Revelations of separatist leaders' deals with America rattles Albertans

As Quebec votes in a separatist government (albeit only a minority government, with a much weaker mandate than was widely expected), Alberta's secession movement also receives another set-back.

Revelations in the Globe and Mail show that some major Alberta separatist leaders have been cozying up to the US Republican Party, which, given current relations between Canada and the USA, has many Albertans pretty worried and upset.

The Globe's report details how, unbeknown to most rank-and-file would-be separatists, movement leaders have met with Republican representatives in Washington and in Calgary and have even discussed potential deals granting the US access to Alberta's land, water, oil and precious metals in return for American assistance in their secession plans. 

This is a bridge too far from most Albertans, and organizations like the Alberta Prosperity Project and Stay Free Alberta are deperately trying to limit the damage of the revelations. Some Albertans - less than a quarter, according to most polls - have a beef with Canada (or they think they do), and believe it is is Alberta's interests, in one way or another, to separate. Hardly any Albertans want to become the 51st state of America.

Trump's AI rebranding just more smoke and mirrors

As a new CNN/SSRS survey concludes that the vast majority of Americans are very concerned about AI and the way it's being developed, President Donald Trump has a solution: rename it.

The CNN survey found that 88% of Americans would be concerned rather than happy if AI were to surpass human intelligence (which it probably already has), 87% are concerned at all the data centr1es being constructed for AI, 82% think that AI is being developed too quickly, and 81% believe that it will change our way of life.(well, duh). Furthermore, 71% think that the government is not doing enough to regulate AI development, including 85% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans.

In the face of that, Mr. Trump, whose only concern seems to be whether the USA is developing it faster than China, has decided that artificial intelligence (AI) should henceforth be called super intelligence (SI). Bizarrely, he has even issued an executive order to that effect, which he considers to be "morally binding", although he can only force the compliance of government agencies.

Even more bizarrely, some of the more pusillanimous tech leaders seem to be humouring him on this, despite the fact that "super intelligence" already has a very specific meaning within the industry (meaning the point where AI exceeds the cognitive abilities of humans in virtually all aspects of thinking). Elon Musk, not generally known for his attention to morality, says he will rename his AI company SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI. Actually, he is the only one...

Obviously, Trump's order will have zero effect on the AI industry and its regulation. Like his other renaming stunts, it is just another attempt to distract Americans' attention from some of the worse developments happening under his watch, and to make it look as though he is being proactive on an issue of concern without actually doing anything at all, the old smoke and mirrors routine. As usual, an extraordinary percentage of Americans will be fooled by it.

Christa Pike on life support is the mother of all ironies

I'm sure everyone has heard about the "failed execution" of Christa Pike in Tennessee this last week. 

Incidentally, "failed execution" is different from "botched execution". In a "botched execution", something went wrong with the lethal injection procedure, but the person died regardless. This apparently happens as often as 8% of the time, which seems extraordinary to me. In a "failed execution", on the other hand, the person does not even die, a much rarer event but far from unprecedented, as some news outlets are suggesting (this is the second time this year it has happened in Tennessee alone). 

Christa Pike is very much alive as we speak, although in a pretty bad way, unconscious and intubated on a ventilator to keep her alive. She survived two doses of a lethal pentabarbitol injection, the capital punishment method of choice in Tennessee and a few other US states. It's not entirely clear why the lethal injection failed, but some commentators suggest that her vein may have burst (twice!) and the pentabarbitol spilled out into the surrounding tissues (she complained of a burning sensation at one point, which supports this theory).

If one attempt fails, a second is called for. There is, however, no protocol on what to do if the second attempt also fails, as in this case. So, a very ill Ms. Pike was summarily whisked out of there and away from the press, and is currently being maintained on life support at an off-site medical facility.

The fact that she is now receiving "life-saving medical care" has to be the mother of all ironies. Ms. Pike's lawyer is calling her treatment "chemical torture", and is calling for her death sentence to be commuted. Her conviction of killing a classmate 32 years ago, at the age of 18, was controversial in the first place, partly because of her age at the time of the crime, and partly because of her history of severe childhood abuse.

So, what's next? The Tennessee prisons chief has resigned, and the state Governor has halted any new executions and called for an independent inquiry into the situation. And Ms. Pike? Who knows? She's now a cause célèbre for some.

Has Samuel Alito left his retirement too late?

US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito - a man whose extreme right-ring political views make even Donald Trump look like a moderate, and who has presided over many of the Supreme Court's most politically-motivated and legally suspect decisions in recent years - is considering imminent retirement. 

The controversial 76-year old, who has been on the Supreme Court bench for over 20 years, is a strong Trump-backer, and most people assume that his decision to retire is being timed specifically to allow Trump to nominate another MAGA conservative to the court, thus cementing the court's conservative bias for many years to come.

But has he left it too late? If the Democrats swing both the House of Representatives (almost certain) and the Senate (more than possible) in the upcoming November mid-term elections, they have made no bones about their intention to block any Trump nominees to the Court, as is their right.

How much time does he have? The mid-terms are on 3rd November 2026, just a month away. However, any newly elected Senators will not actually take office until 3rd January 2027. So, that's actually tons of time for Alito and Trump to pull off their caper.

The case for replacing diesel in heavy-duty trucking

As diesel prices reach record levels, and the idiot-in-chief in the White House threatens to ban American diesel exports to the international market, it's never been clearer just how much we still rely on diesel for the transportation of goods. Almost completely, in fact - 97%.of the largest Class B tractor trailers run on diesel, although the figure for commercial trucks as a whole is about 76%.

So, what's the deal? We see lots of electric cars on the roads these days, but when was the last time you saw an electric truck? Why has the take-up of alternative-fuel trucks been so poor?

The main types of alternative fuels available for heavy-duty transportation are:

• Renewable diesel - made from fats and oils, which can be used directly in current trucks with no engine modification. It can reduce carbon intensity by as much as 68% compared to traditional diesel, but it remains relatively expensive. Incentives like California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard are starting to change that and adoption is increasing rapidly in such jurisductions.
• Natural gas (methane) - compressed natural gas offers a more stable price compared to diesel, but it is still a fossil fuel, albeit a bit cleaner than diesel. Renewable natural gas is sourced from landfills, animal waste and other organic matter, and is a net zero, or even carbon-negative, fuel, but it remains relatively expensive. They both offer diesel-like performance and good range, but require specialized engines (renewable natural gas fuel is compatible with engines designed for compressed natural gas). Natural gas is the most widely-used alternative fuel today, and there is already a reasonable network of filling stations, although it needs to be expanded if take-up is to improve.
• Electric batteries - offer zero tailpipe emissions and lower energy costs compared to diesel, but charging infrastructure is still lacking, and range, battery weight and initial purchase cost are also limitations (although all of these factors are in the process of improving). The sustainability impact also depends on the emissions profile of the electricity being used to charge them.
• Biodiesel - made from animal fats and vegetable oils, biodiesel is often blended with conventional diesel, with which it is completely compatible. It's performance in cold weather poses a challenge (it turns to gel and can harm engines), so most manufacturers do not support blends above 20%, although new technical advancements are overcoming even that drawback. Biodiesel can reduce carbon intensity by 73% compared to conventional diesel.

The main reason for diesel's continuing dominance in heavy-duty haulage is inertia, but its high energy density, strong pulling power, and the durability and reliable ignition of its engines make changes of any kind difficult. Furthermore, we are currently in a period of retrenchment, mainly thanks to Donald Trump and his ilk, and environmental concerns are not top of mind right now.

But, in this era of spiking diesel prices, the cost-benefit calculations for alternative fuels are starting to change, particularly for renewable natural gas and renewable diesel (the cost of electric trucks still makes them prohibitively expensive). By some analysis, electric trucks are expected to become economically competitive with diesel in the early 2030s. Donald Trump may have inadvertently given alternative fuels a shot in the arm.

Is AI really an existential threat?

I don't remember reading the word "existential" so frequently since I made my Basics of Philosophy hobby website many years ago. Just recently, though, it seems to be ubiquitous, usually in the same sentence as AI or artificial intelligence. "AI could pose existential risk to humanity, UN rights chief warns". "Is the AI existential threat real?". "Breaking down the dire warnings about the technology's existential risk". Etc, etc.

Much of this has been galvanized by the online parting shot by 27-year old Anthropic junior researcher Jacob Coxon as he quit his plum job with one of the leading AI companies: "The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade." His comments gained still more attention when current (and more senior) Anthropic employee Evan Hubinger confirmed on X: "We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally believe it is >10% within the next decade." That's quite an admission from one of the leading lights in AI development. Bill Gates is slightly more circumspect, predicting just a billion deaths from AI in a recent interview.

This is not new, of course. The "Godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton has been warning us about this stuff for years. Isaac Asimov was cautioning us back in the 1940s! What is new is that the current crop of warnings are coming from the developers themselves. So, we should probably take it seriously, don't you think? After all, it's not often that the ambitious tech bros behind companies like Anthropic and OpenAI agree on anything.

There have now been many instances of AI models breaking out of their test environments, something they are not supposed to be able to do, but one in particular has people worried. In July, literally hundreds of OpenAI agents escaped human control and their so-called "sandbox" in July and hacked into the secure systems of a billion-dollar tech company called Hugging Face and other organizations. It's now becoming increasingly clear that OpenAI employees warned that such a thing might happen and that security was being skimped, but upper management insisted they press on regardless so that new AI models could be released on time.

In the wake of this and other such unplanned breakouts, almost all of the major American AI development companies have come out to warn that severe regulation is needed before it is too late. (See the list of over a hundred signatories at the end of this document, and yes, it includes OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, and a virtual who's who of AI development.) Parallel to that, 1,386 "frontier" AI employees penned their own warning letter, urging the US government to work with other nations to "deliberately pace" automated AI development and to address emerging risks. 

Leading experts openly admit that they don't know how to control future highly capable AI systems, known as "artificial superintelligence" or ASI. Some argue that it may actually be impossible or too late, and that the genie is already out of the proverbial bottle. The concern is that AI technology is progressing at such a breakneck pace that "we would no longer be able to detect them or stop them". This could happen within a few short years, or even months.

China too is wrestling with burgeoning AI usage, albeit with less fanfare. The government is worried that unfettered growth in AI usage is undermining human relationships (and thus, potentially, population growth!), depriving people of their better judgement (people are getting lazy and less able to come to grips with challenges on their own), and even constraining artistic endeavours (an estimated 90% of the popular Chinese online "microdramas" are now produced by AI). There is maybe less apocalyptic talk in China, but the government is nevertheless moving to impose new regulations and guidelines on its use and misuse.

Senate negotiators in the US are already debating legislation that would put the responsibility on tech companies to design safe AI products and establishing a "duty of care", but it's unclear how useful such legislation might be in practical terms. Other legislation in the works would require AI companies to build in a "kill switch" to their AI developments which the government could order to be triggered.

Unfortunately, the US government is effectively controlled by one man, Donald Trump, and he derides all calls for AI regulations as a "hoax" and a "scam". All he cares about is AI's potential as the "Greatest Economic Development in History", and the imperative that America must beat China to it. Regulation is a dirty word in his mind. 

As for AI presenting an "existential threat"? Pshaw! Existential schmexistential.

Pope Leo checks his progressivism at the shrine door

Pope Leo XIV has the reputation of being a pretty progressive Pope. But, lest we forget, that's not actually saying much. Official Catholic doctrine, which he has to more or less follow whether he likes it or not, is still ineluctably stuck in the distant past, and nowhere more so than on moral issues like abortion, euthanasia and medical assiatance in dying (MAID).

At the moment, he is in Lourdes, a pilgrimage site synonymous with miracles, orthodoxy and retrogressive Catholic tradition. At the same time, he is in France - forward-looking, liberal, fiercely secular France. So, I guess he felt the need to make a statement to the remaining faithful. It's his job after all.

In particular, he has made a strong statement agaist MAID, especially given France's 2024 decision to make abortion a constitutional right, and last month's decision to also make medical assistance in dying a legal right. France is far from the first country to do so, although the list is still relatively short, consisting of the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and, of course, Canada. (13 American states have also passed legislation allowing it.)

Leo's take on all this? Well, after the now obligatory condemnation of centuries of Catholic Church sexual abuse, his broadside against MAID went like this: "It is impossible to regard causing death as something normal. What is legal is not necessarily moral." Furthermore, "It is precisely in the name of this inalienable dignity of the human person that we must reject the temptation to cause death under the guise of false compassion."

So, there you have it: MAID is "false compassion". Try telling that to the thousands of people who have had their life sentences of constant pain and anguish commuted by access to MAID in those forward-thinking countries where it is legal. Try telling that to their families. Try telling them what is moral and what is compassionate.

Like many a Pope before him, Leo has fallen back on the tried and trusted Catholic doctrine that "daddy knows best". Brought up in the faith, he is convinced that the orthodoxy, however outdated, is the only way to think. 

It would be interesting, though, to know what he really thinks. He is clearly a thoughtful guy, with an underlying penchant for progressivism. Does he believe what he says, or is he just toeing the line?

The wacky world of BC politics

We sometimes think that Ontario provincial politics is pretty wacky, but it's certainly got nothing on the strange goings-on in British Columbia politics. Stay with me here.

The BC Liberals dominated BC politics from more than a decade, from 2001 to 2017, when there left-wing NDP under John Horgan and then David Eby came to power, and the NDP has domination ever since. The BC Conservative Party spent the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s in the political wilderness, with zero seats.

In 2022, former BC Liberal cabinet minister John Rustad was booted out of the party for questioning climate science. He crossed the floor and joined the Conservative Party in 2023, soon becoming party leader (he was the only Conservative with a seat in parliament for one thing). The Liberal Party basically disbanded and renamed itself BC United, although it was short-lived.

Rustad was initially lauded for growing the BC Conservatives from less than 2% of the vote to Official Opposition status (mind you, they still lost by a long chalk to David Eby's NDP). By 2025, though, Rustad's abrasive style made him very unpopular. Several Conservative MPs defected, and Rustad eventually resigned his leadership amid a party revolt.

In May 2026, Kerry-Lynne Findlay took over the leadership of the Conservatives, but she was even more unpopular and scandal-prone than Rustad. Conservative MP after Conservative MP resigned, many of them joing a new party, CentreBC, looking to distance themselves from Findlay's hard right stance, and Findlay herself ejected a few more. With the party in freefall, Findlay eventually resigned as leader on 20 September 2026.

With an election cynically called by Eby for 24 October to take advantage of the Conservative disarray, the BC Conservative Party is now desperately trying to reinvent itself. Many (but not all) of those who defected or were ejected are now moving back, rather shamefacedly, to the Conservative Party under new leader Lorne Doerksen.

And now, just for added confusion, the ex-leader of the BC Green Party, Andrew Weaver, will be running in the upcoming election ... for the conservative CentreBC party! Wacky doesn't even cover it!