So much for all that redacting....

A lot of people are complaining about the extent of the redactions - all those thick black lines - in the recently-released Epstein files. And, of course, some people are finding ways round them.

Apparently, if you just copy the text, and paste it into a new unformatted document, some of the redactions disappear, a known security flaw in some PDF documents. (I'm not sure why it should work for some documents and not others.) Others say that, if you take a screen shot on your phone and play around with some standard image-editing features (like brightness, contrast, etc), you can start to see the redacted text.

None of this is very lawful, I'm guessing but given that very few people trust the Trump administration to redact things fairly, it's not surprising that people are trying.

Mark Carney seems like a nice guy, but he has abandoned the environment

Prime Minister Mark Carney's honeymoon period seems to be extending much longer than I had expected. Most liberals still seem to like him, and many conservatives have joined them (which shouldn't surprise us too much given that most of his policies are very much conservative ones, regardless of the party he is supposed to be leading).

Me, I'm feeling a bit sour about the guy. Perhaps the best that can be said is that he's not Pierre Poilievre. And he's been given a crappy job, to be fair, battling against the headwinds of Trumpism. But he has now abandoned too many liberal/progressive stances to be taken seriously as a Liberal. Most glaringly, he has abandoned the environment in general and the fight against climate change in particular. 

I said this to a Liberal friend and she insisted that, no, no, no, he hasn't abandoned it, has a plan, a long-term plan. But that's not at all evident to me. It seems to me that Carney - who once talked a good game on climate change and other issues - has decided that the economy is more important than the environment. And, short-term, he may be right, but long-term this will take some recovering from.

Anyway, someone else has done the hard work of keeping track of the extent to which Carney has dropped the climate change ball. University of Toronto prof and climate activist Laura Tozer lists the evidence in a handy little crib-sheet on her LinkedIn post:

❌ Suspended Canada's Clean Electricity Regulations in Alberta ❌ Weakened methane regulations ❌ Scrapped the Oil & Gas Sector Emissions Cap ❌ Abandoned Canada’s consumer carbon pricing system ❌ Ended Canada Greener Homes retrofit program to electrify and improve household efficiency ❌ Ended Canada Greener Homes Loan Program to electrify and improve household efficiency ❌ Ended the Electric Vehicles (iZEV) program ❌ Delayed Canada’s Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate ❌ Passed bill C5 ‘Building Canada Act’ to allow government to override 12 laws and 7 regulations, including the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, for designated projects ❌ Committed to clawing back Canada’s anti-greenwashing legislation ❌ Announced plans to eliminate a tax on private jets and yachts ❌ Weakened the Alberta industrial carbon price from the $170/tonne it should have been (if the federal government enforced its own policies) to $130/tonne

Not a very auspicious summary, is it? And I don't see much evidence of a plan there, long-term or not.

Trump's cancellation of offshore wind projects makes no sense

Donald Trump has cancelled five more offshore wind power projects along the east coast, despite them being well advanced, with billions of dollars already sunk into them. It's worth looking into exactly why he would do such a thing.

The US is in need of more electricity production, as even Trump agrees, but Trump wants to see any new power generated by coal, oil and gas, because, for whatever reason, he likes fossil fuels and he hates clean renewable energy. It's not very clear why he hates wind power so much, but it may just come down to an offshore wind project spoiling the view at one of his golf courses in Scotland. Yes, he's that petty. He has blamed wind turbines for causing cancer, killing whales, all sorts of unjustifiable claims.

But, of course [sic], he can't just come out and say that he is cancelling the wind farms because he doesn't like them; he would get laughed out of town. So, he falls back on his tried and tested excuse for pretty much anything illogical - "emergency national security concerns". And, because the words "national security" are in there, he doesn't have to explain any further, he can just say that the reasons are "classified".

The only national security concern anyone can think of in respect to wind turbines is interference with radio signals, due to reflection by the moving blades on wind towers. This could theoretically interfere with target tracking and impede critical weather forecasting, something the Department of Energy under Trump has talked about before, although countries like the UK and Denmark have been using offshore wind for decades without any such national security concerns. 

Conceivably, the very need for more power could be framed as an "emergency national security concern". Such a designation, by its very nature, means that discussion and explanation are out of the question because, well, national security. But if the problem is lack of power, cancelling almost finished wind projects that would provide said power doesn't make much sense. 

Wind currently generates about 10% of America's electricity, with most wind farms located on the Great Plains of Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Illinois, where the winds are "steady and consistent". The smaller number of offshore wind farms are mainly off the east coast, where winds are also steady and consistent, and where they are close to major population centres. It is one of the cheapest sources of power nowadays, much cheaper than coal or gas, and certainly less polluting.

Cancelling these offshore wind projects will waste billions of dollars in already sunk costs (who will pay for that?), and say goodbye to 6 to 8 gigawatts of annual power, enough to heat and light millions of homes in an area where it is most needed. But logic is not Trump's strong suit. He doesn't care about achieving net zero, or reducing the country's carbon footprint. He doesn't even care about economics unless it serves his ideological predilections. He prefers to just go with his gut, and everyone around him seems content to let him.

Cash is no longer king, but we still need it

In an increasingly digital world, cash seems like an unnecessary anachronism. But there are actually compelling reasons not to abandon cash completely.

Paper money accounts for just 20% of all financial transactions these days, down from 54% just 15 years ago. A fifth of Canadians no longer carry any cash around with them. But if we were to go completely digital, as some would have us do, we would probably regret it. 

The Canadian government's Bill C-2, designed to make money laundering more difficult, would actually make the use of cash in general more difficult, by making large cash payments, donations and deposits illegal, and banning the use of "night drops" of business' cash earnings (which actually puts the businesses at higher risk). That has many people upset for a variety of reasons. It's also another step towards a completely cashless society, which, it is argued, would be a mistake.

First off, cash is not reliant on electricity, a communications network, or a secure payments system. The increasing prevalence of wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural (and unnatural) disasters puts the whole system needed for digital transactions at risk. Case in point, back-to-back typhoons decimated the infrastructure of the Philippines just last month,.and the resulting devastation was made much worse by the breakdown in its financial system. Point-of-sale machines went down, e-wallets became useless, cellphones died, and Filipinos had no way to spend their money, even to buy a loaf of bread, in the county's almost-completely-digital financial system. A similar thing happened in China's Hainan province the previous year.

Digital finances are also vulnerable to hacking by malcontents and hostile countries. After Russia invaded Ukraine, physically and digitally, in 2022, cash use in Ukraine (and several other nearby countries) spiked, as the inhabitants worried that Russia would come for their life savings through cyber-attacks. And don't even get me started on the now regular hacking of bit-coins and other supposedly secure crypto-currencies.

Some people like cash because it offers an easy way to budget, and a hard cap on what they can spend, while credit cards and online transactions open up their entire borrowing limit, risking gross overspending.

Some 12% of Canadians don't even have a credit card at all, and rely on cash to survive. Victims of domestic abuse are encouraged to keep a stockpile of cash, just in case they are cut off from their funds. First Nations reserves pretty much run on cash, and many older people the world over use nothing else. Even many small businesses prefer cash, as it avoids those steep credit card fees.

I don't use much cash myself, particularly since the pandemic, when a lot of old habits bit the dust. But I always have some on hand, just in case. 

On the virtues of solitude

Finally, an article extolling the merits of solitude! I'm not one of the world's great socializers. I like my "me time", always have done. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a complete misanthrope: I do socialize, although it's usually my wife (or a third person) that initiates it. But solitude has earned a bad rap in recent years, and that seems a shame to me.

The main reason, of course, is the veritable explosion of research and media coverage on loneliness. We are told that loneliness is approaching epidemic levels, and that social isolation increases the risk of premature death by 25%, worse than drinking six alcoholic drinks a day, or 15 cigarettes!

But, as this article stresses, loneliness is not solitude. You can be lonely in a crowded room. People, generally speaking, don't choose to be lonely. Solitude, however, is a deliberate choice to be on your own for a while, to step off the social "stage", with all its stresses, preconceptions and rules, to spend some quiet time alone. Solitude is often thought of as a punishment (time-out for an unruly toddler, solitary confinement for a recalcitrant prisoner) but it can also be a reward: the gift of some "me time" and relaxation.

It doesn't have to involve a two-hour walk in the woods; it can just be 15 minutes snatched away from the social whirlwind. It doesn't have to be structured meditation on a yoga mat; it can just be time spent idly day-dreaming (there's an increasing body of research around letting your mind wander too). Read a book, listen to music, knit, go for that two-hour walk in the woods, whatever works for you. Don't use it to catch up on emails or special media, though - that's not solitude. And don't be alone ALL the time; that's not healthy.

There's even some research to show that some solitude can be beneficial. The "deactivation effect" helps us to calm down by taking the edge off our more intense emotions. It may even serve to recharge our "social batteries", making subsequent social interactions more positive and enjoyable. It presents an opportunity for self-discovery and reflection, and it can be an incubator for problem-solving and creativity.

So, don't be brow-beaten into going to a party you will probably hate. Don't give in to expectations and assumptions that entertaining and mingling is civilized, and time spent alone is depressing and misanthropic. It can actually be quite nice.

One of the world's weirdest plants

It looks like a kid's plasticine model of a fungus, ornpossibly some kind of sex toy, but it's actually one of the world's weirdest plants. This is balanophora fungosa. It doesn't really have a common name, although it's sometimes called fungus root. It's said to smell like mice!

It's pretty rare, growing only in the steamy subtropical mountains of Taiwan and parts of Japan. It has some close relatives in South Asia, South-East Asia, Australia and some Pacific Islands. It's actually an angiosperm, or flowering plant, related to, you know, daisies, roses and such like, but it's very different from daisies and roses in several respects.

For one thing, it contains no chlorophyll.and.so does not grow by photosynthesis like most plants. It also lacks a conventional root system, instead attaching itself to the roots of nearby treees and stealing its nutrients parasitically (although it does still retain some plastids, the organelles that normal plants use to enable photsynthesis).

The plant can also reproduce without fertilization, which is very rare in the plant world, using a process known as "facultative aganospermy" - essentially, it clones itself. This can be useful, but it also leave it highly vulnerable to habitat loss, as it is very dependent on specific confutions and tree hosts.

It does technically have flowers and seeds, some of the smallest flowers and seeds in the plant world. Thousands of tiny female flowers are contained the bulbous structure at the top, with a much smaller number of male flowers are at its base.

So, yes, pretty weird. And, of course, given its very specific habitat and the encroachment of humans, it's endangered.

The world's most populous cities

I'm sure that, just a few short years ago, Mexico City was the biggest city in the world (by population). Well, fast forward to 2025, and Mexico City is the 15th largest city!

Today the world's most populous cities are all in Asia:

• Jakarta, Indonesia: 41.9 million
• Dhaka, Bangladesh: 36.6 million
• Tokyo, Japan: 33.4 million
• New Delhi, India: 30.2 million
• Shanghai, China: 29.6 million
• Guangzhou, China: 27.6 million
• Cairo, Egypt: 25.6 million
• Manila, Philippines: 24.7 million
• Kolkata, India: 22.6 million
• Seoul, South Korea: 22.5 million

(Cairo is the only non-Asian city in the top 10.)

Iran is moving its capital city

Iran is in the process of moving its capital city. Tehran, a city of 9 million inhabitants (15 million in the entire metropolitan area) is now widely considered to be unsustainable.

Tehran has been the capital of Iran/Persia since 1786, but it is by no means the original capital. In fact, Tehran is the 32nd location of the country's capital throughout its long and turbulent history. Now, though, an acute water shortage ("water bankruptcy") due to its rapidly-draining underground aquifers, regular earthquakes, and the compressing and sinking land it is built on (it is sinking at an alarming 35cm a year!) has led to President Pezeshkian's decision that the whole capital city should be moved nearly 2,000km to the under-developed and remote Makran coast in the far south of the country. The idea has been in the air for at least 25 years, but never acted on.

Climate change (particularly in the form of failed rains) is, of course, part of the reason, but experts say that land, water and and waste-water mismanagement, overpopulation, air pollution, power shortages, and rampant corruption, has made the natural crisis much worse. The Makran region is known for its harsh climate and difficult terrain, and it is by no means certain that such a move will in fact be viable, but the writing is on the wall and the President is finally admitting that they now have little choice in the matter. 

Moving a whole megacity and all its administrative, commercial and government functions is expected to cost the country north of $100 billion. Estimates for the time required vary between 25 and 100 years! But what else to do?