Meet the ultra-cute leaf sheep

Part 52 in my series of cute and improbable animals, meet the leaf sheep.

You probably guessed that it's not a sheep at all. In fact, it's a kind of tiny sea slug (about the size of a gain of rice), Latin name costasiella kurashimae. It lives in shallow tropical waters near Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines. 

Unusually, it absorbs chloroplasts from algae and uses sunlight to generate energy in a process similar to photosynthesis (actually called kleptoplasty). It is also a hermaphrodite, possessing both male and female reproductive organs, although it does need another leaf sheep in order to reproduce.

Most of all, though, it is impossibly cute, with those tiny cartoon eyes, little horns and succulent-luke leaves branching off its back.

Does Canada have any alternatives to retaliatory tariffs?

As Canada invokes dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs on the USA, one can't help but lament how Canada is getting dragged into Trump's own silliness. On both sides of the border, prices will go up, plants will close, and jobs will be lost. As one journalist put it, this is "fighting stupid with stupid". Protesting that "we didn't start it" doesn't change that.

I mean, think about it: Canada now has tariffs on the same exports to the US as the US has tariffs on its exports to Canada. How daft is that? We may as well just keep those products and use them here in Canada, rather than making them more expensive, exporting them to the USA, and then importing the same products back again from the USA (after they have made them more expensive). Franz Kafka would have had a field day with this stuff.

There again, what choice do we have? Doing nothing would signal surrender, and give Trump carte blanche to extend or ramp up his tariffs. Hardly anyone is advocating that.

Some - including the Alberta Federation of Labour, much to many people's surprise - have suggested levying export taxes on our exports to the US. After all, that would put the financial burden on American importers, not Canadian exporters, right? The problem is, export  taxes raise the prices for importers, who would probably then look eslewhere for their imports. It would reduce the attractiveness of, and demand for, Canadian products, and probably result in scaled-back production and job layoffs. 

Predictably, others - the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, for one - have strongly counselled against such a move. Oh, and export taxes are also explicitly prohibited under the CUSMA/USCMA agreement with the US (although, arguably, Trump has flouted the spirit if not the letter of that agreement many times).

Which leaves us with retaliatory tariffs, or some other non-tariff option. BC Premier David Eby has called on Mr. Carney to consider other strategies, like reconsidering the plan to buy American F-35 fighter jets, and to levy export taxes on exports of coal to the US, but only in adddition to retaliatory tariffs, which he says he fully supports.

Canada nonplussed by Trump's threat to change Lake Ontario name

Family overseas are asking us how Canadians feel about Donald Trump threatening to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America. (Could he not think of anything more creative?) Well, the word that springs to mind is "nonplussed". Generally speaking, we have learned to ignore Trump's bloviations and his childish outbursts as much as possible.

Besides, he just can't do it. Even a US president can't unilaterally change the name of a bi-national lake. Any change he proposes (assuming he is serious, which is far from clear) would only apply to US federal government publications and maps. The current name is recognized internationally and appears in federal legislation on both sides of the border.

Lake Ontario (an Indigenous name that predates the country, incidentally) is governed jointly by Canada and the USA, through a whole series of treaties, commissions and bi-national agreements. To change the name, Trump would first need to go through the US Board on Geographical Names. Assuming he could cajole, browbeat and threaten them to go along with his childish prank, it would then need to be ratified by the Geographical Names Board of Canada and Ontario's Ministry of Natural Rreources and Forestry and Indigenous Communities, which is consulted on culturally significant names.

So, not going to happen.

Doug Ford tries to out-Trump Trump

It's pretty instructive to see Ontario Premier Doug Ford's contribution to the ongoing debate on American tariffs and their perpetrator, Donald Trump.

Following up on "He can kiss my ass as far as I'm concerned", Ford called Trump a "loser", a "dictator", a "bully" and the "king of bankruptcies". Ouch! Then, "I have more courage, more brains in my baby toe than he has in his whole body". Kapow! 

Predictably, Trump fired back very much in the same vein, calling Ford "the less charismatic, intelligent and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great Rob Ford". Zhang! And, to cap it all, he says he is "giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontatio to Lake America in that we don't expect to doing much business with Ontario any longer". So there!

Ford: "You think an insult from him hurts me? Well, bring it on buddy, I am read ready. Bring it on!" Kraak!

The next day, in a CNN interview, Ford admitted that, "Things got a little heated, it got a little personal yesterday". Yuh think?

They're two of a kind, aren't they? Neither of them have any filters or any off switch. Neither considers consequences or engages brain before speaking. How either of them got to where they are today is a mystery. They are supposed to be leaders of large and important regions, and they continue to talk like naughty schoolkids. I'm embarrassed by the pair of them.

Also like Trump, though, the more daft things he says and does, the more Ford's support increases (although while that was true at one time, Trump has shown that there are limits to this kind of counter-intuitive popularity bump - his popularity is now at an all-time low).

Canada-US trade talks fall through

Well, the Canada-USA trade talks fell apart at the eleventh-plus hour.

Prime Minister Mark Carney blamed the Americans for "last-minute changes in US proposed terms [that] were unfair, uneconomic and called into question the reliability of any deal". That sounds about right from past experience.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, of course, blamed the Canadians for "new demands and walk-backs of other commitments by Canada [that] have upended the careful balance reached in the past days". That sounds less convincing.

So, the 50% Section 338 tariffs on about $28 billion of Canada's exports to the US (about 5% of total exports) are set to go ahead forthwith. That sounds pretty bad, but an RBC analysis estimates the fallout at just 0.4% of Canada's GDP, and a separate Capital Economics study puts it at 0.6% of GDP. So, not good, but not disastrous, in the scheme of things. The burden would not fall evenly on the economy, though, with apparel and electrical goods being most badly affected (20% of production and jobs in those sectors could be hurt).

Canada has vowed to retaliate "dollar for dollar", Trump has vowed to up the ante should Canada retaliate, and we now have an all-out open-ended trade war. And we haven't even started negotiation on the renewal or otherwise of the CUSMA/USMCA free trade agreement!

But, I'll tell you what, it actually pretty good to be standing up to the bully to our south. The only other country that has stood up for itself in this way is China. Although, granted we are much more in a David and Goliath situation.

Elbows up, anyone?

Solar energy bails out a baking Europe

It's common sense, but still worth remarking on: Europe only got through this summer's successive heat waves and droughts due to its investments in solar power.

Nuclear, g as and coal plants reduced their output as cooling water sources dried up. Wind turbines struggled to produce in the stagnant, airless conditions resulting from heatwaves. But solar farms and rooftop arrays yielded record amounts of power, which, when called with battery storage, helped electricity networks cope with the abnormal demand levels Europe experienced.

Of course, under different circumstances, solar would not be the saviour. In times of abnormal rainfall, hydroelectricity would come into its own while solar struggles to produce. During periods of high winds, solar panels may still produce good output, but wind farms will really shine. Which is why a judicious mix of renewables is needed backed up by sufficient battery storage capacity. So, that people like Donald Trump can't smugly say, "The wind doesn't always blow, you know?.The sun doesn't always shine." Duh!

Canada probably needs to retaliate against US tariffs, even if it's self-defeating

Just hours before the next batch of Trump tariffs almost certainly comes into force, affecting a long list of Canada-produced items, there is still talk of retaliatalory Canadian tariffs. The question is: why?

Despite what Donald Trump wants you to think, tariffs are a tax on the levying country. Everyone else underatamds that. So, why would we want to do that to our own hard-pressed consuners and businesses?

The answer apparently, has nothing to do with economics. Economically, it makes no sense for us to levy counter-tariffs, even targeted tariffs. But not to retaliate would send a bad political message, and open up the possibility of further tariffs down the road, imposed apparently with impunity.

I get it: doing nothing implies weakness, and Trump punishes weakness. But I'm not totally convinced that responding with force is necessarily going to deter future escalations.  Retaliation or no retaliation, further threats and bullying is always a possibility with Trump, who is never satisfied.

Perhaps even more pertinent, though, is the matter of optics for Mark Carney and his Liberal government. Carney was explicitly elected on a platform of standing up to Trump, of not rolling over, and the polls are clear in their portrayal of Canadians as expecting some show of strength, some "elbows up". Carney's responses to Trump so far have been distinctly mixed, and many Canadians think he has already gone too far down the road of appeasement. So, a strong response is particularly important this time. And, for most Canadians, that means retaliation, however ill-advised.

Even if USMCA falls through.completely, the Canadian sky will not fall

It's been a while since I posted about US tariffs and the USMCA negotiations. It doesn't seem much like news any more. But as the US and Canada ramp up negotiations ahead of the August 19th deadline (tomorrow!) for a new round of Trump tariffs, it's starting to become more real. 

It was timely, then, to read an article about how even the end of USMCA - often portrayed as an existential threat to Canada - actually night not be as impactful as most people assume. Yes, it would be bad, bad, not good for the economy, generally speaking, but terminal danger?  - probably not.

There have been several studies and modelling exercises over the past couple of years on the likely impact of Donald Trump tearing up the USMCA agreement he signed off on six years ago, almost all of which have concluded that, while unfortunate for both countries, it would not be catastrophic for Canada. 

The latest such comes from the Canadian American Business Council, and it concludes that "USMCA Breakdown" would probably reduce Canada's economic growth rate by just 1% in 2027, and the economy would be about 1.6% smaller in 2035 than if USMCA were renewed (and respected) and tariffs fell to near zero.

Furthermore, it would result in about 102,000 lost jobs. While this sounds pretty bad initially, bear in mind that Canada currently has 21.2 million citizens in paid employment. The 102,000 lost jobs would have the effect of increasing the unemployment rate from 6.4% to 6.9% (which is about where it was four months ago; indeed, it was at or above 6.9% for most of 2025).

So, not so bad, then. The country will not be bankrupt. Not so good for those 102,000 workers, of course, and bear in mind that the axe will not fall randomly - some sectors in particular will be disproportionately affected. But all this means that Prime Minister Mark Carney does not necessarily have to accept any old deal Trump throws at him; a bad deal could be worse than no deal

AI slop has broken the internet

"Slop" was Mirriam-Webster's Word of the Year last year. "Slop" or "AI slop" is defined as "digital content of low quality that is produced, usually in quantity, by means of artificial intelligence". You know the kind of thing: pictures of Shrimp Jesus, glue-topped pizza recipes, AI-generated songs, sham biographies, deep fake videos, talking cats, genuinely fake news, advertising that looks "not quite right". AI slop is everywhere, and it now, after just a few short years, makes up a good proportion of the entire Internet. 

And it is for this that we are investing billions of dollars, and straining our electricity and water systems to power endless miles of data centres?

I knew slop was a problem, but I hadn't appreciated just how much of a problem until I read an article in the Globe and Mail (originally from the New York Times) today. It seems that tech giants like Google, Meta and X are having to spend significant resources weeding out AI slop that was largely produced by their own platforms.

Spotify removed 75 million AI fake songs and duplicate uploads last year. Google wiped 130,000 YouTube channels of low quality content over the last six months. TikTok removed 377,000 videos in the first three months of the year for violating its AI policies. (TikTok USA is currently developing a feature that lets people dial up or down the amount of visible AI content.) 

But still the problem lingers and grows. Apple Music estimates that a third of what is uploaded to its site is now AI-generated. French streamer Deezer says it may be as much as half for them. More than 20% of short YouTube videos are AI-generated slop according to one (AI-powered) online video editor. Nearly half of the posts over 50 words on X are create by AI.

But the same tech giants that are trying to manage AI slop are continuing to make things worse. At the same tume as Meta showcased a detection, labelling and tagging system designed to make AI content more identifiable, it also rolled out an all-AI video stream widely considered to be the apotheosis of AI slop, and released an AI image-generator using its own public Instagram accounts as its references.

Part of the problem is that the less-discerning elements of the internet's clientele laps this stuff up, and AI content, however poor, can substantially inflate the viewership of many platforms. It can make big money for the creators and re-posters too. Unfortunately, it also makes it much harder for other users to find genuine, truthful and high quality search results.

As Substack's CEO put it, "it's getting harder to tell what's real on the internet", and "platforms that reward fakeness will create a race to the bottom". Quite. Substack recently announced its own AI detection tool for users, but the tool mistakenly identified some real, human posts as AI-generated.

This stuff is not easy. The point is, though, the onus should not be on users to figure out what's real and what's not. It seems trite to whine that "the internet is broken". But, really, the internet is broken.

Should Ontario Appeals Court ruling overrule the earlier Superior Court ruling?

If a higher court overrules a lower court ruling, is it always the case that the higher court is more correct?

The Ontario Court of Appeal recently ruled that Premier Doug Ford's government can in fact rip out the bike lanes along Bloor Street, Yonge Street and University Avenue that Ford has a particular personal dislike of. In 2025, the Ontario Superior Court ruled that their removal would be unconstitutional because it would put people at increased risk of harm or death.

The Appeals Court, however, argued that there is no constitutional obligation to regulate roads in any particular manner, and that the government can choose to regulate roads however they like, and are under no obligation to listen to expert advice.

Well, I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that, whether or not you agree with that, the Appeals Court's ruling does not negate - does not even address - the Superior Court's previous decision. Surely, when the expert advice involves constitutional rights, they do need to be listened to.

So, who wins? Is this a partisan decision a la USA? Does it have to go all tbe way to the Ontario Supreme Court to decide? Maybe.

Hunger stones in Germany

As Europe deals with unprecedented heat and drought conditions, you've probably read about relics of bygone ages surfacing as the levels of major rivers continue to recede: shipwrecks, unexploded WWII bombs, mammoth remains, even, most recently, a Roman bridge.

The other thing that is starting to be revealed are so-called "hunger stones" ("Hungersteine" in German). These are messages carved onto stones on rivers' edges during past droughts that usually remain hidden from sight, but are now starting to show

This one in the River Elbe in Germany is particularly poignant: it reads "Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine", translated as "If you see me, weep".

Carney's climate change announcent a drop in the bucket

If you are non-plussed by the Carney "Liberal" government's apparent complete abandonment of concern over climate change, as I am, you could do worse than to read a good article that appeared in the Globe and Mail last week, entitled "Not addressing climate change costs the economy more. When will we finally get this?"

It's nothing new, but it's well-written, well-argued and convincing. Unfortunately, it will have absolutely no impact on Carney's policies because, for now at least, he is focussed on fighting fires from south of the border, and he is all about short-term gratification right now.

As an indication of where his head is at, one of the very few climate initiatives he has announced - positive ones that is; he has made many announcements killing or paring back existing climate initiatives - was the recent announcement of $34 million for various projects to make Canadian communities more resilient in the face of climate change.

$34 million used to be a lot of money once upon a time. But, as has been pointed out, it amounts to one-thousandth of the money the government invested in the Trans-Mountain oil pipeline, and a similar proportion of the proposed West Coast pipeline. That certainly puts it in perspective. 

And even this paltry amount is focussed on mitigation of damage rather than aimed at reducing the ongoing need for such mitigation.

Child who caused Porter flight to be cancelled maybe not at fault

You will by now have probably heard or read the story of the Porter flight out of Victoria, BC, which was cancelled late at night after staff and parent were not able to get a young child to sit in his seat and buckle up his seatbelt. The child and parent eventually had to leave the plane, by which time it was too late for the plane to take off, and all the other passengers also had to disembark.

There have been mixed reactions to the incident, some (most) severely critical of the child and parent, some more empathetic. This eye-witness report, for example, makes.it clear that the child was clearly terrified, not just a spoiled brat having a temper tantrum.

I actually tried to find some video footage of the incident - you'd think, in this day and age, that someone would have been assiduously filming the whole thing. But all I could find was a very short clip, showing staff calmly (and obviously unsuccessfully) reasomong with the child.

My first reaction on reading about it was along the outraged "spoiled brat" lines. But, on reflection, I think the staff and parent probably did what they could, and the traumatized child probably could not help himself.

Soccer closes ranks against Infantino's vision

Football (soccer) federations across the world are closing ranks in opposition to beleaguered FIFA boss Gianni Infantino. 

In an "open letter to the football family" yesterday, UEFA (representing Europe), CONCACAF (representing North and Central America and the Caribbean) and AFC (representing Asia) presented Infantino and FIFA with a joint declaration of solidarity and opposition to Infantino's money-grabbing vision of world football.

It took Infantino's latest faux pas - his plan to sell off a large share of FIFA to private investors - to bring these disparate federations together in joint outrage, reflecting the outrage expressed by most of the rest of the world at Infantino's excesses. His time at the helm of FIFA is surely limited.

All those e-scooters you see? They're illegal

If you are becoming increasingly exasperated by those annoying and apparently lawless electric scooters, you are not alone.

Stats on e-scooter crashes with pedestrians are hard to find, but accidents resulting in e-scooter rider visits to hospital, and even deaths, are increasing exponentially, especially among children. There have been at least two deaths of e-scooter riders in July alone.

How does it make you feel, then, to know that pretty much all of the e-scooters you see zooming around our streets, sidewalks and bike lanes are doing so illegally?

Having said that, it depends on where you live. You see, there are no national or even provincial rules or laws in place regulating e-scooters. What rules do exist are municipal. (And when was the last time you saw municipal laws being enforced?)

Thus, in Mississauga or Brampton or Ottawa, e-scooters my be legal due to a six-year old provincial pilot program they are part of. Even there, though, they are only legal if the scooters are unable to go faster than 24 kph (can YOU tell?) and if the driver is over the age of 15 (again, can YOU tell?) Also, you can't ride with a passenger, under-18s must wear a helmet, you can't ride them on the sidewalk, and if there is a bike lane available you have to use it. In Mississauga specifically, you can't ride them on a road with a speed limit of more than 50 kph.

So, it's complicated, and most people you see are probably breaking at least one of those rules.

In Toronto, on the other hand, it's not complicated at all. Toronto is not part of the pilot project, and you can't legally ride an e-scooter ANYWHERE in Toronto except on private property (so up and down your driveway, for example). You can buy them, but you can't use them. Once again, no-one is enforcing this ban - e-scooters are everywhere.

Outside of Ontario, it's just as confusing. In Vancouver, Halifax and Calgary, for instance, e-scooters are allowed, at least in bike lanes. In Calgary, though, e-scooters are only allowed if they are rented/shared, not if you own your own e-scooter. Plus, you can use your (shared) e-scooter on some sidewalks in Calgary but not others. Like I said, it's complicated (and unenforced).

Canadians are surprisingly cosmopolitan

Visual Capitalist does it again: produces a striking and unexpected graph, this time of the extent to which the inhabitants of different countries travel abroad.

Not unexpected: Sweden, Netherlands and Germany top the list, with 99/96% reporting having travelled abroad, with the UK not far behind at 94%. 

More unexpected: Canada comes next, with 92% reporting having travelled abroad (although most to the USA, I'm guessing). This is more than the French (90%), Australians (88%), Italians (86%), and Spaniards (84%), and significantly more than the Americans (76%) and the Japanese (65%). 

Ha! How cosmopolitan we are!

Clear up your mess, Elon

I hope Elon Musk is going to go up there and clear up the mess his SpaceX rocket made on the Moon.

Trump's hold over US Supreme Court is weakening

The US Supreme Court had a busy day yesterday, as it prepares to wind down for a long and leisurely summer break. Among its mixed bag of decisions was one particularly important one: a 6-3 decision to strike down Trump's attempts to end "birthright citizenship", the right of children physically born in the USA - even to undocumented immigrants, tourists, and people on short-term work or study visas - to have US citizenship.

This was a big deal for Trump. His executive order on this issue was one of the very first things he did on taking power. He even attended the Supreme Court's oral arguments in person, the first time a sitting president has ever done so, his intention presumably being to stare down the judges to make sure they voted with him. In the end, though, the court voted against him in one of the few checks to his many illegal attempts to re-write American law and way of life.

Perhaps the biggest surprise, though, considering how clear the wording of the American Constitution is on the matter, and the century-plus of corroborating case law and legal precedent, is that three of the Court's most conservative judges - let's name names: Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas - still managed to justify dissenting against the decision. A fourth, Brett Cavanaugh, decided to prevaricate and knit-pick, concluding that Trump's order was not unconstitutional but did still violate immigration law. The other two conservatives on the Court (John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett), who have in the past been guilty of voting ideologically, voted according to the clear legal principles this time, siding with the three Democrats on the Court.

Legal scholars are at something of a loss to understand how, and on what legal grounds, the three conservatives could vote to allow Trump to force through this clearly unconstitutional measure. But it just shows the hold Trump still has over them, even if his hold over some of the others appears to be weakening.

The Washington DC Reflecting Pool Saga

The Washington DC Reflecting Pool Saga in three minutes flat. In case you care...

Does Canada really need high-speed rail?

Canada has been talking about a high-speed railway line for decades. You only have to visit Europe or Japan or China to experience the wonder of an ultra-high-speed train, but these things don't come cheap. And, in North America at least, they don't come quickly.

The current Alto plan for a high-speed rail link from Toronto to Ottawa to Montreal to Quebec City (possibly via Kingston) is about 1,000 kilometers in length, and is protected to cost between $60 and $90 billion. The fact that the estimated cost covers such a large range suggests that they actually have no clue how much it will cost. Alto, the Crown corporation tasked with developing the project, itself warns that these figures are "for planning purposes only and should not be considered as a project budget". As with every other large Canadian development project, cost overruns are all but guaranteed.

As for how long it will take to build, well, that's anyone's guess. Not much of any size gets built in Canada in less than 15 or 20 years. The experience of California's foray into high-speed rail is salient here: a line from Los Angeles to San Francisco (just over 600km) was proposed in 2008 but, eighteen years later, just a tiny stretch of track has been laid, with most of the rest still at the planning stage. Currently, projections are that a 260km stretch from Merced to Bakersfield is expected to be completed by 2032, but don't hold your breath.

The bottom line, though, is the bottom line: $90 billion (plus) is an awful lot of money for Canada. Think what just a part of that that kind of money could do for public transit in Toronto or Montreal. Think what it could do towards eliminating poverty or propping up ailing Trump-tariffed businesses. 

Many politicians, though, seem excited by such a large-scale "nation-building project". It's often pointed out that Canada is the only G7 country without high-speed trains (although, as mentioned, America's is marginal). But is this really the best use of taxpayers' money? Do we really want to spend $90 billion - and it would probably end up costing much more than that, it always does - to save a few wealthy businessmen an hour or two on their commute, or to cannibalize customers from domestic airlines. 

Because, make no mistake, the cost of a ticket will probably put it outside the budget of the average Canadian (or the average tourist, for that matter), so it could end up as the biggest white elephant in Canada, the ultimate vanity project of the kind that we regularly mock other countries for undertaking. Canada's population is much less concentrated than France's or Japan's, and the distances are greater - what works over there won't necessarily work over here. Maintenance in the Canadian Shield terrain, and through those long hard winters, is also a differentiating issue.

I don't buy the argument that it is somehow miraculously going to fix traffic congestion and reduce our carbon footprint. It will not suddenly become the no-brainer option for travelling from Toronto to Montreal or Ottawa to Quebec City - it will be too expensive for that, for one thing, and will probably only appeal to people who currently take the train anyway. Neither will it magically boost GDP and create national prosperity, let alone improve access to housing and jobs and - most improbably - advance reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, all of which Alto is promising.

Yes, high-speed rail is cool, and yes, it would be nice. But can we really justify jt? Call me small-minded and anti-development, but I think not. And, just think, $90 billion!