Featured Links - February 18, 2026

Personal Note:  My eyes have improved enough that I can read comfortably (most of the  time) so I'm going to tyry to get back to a bit of blogging. 

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. 

A foggy February

Medical Fan Fiction, National Consequences, and What Happens When We Lose the Shared Shield. "Measles, declining vaccination rates, and the revival of preventable disease." ... "This is what breaks my heart. We had the answer, we still have the answer, we are watching people try to throw it away and call that freedom. And I simply will not stand by this. I will not be quiet while preventable disease is welcomed back like it deserves a seat at the table. I will make my voice loud and known, and I hope you do the same."

In Cuba, wellies shed light on the island’s hardships as Canada suspends flights. (gift link) It's sad to see what Cuba and Cubans are going through right now, through no fault of their own. "The footwear, it turns out, is a symbol of the island’s hardships. Pandemic-related declines in tourism and six decades of U.S. sanctions – including embargoes tightened by the Trump administration in 2025 – have pushed the island’s economy to collapse. Staples such as clothing are hard to find. These days, rubber boots are cheaper and easier to find than leather shoes or sneakers. Many Cubans pair their wellies with colourful socks, a testament to their resilience and flair."

Is 2026 the year buttons come back to cars? Crash testers say yes.  "The requirements won’t go far enough for many, but it’s a start." It can't come soon enough for me. Putting all controls into a screen interface is a recipe for distracted driving. 

Consumptive Capitalism. "On MAHA and Expensive Suffering -- A Guest Post by Sara Silverstein. An essay exposing the similarities between the MAHA movement and the tuberculosis treatments of the early 20th century. ' MAHA depends on the “again,” the fantasy of a better past. But it also depends on the “America,” the notion that we are in some way exceptional. But we are as vulnerable as everyone else without investment in medical science and public health. Valuing profit above life undermines our progress, and doing so under misleading appeals to myth only makes matters worse.'

Your BMI can't tell you much about your health – here's what can (archive link). 'People classed as “overweight” according to BMI can be perfectly healthy. But there are better measures  of fat, and physicians are finally using them.' 

Inside the quest to build the ultimate nonalcoholic beer. "Scientists in Belgium—that celebrated bastion of ancient beer culture—are harnessing genetic breakthroughs and machine learning to reimagine how great booze gets built. Here’s how their revelations in the lab could transform the global beer industry." As a consumer of regular beer, I found this article quite interesting. A quality non-alcoholic beer would definitely get some of my money.

Saturday Sounds - Bradstreet and Keesee (Live in London)

Back in the 1970s, I lived in Hamilton, Ontario. Despite it's reputation as a working-class steel town, or maybe because of it, Hamilton had a flourishing folk music scene.

David Bradstreet was a regular on the folk circuit and I saw him perform several times. He is a first-rate cong writer and guitarist whose song "Renaissance" was made a hit by Valdy. In recent years, he's been performing around Ontario and this week's music treat is a concert recording from London, Ontario in 2025. He performed with his long-time musical partner, bassist Carl Keesee.  It's a lovely album and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 

If you live in the Toronto area, he'll be performing with Keesee at Hugh's Room in Toronto on May 9. I'm hoping to be there.

 

2025 Locus Recommended Reading List

Locus, the newsmagazine of the science fiction and fantasy field, has published its recommended reading list for 2025. The list includes novels, short fiction, collections, anthologies, non-fiction, and illustrated and art books, and is an unofficial long list for field's major awards. 

I'm way behind on reading current fiction (reading anything actually right now, though my eyes are improving), so I've only read one book on this list: Where the Axe Is Buried, by Ray Nayler, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I will be starting Anna Lee Newitz's Automatic Noodle in the next few days.

There are a few other books I may look at.

• The Folded Sky by Elizabeth Bear 
• Picks & Shovels by Cory Doctorow 
• All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu
• Slow Gods by Claire North 
• Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds 
• When There Are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift
• Hole in the Sky by Daniel H. Wilson

Saturday Sounds - Broken Social Scene - Live at Pickathon 2018

Broken Social Scene are an indie Toronto band and musical collective who've been performing since 1999. Depending on where and when they're playing, there can be anywhere between six and nineteen members on stage. I've been lucky enough to see them four times since 2004, when I took my tween daughter to her first big concert at Harbourfront and we became fans for life. Parts of their July 2009 concert. again at Harbourfront, was featured in the film, This Movie Is Broken, and was of of the best concerts I have seen in this century. 

They've just released Live at Pickathon, recorded at their appearance on Ausust 4, 2018, on Bandcamp. It's an excellent performance and beautifully recorded. It's free to listen to; I'd gladly pay for it if there was a way to download it. I recommend it highly.

For the fans, here's the setlist.

Pacific Theme
Play Video
7/4 (Shoreline)
(featuring Reid on sax)
Cause = Time
Shampoo Suicide
Hug of Thunder
Sweetest Kill
Gonna Get Better
TBT  (La Force cover)
Skyline
Almost Crimes
Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl

How To Tell When You Are Being Manipulated

It's getting harder and harder to find objective news. It seems that almost every site now is pushing an agenda and trying to get you to think their way or make you do something. 

Here's a good article from The Big Picture that offers some basic techniques to help you tell when you are being manipulated.. 

To avoid falling into the manipulation trap when consuming media, I like to remind myself of the first two tenets of journalism ethics:

Seek the truth as fully as possible

Seek to minimize harm

Anyone who isn’t doing these things isn’t performing ethical journalism.

More practically, when someone tells you a story, look for an attempt to fulfill these two elements—seeking the truth as fully as possible, and seeking to minimize harm. If you don’t see it, you should be skeptical of what you’re being fed. And you should use it as a trigger to employ extra critical thinking.

There are lots of ways to manipulate people with storytelling. But there are three big ones right now in mainstream news and social media that, once you start noticing them, you’ll have more power to see when you’re being manipulated—and hopefully, help others see too.

A Chilling Warning

Here's a chilling warning from historian Timothy Sbyder about what might happen in Springfield, Ohio later this week. 

In a conincidence, both Vance and Snyder came up for discussion at a lunch with some friends last week. Some thought that Vance would be an improvement over Trump, shold he become president. 

It's clear they're wrong.

Update: Yesterday, a judge stayed the order revoking the Temporary Protected States of the Haitians until their court case is decided. 

Movie and TV Reviews - January 2026

 Short reviews of movies and TV shows that I watched in January. 

Movies

• The Velvet Underground: A so-so documentary. I wish it had focused more on the music and less on how they looked. (Apple TV)
• Galaxy Quest: This is still the best Star Trek parody and better than most of the Trek movies. (Blu Ray)
• Sinners: There was a lot of buzz about his movie and I can see why. It was very well done in every respect and also very unconventional. Buddy Guy at the end sealed it for me. One of  the best movies I've seen in a long time. (Crave)
• Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. This biopic looks at Springsteen's life between the release of The River in 1981 and Born in the USA in 1984, a period of reflection that led to the release of Nebraska. It's well done, reasonably accurate, and quite watchable but marred by a made0-up romance subplot.  (Disney)+)
• The Thursday Murder Club: A cozy mystery about residents of a retirement home solving murders. Light but worth watching for a high-powered cast. (Netflix)
• K-Pop Demon Hunters: We watched this just to see what all the fuss was about and did enjoy it. Not much of a stpru but the animation and music are the point. (Netflix)

TV Shows

• Antiques Road Trips (season 14-15): Our treasure hunt through Britain's villages continues. After these, we will have to find a new comfort watch.. (BritBox)
• Stranger Things (season 5): The final season was about twice as long as it needed to be. I still think the show should have ended after the third season. (Netflix)
• Pluribus: One of the best SF shows that Apple TV has produced. It manages to be both funny and terrifying. (Apple TV)
• Beyond Paradise (Christmas special): Nice to see a plot that didn't revolve around a murder. (BritBox)
• Death in Paradise (Christmas special): Only for fans. (BritBox)
• Unforgotten (season 5): Still one of the best British police procedurals with an especially twisty plot that neither of us figured out. (BritBox)
• Starfleet Academy: If it's intended to be a comedy then it's a disaster. (Paramount+)
• Bookish: A light mystery series about a gay bookseller in post-war London. The best thing about it was the evoication of the period. (PBS)
• Down Cemetery Road: We only got through one eopisode of this. Too contrived and not believable. (Apple TV)
• Seven Dials: Another Agatha Christie mystery. Contrived yes, but we didn't expect any more. (Netflix)
  
• The Night Manager (season 1): A rather good adaptation of a John Le Carre novel. One of the best series we've watched in a while. (Amazon Prime)