crimes and genocide?

The BBC has produced another of their excellent debates, this one on the Israel-Gaza conflict, and more specifically on whether Israel is carrying out war crimes and genocide.

Spoiler alert: No surprise - yes, it is. 

Decarbonized oil is magical thinking

Hmm. As Prime Minister Carney tries to square the circle and get all the provincial premiers pulling in the same direction, one phrase keeps recurring that gives me, at best pause for thought, at worst the heebie-jeebies. That phrase is "decarbonized oil". 

Carney talks a good Western Canadian game when he assures everyone that he is in favour of new oil pipelines to get Alberta and Saskatchewan oil "to tidewater", as the current idiom has it. But this is not just any old oil, this is "decarbonized oil", according to Carney. Even hardliner Danielle Smith seems on board with the idea, which she calls the "grand bargain".

Well, that's OK, then: if the oil is decarbonized who could possibly complain? But, wait, "decarbonized oil"? Is that a thing?

Actually, no, there is no such thing as decarbonized oil, it turns out. Oil executives even talk about "taking the carbon out of the barrel", as though such a magical thing were possible. It's not. Not is there any likelihood of such a thing occurring the foreseeable future.

What Carney and Smith appear to be talking about is Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS, or more commonly, just CCS). So, the oil being produced, sold and used, either here or abroad, is not decarbonized at all. But, they argue, if at the same time we are able to scrub carbon out the production porcess, even out of the very air, and maybe even use it in other industrial processes, then it's as good as the same thing, right?

Unfortunately, CCS is not a thing either, despite what Pathways Alliance's advertising campaigns suggest. Currently, CCS captures just 0.5% of Canada's national emissions. And, even it were to be ramped up, the cost of scaling it up to such a level that it matched the carbon burden of our oil production would be astronomical. 

And this is to say nothing of the carbon emissions resulting from the subsequent  burning of that oil and gas (downstream emissions make up as much as 80% of oil and gas' overall emissions).

So, this is is some sleight of hand, then. To call it disingenuous is much too merciful. This is deception, mendacity. Mark Carney, once a committed environmentalist - or so he seemed - should be ashamed. I'm not saying that he shouldn't have been elected (the alternative was too horrible to contemplate).

I know he's stuck between a rock (Newfoundland) and a hard place (Alberta). And I know that he needs to respond to all the crap that's coming from the Orange Menace in the USA (although we don't have to emulate it). But, really, it's disappointing. At a time when the rest of the world is following the money into clean energy investment, Canada has to follow Alberta and the USA into the 20th century backwaters of fossil fuels.

Ostriches may be cute, but rules is rules

A small ostrich farm in northern British Columbia had been receiving outsized media coverage in recent weeks over a government cull order for several hundred ostriches in a flock where many birds have already died from H5N1 bird flu.

Governments across the world are acting to avoid a worldwide avian flu pandemic, instituting some harsh rules. If even a single bird tests positive for avian flu, the whole flock has to be killed and carefully disposed of, and the farms are quite generously compensated for their losses. Nearly 15 million birds (mainly chickens, geese and ducks) have already been culled in Canada alone as a result, and over 173 million in the USA. 

Now, most of these were in commercial operations, where the birds don't have names or come when called. But some were in backyard flocks, and I'm sure tears were shed. Universal Ostrich Farms has, thus far, deliberately ignored the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) directive, and is playing for time,  calling for a judicial rule, among other things. The CFIA has already ruled that the farm has often disregarded "regulatory compliance and animal standards".

Now, I'm pretty sure ostriches are no more affectionate than chickens, but they are strange and curious animals, and people from all over the world people have been captivated by the news of their plight. The farm has employed unabashed emotional appeals, and is actively inviting visitors, which seems ill-advised for a facility under quarantine. It has also been hitting social media hard, trying to make this into an anti-establishment cause célèbre in the mould of the "Freedom Convoy", I guess. 

The case has also become a political football, not so much in Canada but in the hyper-politicized USA, where ultra-rightwing Rebel News has taken up the cause, as have the likes of noted anti-vaxxer (and now US Secretary of Health snd Human Services) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and broadcaster and discredited quack (and now Administrator of the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) Dr. Mehmet Oz.

But rules is rules, as someone famous once said, and Universal Ostrich Farms need to comply with them. They have already paid out $20,000 in non-compliance fines. They would get $3,000 per culled bird in compensation, so they may need to kill a few to pay off their fines.

However cute ostriches may be, as they bat their huge eyelashes, there is an international public health crisis going on, and cute just doesn't cut it.

Spelling bees may have jumped rhe shark

Maybe you always thought that spelling bees were kind of geeky and ridiculous. I actually used to think they were pretty cool, but in recent years they may have got out of hand and jumped the shark.

The 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee - the big one - was won by the correct spelling of the word "éclaircissement". The previous word, which almost caught the contestant out, was "commelina". So, kudos to 13-year old Faizan Zaki for getting these right. But these are not English words.

"Éclaircissement" is obviously French, and with a bit of basic French you can figure out what it means. "Commelina" is the Latin name for a flower, but most English-speaking people would just say "dayflower" should they ever need to reference it.

Now, I understand about loanwords, and how they have immeasurably enriched and broadened - made unweildy, you might say - the English language. But I would argue that these are not loanwords at all. These are foreign words, not in general usage. Sure, they may appear in one or two of the more comprehensive dictionaries, but they are not words that even the most erudite speakers would use in an actual conversation.

Their spellings are being asked in the Scripps Spelling Bee because modern contestants - principally Indian-Americans, as far as I can tell, obsessively coached by over-achieving fathers and dragon mothers - are so good, having spent years of their childhoods poring over dictionaries, that regular English words are just too easy.

So, what is a self-respecting national spelling competition to do? If they were to stick to regular English words, the competition would go on forever (or until one contestants fell asleep from exhaustion). There is, then, no real alternative to including all manner of foreign and technical words.

In the process, though, it has become a test of rote memorization of dictionaries, and it loses any human element an amateur spelling bee might once have had. And I hate to think what kinds of lives these young kids live en route to their brief stardom in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.