Gardening as a Metaphor for Politics

I've been reading Geddry's Newsletter for some time now. It's a mother-daughter news column written by Mary Geddry and Shanley Hurt.

Recently they've published a couple of articles on the theme of gardening and how it relates to politics that I found especially perceptive. 

• The Hidden Allies of the Underground Republic. What mycorrhizal networks, beneficial insects, and the underground republic can teach us about resisting collapse. 
• The False Flower in the Underground Republic. A dispatch from the garden bed, on what bindweed can teach us about Trumpism, entanglement, and the danger of mistaking strangulation for strength,

From the second column:

A living system is not healthy because nothing grows wildly, it’s healthy because the wildness doesn’t all belong to one thing, and a democracy is not healthy because nobody fights, it’s healthy because no one hungry vine is allowed to wrap itself around every structure and call the suffocation unity.

So yes, the false flower is pretty, yes, it’s persistent, yes, it will be back tomorrow. But so will we.

Featured Links - April 15, 2026

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

Docks waiting for summer

• The Cascadia Subduction zone isn’t shutting down – but it’s more complicated than we thought. "But while the discovery is real, the interpretation that the subduction zone is winding down gets ahead of the science. What the new research actually shows is far more complex — and more interesting. But before we can understand what this tear means, we need to go back to plate tectonic theory."
• Helium Is Hard to Replace. "One such supply chain that’s suddenly getting a lot of attention is helium. Helium is produced as a byproduct of natural gas extraction: it collects in the same underground pockets that natural gas collects in. Qatar is responsible for roughly 1/3rd of the world’s supply of helium, which was formerly transported through the Strait of Hormuz in specialized containers. Thanks to the closure of the strait, helium prices have spiked, suppliers are declaring force majeure, and businesses are scrambling to deal with looming shortages."
• 5 takeaways from NASA’s biggest test in decades. While successful, there are a lot of things that will have to be addressed before the next Artemis mission. 
• Bad as Trump Is, What Follows Him May Be Worse. "The fight to define MAGA’s future is turning ugly—and more extreme."
• Trump, Pope Leo and the Lessons of 1933. "There is no way that in this new age of fascist threat, the Church is going to forget the lesson of the Reich Concordat."
  
• Solar panels are creating an unexpected effect by forming rainfall clouds and thriving oases in the middle of the desert. 
• Yellowstone's magma source may be closer than thought, reshaping hazard models. "Now, a research team from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS) has developed a comprehensive three-dimensional geodynamic model of western North America that simulates the present-day dynamics of both the lithosphere and the underlying convecting mantle, revealing a mechanism for magma generation beneath supervolcanoes."
• This founder helped build SpaceX’s most powerful rocket engine. Now he’s building a ‘fighter jet for orbit.’ "The company is developing a technology called solar thermal propulsion. Today’s standard satellite engines either burn chemical fuel or convert the sun’s energy to electricity, using that to power efficient but low-powered thrusters. Portal’s engines would instead concentrate the heat of the sun, using that to heat propellant and move the spacecraft along at high speed."
• How AI Is Turbocharging the War in Iran (archive link). "Intelligence, targeting and damage assessments are accelerating thanks to military versions of software now remaking business and daily life."
  
• Chinese Electrotech is the Big Winner in the Iran War. "An energy-hungry world is being pushed away by America and into China’s arms."
• This Experimental Drug Could Be a Game Changer for Pancreatic Cancer. "In a Phase III trial, Revolution Medicines' daraxonrasib almost doubled the survival length of people with advanced pancreatic cancer." 
  
• Members of neo-Nazi ‘active clubs’ join combat events at secretive Virginia compound. 'A network of militant neo-Nazi active clubs from around the US has been participating in riot-style combat events with other white nationalist groups in Virginia as part of what their founder called a “tip-off point for a fascist cultural revolution."
• SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites. Here's how that could impact the atmosphere and the night sky. "'These launches affect everyone,' says one astronomer."

Featured Links - April 1, 2026

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

Note:  There are no April fool jokes in the post.

The rite of spring

• The broligarchy's war on journalism. "The capture of US media by Trump allies is accelerating and the UK is the next in line. Plus: the mystery money behind my old newspaper." The financial shenanigans described here are quite remarkable. If you read The Guardian or The Observer, you should read this. 
• When is an alien invasion not an alien invasion? "Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's alien invasion novel is a time capsule from the Cold War, and a reminder that the threat of nuclear annihilation isn't ancient history." A good review of one of my favourite books from the 1980s that places the book in a wider historical perspective. 
• Endgame for the Open Web. "Now, the centibillionaires have begun their final assault on the last, best parts of what's still open, and likely won't rest until they've either brought all of the independent and noncommercial parts of the Internet under their control, or destroyed them. Whether or not they succeed is going to be decided by decisions that we all make as a community in the coming months. Even though there have always been threats to openness on the web, the stakes have never been higher than they are this time."
• ‘Truly spectacular’ drug for sleeping sickness simplifies treatment, raising hopes for eradication. "European regulators greenlight new one-dose compound that could help African countries get rid of an ancient burden." 
• ‘Canadians don’t want to come here any more’: anger over Trump squeezes US border businesses. "Shops and restaurants once bustling with tourists now struggle for survival as Canadians think twice about crossing the border." It's not just anger over the tariffs; people do not want to deal with the increasingly obtrusive border searches and the risk of ending up in an ICE detention centre. 
• Computer finds flaw in major physics paper for first time (archive link). "A computer language designed to robustly verify mathematical theorems and expose logical flaws has been turned towards a physics paper – and spotted an error. The discovery raises questions about how many other papers may harbour similar issues."
• How to Home. From Recomendo: "a YouTube channel with excellent videos that demonstrate how to complete common household repairs, such as wiring switches, fixing faucet leaks, and threading wire through walls and ceilings. Unlike many DIY videos, these feature high-quality audio, are well-lit, and aren’t blurry."
• How Alberta’s Separatist Movement Could Shake North America. "The resentments, politics, and risks behind their push to leave Canada." The separatists in Alberta are a small minority, but they are very committed and have ties to the US right. 
• The Hunt for Mr. Deepfakes. "A Toronto-area pharmacist is accused of being the internet’s most prolific peddler of deepfake porn. He’s just the beginning."
• This Week’s Small, Furry and Wet Reminder, That Repair is Still Possible. "Some hope for humanity, brought to you by beavers, with no consultants, no ribbon cuttings, just the ancient art of fixing what we keep breaking." Today, the UK. Tomorrow the world!
• Silicon Valley Giants Finally Face the Music. "Is this the Big Tobacco moment for the tech bros?"
• America and Public Disorder. "You can learn more about the U.S. by traveling overseas and comparing, and five years of that has taught me we accept far too much public disorder. We are the world’s richest country, and yet our buses, parking lots, and city streets are filthy, chaotic, and threatening. Antisocial and abnormal behavior, open addiction, and mentally tortured people are common in almost every community regardless of size."
•  The life and times of Grateful Dead icon Bob Weir. "We salute the Grateful Dead original, who – in the last 30 years of his life – stepped out from Jerry Garcia’s considerable shadow to emerge as a guitar hero in his own right."

Featured Links - March 25, 2026

Things I was interested in but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Bluffer's Park on a cloudy day

• Inside the fiery, deadly crashes involving the Tesla Cybertruck. "Cybertrucks have locked passengers inside and burned so hot they’ve disintegrated drivers’ bones. Victims’ families blame what they say is the faulty design of a truck Elon Musk calls ‘apocalypse-proof’" Just in case you need another reason to not buy a Cybertruck. 
• No Pills or Needles, Just Paper: How Deadly Drugs Are Changing (gift link). "Lab-made drugs soaked into the pages of letters, books and even legal documents are being smuggled behind bars, killing inmates and frustrating investigators."
• Inside the Dirty, Dystopian World of AI Data Centers (archive link). "The race to power AI is already remaking the physical world."
  
• Resisting the superbugs (archive link). "Canadian researcher Gerry Wright is searching for the next generation of life-saving antibiotics." Unfortunately, discovering a new antibiotic is easier than getting it to market. 
  
• Record-torching March heat ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change. "Friday’s spring equinox may seem like a quaint notion to those already enduring furnace-like 90-110°F summer heat." In this part of the country, we've had a cold winter with more snow than usual in recent years.
• The Trap Always Closes. "Donald Trump, Lyndon Johnson, and wars we can’t win." History shows that Trump can't win this war. His only way out is to stop, and he won't.
• Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks, bolstering origin-of-life theories. "We are stardust, we are golden ...".
• The World Factbook. "The community-maintained successor to the CIA World Factbook. Comprehensive data on 254 countries and territories." The CIA killed the CIA World Factbook in February and that this site is maintaining the information. 
• Canada wants to build up its long-neglected Arctic. The hard question is how. "Ottawa wants to modernize a region in the north that’s about six times the size of Texas, ‘just like in the 1800s’"
• As SpaceX Launches its 10,000th Satellite, A Photographer Captures the Impact on the Night Sky, "This week SpaceX passed an eye-watering milestone: it launched its 10,000th satellite into low-Earth orbit. The sheer scale of the devices whizzing around above humanity is unimaginable, but photographer Joshua Rozells is helping people see. Rozells’ image, Swamped Skies, is a composite of 343 photos that all contain at least one satellite streak. The Australian photographer didn’t set out to make the image; he originally wanted to capture star trails."
• Project Hail Mary is packed with hard science. An astrophysicist breaks it down. '"Project Hail Mary" is more than just an epic adventure film with beautiful visuals. It's a story that reminds us how important our world is—and how vital science is to our continued existence on it.'
• When Hyperglobalization Meets Chaos. "Choke points are everywhere you look." The crisis over the strait of Hormuz is only the beginning. 
• Historians Say They’ve Discovered a Long-Lost Page From the Archimedes Palimpsest, a Treasure Trove of Rare Ancient Mathematical Treatises. "Three leaves had been missing for more than a century. Researchers found one of them when they decided on a whim to check the archives of a French museum."

Featured Links - March 11, 2026

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

Lactose-free cat

• The Corporate Miscreants Driving the Affordability Crisis. "These 20 firms all have something in common: Their CEOs get paid millions, their workers are being pushed onto public assistance, and voters are fed up with them."
• We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI. The irony of being forced to dumb down an essay about a story warning against the forced suppression of excellence was not lost on me. Or on my kid, who spent a frustrating afternoon removing words and testing sentences one at a time, trying to figure out what invisible tripwire the algorithm had set. The lesson the kid absorbed was clear: write less creatively, use simpler vocabulary, and don’t sound too good, because sounding good is now suspicious."
• NASA’s DART Mission Did More Than Just Nudge an Asteroid, Study Says. "With these new findings, researchers are closer than ever to validating a key planetary defense technique."
• Managing phone media. "Dealing with photos, screenshots, and videos created by your phone isn’t simply a matter of deleting them. In this article, I’ll describe how to move media off your phone and onto your computer, remove media from the cloud, and disable automatic synchronization of media (which is usually the default)."
• Whiteouts, Ice Roads, and Wolverines: What Working at a Diamond Mine in the Far North Is Like. "In minus forty, even a twisted ankle can turn deadly if no one knows where to find you."
• The bombshell results that demand a new theory of the universe (archive link). "Last year, our most detailed map of the universe yet suggested our understanding of dark energy has been wrong for decades. The shock result is reigniting the search for a better cosmic story." This is one of the best articles on the subject of dark matter and dark energy that I have read. 
• The Myth That Wind Farms Are a Guillotine for Birds Is Being Debunked by Hard Data. "The harm caused by wind turbines isn't nearly as bad as you think."
  
• Meat Without The Animals. "Meat cultivated from cells — with no need to raise and slaughter an animal — is now a reality. But can it be made cheaply enough to displace animal agriculture?" 
• Mozilla Partners with Anthropic to Better Secure Firefox. "As Mozilla explains, this isn’t a one-off: Unlike the previous AI-assisted bug reports it’s received, which included false positives that required unnecessary work on its part, the Anthropic bug reports were different. They focused on the Firefox JavaScript engine. And each included minimal test cases to help Mozilla quickly verify and reproduce each issue."
• ‘We’re no longer attracting top talent’: the brain drain killing American science. "As Trump slashes science funding, young researchers flee abroad. Without solid innovation, the US could cease to have the largest biomedical ecosystem in the world."

A Cautiously Optimistic Look at the Future

It's easy to get depressed when looking at the news and thinking that everything is getting worse. But there are some trends that provide some hope, at least in the middle and long-term futures. 

Science fiction author and futurist, Karl Schroeder, has published a blog post in which he highlights some things that might lead to cautious optimism about our future prospects. It's long but worth a read.  

Today I’m going to describe some hard, apocalyptic truths about our short-term future. Basically, using fossil fuels for geopolitical extortion is resulting in catastrophe. But then I’m going to make three unapocalyptic claims: first, that fossil fuel coercion is becoming structurally self-defeating; second, that future material scarcities that can be used to coerce weaker nations are shallower and shorter-lived than their predecessors; and third, that the limiting constraint on industrial civilization is ultimately ecological rather than technological or political. Finally, I’ll show how this is cause for a (cautious) optimism about our mid- to long-term future.

Featured Links - March 4, 2026

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

• Fat Signing Bonuses, and Concierge Service, for Family Doctors (gift link). "In a country where a quarter of the population lacks a family doctor, Canadian communities compete in a zero-sum battle to recruit family doctors." The competition for doctors willing to work in small towns is becoming more intense in Canada, and I suspect, in the US as well. 
• This Looks Like an Insider Bet on Aliens (archive link). "Someone just put a lot of money on ET." I wonder if they have inside information. 
• Nature Comms: The Risk of Kidney Disease Increases Following SARS-CoV-2 Infection Compared to influenza. Yet another reason to do everything you can to avoid catching COVID-19.
• Measles outbreaks are costing the U.S. millions of dollars. The true losses can't be counted. "As vaccination rates decline, the economic consequences will increase, research suggests."
  
• AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder. "Yes, writing code is easier than ever. AI assistants autocomplete your functions. Agents scaffold entire features. You can describe what you want in plain English and watch working code appear in seconds. The barrier to producing code has never been lower. And yet, the day-to-day life of software engineers has gotten more complex, more demanding, and more exhausting than it was two years ago."
• John Shirley's guide to wrecking your career in science fiction. "A short memoir with  material that may be upsetting. Published for the first time at Boing Boing. Some of it's about Harlan Ellison, a hero of my youth--an enemy for a while, then a friend once more. Joe Straczynski, I review The Last Dangerous Visions, which you co-edited, at the end of this."
• A new space race could turn our atmosphere into a 'crematorium for satellites'. "When we look up at the night sky and see a satellite glide past, we might not consider climate change or the ozone layer. Space may feel separate from the environmental systems that sustain life on Earth. But increasingly, the way we build, launch and dispose of satellites is starting to change that."
• The Stupidest Glitch Imaginable Killed a $72 Million Lunar Mission in a Single Day. "NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer satellite was supposed to map water across the surface of the Moon, but glaring design and testing errors killed it."
• Trump Is Spoiling for a Fight over Canadian Potash. "The fertilizer that feeds America is key to the president’s next confrontation with Ottawa." 'Next confrontation` There's more? Oh, joy. 

A Futurist Looks Ahead to 2026

Amy Webb is an American author, futurist, and founder to the Future Today Strategy Group. I read her book, The Genesis Machine, a few years ago and was seriously impressed. 

Every year she publishes a newsletter article looking at what happened during the year and what it portends for the coming year. If you want to get a handle on these topsy turvy times, it's essential reading. 

She starts out by looking at what she expects to be the big themes for 2026. These are the first three. (All are described in detail in the newsletter)

1. Convergences will drive the next wave of disruption and growth. 
2. The post-search internet. 
3. The rise of unlimited labor. 

After that, she looks at some of the signals to watch for in 2026.

At FTSG, we define signals as indicators of emerging change. Longtime readers of this annual letter know that 18 years ago, I created an end-of-year inventory of signals to methodically reflect on the prevailing forces that are likely to influence the world ahead. It proved to be an invaluable catalogue months later for our clients and partners, so I've continued to publish this end-of-year letter with impactful signals for the entire FTSG community.

Cataloging signals is a practice I've refined and honed for two decades. My annual inventory is a way to think about the evolution of technology, science, business, and society as part of a long continuum.

Below is a short list (not hyperbole!) of signals I collected from the past year that are likely to shape the year ahead.

This is a long newsletter article but well worth the time it takes to read through it. A good idea would be to bookmark and look at it again in mid-year.  

Featured Links - November 18, 2025

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

The Scarborough Bluffs

• Loeb’s 3I/ATLAS “Anomalies” Explained. It's weird, but not 'that' weird. (I would love to be proved wrong on this, but I'm not holding my breath).
• Review: Playing the Short Game. How to Market & Sell Short Fiction. Review by Geoff Hart, technical writer/editor and author. 
• We could have healthier, more affordable lives through renewables and electrification. "Vested interests are spending $billions to prevent this."
• A Chinese AI model taught itself basic physics — what discoveries could it make? "A tool called AI-Newton can derive scientific laws from raw data, but is some way from developing human-like reasoning."
• The Big Shift in Cardiology to Atheroma and Inflammation. 'One A.I. company's tag line: "Creating A World Without Heart Attacks"'. This ties in to the idea that COVID-19 is a hematological disease that just happens to have a respiratory component.
• Workplace Surveillance Is Here, Counting Your Mouse Clicks and Bathroom Breaks. "Remote employees are being tracked and punished by invisible systems. Some workers are refusing to play along."
• Inside Canada’s shadowy crypto banking system that makes it easy to facilitate ‘an unlimited amount of crime’ (gift link). "Reporters went undercover to expose a growing crypto-to-cash industry that is openly flouting anti-money laundering measures."

Featured Links - October 14, 2025

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

A grey Lake Ontario

• Toronto vs Chicago: Transit Moving Masses Through The Metropolises. On the map, it looks like Chicago has a more extensive transit network than Toronto, but the reality on the street is very different. 
• A digital dark age? The people rescuing forgotten knowledge trapped on old floppy disks. "From lectures by Stephen Hawking to the letters of British politician Neil Kinnock – it's a race against time to save the historical treasures locked away on old floppy disks." This was a real eye-opener and really interesting. 
• How can a blind photographer take such great photos? Find out here. As a photographer and a person with low vision, I found this both interesting and  inspiring.  
• The Village and the Stars. "Science Fiction, Greenwich Village, and the American Counterculture." An article by Robert Charles Wilson. 
• Regular Expressions, and AI. Using ChatGPT to help construct useful regex expressions is something that would have been a great timesaver in my last job. 
• Engineers create first artificial neurons that could directly communicate with living cells. "A team of engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has announced the creation of an artificial neuron with electrical functions that closely mirror those of biological ones."
• The Destruction in Gaza Is What the Future of AI Warfare Looks Like. "American tech companies have given highly consequential support to Israel's campaign."
• Another mid-M7 earthquake in the Drake Passage. "The third large earthquake to strike between South America and Antarctica this year." 
• Have We Reached a Space-Junk Tipping Point? "In some orbits, the Kessler syndrome is already underway." This is rather disquieting. 

We're Toast 63

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. 

Our future

• Scientists issue warning after discovering concerning phenomenon in trees: 'Simply not keeping up'. "Increasing temperatures around the globe are threatening habitats and ecosystems. In fact, a study by the United Nations declared that 14% of the world's coral was lost between 2009 and 2018 because of warmer ocean temperatures."
• The Siberian Tundra Is Exploding. New Research Helps Explain Why. (gift link) "Spontaneous gas explosions appear to be increasing in northern Russia because of climate change and some specific local conditions."
• Trump's Crusaders: Christian Nationalists Are Gaining a Solid Foothold in Washington. "U.S. President Donald Trump has opened the doors of power to far-right Christian nationalists." Gilead is rising in the US. 
• Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid. "It’s not just a phase."
• ‘Nightmare bacteria’ cases are increasing in the US. " Infection rates from drug-resistant “nightmare bacteria” rose almost 70% between 2019 and 2023, according to a new report from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists."
• COVID-19 infections impair our immune systems for months or even years. "Even mild cases can lead to serious health problems years later."
• European Society of Cardiology: Major Consensus Statement Released on Long-Term Cardiovascular Impact of COVID Infection. 'Professor Vassiliou said: “Covid-19 has a profound and lasting impact on cardiovascular health, with complications emerging during acute illness, recovery, and even after reinfections or vaccination. In the absence of clear evidence-based guidance, patients risk harmful treatments and clinicians face uncertainty.'
• Oxford Historian Offers Dire Warning With Prediction Of How Long Americans Have To Save Their Democracy. "Noted British historian, author, and head of the Oxford University European Studies Center Timothy Garton Ash wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian that the 2026 midterm elections will decide the fate of the United States.. Will it continue as a democratic republic of unified states or continue on its current path to become the Christian nationalist, White supremacist authoritarian regime the Republicans' Project 2025 called for."

Featured Links - October 6, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. I didn't post last week, so here's a baker's dozen for you. 

GO Train tracks out of Pickering

• Chicago and the Horrors of Carte Blanche. "The Trump regime believes it has all the justification it needs to violate our laws and the Constitution. It is mistaken." I am boggled that this is not front-page news and appalled at the silence of the mainstream media. 
• How China is Powering a Clean Energy Revolution. "And bringing cheap electricity and energy security to poor countries."
  
• When Did the New Global War Begin? "So maybe now I can finally pose the question that has been keeping me up at night: At what point will it become evident that we have entered a global conflict? A third world war?"
• CHORD will be a huge leap forward for Canadian radio astronomy. "The next-generation radio telescope will leverage Canadian astronomical leadership to unveil the mysteries of the cosmos."
• Canada Tables A Bill That Can Net You Life In Prison For Hate Propaganda/Hate Speech. IRL And Online. LFG. "You Might Want To Start Scrubbing Your MAGA Timelines..."
• ALS Breakthrough Shows Fatal Disease Is Driven by Immune Attack. "Researchers have uncovered how the body’s own immune system may be driving the progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS — a breakthrough that could reshape treatment of the fatal disease."
• Why a massive Russian plane was moved at Toronto Pearson Airport. The AN-124 has been there since the start of the Ukraine war. 
• Anya Pogharian, Montreal teen inventor, takes portable dialysis machine to the world. "18-year-old tests her invention on real blood during internship at Héma-Québec." I hoipe this works and can be put into wide production. It will change peple's lives.
• Declining American Democracy: Trump is a Symptom, Not the Cause. "The modern GOP is inherently authoritarian." This is one of the more insightful essays I've read recently.
• Rise of the Middle Powers. "Who are the adults in the room, in modern politics? And what if those adults want neither a return to American hegemony, nor a multipolar world order?"
• Scientists uncover how to block pain without side effects. "Current painkillers like ibuprofen and aspirin often come with harmful side effects because they shut down both pain and inflammation. But this new research identified a single “pain switch” receptor that can be turned off without interfering with inflammation, which actually helps the body recover."
• Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish? "Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and what we can do about it."
• He Created a Spiritual Jazz Masterpiece. He’s Still a Mystery. "Shamek Farrah’s 1974 debut is a highly sought-after rarity, but even his most ardent admirers know little about him. In a rare interview, he tells his story."

Featured Links - September 2, 2025

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

Swans on the bay

• AI is unmasking ICE officers. Can Washington do anything about it?  "A new twist in the debate over surveillance tech raises tough questions for policymakers." As William Gibson said: "The street finds its own uses for things." 
• Reflections on Katrina: 20 Years Later. "People often ask me: What’s the worst hurricane you’ve ever personally seen? With over two decades in the hurricane and disaster space that’s taken me to the ground (or in the air) for nearly every major U.S. hurricane in that span, including Katrina, the answer to that question shouldn’t come so quickly. But it does."
• Alberta Separatists Say Trump Regime Offered Them $500,000,000 “Loan” To Break Up Canada. "Alberta’s separatist circuit is bragging about a half-billion-dollar “transition loan” they say was discussed with Trumpworld in Washington. Seditious if true..." Even if money has not been offered, there is no doubt that the MAGA movement is coordinating with Alberta separatists. 
• Decline and Fall of the American Empire. "Alliances were what made us great." And Trump has shat on almost all of them.
• Our Preoccupation With Protein Intake. "The data on high protein diets, bars, supplements, and powders will surprise you." Some reliable information on protein intake. 
• What happens to New Orleans’ levees when a Category 4 hurricane hits? "The city’s $23 billion levee system is only rated to withstand a Cat 3." The city is still at risk. 
• How to rescue yourself from choking when you're all alone (video). This technique save your life.
• No, the White House Is Not Getting a 90,000-Foot Extension. "But Trump’s doomed proposal does give us a revealing glimpse into his state of mind."
• Earth's Seasons Are Out of Sync, Scientists Discover From Space. "We present an unprecedented and intimate portrait of the seasonal cycles of Earth's land-based ecosystems. This reveals "hotspots" of seasonal asynchrony around the world – regions where the timing of seasonal cycles can be out of sync between nearby locations." 
• Heat events and domestic violence linked, a new study out of New Orleans finds. This does not surprise me but it's good to have the data to back up the hypothesis.
• Harassment at Antarctic research bases could spell problems for moon, Mars outposts. "Antarctica is an isolated, confined environment similar to those that might be on future moon or Mars bases."  

Featured Links - August 26, 2025

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

Front yard hyacinths. 

The Super-Weird Origins of the Right’s Hatred of the Smithsonian. "The Trump administration has stepped up its antagonism of America’s treasured museums. But conservative antipathy toward the institution began long ago—with the bones of Bible giants."

Scientists Propose a Smarter Way to Hunt for Alien Radio Signals. "We might find intelligent aliens by looking for them the same way they’d find us."

Covid and Our Arteries. "A new study on acceleration of vascular aging adds to the body of evidence." Yet more reasons to do whatever you can to avoid catching COVID.

4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC. "A lawyer representing the online message board 4chan says it won't pay a proposed fine by the UK's media regulator as it enforces the Online Safety Act."

The 9 Worst RFK Jr. Decisions to Date. "By every measure, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s tenure as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been — and continues to be — a disaster. His actions undermine scientific progress, public trust, and the health of millions. In a mere matter of months, his agenda has left lasting scars on America’s public health infrastructure, while reverberating globally by undoing decades of progress in vaccination and disease prevention."

Sadopopulism and the Fascist MAGA Ethos. "Trump’s policy is to inflict pain, even upon his own voters. But why does this work, and what will stop it?"

Five Ways to Fight Trump's Fascism. "People are constantly asking me — what can I do? Between now and the 2026 midterm elections, here are five practical steps you can take to make a difference." YouTube video from Robert Reich. 

We Are All Lisa Cook. "Nobody is safe from weaponized government."

The “Peace in Our Time” Moment. "Why Trump’s Deal With Putin Echos Munich 1938." The similarities between now and 1938 are clear. 

Dude, you broke the Future! A talk by SF author, Charlie Stross, from the 34C3 conference in 2017. It's eight years old now and still relevant. (YouTube video)

Featured Links - August 5, 2025

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

A farm north of Oshawa

• The 10 apps I can't live or work without - on Windows, Mac, and mobile. I've been reading Ed Bott's articles and listening to him on podcasts for years. You can trust his research and his opinions. You might also want to read this article he wrote about the comments section for the article. 
• Midcentury Dreams. "Chesley Bonestell and Willy Ley's The Conquest of Space". I remember that book fondly, and the movie that was based on it.
• Flourishing chemosynthetic life at the greatest depths of hadal trenches. Life at 9 km. deep in the ocean. This might bode well for the prospect of life in the outer icy moons of the solar system. 
• A perfect storm (gift link). "As wildfires and storms fuel climate worries, the rise of weather content on social media shows there's a fine line between preparation and obsession."
• I Trusted Gemini With a Web Search and It Sent Me Straight to a Scam. "AI is creeping into more parts of the internet, answering search queries, recommending downloads, and even deciding what emails deserve your attention. But just because it sounds helpful doesn’t mean it always knows what it’s doing."
• Dennis McNally’s Last Great Dream: Memories of Working with the Grateful Dead, Tracking Kerouac and Exploring How Bohemians Became Hippies. I definitely want to read this.
• De-Google Project Update. "I introduced this family project in the spring of 2024. I won’t reproduce those arguments for why we’re working on this, but in the current climate I feel like I hardly need to. Since that post, our aversion to Google dependency has only grown stronger. Progress has been non-zero but not fast."

Featured Links - July 29, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. This post is (mostly) politics-free.

A farm north of Oshawa

• I started using NotebookLM with Microsoft Word and I’m not going back. I could have used this in my last job. 
• The Painter of the Right. "Thomas Kinkade’s paintings show conservatives a world they have already won." Unfortunately, the documentary mentioned in the article doesn't appear to be available for streaming. 
• Remembering Descent, the once-popular, fully 3D 6DOF shooter. "Descent is a big part of gaming history, but not many people talk about it." 
• The death of the projection booth. "As movie theatres adapt new technology for screenings, the art of feeding film through a projector is fading to black."
• 12 Fresh Tomato Pasta Recipes We Can’t Stop Making. Our garden looks like it will produce a bumper crop of tomatoes this year, so I'm looking forward to trying some of these recipes.
• I took my e-book library back from Amazon with this self-hosted app. "BookLore turns ebook chaos into a modern, streamlined library you control completely." I might try this. I'm finding the Kindle app on my iPad Mini almost unusable for managing my books because the Collections view won't show a collection's contents in a list format. 
• Social media is dead – here’s what comes next. "A new information ecosystem is on the rise, featuring closer connections, cosy media and worker-owned websites, writes Annalee Newitz."
• Tom Lehrer, Musical Satirist With a Dark Streak, Dies at 97. "A mathematician by training, he acquired a devoted following with songs that set sardonic lyrics to music that was often maddeningly cheerful." Noted with sadness. 

Featured Links - July 22, 2025

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

Sunset along the 401

• Five days, 65 km, 86,000 steps — and one restless city: I walked all the way across Toronto. This is what I saw (archive link). I am waiting for the Eglinton Crosstown to open and plan to ride it across Toronto, perhaps with stops at some of the stations on the underground part of the line. 
• A Juicy Chronicle of the Fat Decades at Condé Nast (gift link). Empire of the Elite, by Michael M. Grynbaum, is a story of (mostly) insider-outsiders who helmed the glossiest American magazines in their heyday." I miss magazines and browsing the racks in stores like Lichtman's, now sadly defunct. 
• Why Did the Rich Pull Away from the Rest? 'This is Part I of Stone Center Senior Scholar Paul Krugman’s series “Understanding Inequality,” which originally appeared on his Substack newsletter.' This is an important series of articles and worth the time to read.
• Published Via Desktop. 'A list of programs from the all-too-brief golden era of desktop publishing that “didn’t make it.” The GUI’s killer app didn’t slay forever.' Out of the 10 programs listed in the article, I used two: Aldus PageMaker and Venture Publisher. 
• The Peptide Craze. "The Surge in Use of Off-Label and Non-FDA Approved Peptides." TANSTAAFL. 
• Terry Gilliam Reflects On ‘Brazil’ As Film Celebrates 40th Anniversary & The Challenges Of Getting Movies Made Today: “I Really Don’t Want Any More Fights” I really must rewatch Brazil; it's one of my favourite movies. 
• Alberta’s Book Ban Is a Blatant Act of Cultural Vandalism. "The push to sanitize school collections erases what literature is for: knowledge, discovery, the freedom to think." I am sad to see this happening in Canada. 
• The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations. "I would like to address the recent slander circulating on social media, in editorial Slack channels, and in the margins of otherwise decent Substack newsletters. Specifically, the baseless, libelous accusation that my usage is a telltale sign of artificial intelligence."
• Radical New Theory Rewrites the Story of the Earliest Universe. "A new theory promises to simplify our approach to the universe's earliest moments, but some cosmologists say further mathematical scrutiny is warranted." Simplification is good. 

We're Toast 61

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. 

US climate change policy 

Note: I created the image above Microsoft's Copilot AI tool. It took about three minutes and three prompts to get something close to what I wanted.

• After 100 days of upheaval, what’s next for U.S. science? "Fights over research spending and pending court rulings loom large." 
• Will US science survive Trump 2.0? "President Donald Trump and his administration have gutted science agencies, terminated research programmes and cancelled billions of dollars in grants to universities. What are the long-term impacts for the United States and the world?"
• It’s too late’: David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost. '“We have failed to shift the narrative and we are still caught up in the same legal, economic and political systems,” said David Suzuki in an exclusive interview with iPolitics. “For me, what we’ve got to do now is hunker down.”'
• Climate Change is Trying to Kill Me. "It's here and it's personal." True for Nancy and me too. 
• What the Fastest-Growing Christian Group Reveals About America. (archive link) "Instead of killing off faith, modernity has supercharged some of its most dramatic manifestations.:
• ‘Could become a death spiral’: scientists discover what’s driving record die-offs of US honeybees. "Experts scrambling to understand losses in hives across the country are finally identifying the culprits. And the damage to farmed bees is a sign of trouble for wild bees too."
• It's not just about measles. "Measles is a canary in the coal mine. When measles reappears in a country like the U.S., it signals that something has gone seriously wrong. This is a disease we had essentially eliminated—thanks to one of the safest and most effective vaccines in the history of medicine. But the way things are heading, the U.S. is at risk of losing its elimination status this year. This is not just a failure to move forward—it’s the unraveling of decades of progress, representing one of the greatest public health achievements of our era."
• How the little-known ‘dark roof’ lobby may be making US cities hotter. "As cities heat up, reflective roofs could lower energy bills and help the climate. But dark-roofing manufacturers are waging a quiet campaign to block new rules."
• Deadly drug-resistant fungus spreading fast across US, WHO raises alarm. "A deadly, drug-resistant fungus, Aspergillus fumigatus, is spreading rapidly across the US, posing serious risks to people with weak immunity as climate change fuels its growth and resistance." If you think the planet is out to get us, you may be right.
• A 100 ft 'mega tsunami' could hit the US at any moment. And that’s only the beginning. "This could be the biggest disaster in US history, and it just got a whole lot worse." Look up the term "ghost forest" and what can cause them.

Featured Links - July 15, 2025

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

Summer daisies

• The Day Grok Tried to Be Human. "xAI’s chatbot spiraled into chaos after trying to sound more human. The fix reveals just how fragile truth-seeking AI really is." Like father, like son.
• Collapse of key Atlantic currents may be held off by newly-discovered back-up system, study finds. "Rising temperatures in the North Atlantic are slowing vital currents, but a new process in the Arctic could save the day, scientists say." Let's hope this is true. 
• Commentary: Cory Doctorow: Rubber-Hose Cryptanalysis. "In a technologically advanced society, where your health, life and livelihood are all dependent on encryption, and encryption is dependent on the rule of law, authoritarianism represents an existential threat. When a border guard, an immigration enforcer, a federal of­ficer, or the cop on the beat can use rubber-hose cryptanalysis to compromise the security of our otherwise impregnable cryptosystems, the entire basis for trusting in the integrity of our computerized world crumbles."
• Ukraine Infantry Adapts to More Menacing Drones. "For an elite unit, rapidly evolving drone warfare makes the “toughest job in the army” both easier and more perilous." Shades of The Terminator.
  
• Algoma Steel announces historic first arc at new electric furnace. "Michael Garcia, Algoma's president, described today's news as a landmark development in the 'largest industrial decarbonization project in Canada'" Good news for the Sault and for meeting Canada's carbon emission goals.
• Canada's second-tallest structure is being demolished in Ontario. "The Superstack — designed to better disperse smelting gas from Vale's Copper Cliff Complex — has stood as the tallest chimney in the Western Hemisphere throughout its existence." I have driven past that stack many times. 
• Work-from-home starting to look more remote as companies get stricter on office time. During my last few years at the TSX, I was able to work from home two or sometimes three days a week and loved it. I was more productive and had more energy because I wasn't commuting 90 mintues each way. 

Featured Links - June 30, 2025

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

This week's post is shorter than usual. We have a kitchen reno coming up in a week and I'm pretty busy right now. And there's a yard and garden to take care of. So posts here are going to be shorter and/or sparser than usual for a while.

Birds in the hydro marsh

• Are these the world’s oldest rocks? Fresh data confirm contested claim. "Scientists debate age of ancient Canadian crust as Inuit leaders work to preserve the location."
• Photographer Captures the Terrifying Things Humans Have Done to the Planet.  "Photographer Edward Burtynsky has dedicated his life’s work to documenting the impact humans have on the planet, producing stunning photographs that evoke both awe and concern. This week has marked the start of a career-spanning exhibit of Burtynsky’s work at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York." I have seen several exhibitions of Burtynsky's photographs and if you can get to see this show in person, do so, as they have much more impact in a gallery setting.
• Could the Semicolon Die Out? Recent Analysis Finds a Decline in Its Usage in British Literature and Confusion Among U.K. Students. "Not only are semicolons evidently becoming more rare, but young people are less aware of how to use them, according to a survey."
• Why We Need Horror Authors in the Fight For the Freedom to Read. "Please note: this speech was directed at Horror authors, but I hope all of my readers use it as a template to speak to their community members about the importance of speaking out for the freedom to read and use the "how-to" component in the speech to give them the tools they need to take action."
• The Concorde-and-Caviar Era of Condé Nast, When Magazines Ruled the Earth. "Opulent days are over at Vogue, Vanity Fair and other once-powerful glossies. Anna Wintour is giving up (some) control. Now that everyone’s a gatekeeper, why do we keep recreating their status-obsessed world?"