A Rupture, Not a Transition

Yesterday, Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a historic speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. 

Carney received a standing ovation from the audience; something that, as the moderator observed, is not common at Davs, and he deserved it. If you have a few minutes, watch the speech.  I am not being hyperbolic when I use the word "historic" here. It was a speech that clearly defined the current state of the world. the place Canada has in it, and where Canada and its allies can do to cope with the chaos that we see around us and build something better. 

By, contrast, Trump's speech today was at the very least an embarrassment, and in reality, a disaster. The contrast between the two men could not have been starker. If you have the stomach for it, here it is. 

I'm going to quote Dean Blundell here, who describes it much better than I can and in more details than I have the stomach for. 

ot strength. Not leverage. Not “strategic ambiguity.”

It was confusion, grievance, racism, lies, and visible cognitive decline, delivered in a raspy, slurred, low-energy mumble to a room that had clearly already tuned him out.

The contrast with Mark Carney — whose historic speech the day before calmly described the real world Trump has helped break — could not have been more brutal.

Carney spoke like a statesman preparing allies for reality.

Trump spoke like a man yelling at ghosts.

If we are very lucky, Trump's performance at Davos, and the contrast with Carney's, will increae the pressure on the Repubicans in Congress to finally break Trump's hold on them. 

 

Musicolet Music Player for Android

I've been struggling with using VLC as a music player on my Pixel phone. While it's very versatile and will play almost any format, the interface is clunky and it lacks some basic functionality, like easily playing all songs in a folder or an album.

I've found a good alternative if you are looking for something to play local file, IOW files that you've transferred to your phone. Musicolet is fast, has no ads,  a clean interface, all the options you are likely to need for playing music, and it's free. 

About the only thing I've found missing is an option to increase the text size in app. That aside, it's exactly what I was looking for. 

There's no IOS version, so iPhone owners are out of luck.

VLC Is Getting Dark Mode - UPDATE

UPDATE: Finally, VLC has dark mode. It's been added to the Preferences dialog in version 3.0.23 and seems to be working fine.  This is good, because the hack that I mention below stopped working and VLC has been a real strain to use without dark mode. 

I generally use VLC for media playback but it's been a struggle because it doesn't have dark mode, which with my vision problems is essential. Well, it does now if you download the latest nightly build, version 3.0.22. 

The current stable version seems to be 3.0.20, which the  Check for Updates option says is up to date. Version 4.0 is in development but I'm not going to try that one for now..

Instructions on downloading it are in this blog post by Gordon Glas. Note that Windows Defender will probably give you a warning about installing it, but considering it's coming from the developer's website, you can ignore that. 

Given that the build is still under development, it may not be stable, but so far I haven't noticed any major issues. The dark palette could use some tweaking for better contrast in places like the Help > About dialog and the playback buttons , but it's still far easier on the eyes than the previous version. 

Photo of the Week - January 18, 2026

It's winter here in the Great (and very) White North. We had a heavy snowfall on Wednesday, about 40 cm. or 16" for you US folks. That's a rare snowfall; the last one like that was about four years ago. Fortunately, it was light and fluffy, and we didn't have to go anywhere that day. 

This is a picture of the rain barrels in our backyard, taken with my Pixel 8 Pro when I went out to clear a space for the dog to do her business.

Rain barrels buried under snow

Saturday Sounds - Bob Weir - Blue Mountain

Although he was best known as the rhythm guitarist for the Grateful Dead and their later offshoots, Bob Weir had a flourishing career with his own bands (Ratdog and Wolf Brothers) and as a solo artist. In 2016 he released a lovely folk country album called Blue Mountain and toured with a crackerjack band to support it. 

This is the Blue Mountain album, one of the best solo albums from any member of the Grateful Dead. The band includes Steve Kimock and members of The National.

To follow it, here's a concert from the Capitol Theatre on October 16, 2016. I watched the webcast at the time and was blown away and I still am. (The date on YouTube is wrong, by the way; it was definitely 2016, not 2017, which I verified on Setlists.fm.)

If you liked that, here's another show from the same tour, on October 10. This one is an audience recording but it's very high quality and I think I prefer it to the webcast.

Bob Weir RIP

I was deeply saddened to hear the news of the death yesterday of Bob Weir at the age of 78. The Grateful Dead have been a big part of my life ever since I heard their first album sometime in 1967. I saw them perform eight times between 1970 and 1992 and Weir with Ratdog twice in the early 2000s and I have a large collection of thwir music that I still explore. 

Jerry Garcia may have been the spiritual core of the Dead but Weir was their rock and roll heart. After Garcia died, his music took a turn into Americana and a jazzier mode with Don Was in Wolf Brothers. He wrote some of his best songs outside of the Dead and this are two of them, "Two Djiin" into "Ashes and Glass", performed with Wolf Brothers in his TRI Studios in 2011.

Saturday Sounds - Phish - 2025/12/31 Set 3, Madison Square Garden, New York

Over the last few years, Phish have continued a tradition that was started by Bill Graham at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco by performing a theatrical New Year's Eve production. They have become quite elaborate and this year was no exception, running for almost an hour starting with the song "It's Ice Cream". 

I don't think it was the best music of the 4-night run, but it is certainly fun to watch. This is an official band video so the sound and video quality are first rate. Enjoy.