And now we need to think about "fungal storms"?

Fungal storms are not so much a storm of fungi, but fungi that spread through storms, and these events are becoming much more prevalent as climate change amps up the intensity and the frequency of storms. In particular, they are affecting the dry, dusty and hot south-west of America.

In south-western USA, storms often manifest as dust storms, where clouds of sand, soil and dust are whipped up by extreme temperatures, including the fast-moving walls of dust known as "haboobs". Construction, agriculture and wildfires also add to the particles carried in these intense storms. 

As well as dirty windows and hazy skies, these storms can disrupt air and ground transportation, agriculture, and solar power generation. They can also trigger heavy rain, flooding and mud flows. But it's now becoming clear that these storms also carry fungal spores from disturbed or contaminated soil hundreds of kilometers from where they were once safely buried.

Once airborne, these microscopic spores are easily ingested by humans and animals alike. Fungal infections are spiking in desert states like Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, but also even further afield, like Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Kansas. 

Infections from fungus species like coccidoides, aspergillus, candida auris, histoplasma capsulatum and blastomyces dermititidis are being found far from their traditional stomping grounds, making diagnosis tricky. They are expected to spread still further into the Midwest, even Canada, in the comimg decades. Coccidoides causes "valley fever" and severe pulmonary disease in some cases. Aspergillis, particularly drug-resistant strains, can lead to life-threatening infections in people with weakened immune systems. 

These dangerous species, of course, only represent a small fraction of fungi, the vast majority of which are harmless, even beneficial. But it's an important minority, and becoming ever more important.

Trump's hissy fits continue to alienate Western "allies"

For an octogenarian in his dotage. Donald Trump sure sounds like a petulant, ill-tempered kid. Is this what they call the "second childhood"?

The latest outburst: "You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself. The USA won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us... Go get your own oil." This to erstwhile American allies, who were not consulted before Trump lashed out unilaterally at Iran and bit off more than he could chew, and who had no intentions of being involved in such a foolhardy caper. Once again, he has sent the world into turmoil and then abandoned it, unwilling or unable to to figure out an end-game.

It seems unlikely to me that anyone will trust the USA ever again, even after Trump has gone, because there is a whole segment of the American political class, and its society in general, that sees this kind of thing as normal now, as what passes for international relations.

The world is already backing away from the USA, slowly but surely, leaving a gaping vacuum where Western values and morality used to be. There is a risk that America may find itself in the wilderness for generations to come, although I've a suspicion that realpolitik will dictate that everyone conveniently forgets this whole sorry Trumpian episode, and just hopes for the best for the future.

Trump asking Arab states to pay for his war is rich irony

Here's a bright idea. Donald Trump thinks he might call up the leaders of various Arabic Gulf states and get THEM to pay for his war against Iran, the one that he started and now can't get himself out of. Neat, eh? The layers of irony are positively dripping off it. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt says it is something the President is seriously considering.

The US war against Iran has already cost an unknown number of tens of billions of dollars, and there is no off-ramp in sight. The other Gulf states, against whom Iran is taking out its frustrations in the only way it can, have no love for Iran. But neither did they ask for a war with it; that was all Trump's idea (maybe with Israeli input).

So, Trump asking them for money is asking for them to pay for being bombed and for losing out on billions in oil revenue. Do you see the irony now? Trump apparently doesn't.

Co-opting God in support of a Holy War

You might have noticed, but I'm not religious. In fact, I'm areligious, atheist.

Kudos to the American Pope Leo XIV, though,  for calling out all sides in the US-Israel-Iran war, but particularly those who claim to be Christian (his turf), for invoking God in support of their cause. Warmongerers have been doing it since long before the Crusades, 

Leo (I can call you "Leo", can't I?) made his position clear: that no-one can use religion to justify war, least of all Christians who worship "Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no-one can use to justify war". Furthermore, "He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them".

Well, that's pretty clear. 

So, when the likes of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth use pseudo-biblical language about US forces raining death and destruction from above "in the name of Jesus Christ", he might want to reign it in and tone it down a little. I know he is not strictly Catholic (Hegseth is an Evangelical Protestant), but still... Hegseth even has a "Deus Vult" tattoo - "God wills it" -  echoing the war cry used by the Crusaders. The guy is distinctly creepy.

And who can forget that image of Donald Trump (a self-declared non-denominational Protestant) deep in prayer with various "faith leaders" in the early days of the war. Equally creepy.

Several Republican holy rollers got in on the act. Senator Lindsey Graham called the conflict "a religious war", and Senator Kevin Cramer declared that the United States has "a biblical responsibility to Israel", whatever that might mean.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavit (Catholic, at least notionally) would also have us know that the whole White House is praying hard this Holy Week, although the fact that she felt compelled to point it out suggests a largely performative element to it.

At least one commander of US troops in Iran was reported as waxing religiously lyrical about the Americans' incursion, saying that it was "all part of God's divine plan" and that "President Trump has been annointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to earth". Yow!

Benjamin Netanyahu is also fond of invoking the scriptures in support of his wars against Palestine and Iran, quoting some pretty obscure stuff about the Amalekites (ancient enemies of the Jews in biblical times) and "wicked Haman" (a Persian official in the Book of Esther, who planned to kill all the Jews).

Of course, the Iranians are just as bad, declaring Ayatollah Ali Khamenei a martyr for being killed by the Americans, making reference tonthe "Hidden 12th Iman" who is supposed to return on the day of judgement. *Yawn*

And then there's Vladimir Putin, who has often used religious imagery in justifying Russia's war on Ukraine. In particular he has co-opted Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, to his cause, a man who is happy to declare it a "holy war" against the West which has "fallen into Satanism". Early in the war, the Patriarch vowed, "I'm going to bless the troops, I'm going to bless the tanks and bombs, and I'm going to declare that anyone who dies in the process of this war will immediately go to heaven and have their sins forgiven".

Wow. Clearly the Americans have a thing or two to learn from the Russians.

Iran may be down, but apparently it's not out

One of the more disturbing aspects of the US-Israel-Iran war is that I find myself rooting, almost against my will and my better judgement, for Iran.

Now, I have no love of Iran - it is a benighted, repressive theocracy with anger management issues - but I have no love of either Israel or the USA either, and they are the ones responsible for starting this unprovoked and illegal war. It's also partly a habitual ingrained tendency to support the underdog in any confrontation or competition. So, when Israel or the US suffers a set-back in their military plans, I tend to respond with a - muted and rather shame-faced - cheer. Is that so wrong?

The war has been going on for a month now, much longer than Trump ever expected. Even though Trump says the Iranian army, navy, air-force and missile capability has been "obliterated", Iran is clearly still hanging on, unbowed and unrepentant.

In fact, in recent days, Iran's "non-existent" missiles and drones have been getting though Israel's formidable defences with more and more regularity, which has some military commentators wondering whether Israel's much-vaunted "Iron Dome" defence system hasn't been damaged by Iran. 

Iranian missile strikes have found their way through to strategic cities like Tel Aviv, Dimona and Arad recently, successfully evading the layered network of detectors and interceptors shared by Israel, the US and its Gulf partners. It's possible that Israel's stock of interceptors is somewhat depleted after the prodigious  barrage of missile attacks from the Iran and proxies like Hezbollah and the Houthis. That does seem likely, but, more and more, experts are positing the idea that the radars and sensors that underlie Israel's integrated air defence network might have been damaged, creating gaps in its detection ability, and leaving both Israel and US forces and assets much more vulnerable than was previously thought. Israel's airspace in particular suddenly seems penetrable, even by a wounded Iranian military. And you know what they say about wounded animals.

Don't get me wrong, I am not going to be out on the streets of Toronto at the weekend, chanting "Death to the American devils!" But it's hard not to feel a bit of righteous schadenfreude when the top-dog aggressors get their comeuppance.

Secession from Canada would be really hard

The provinces of Alberta and Quebec have been bloviating  for some time now (decades, in Quebec's case) about seceding from Canada. It's not clear just how popular a move that would be in either province, but a vocal minority are agitating strongly for it. Alberta is getting close to holding a referendum on the matter, and Quebec will hold yet another referendum if the Parti Québécois assumes power in the next provincial election later this year, as it is expected to do, although exactly when that might happens is now far from clear. 

Most economists think that either province seceding would be an economic disaster, both for the province and for the country. A large majority of Canadians think that, however much of a thorn in the side the provinces currently are, losing either or both would be bad for Canada. But, of course, such logical arguments do not hold much weight with those looking to strike out on their own; this is not a logical argument.

Thing is, though, separation from Canada would be very difficult for either province, even if the populations decided they did want it, as Stéphane Dion (diplomat, academic, former polician, and the ultimate legal and policy wonk) describes in an extensive Globe and Mail article. For context, a couple of other articles in the same paper, one on Alberta and one on Quebec, give a flavour of the kinds of grievances these provinces feel they are suffering.

Unlike most democratic countries, including the United States, the Canadian Constitution DOES allow for a province to secede, but it does not make it easy. For one thing, it does not allow for unilateral secession: it can only happen in a negotiated process, as established by cases in the Supreme Court and by the Clarity Act of 2000. It requires an amendment to the Constitution, which therefore requires the buy-in of all the other provinces. 

Even before that negotiation can happen, the provinces in question must demonstrate "clearly" that a "clear majority" and a "strong majority" (which may mean more than 50%) of its residents want to separate and no longer be part of the country of Canada. There are various stipulations as to what a "clear" referendum question should be, so that there can be no fudging or confusion.

Mr. Dion goes into great detail on what any inter-provincial negotiations would need to look like, detail that would likely make the most ardent separatist blanch and wilt.

The Parti Québécois, in its typical outraged and antagonistic way, has vowed that it will ignore the Clarity Act and just declare its independence anyway if a referendum were to go its way. No other country would accept the legitimacy of such a unilateral secession, and Canada would most definitely not. 

Not only would such a declaration be unlawful, it would be totally impractical. Without the support of the federal government and the global community, there is no way any province could make separation work in practical terms. For example, imagine the process of transferring thousands of federal public servants, of revising a vast array of federal laws and regulations, of the disposition of federal Crown property, assets and liabilities, etc, etc, without the willing (or even grudging) support of the federal government. This administrative nightmare alone should be enough to give any province pause before embarking such a path.

So, lawful secession is possible in Canada. It's just really hard.

A deluge of fireballs

Just while I am on the subject of space, we here on Earth seem to be experiencing an extraordinary, indeed unprecedented, number of fiery meteors ("fireballs").

There are meteor strikes happening all the time, some of them even making it though burning up in the atmosphere to land as meteorites. There are also predictable meteor showers like the Perseids that happen every year, caused by the Earth's path through the tail of a specific comet. But this is different.

It is different partly because of the size of the rocks that are hitting and burning up in the upper atmosphere. In terms of visibility, most fireball events draw a few witnesses; in March 2026 there were at least five that drew over 200 eyewitness reports. One on March 8th over Europe had 3,229 reports from the public. There have been more sightings in one month than in the previous 15 Marches combined. Many also punch deep enough into our atmosphere to cause sonic booms, rattling windows and scaring pets. One crashed through the roof of a residential building in Texas and ricocheted around the bedroom. A house in Ohio had a similar experience, as did a house in the German town of Koblenz-Güls.

This is not the prelude to an alien invasion, though. Mapping of the trajectories of these meteors shows that they are emanating from a region called the Anthelion Sporadic Source, a diffuse region of the Solar System where there are lots of asteroids and meteoroids under the influence of Jupiter and other gravitational forces. Meteors from this region are usually quite few and scattered, making this current spate something of an anomaly (and regular viewers of Star Trek know what an "anomaly" usually portends!) The heliocentric origin of the meteors, though, means that we can rule out an incursion from other galaxies. At least for now.

Another Moon mission? Why?

After a few false starts as NATO erred on the side of caution and dealt with various technical challenges, the Artemis II manned mission to the Moon is due to blast off on April 1st (foolish? I don't think astronauts are superstitious).

It doesn't plan on landing on the Moon - the last time that happened was 1972. Artemis II will just fly around it and back home. But this 10-day trip around the Moon is still a big step in the reboot of American lunar ambitions, and is seen as an important testing run for future missions. Ultimately, the plan is to establish a permanent human base in the Moon, theoretically by as early as 2030.

The Artemis program is the successor to the Apollo program of the 1960s and 1970s. (In Greek mythology, Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo, so the name was pertinently chosen.) Artemis I was an unmanned flight 3½ years ago to test out the Space Launch System (SLS). Artemis II will be the first manned mission to go past the International Space Station (in near Earth orbit) since 1972, and the first to include a Black astronaut (Lt. Cmdr. Victor Glover), the first to include a woman astronaut (Christina Koch), and the first to include a Canadian astronaut (Col. Jeremy Hansen).

How did a Canadian wangle his way on there? Negotiations over several years (pre-Trump, back in the days when the USA and Canada actually got along) yielded an agreement whereby a Canadian astronaut got to tag along in return for about $2 billion in Canadian investment in the lunar program, and the provision of an AI-enabled robotic arm designed to operate on a lunar orbital space station called the Lunar Gateway. (Robotic arms are something of a Canadian specialty - the original Canadarm paved the way for Canadian astonauts Marc Garneau and Roberta Bondar to fly into orbit; Canadarm2 was Chris Hadfield and David Saint-Jacques' ticket to the ISS; and Canadarm3 was part of the Artemis deal for Jeremy Hansen.) 

As it turns out, the Gateway project has since been abandoned in favour of a push for a lunar land base (at least partly to get ahead of Chinese lunar ambitions), so the future of Canadarm3 is unclear, but Hansen still gets to fly. The deal also includes a second lunar mission for a Canadian, and a Canada-based control centre for the robotics (maybe?) The European and Japanese space agencies are also partners in the Artemis program, and they are also expecting to have astronauts included on future missions.

Incidentally, the current American push for the Moon is not Donald Trump's doing, whatever he might try to convince us of later. It was George W. Bush that first announced a new initative for NASA after the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster sent US space ambitions into an existential tailspin. Barack Obama repurposed Bush's lunar project into an asteroid mission, but that too foundered, and space exploration gradually became the province of private space companies like SpaceX for a while. It was only when space missions by Japan, India, Europe and particularly China started to eclipse American efforts that NASA announced its new lunar direction. A new space race had begun.

When Col. Hansen orbits the Moon in the Orion crew module, he will get to see, first-hand, parts of the Moon's far side that have never been seen by human eyes (although the flight's trajectory will actually keep it at quite a distance away). As Chris Hadfield puts it: "the first non-American to fly beyond Earth orbit will be from Canada, not from Russia, not from China, not from India". Depending on the precise trajectory taken, he will probably be further from the Earth than any human ever before at one point.

Do we need to go to the Moon? No. Is it exciting? Sure!

Why is diesel so much more expensive than gas?

I keep asking myself questions I don't know the answers to - it's shocking how much I don't know! Well, here's another one. Why is diesel more expensive than regular gasoline? I'm sure it used to be cheaper than gas, but now it's substantially more expensive.

Well, it seems there are at least three main reasons: 

• Diesel is the main fuel used for shipping, trucking, farming and construction. Global demand for diesel has been particularly high in the last couple of decades, driving up prices. Diesel prices are particularly sensitive to shipping and maritime disruptions.
• The transition to less-polluting lower-sulfur diese, again over the last 20 years or so, and particularly in the USA, has required more intensive and more costly refining processes.
• Taxes on diesel are typically more than the taxes on gasoline.

There is also a seasonal effect, as home heating oil - which is quite similar to diesel and often produced together - sees peak demand in the winter, which has the effect of pushing up the price of diesel.

Either way, the price of diesel has indeed gone up substantially more than the price of gasoline since the Iran war - about 50% compared to 30-33%. And that, of course, will make everything else more expensive, given our calamitous over-reliance on diesel for transportation.

Should we be concerned about a helium shortage?

We are told that the US/Israel-Iran war, and Iran's closing of the Strait of Hormuz in particular, is causing a worrying global shortage of helium. So, there might not be enough lighter-than-air gas to fill party balloons? We won't be able to make our voices sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks? What's the big deal?

While those might the most common every day uses for helium the man in the street might think of, they are far from the most important. Helium gas is indispensible to the manufacture of computer chips. And computers are what make the world go round these days. 

Helium is the coldest liquid on earth, and it's used as a protective inert atmosphere as tiny semiconductor circuits are etched onto silicon wafers, as well as to flush out the toxic residue after chemical washes. Helium is also used to cool the super-powerful magnets in MRI machines, to prevent air bubbles forming in the production of fibre optic cables, to detect leaks in high pressure vacuum systems in heat exchangers and air conditioners, as a shield gas in arc welding, to prevent nitrogen narcosis in deep-sea diving oxygen supplies, for cleaning out rocket fuel tanks, and any number of other industrial applications.

Industrial helium is a by-product of natural gas processing, but not many countries are geared up to produce it in usable quantities. Qatar produces about a third of the global supply, only the US produces more. Other than those two big guns, the only other producing countries of any note are Russia and Algeria (don't ask!) And it is the Qatar production that is at risk here, using as it does the Strait of Hormuz to get to market.

Why is the helium market dominated by so few countries? Not clear. I read that it is expensive to extract and expensive to store (sure, but that would apply to all countries). It also appears that not all gas fields have a high enough helium levels to make extraction economical, and different gas fields have different concentrations even within a country. Recently, some quite concentrated helium sources have been found in areas WITHOUT gas reservoirs, such as in Tanzania, which is leading to a hunt for other such hydrocarbon-free helium reservoirs.

Besides, you say, isn't helium all around us in the air? Well, technically yes, but the concentraction of helium in the earth's atmosphere is of the order of 5 parts per million (0.0005%), so it's definitely not practical to extract it from the air. Universe-wide, it is much more common - in fact, it's the second most abundant element after hydrogen, comprising around 23% of the mass of the universe - but it is almost all found within stars. Not easy to mine.

Back here on earth, the price of helium has soared since the war began. The helium shortage will increasingly force semiconductor production cuts and will have supplements effects from electronics (computers, phones) to automotive production (particularly electric vehicles). It might sound like a relatively unimportant victim of Trump's war in Iran and the least of our worries, but helium actually packs a big punch in global industry. Helium is indeed a big deal.

Why are Canadian housing prices down?

Housing - real estate - has always been considered the best investment you can make here in Canada. Not so much any more. Compared to the top of the market, back in the heady days of 2022, the average value of a home is down about 21%. A pretty substantial hit. The stock market, on the other hand, is still going great guns, despite all the global turmoil that would suggest otherwise.

So, what happened to house prices? Let me count the ways.

Mortgage rates have come down some after the precipitous increase following the pandemic, but they are still well above the 20 year average.

The country's population is actually falling for the first time since Confederation, after a huge increase in immigration in recent years, and housing responds very quickly to falling demand.

Housing remains unaffordable for many. The gross debt service ratio for housing remains stubbornly high.

New housing starts may have flatlined or even fallen recently, but there is still an oversupply of housing if anything (despite what the politicians are saying), at least in some markets, which is depressing prices.

General buyer sentiment is likewise depressed, as a sluggish economy and a poor job market (largely as a result of AI developments and US trade policy) weigh on people's minds. The uncertain CUSMA trade deal renegotiation later this year, and the current oil price shock, also has people waiting out commitments to large expenditures.

Can we ever know whether Chinese imports are made using forced labour?

The issue of forced-labour products from China's Xinjiang province is a thorny one indeed.

It's pretty clear that China does use the forced labour of ethnic Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang. What's not so clear is to what extent our Chinese imports include such products. Goods manufactured using forced labour are explicitly prohibited in the North American market, and are specifically prohibited by the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA, or CUSMA), which comes up for renegotiation later this year.

The Canadian government assures us that it is vigilant in excluding such products from Canada's imports, but it's really not that simple, especially given the lack of transparency around the whole issue. China obviously does not detail for us which elements of an exported product contains what percentage of Xinjiang labour. And not everything that comes from Xinjiang is made by forced Uighur workers anyway. It's a bit of a minefield.

It has all come to a head recently with the Canadian government's decision to allow some Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) into Canada, and the scrutiny over the vehicles' supply chains. Michael Ma's inflammatory (but actually pertinent) questions about whether Xinjiang forced labour content might just be based on "hearsay", and whether the expert in question had seen it for herself, have taken up most of the media attention on the industry committee's deliberations. Expert witness Margaret McCuaig-Johnston's impetuous put-down of such a challenge to her authority and credibility on the subject seemed to be definitive, but the issue is far from straightforward. 

In the end, Mr. Ma apologized, but also claimed he was actually referring to "Shenzhen", a major hub for Chinese EV production, not "Xinjiang", and the transcripts of the exchange do seem to support that. Hmm.

So, where does that leave us? Yes, Xinjiang does produce aluminum, lots of it, but it does not have the capacity to process the metal into the more sophisticated alloys used in the automotive industry. Its blocks of unprocessed metals are amalgamated elsewhere with other aluminum and other materials, so that it is really not possible to estimate how much of the end product came from where, and how much of that was produced using forced labour. And as for Uyghur labour forcibly transferred to factories in other parts of China (which is definitely a thing), there is no way at all to keep track or quantify that.

Even Tesla, which maintains much better records than other Chinese car manufacturers, is unable to definitively say how much of the aluminum used in its cars might have its origins in Xinjiang. Given that Xinjiang produces about 10% of the world's aluminum, other car brands, including Tesla, GM, Toyota and Volkswagon, probably also incorporate Xinjiang aluminum in their vehicles. Like I said, minefield.

The other thing that occurs to me is that we seem to be fixating on a few Chinese EVs, partly due to pressure from the US. Canada - and the US and everywhere else - imports no end of other products from China. Most of the contents of the average Dollarama store probably come from China, many of them made from, or containing, aluminum. Do we know the forced labour content of that cheap frying pan or spice rack? Does the US? It's easier when the product entirely made in Xinjiang (e.g. clothing and textiles, tomatoes, silicon for solar panels, etc), but the aluminum issue in particular is fraught with difficulties.

The challenges of doing science in Trump's America

Here's a good account of how scientific research has had to pivot in Trump's America.

The article deals specifically with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), but I'm sure it applies to any number of government departments and agencies. Scientists and researchers are having to self-censor and find creative ways around the Trump-mandated ban on using MAGA trigger words and phrases like "global warming", "climate change", "solar energy", "alternative energy", "decarbonization", "energy transition", "renewables", "environmental justice", "greenhouse gas emissions", "carbon sequestration", "sustainability", even "safe drinking water". Otherwise, they run the risk of having their research censored or their grant applications denied.

So, instead of using phrases like "climate change", resourceful researchers - those that have not already given up completely or moved away, that is - are trying to use less controversial, softer phrases like "elevated temperatures", "soil health" and "extreme weather", so as not to trigger discovery by the automated tools of the Trump woke police.

I know it reads like a bad science fiction story, but this is really happening in modern-day America. In Trump's America there are about 100-plus words and phrases that are essentially banned in academic and scientific research circles, about a third of them related to climate change (which is, remember, a "hoax"). Some of them are real head-scratchers, like "diesel", "affordable housing", "runoff", "microplastics", "rural water". There are also whole other categories of banned words to do with DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), gender, abortion, immigration, etc. 

Of course, if your whole paper or grant application is about solar energy or affordable housing, it is essentially impossible to avoid these phrases. So, the beleaguered American scientific community is finding alternative sources of funding and alternative publication destinations. And some of them are just leaving for less restrictive and repressive regimes. This is having a huge impact, not only on the American research community, but on that of other countries too, where local talent is now having to compete against well-qualified American ex-patriates and academic exiles (as my son-in-law, who is currently looking for post-doc opportunities abroad, is finding, to his chagrin).

US government department websites have been dilligently "scrubbed" of offensive words like "climate change" and "renewable energy" since early in Trump's second administration. Whole reports have been conveniently removed if they were considered too woke or prejudicial. It makes me wonder: did Trump personally come up with the list of proscribed words and phrases? And who are the people who carry out these bizarre instructions? Talk about the banality of evil.

Imagine working in such a system! Imagine that the field of inquiry you have spent your whole career in (or your future prospective career) is in one of these proscribed areas! Imagine having to avoid using the word "green" or "black" anywhere in your dissertation! I'm sure that many are just hoping to wait it out, on the assumption that "this too shall pass". Others, though, may be second-guessing their whole careers.

I have a suspicion that most Americans are not even aware that this is going on under their noses. Many will not care, of course, those who routinely complain about "radical wokeness" and other such nonsense. But many others will. And if I just found out about it (or at least about the extent of it), I'm sure there are many potentially concerned citizens who have no idea just how close to Margaret Atwood's Gilead or George Orwell's Thought Police modern America has become.

Did the Ontario budget bring in record spending, or cuts, to services?

The Ford Ontario Conservatives - gods, how bored I am with them! - brought down a budget yesterday, forecasting (predictably, given the global situation) a large deficit of $13.8 billion, and pushed back again its plans to balance the books in the near future.

They say they are increasing funding for small businesses, education and healthcare. But then they say that every budget, and after every budget the opposition parties get up and say "Oh, no you didn't!". This happens every time. 

So, what's the truth? How can both claims be made with such passion and conviction? Did they increase healthcare funding, or didn't they?

Politics is all about spin. Like or not, that's the truth. So, of course, the party in power, the Conservatives at the moment, says they are making record investments in education and healthcare. That may be technically true - in nominal terms, the education and healthcare budgets are higher than ever before, including under the previous Liberal administration. 

But this misses some important context. Everything costs more now, especially when comparing with the previous administration, which was way back in 2018, a period of particularly high inflation. So, of course expenditure has to increase, just in order to standard still. Plus, Ontario now hosts over 1½ million more people than it did. So, real per-capita expenditure on education, healthcare and pretty much everything else is not keeping pace. In real per capita terms, the measures so glowingly announced by the Finance Minister were actually pretty savage cuts.

But what's a government to do? They can't preface their budget announcement with, "We're bringing in record cuts to essential services!" No-one would ever vote for them again. No-one likes austerity. But no-one likes tax increases either. So, governments tend to sugar-coat their budget announcements by claiming to be investing in services like never before AND giving the hard-pressed populace tax cuts. Of course, that's not true; the math wouldn't add up, even with a constantly increasing debt load from deficit after deficit. But it sounds impressive, and that's what really matters to them.

How the Netherlands became an agricultural powerhouse

Having just watched the excellent A Life on Our Planet, a spry 93-year old David Attenborough's 2020 "witness statement" (he's now 99!), it's hard not be cowed by the grand old man's ridiculous optimism in the face of the seemingly insurmountable problems facing the planet.

One thing that he did cite as an example of progress in the right direction (and part of Attenborough's vision of a solution to our environmental ills) was the success of the Netherlands' agricultural endeavours. I think I had some idea that they were leaders in vertical farming and hydroponics, but I had no idea things were so advanced there ... and so successful.

But, yes, it turns out that little Netherlands is now the second biggest food exporter in the world (after the USA, which is 240 times larger). The little densely-populated country - for reference it is about the size of Wales, or the province of Nova Scotia, or half the size of US states like South Carolina or Maine - has very little real estate to spare. Nevertheless, it has devoted more than half of its valuable land to farming, and it has developed one of the world's most intensive and efficient agricultural bases.

After the grim experience of the "Winter of Hunger" under Nazi occupation during World War II, food security became a national priority, and the Netherlands made some important strategic decisions, one of which was focussing on high-value agricultural goods like eggs, meat, cheese, tomatoes, peppers and flowers. There was government subsidization, a strong push towards agricultural education and research, and farmland was rationalized into more efficient larger farms. It pioneered greenhouse growing, which it has since taken to the next level, employing robots and algorithms, hydroponics, computer-controlled watering systems and crop ripeness surveillance, optimized LED artificial lighting, etc. 

Despite all these high-tech solutions, bees are still used to pollinate the plants, and are kept in the greenhouses almost like pampered pets. Much of the picking and quality control and even some of the final packaging, is still done by hand, although often (and increasingly) with AI/computer help. Irrigation water is sparingly applied, recycled and reused, and water usage is one-fiftieth of the global average for equivalent crops. Pests and insects are constantly monitored and detected in real time, allowing for timely attention. Crop yields can be ten times or more than global averages.

This is industrialized agri-business taken to the nth degree, but it's sure as hell effective: in 2024, the country produced $140 billion worth of farmed goods. It has established itself as Europe's top exporter of meat, and about 60% of all crops produced in the country are exported, principally to Germany, the UK, China, and (ironically) even the US.

There are still challenges, though. 

There is some worry about the large carbon footprint of Dutch agriculture, although since the Russian war in Ukraine deprived it of cheap Russian gas, there have been moves to secure home-produced energy from wind and geothermal power. 

With the highest livestock density in Europe, the Netherlands also has the highest ammonia emissions on the continent, causing algae blooms in waterways and playing havoc with some native plant species. Calls to limit these emissions have led to mass protests as farmers see their livelihoods threatened. But changes to the diet of animals, separating their pee and poo, etc, have shown promising results.

There is also an increasing labour shortage in some areas of Dutch agriculture (I'm not really sure why), prompting still more AI, robotization and technology innovation, technology that is also exported across the globe.

So, if you want a business success story with a side of environmental hope, watch Business Insider's 20-minute doc on the Netherlands' agricultural revolution.

Air Canada is being held to language obligations its competitors are not

Canada's language battles continue, this time when the CEO of Air Canada aired a condolence message for the families of the two Air Canada pilots who were killed in an accident at La Guardia airport in New York a couple of days ago. He managed a "bonjour" at the start and a "merci" at the end of his video piece, which did at least have French subtitles. But, given that one of the pilots was a francophone, that the flight originated in Montreal, and that the Air Canada company is based in Montreal, has been lambasted as insufficient, disrespectful and downright outrageous by many. There were renewed calls for his ouster.

CEO Michael Rousseau (despite his name) has been called out before by the Quebec language police. He took even more flak for suggesting that his busy schedule just did not allow him to focus on learning a new language, which he said he had not needed in his 14 years of living in Montreal. This time, though, others have involved themselves, including Prime Minister Mark Carney (whose French is not brilliant but he did learn enough to get by for his election campaign), and Rosseau has been summoned before a parluamentary committee to explain his situation.

Poor Mr. Rousseau apologized for his lack of French, which he admits is inadequate "despite many lessons over several years". I can sympathize - some people just don't have the gift. He also apologized that his inability to speak French had "diverted attention" from his message of condolence and grief to the families of the deceased, although, arguably, it was the language hawks in the Bloc Québécois who were doing the diverting. 

While Air Canada is not a federal government agency, it is considered (rightly or wrongly) a federal public corporation, and it is subject to Canada's Official Languages Act. Announcements on board are made in both English and French, and service in both languages is guaranteed. As a high-profile "flag carrier", Air Canada in particular is expected to uphold the myth of Canadian bilingualism and, as CEO, Rousseau is first in the firing line.

In fact, the situation is more complicated than that. Air Canada used to be a fully-fledged Crown corporation, but when it was privatized in 1988, it was specifically subject to various "public interest obligations", enshrined in a whole act of Parliament called the Air Canada Public Participation Act. This included the continued application of the Official Languages Act, although it was not given any additional federal finding to accommodate these onerous requirements.

It's interesting to think, then, that Air Canada's direct competitors, like WestJet and Porter, are not subject to this kind of scrutiny or held to this level of expectations. They are normal private companies, and not subject to the Official Languages Act. Air Canada, though, due to the vagaries of history and the way the company was converted from from a Crown corporation to a piece company nearly forty years ago, IS subject to these additional obligations. Double standards?

Anyone from outside the country watching the howls of outrage going on around the airline's CEO'S French proficiency (or otherwise) would no doubt be dumfounded that we twist ourselves into these kids of knots over something that doesn't seem that important. To a relatively small sub-section of the Canadian population, though, these things are of paramount importance. The country's supposed bilingualism is sometimes touted as one of its strengths; often, though, it is more of an albatross around its neck.

And the biggest losers in all this? The two dead pilots who, as far as we know, did everything in their power to minimize trauma and death among their passengers. Two pilots lost their lives: that should be the story here. They seem to have been all but forgotten amid this squalid, politicized side-show. Good job, Bloc Québécois.

UPDATE

It seems like Rousseau has been successfully pushed out by this "scandal", and he intends to retire by year-end.

More AI prophets of doom

There seem to be two irreconcilable trends in artificial intelligence (AI) development. There are the boosters, largely comprised of tech giants and other large companies, who see oodles of money to be made from it and are doing everything they can to promote it and establish it as the default go-to solution for pretty much everything, even at the expense of flesh-and-blood people, and despite the fact that very little money is actually being made from it thus far. 

And then there are what you might call the prophets of doom, the more thoughtful, cautious contingent, largely comprised of eggheads and theorists (including most of the early pioneers), who are warning that AI development is proceeding too quickly and with insufficient safeguards, or - at the extreme end of the spectrum, but far from isolated - those who are warning that current development trajectories are probably headed towards human extinction.

The former trend seems to be winning at the moment, but that doesn't mean that we should just ignore the eggheads and theorists. The latest warnings come from a researcher called Nate Soares, perhaps not officially in the egghead category, but still a smart cookie with a gift for useful analogies and a well-turned simile.

Soares points out that when (not if) superintelligent AI becomes better than humans at absolutely everything, then "things would get wild". In fact, things would get wild long before that: "It's sort of like saying if you dropped a 500-ton weight on a chicken, the chicken would die. I'm not saying smaller weights wouldn't work. I'm, like, this weight is definitely big enough."

We can't actually design AI to be safer, because AI is not really designed, it grows like an organism. And it is hugely complex, so you can't just point to, say, Line 73 in the code and say, "that needs to be changed". It's more like disciplining a naughty child - we can't just rewire their brains. Worse, machines don't have empathy, sympathy and human emotions, so we can't even appeal to that.

You can actually force an AI application to admit that it made something up, or that it had a "hallucination". It will say that it knows you didn't want it to do that, but it did it anyway. This drive to produce something even if it is incorrect is just one worrying sign we are already seeing of AI going rogue. 

In the same way, while no-one is saying that AI wants to deliberately harm humans, that's not to say that it won't do so while trying to achieve some other task or goal. It doesn't actually care about us - is not capable of caring about us - so this utter indifference combined with its great technological might may result in it just rolling over us en route to completion of an otherwise unimportant task.

AI company Anthropic, for example, may be training its AI according to a "constitution" to try to align it with human values, but even the head of Anthropic thinks there is a 25% chance that AI will go catastrophically wrong. That's a pretty big chance. And yet these companies are still barrelling ahead, most with much less ethical questioning than Anthropic. This is happening mainly because they think, "If I don't do it, somebody else will, and they will probably do an even worse job of it". And that's those who are not motivated by much more base considerations, like money.

Mr. Soares concludes with another analogy: we wouldn't build a plane with no landing gear and just assume that such a minor problem could be fixed while the plane is in flight. Nor would we launch a plane that we were 75%, or even 90%, sure was safe. But that's kind of what we are doing with AI.

I thought it was funny that the article ended with an Editor's Note: "AI tools assisted with condensing the original podcast transcript".

Social media's Big Tobacco moment

I confess I'm surprised it ever came to this, but kudos to the American courts system for having the gumption to rule against the combined might of Meta/Instagram/Facebook and Google/YouTube in finding the social media companies liable for intentionally building addictive social media platforms that harm the mental health of young people.

In this case, it was a 20-year old woman called Kaley (or K.G.M.). She sued Meta and Google over her childhood addiction to social media, claiming the platforms left her with body dysmorphia, depression and suicidal thoughts. Yesterday, she won US$6 million in compensatory and punitive damages, of which 70% is to come from Meta and 30% from Google. (TikTok and SnapChat both settled out of court with the same plaintiff for an unknown sum before the Meta/Google trial began.)

Now, $6 million is not really going to make the likes of Meta and Google sit up and take note - the plaintiff's counsel was initially claiming $1 billion! - but, given that there are tens of thousands of such victims lining up to sue Big Tech, this precedent could indeed be material. This is social media's Big Tobacco moment.

Of course, it's not over until it's over, and both companies say they will appeal the ruling, to try and stanch the bleeding which could indeed cost them dearly over time. If they manage to get the case overturned, is it still a landmark case? Probably. It validates the legal theory that social media sites or apps can cause personal injury, that it is essentially a defective product, if you will. And it will almost certainly encourage many more tentative litigants to try their luck with the legal system, although that is not a task for the faint of heart.

Trump now lives in a Democratic district

Pretty funny: Donald Trump now lives in a Democrat-held electoral district.

The "special election" (by-election) in Florida District 87 - in which Trump's Mar A Lago estate is located - has been flipped by the Democrats. The young first-time Democrat candidate Emily Gregory handily beat out Trump-backed Republican Jon Maples, in a district where the the Republicans won by 19% in 2024.

Mr. Trump is now Ms. Gregory's constituent.

The complicated mix that is Danish politics

Denmark held a general election yesterday, and the expectation was that Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen's Social Democrats would handily win. As it turned out, her party did win the most votes although it was still the party's worst showing in over a century. Luckily, the main right-wing party, Venstre (Danish Liberal Party), also had its worst showing in a century. 

But individual parties are not the be-all-and-end-all of Danish politics, it's all about the "blocs": the "red bloc" of left-wing parties, and the "blue bloc" of right-wing parties. Joining the Social Democrats (with its 38 seats) are the Green Left (20 seats), the Red-Green Alliance (11 seats), the Danish Social Liberal Party (10 seats), and the Alternative (5 seats), giving the red bloc a total of 84 seats. The blue bloc, consisting of Venstre and a rag-tag bunch of other parties, total 77 seats. So, neither bloc achieved the 90 seats needed for a majority, leaving the Moderates party (14 seats) as potential kingmakers in the ensuing negotiations.

That's a lot of different parties, all with some level of influence on the national political scene. It's fascinating stuff, for an outsider like me, used to two (maybe three or four) main political parties. But I guess the Danes are used to all the argy-bargy and bargaining that their politics entails.

Trump is apparently negotiating with himself

Desperately seeking an off-ramp from his disastrous war in Iran, Donald Trump insists that Iran is negotiating a deal. "They want a deal so badly", he assures us. In fact, he seems to think that they have had "GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS" already, and some "very, very strong talks".

Unfortunately, Iran doesn't seem to know anything about this. Iran's foreign ministry issued to a terse statement saying that, "There is no dialogue between Tehran and Washington". The speaker of Iran's parliament confirmed that, "No negotiations have been held with the US, and fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped". A spokesperson for Iran's military was less subtle: "You are negotiating with yourselves ... someone like us will never come to terms with someone like you. Not now, not ever".

As usual, Trump seems cocooned in his own little world, more concerned with appearances than actual substance. Meanwhile, the US and Israel continue bombing the hell out of Iran, and Iran continues bombing anybody it can reach. Put it down to the fog of war?

Clean power as an energy security issue

Perhaps it's not much, but maybe something good might come out of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Spooked by the precipitous increase in oil and has prices, Britain's biggest energy company, Octopus Energy, has already seen a 50% rise in solar panel sales in the few weeks since the war started, as well as a spike in heat pumps and enquiries about electric vehicles and chargers. Something very similar is happening in Europe.

Now, the UK is introducing new rules to the effect that all new homes built there (from 2028) must be installed with heat pumps and solar panels. In addition, plug-in solar panels are to be widely available in stores in Britain. The idea is to avoid being held hostage by the globalized oil and gas market, as is happening in the aftermath of the Iran war, and to move closer to "energy sovereignty" for the country.

Hey, maybe we could do that too, here in sunny Canada? Ah, no, Alberta would never allow that!

Canada's Supreme Court hears one of its most important cases ever

The Supreme Court of Canada will spend most of this week debating the legality and constitutionality of Quebec's controversial Bill 21, also known as the "secularism law", which would ban religious symbols and clothing for public employees (including teachers) in positions of authority.

It is expected be one of the Supreme Court's longest ever cases, and is being called "one of the most consequential constitutional cases in the country's recent history", "the case to end all cases", and "the most important charter case in a generation", among other superlatives. That's largely because the "Act Respecting the Laicity of the State" essentially hangs on the Quebec government's invocation of Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the dreaded "notwithstanding clause". 

Originally intended to be used only very sparingly and in cases of absolute necessity, the clause has been invoked increasingly frequently in recent years, and even pre-emptively. It effectively allows governments to pass legislation which they know contravenes the fundamental rights and freedoms of Canadians that are supposedly protected by the Charter. 

No other country has anything like it. It makes a mockery of our constitution. Nevertheless, in recent years, it has become a favourite tool of provincial governments, particular the right-wing populist governments we have been saddled with recently in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. It's the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card.

The Supreme Court case this week should hopefully give some much-needed clarity on how and when such a nuclear option can reasonably be employed. Unfortunately, the Court will not be able to get rid of the ill-conceived clause completely, but let's hope that a precedent will be set discouraging governments from over-using it. 

Either way, though, we won't hear any decisions from the Court for some months, so don't hold your breath.

If you thought that democracy was failing in America...

Most people probably have a general feeling that the Trump administration has been gradually rolling back democracy in the United States over the last year or more. Such a thing is hard to quantify, but some people have been doing just that: quantifying how much democracy has been dismantled in the US under Trump 2.0.

No fewer than three separate reports published this month indicate that democracy in the USA has been eroded at record speed under Trump. The Swedish V-Dem institute shows the US falling from 20th to 51st position out of 179 in the global democracy rankings, leaving it somewhere between Slovakia and Greece. The Bright Line Watch now puts America's political system about midway between liberal democracy and dictatorship. And the US-based democracy think-tank Freedom House concludes that three countries, USA, Bulgaria and Italy, have recorded the sharpest declines in political rights and civil liberties last year.

Among the evidence: the administration's concentration of power, the undermining of checks and balances on executive power, the overstepping of laws, the circumvention of Congress, the regular attacks on news media and freedom of speech, the erosion of the country's democratic standing overseas, and the absence of criticism of (and even support for) democratic declines abroad.

It is, as V-Dem's founding director says, "The most rapid decline ever in the history of the United States and one of the most rapid in the world". He says that the Trump administration has rolled back democracy as much in one year as Modi in India and Erdogan in Turkey managed in ten years, and as much as Orbán in Hungary did in four.

In the contemptuous style typical of the whole Trump administration, a White House spokesperson dismissed this as "a ridiculous claim made by an irrelevant, blatantly biased organization", calling Trump a champion for freedom and democracy and the most transparent and accessible president ever. How do these people live with themselves?

These democracy monitors note, though, that the US has not yet passed the point of no return, and that the Trump effect is not necessarily permanent. Another presidential election in less than three years time, and even the upcoming mid-term elections later this year, could put substantial limits on Trump's slide towards authoritarianism. Gods, let's hope so!

A head-scratcher of a Liberal budget

Mark Carney and his Liberal government have brought down a distinctly Conservative-style budget. As always, there are winners and losers, but which departments gain and which are being cut shows a distinct change of emphasis from the past. And the fact that there are more cuts than increases also marks a break with the Liberals' free-spending past.

All in all, there are $31 billion in cuts and just $23 billion in new spending for 2026-7, so a pretty substantial net $8 billion cut in overall spending. 

The biggest losers are the Canada Revenue Agency ($4.3 billion, or nearly 41% of its old budget), Department of Fisheries and Oceans ($4.3 billion, or nearly 70% of its budget), Department of Indigenous Services ($3.0 billion, or 11%), Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs ($2.6 billion, or 18%), Global Affairs ($2.1.billion, or 23%), and Canada Post ($2.0 billion, or 99%). 

There are some huge surprises there. Wait for some significant push-back, although probably not from then opposition Conservatives. It's a brave (or foolish) man who cuts money for Indigenous people these days, and "sunsetting" overseas programs smacks of Trumpism. And almost totally cutting loose Canada Post suggests that they have completely given up on the Crown corporation, so don't expect any Christmas cards in the mail next December.

The main winners in the budget are the Department of Finance (with a whopping $8.5 billion increase, or nearly 6%% of its original budget), Department of Employment and Social Development ($5.7 billion, or 5.4%), Department of National Defence ($5.3 billion, or 12%), and  Department of Housing Infrastructure and Communities ($1.4 billion of 15%). 

Injections of cash into defence and housing align with recent rhetoric, and a shot in the arm of Employment and Social Development perhaps makes sense in these times of tariffs and layoffs. But what is the finance department going to do with an additional $8 billion? (A bit of research suggests that this includes accelerated investments to counter the effects of US tariffs, affordability measures like the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit, investment in Build Canada Strong projects, including housing, investment in a new financial crimes and anti-fraud agency, and financial support for built-in-Canada defence and infrastructure projects.) 

No doubt all will become clearer in the coming days, but so far it seems like a bit of a head-scratcher of a budget. As a Liberal budget it is - that word again! - unprecedented. I can't help but think that some of this stuff will come back to bite them later.

Should I be concerned that Canada's happiness is slipping?

There's a World Happiness Report published every year - I've mentioned it from time to time in this blog: it seems like an interesting idea, a fun but functional concept.

This year, as always, Finland is top of the list, followed by all the other Scandinavian and near-Scandinavian countries (and, interestingly, Costa Rica). This year's Index has generated more attention that usual here in Canada, though, because Canada has fallen precipitously from 6th to 25th.

Scandal! Horrors!

Why Canada's happiness rating has fallen more than almost any other country is unclear. Social media, weakened family ties, a crumbling welfare state, and several other factors have all been mooted. But other countries are also living under the threat of  tariffs, dire climate change, even existential violation. Other countries use social media at least as much as we do. Why are Canadians more upset about everything than the denizens of other countries?

Actually, that's not the point of my entry.

What I found out this year is that the Global Happiness Index is actually based on a sample population's response to just a single "life evaluation" question. So, people are self-reporting how they feel at a particular point time, which doesn't sound very scientific somehow. Maybe the Canadians were sampled on the day Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian steel and car exports, or the day Trump reiterated his threat to make us the 51st US state? Maybe the Finns are the most delusional people, not actually the happiest? (Finland used to have the highest suicide rate in the world and, although it has improved that statistic impressively in recent years, its suicide rate is still worse than average. How happy can they really be?) And anyway, what happened to Bhutan, the self-styled "kingdom of happiness", with its famous Gross National Happiness metric? It's not on the list at all!

So, should I be concerned about the mental state of Canadians? Well, maybe, although perhaps 25th out of 147 is not all that bad. But surely we can do a better job of measuring happiness than a simplistic question.

Once again, Ford makes inappropriate noises about the judiciary

Doug Ford again, I'm afraid. I'm getting tired of complaining about him, but he seems to have been opening his mouth without engaging his brain more and more just recently, as I have reported here several times in the last month or two.

Yesterday, in addition to his controversial comments about a trigger-happy homeowner, he parroted the Toronto Police Association's and Chief of Police's (dubious) assertion that veteran Ontario Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy should apologize to three Toronto Police officers after an Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) investigation found no evidence of perjury or collusion in their evidence at the trial of Umar Zameer, a man accused of fatally running over one of their colleagues. In his usual over-the-top, overwrought way, Ford stated that the judge "should apologize for accusing them of everything under the sun". 

For the record, Zameer was found not guilty back in 2024; that part at least is not at issue. So, in the end, the police officers' testimony - truth or lies - did not actually change the verdict.

The OPP report did indeed exonerate the three police officers, despite the fact that their testimonies were remarkably similar to each other, and totally at odds with the security video and the testimony of the two expert witnesses. It was this inconsistency with the other evidence, and the similarity of their own contributions, that led Justice Molloy to suggest that there was some collusion and perhaps even some untruths, in what was a case that was very close to home for them. Her comments were a reasonable conclusion, as many legal experts have averred. In fact, the OPP's report conclusions came as a surprise to many, and some have alleged a possible cover-up, particularly as the publicly-available report was severely redacted and, it is argued, the OPP is not the right body to be reviewing the actions of police officers anyway. There have been calls for a public inquiry into the matter, or at the very least the release of the full report.

Either way, it is entirely inappropriate for Doug Ford to be commenting publicly on the report, and especially inappropriate for him to be questioning the competence and independence of a senior Ontario judge, just because he happens to disagree with them. But then, "inappropriate" is Ford's middle name these days. I'm sure he sees what is happening south of the border, and concludes that he can get away with such nonsense too.

Confusion on what US National Intelligence is for

So many MAGA people are so completely in thrall to Trump that they seem not able to think for themselves, or at least they daren't voice any kind of dissent because their jobs are on the line. 

Take, for example, the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who maintained under questioning by a congressional committee that: "The only person that can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the President". Er, no, that's exactly what National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Centre (and a bunch of other similar-sounding agencies) are for. They are supposed to advise the President, because the President is not an expert in these matters (and this President in particular needs more guidance than most).

Ms. Gabbard even doubled down: "It is not the intelligence community's responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat." She seems a little confused about her job mandate. Her (Democrat) questioner shot back: "It is PRECISELY your responsibility to determine what constitutes a threat to the United States".

If the President then ignores that advice, then that's on him. Frustrations, even within Trump's so-called supporters, are building; hence the high-profile resignation of National Counterterrorism Center boss Joe Kent yesterday.

I get it that some of these people are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, and many of them are completely out of their depths, unqualified and inexperienced in the fields they have been dumped in. But that's hardly an excuse for this kind of nonsense.

Doug Ford hits the controversy button yet again

Never one to be shy of making his opinions known, Doug Ford has been throwing his controversial views around again. It does seem like, just recently, pretty everything he says is contentious or dubious.

After a Vaughan home-owner foiled a home invasion attempt by shooting and injuring one of the would-be burglars, Ford couldn't stop himself from congratulating the trigger-happy home-owner: "Well, you know, these guys, they need to be shot. Congratulations for shooting this guy - should have shot him a couple more times as far as I'm concerned". He went on to attack the federal government for "going after legal, law-abiding gun owners" and berated "weak-kneed judges" for letting people out on bail. This sounds so much like Donald Trump, it's not even funny.

The home invader who was shot was actually injured, not killed, but he could easily have been killed, and presumably Ford would have been fine with that too. The injured man was seen in security video footage to be holding a gun, but did not use it. He is now facing charges of robbery with a firearm and "disguise with intent". No charges are being laid against the resident doing the shooting.

Predictably, many people took issue with Ford's outburst. NDP opposition leader Marit Styles called it "very irresponsible nonsense", and Green Party leader Mike Schreiner called it "irresponsible of the Premier to be making comments encouraging violence or celebrating the loss of life". A Liberal critic pointed out that "no-one should be congratulated for shooting another person". 

More than one commentator has observed that this kind of vigilante justice should be discouraged, not praised. Under Canadian law, the use of force is only allowed when "reasonable and proportionate in the circumstances". 

Our ethical decisions may depend on the language they are couched in

Here's an interesting thing. You've probably heard of what's usually referred to as the "trolley problem" of ethics and philosophy. So, people have to decide whether to sacrifice one person in order to save five others who are about to be killed by a hypothetical runaway trolley bus (or tram, or train). There are various formulations and variations, like what if it was a fat person or an old person, or what if you had to actually push a person off a bridge in order to save the five rather than just pull a track switch. 

Generally speaking, a sizeable majority think that it is morally permissible to make the utilitarian choice and pull the lever to save the five at the cost of the one. However, much fewer people would push someone off the bridge to save the five, reflecting the increased "emotional resonance" of such an action. 

More recent studies, though, have looked at what difference the language in which the problem is posed makes to people's moral decision-making. The problem was put to people who spoke more than one language, both in their native language and in their second language. By a substantial margin, more people chose to pull the switch to kill the one person in order to save the five if the problem was put to them in their second language, rather than in their native language. The difference was even starker for the more emotive problem of having to push someone off a bridge rather than just pull a rail switch at a distance. Furthermore, the poorer people's mastery of the second language, the more marked the effect.

This suggests that a native language holds much more emotional resonance, while a second language maintains more psychological distance for most people. This makes some intuitive sense, I guess, but it's interesting to see it demonstrated in quite such a stark manner.

Joe Kent resignation is a blow for Trump

Trump shrugged it off and (very quickly) moved on to a new question in a media scrum yesterday, but the resignation of Joe Kent - the director of the US National Counterterrorism Center - is a big deal.

Not just because Kent was a Trump appointee and a high-profile MAGA guy (albeit on the non-interventionist wing of the movement). But because he didn't just disappear quietly into the background, but rather defected very publicly, with an open letter explaining his reasons for resigning and the many reasons why Trump's war in Iran is wrong.

"I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby." 

Ouch.

Don't get me wrong, Kent is a bit of a loose cannon himself, and deep into conspiracy theories. But kudos to him for standing up to Trump and telling it like it is. The rift between the interventionist and non-interventionist wings of the MAGA base is becoming deeper and wider every day. Bring it on, I say.

Trump tries to bribe companies to abandon renewable energy projects

It's no secret that Donald Trump hates wind turbines, especially offshore ones. He has tried (and largely failed so far) to cancel a bunch of wind farms off the eastern US seaboard that were already in progress.

Now, though, he is setting his sights on cancelling offshore wind farms that are permitted but not yet begun. And this time, there's a twist.

Trump wants to cancel two large wind farms permitted by the Biden administration to the French oil/energy company TotalEnergies SE, one off the coast of New York, and one off North Carolina. His ploy now - or at least that of the Interior and Justice Departments, which just seem to follow Trump's every whim, no matter how random, foolish or financially imprudent - is to basically bribe the developers. 

The New York Times has viewed contracts drawn up with TotalEnergies that would see the company abandon the two wind farms (which would, between them, have powered over a million homes and businesses) and commit unspecified sums of money to investing in natural gas infrastructure in Texas instead (something they were doing anyway). To make TotalEnergies happy with this intervention and their loss of income, the Justice Department would pay them $795 million to abandon the New York project and a further $133 million for the North Carolina development. 

So, that's nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money that Trump is making the government shell out just because ... well, we're not really sure why. There are no actual national security reasons or economic imperatives, whatever Trump may bluster. He has just decided that he doesn't like wind power, and his feckless administration humours him in it. And this, remember, in a so-called "energy emergency" that Trump himself declared last year.

Thing is, though, it's far from clear whether the Trump administration has the legal power to do this without the approval of Congress. We may not have heard the last of this.

UPDATE

Well, TotalEnergies backed down, accepted the bribes, and two more wind farms are now toast. You can totally see why the company might not want to pursue the wind projects in the face of such an antagonistic administration.

The winners: the US government and, in particular, Donald Trump. The losers: US taxpayers and electricity users, and the environment. The biggest disappointment: TotalEnergies. The biggest surprise: absolutely nothing.

UPDATE

The other anti-wind power policy Trump is currently pursuing is gratuitous delays in permitting. At least 30 wind farm developments are being deliberately delayed as the Trump administration sits on routine military reviews needed before the projects can be begun.

These reviews used to be considered a quick and routine rubber-stamping exercise, needed to confirm that the wind turbines will not interfere with military radar and aviation systems. But construction cannot start without these permits.

The increasing backlog and seemingly endless wait for routine permits makes it pretty clear that functionaries are being directed to stall wind projects on idealogical - not economic or military - grounds.

You can't buy veggie chicken in Europe any more

The EU comes in for a lot of stick from a lot of folks and for various different reasons. But, for all that, it remains one of the most sensible and civilized blocs in today's world. Yes, it has its problems (Hungary, anyone?) but, for the most part, it does a good job of providing a voice of sobriety and reason in today's increasingly weird and dysfunctional global politics.

Occasionally, though, it missteps. One such misstep is the latest policy decision to ban the use of words like "chicken", "bacon" and "steak" by vegetarian and vegan food producers, even if it is clearly qualified on the label as being vegetarian or vegan. Mysteriously, words like "burger", "nuggets" and "sausage" ARE still allowed, because ... well, I'm really not sure why. Where they stand on the use of "chick'un", "chick'n", etc, I'm also not sure. Incidentally, this ruling also applies to the UK, which - also mysteriously - is still subject to such EU commercial edicts.

Now, it seems pretty unlikely to me that anyone has ever picked up a pack of veggie bacon in a supermarket and been traumatized to find that it contains absolutely no dead animal. The "veggie" part is usually front and centre of their packaging and advertising - it's a positive selling point, after all. (A British survey suggests that 92% of shoppers say they have NEVER mistaken "fake" meat for the "real thing".)

Either way, I think the EU overstepped their brief on this this one. Do they really have nothing better to discuss at the moment, like maybe global security, recession-spawning tariffs, existential changes in the climate?

No-one wants to help dig Trump out of his latest quagmire

Unsurprisingly, Trump's "demand" that other countries (like China, Japan, South Korea, France and the UK) help police the Strait of Hormuz is falling on deaf ears.

"I'm demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is their own territory", quoth he. Well, no it's not, actually. The Strait, which is as narrow as 20 miles (32km) at one point, is technically an "international strait" within the meaning of Article 37 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). It is bordered by Iran on one side and Oman on the other. Iran does not legally own the Strait, but it can effectively control it based on its physical proximity. However, it definitely does not belong to the USA, China or any other country that may happen to use it or want it.

Trump, whose "most powerful military in the world" seems to be struggling to assert control in the region, wants to drag other countries into his unilateral war. But, wisely, no-one is biting. Just because Trump has bitten off more than he can chew doesn't mean that everyone else should come flocking to his aid - quite the contrary. He needs to learn not to go around imperilling world trade and security based on little more than a whim and delusions of grandeur. 

After Trump warned - in his usual tone of veiled, or not-so-veiled, threat - that not doing as he "demands" would be "very bad for the future of NATA", one former British Chief of Defence Staff laid it out clearly: "NATO was created as a ... defensive alliance. It was not an alliance that was designed for one of the allies to go on a war of choice and then oblige everybody else to follow." Thus far, there have been few firm commitments (none confirmed publicly, despite Trump's claims). Canada, as always is playing it cagey, insisting that "there has been no formal ask of Canada". More bluntly, the UK's Keir Starmer asserts that the UK "will not be drawn into the wider war". German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius was even blunter: "This is not our war. We haven't started it."

UPDATE

Stung by the deafening silence from the US's "allies", Trump launched into another bewildering speech in which he flip-flopped back and forth but eventually concluded (I think) with the rather tired line that America doesn't actually NEED anyone else's help - they're the most powerful country on earth, don't you know, with the strongest military anybody has ever seen, ever - and that he was only asking for help in the Strait of Hormuz to see who would respond, to see who his real friends are.

Unbearable man! I think he can safely say, after this little exercise, that he HAS no friends, and that he has managed to alienate pretty much the whole world in just one year.

Even teabags are full of microplastics

By now, we have pretty much come to understand that microplastics and nanoplastics.(collectively, MNPs) are everywhere, in the food we eat, the water we drink, the very air we breathe. Our bodies are therefore just full of them.

A recent meta-study shows just how many are entering our system through as innocent an activity as drinking a cup of tea. Setting aside MNPs in the water, MNPs leaching from the cup/mug/teapot, and MNPs from the packaging and processing operations, the studies show that the teabags themselves are a significant source of micro- and nano- plastics.

I try to avoid those fancy pyramid-shaped "silk" teabags, which are essentially made of nylon (i.e. plastic). Pour boiling water over them and you have to expect a flood of plastic bits to be released. But traditional "paper" teabags (which are actually primarily made of bleached wood pulp and abaca, a banana plant derivative) are also a source, made worse by the fact that many such paper teabags are treated with polypropylene, epichlorohydrin, etc, to help strengthen and seal them. Not even "biodegradable", "compostable" and PLA "bioplastic" teabags are exempt.

A single teabag, it seems, can release between 1.3 and 14.7 billion MNPs, depending on the study and the methodology. Those are huge and scary numbers, but they do not mean that teabags are killing us, merely that they are contributing to the plastic load in our bodies and the environment, which over time will degrade our health in subtle and opaque ways.

Makes you feel like throwing your hands up in despair and having a cup of tea, doesn't it? Oh, wait...

Trump's solution to the oil crisis is ... not actually a solution

Trump's gratuitous and illegal war in Iran has upended the world's trade in oil and gas and caused a record spike in prices

But, never fear, he has a plan. That plan involves lifting the restrictions that he himself imposed on other countries buying Russian gas. Not the most obvious solution, you might think. Not even a very effective solution. But, as treasury secretary Scott Bessant assures us, this really won't benefit Russia all that much: "It won't provide significant benefit to the Russian government", and is merely a "tailored short-term move".

Well, it turns out that this "tailored short-term move" will actually generate about $11.3 billion for Russia, money that Moscow will happily pocket and put towards its rapidly-depleting Ukraine kitty. India and China, neither of which greatly care about the morality of buying Russian oil, will be most happy to take advantage of this new loophole without being dinged by American tariffs. Other Asian countries struggling to find petroleum products sufficient for their needs include Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, and all are looking in the direction of Russia. Russia, then, is benefitting from artificially high oil prices and unprecedented demand for its oil

And this is somehow supposed to directly ameliorate the global oil price crunch? To rectify the economic chaos that Trump himself instigated?

Brilliant idea, Donny! Inspired!

Gambling in America goes beyond the pale

If you wanted yet more evidence that the United States is going off the rails, you need look no further than American gambling culture.

Gambling, including online gambling, in the US used to be pretty highly regulated. Sports betting was illegal until 2018, and betting on elections was off-limits until 2024. Now, though, gambling has become completely ingrained in American culture.

Most recently, in the morality-free milieu of Trump 2.0 and MAGA "philosophy", an even more problematic habit is taking hold: the so-called "prediction market", or betting on political or military actions. Under American law, it is still supposed to be illegal to bet on war, terrorism, assassination, or other illegal activities. But, of late, outfits like Kalshi and Polymarket have been taking bets on, for example, when Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be "out", military action in Venezuela and Israel, when US ground forces will enter Iran, even the chances of a nuclear detonation.

Yes, it is all supposed to be illegal, but there has been an estimated $44 billion in prediction market trades over the last year or so. Polymarket alone has hosted an estimated $500 million in bets on the Iran war, which is now just two weeks old. There does not seem to be much enforcement of the legalities.

There has been an outcry, though, and some of the companies involved have said they will dial back that line of gambling. There is even discussion of whether such speculation should come under the oversight of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. But in a country where you can bet on local elections, whether the central bank will cut interest rates, and when Jesus.Christ will return, there doesn't seem much likelihood of legal reform making a whole lot of difference.

UPDATE

Crap! It looks like it's happening in Canada too. Despite "prediction trading" being specifically banned in Canada since 2017, the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization is apparently issuing approvals for some investment companies to deal in "forecast contracts" or "event contracts", which is pretty much the same thing as the event betting going on in America. It's just being disguised as "investment" here.

Sports and election events are still not allowed,  but contracts on economic indicators, financial markets and climate trends appears to be allowed. And you have to think that this is just the thin end of the wedge, and that other kinds of event betting will gradually creep in.

And there I was thinking it can't happen here!