I took this picture at the Canadian Home Show in Toronto on Saturday. It is possibly the ugliest, most garish vehicle I have ever seen, at least in person. Taken with my Pixel 8 Pro and the colour adjusted slightly in Google Photos to reduce the yellowish tint from the artificial lighting. It was a very vivid lime green.
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| Lime Green Tesla Cybertruck |
A week agp Nancy and I trundled into Toronto to see Los Lobos at Koerner Hall. This was the first time we've seen them live. It was billed as an "acoustic evening" but turned out to be a pretty loud and raucous performance. .
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| Los Lobos at Koerner Hall |
I'm not that familiar with their songs but I recognized a few, though given our location behind the stage, it was difficult to hear the vocals. The band came through loud and clear though, especially the drummer, who was outstanding. They finished the set with "Going Down the Road Feelin' Bad" > "Bertha" and an energetic performance of Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl". The show ended with the entire audience up on their feet and dancing to La Bamba. something I doubt happens often there.
So for this week's musical treat, here's a few videos of Los Lobos performing starting with a six-song set from KCRW-FM followed by a few videos of individual songs. All are pro-shot with excellent sound. Enjoy.
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.
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| A thawing marsh |
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has announced the finalists for the 2024 Nebula Awards. The awards are voted on by members of SFWA and will be announced at the 2025 Nebula Conference and Awards, June 5-8.
These are the finalists for the Novel award:
Back in the fall, I figured that if Trump somehow got elected, things would get bad , but I didn't expect them to get this bad and this crazy. I can't possibly comment on all of the insanity going on south of the border, but being Canadian, I do want to focus on one thing: Trump's irrational delusion that Canada should become "the 51st state".
If you know anything about Canada, you will know that it's NOT going to happen. This is what happened the last time somebody tried to take over Canada.
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| The British burning Washington |
I don't remember Canada being mentioned much, if at all, during the election campaign. But it cropped up in a comment at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Trump and the Canadian prime minister; a comment that was thought to be a (rather inapproriate) joke at the time, but may have been the first shot in a campaign by the Trump regime to undermine the Canadian economy.
This article from the New York Times (gift link) goes into some detail about the discussions between Trudeau and Trump and reveals that the US wants to renegotiate agreements on water sharing and treaties setting the location of the border between the two countries.
On those calls, President Trump laid out a long list of grievances he had with the trade relationship between the two countries, including Canada’s protected dairy sector, the difficulty American banks face in doing business in Canada and Canadian consumption taxes that Mr. Trump deems unfair because they make American goods more expensive.
He also brought up something much more fundamental.
He told Mr. Trudeau that he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary. He offered no further explanation.
The border treaty Mr. Trump referred to was established in 1908 and finalized the international boundary between Canada, then a British dominion, and the United States.
The Globe and Mail reported on this as well, going into some detail about negotiations to update the agreement governing water from the Columbia river, (gift link) which originates in British Columbia.
U.S. President Donald Trump raised the 61-year-old Columbia River Treaty among a list of grievances with Canada during a call with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last month, a source in Ottawa said.
The agreement, which is currently under renegotiation, co-ordinates hydroelectric power production and flood control along the 2,000-kilometre Columbia River flowing from B.C. through the U.S. Pacific Northwest, and has long been seen as a model of international water co-operation.
During a Feb. 3 phone call between the two leaders, Mr. Trump read from a four-page memo listing U.S. irritants with Canada that the Prime Minister and Canadian officials believed was an attempt by the President to soften him up as part of the tariff negotiations, the source with direct knowledge of the conversation said.
The President, reading the memo, said the treaty was unfair to the United States and that it needed changes Canada had yet to agree to.
This post by Zoe Ellen Brain on Facebook is a good timeline of events up to March 11.
Trump's imposition of tariffs, his gaslighting about fentanyl crossing the border, and his "51st state" comments has ignited a firestorm of reaction in Canada. I'm going to link to several articles from Canadian writers.
In The Globe and Mail, Kristen Hopewell has a suggestion for how Canada can retaliate against Trump's tariffs.
For Mr. Trump, weakness is a provocation. Canada needs to respond to his aggression forcefully and with strength. Retaliating against U.S. goods alone is not enough. Today, it is no longer manufacturing but technology, services and intellectual property that lie at the heart of the U.S. economy. Companies such as the Magnificent 7 (Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., Microsoft Corp., Nvidia Corp. and Tesla Inc.) – which make up 35 per cent of the S&P 500 – are the foundation of America’s current global economic dominance. The U.S. has a large services trade surplus, and knowledge-based industries that rely heavily on IP account for more than 40 per cent of U.S. GDP. This is where Canada’s retaliation needs to be targeted.
Canada should explore more innovative forms of retaliation, including a ban on American social-media platforms such as X and Facebook, digital streamers such as Netflix Inc. and online retailers such as Amazon. An alternative to an outright ban is to jack up digital-services taxes on these companies to levels equivalent to Mr. Trump’s tariffs.
This is from Charlie Angus.
Trump's gang, on the other hand, are thriving on the chaos, uncertainty and fear in America. But the reality is that a deeply divided nation will not put up with the shocks caused by destroying the greatest trade relationship in the world. Even the MAGA voters will start to question the cost of satisfying whack-job ideology. It doesn't bode well for any long-term adventurism.
And they didn’t factor in the determined resistance of the Canadian people.
They thought we would just roll over.
As if.
Canadian economic and political resistance has thrown Trump. He is scrambling to find a way to keep the high ground. But Canadian resistance has only grown stronger.
This political and economic resistance will be key in the coming months and years. That is why the boycott is such an important weapon.
A unified Canada will never be defeated by a nation distracted by its own political chaos and dissension.
And on Facebook, Danny Ivan has written a long post with a series of suggestions about what Canada can and should do to combat Trump and his regime. Here's a small part:
What Canada Must Do—Right Now
This is no longer about preparing for a worst-case scenario. We are in the scenario.
1. Confront Trump’s Lies Immediately
• The Carney government must publicly and aggressively counter Trump’s fentanyl disinformation campaign.
• Demand proof of his accusations and expose his economic destabilization strategy.
2. Prepare for Economic War
• Strengthen trade partnerships with the EU and Asia to break dependency on the U.S.
• Prepare emergency trade measures to counteract tariffs and economic sabotage.
Canadian public reaction has been overwhelmingly against the idea of joining the US in any way, shape, or form. The US anthem has been booed at hockey games, "Buy Canadian" movements are spreading across the country, and people are cancelling plans to travel to the United States.
I'm gong to close with a few videos.
First, "Not Your 51st". "This song is a bold and ironic remake of the U.S. Marine Hymn, turning a patriotic American anthem into a defiant Canadian protest song against Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats of annexation. Originally repurposed as a pro-Trump campaign song in 2016, we’ve flipped the script—using the same tune to reject his trade war tactics and his suggestion that Canada could become the 51st state."
Next, "MAGA Man (A Neil Young Parody - Canada Ain't Your 51st State)". "Canada has always been a good friend to America—but that doesn’t mean we’ll roll over. With some in the U.S. floating the idea of annexation, this is a Canadian response to the madness. Inspired by Neil Young’s Southern Man, this parody, MAGA Man, calls out the chaos, corruption, and threats to democracy south of the border."
Finally, an update of a Canadian classic.
Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.
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| Koerner Hall |
This week's photo is of our local mall. I liked the symmetry though I didn't get the composition quite perfect. (Perfect composition on a phone is hard, even with the Pixel 8 Pro's big screen). I resisted the temptation to fix that using Photoshop's new AI tools, though I did use Google Photos' Vivid filter to give it a little more punch.
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| Mall ceiling |
Note: I wrote this guide about when I was working at the Toronto Stock Exchange and had to create a couple of large documents that had content that was being shared with another writer. I did not trust Word's Master Document feature so came up with my own solution. It took a bit more effort than using Master Documents but was stable. Seeing the recent Office Watch article on master documents made me think that this guide might still have some value so I'm posting it here. I've checked it against the current version of Word in Microsoft 365.
Most people work with Word documents as a single file. This has the advantage of simplicity. However, there are times when it makes sense to split a document up into more than one file:
This guide explains how to construct a document that is made up of several Word files without using Word’s Master Document “feature”. To avoid confusion with Word’s Master Document terminology, I will call the document that you are trying to produce the container document. The individual documents that it contains are subdocuments. Each subdocument will be a separate file.
Most technical writers do not recommend using Word's Master Document feature. They are highly unstable and can corrupt your work. The method outlined in this guide, while it involves more up-front work, is much more stable. That being said, if you must use Master Documents, follow the guidelines at the end of this guide.
It is very important that all documents that make up your container document:
Use the Developer > Document Templates > Organizer command to ensure that the same template is attached to all of your documents. To be on the safe side, you should use the Organizer to copy the styles from the template into all of your documents.
All documents that you need to work with should be in the same directory.
When working with subdocuments:
Important Note: Never try to edit text in the subdocuments while you are in the container document. It will seem like you can, but you will lose your edits as soon as you update the fields in the document (when you print or switch to Page Preview mode, for example).
Create your headers and footers in the container document. Word does not use the headers and footers in the subdocuments. (This is important, and it will drive you crazy trying to figure out what is going on with your headers and footers unless you know this).
Always open your subdocuments with Word’s File > Open command. Never open the subdocuments from within Windows Explorer. (If you do, Word can lose track of path information, messing up your links inside the documents.)
One downside of this method is that you will have to manually set the page numbering for each subdocument.
You can use chapter-page numbering to get around this. If you do, your Heading 1 numbering should correspond to your chapter numbers. If this isn’t possible, don’t use heading numbering in your document.
Use a SEQ field to insert a chapter number in your document:
{ SEQ Chapter \r1 \h }
in the first file inserts the chapter number of one and hides it. The second chapter would be:
{SEQ Chapter \r2 \h}
or
{ SEQ Chapter \n }
which will put the chapter numbers in sequence automatically in the container document, but not in the individual subdocument if you have to work with it that way.
To put the chapter number as part of the page number, put
{SEQ \c Chapter}
before the page number.
If you are using the Insert > Object > Text from File method to put the subdocuments in the container document, you can use the standard Word TOC and INDEX fields for your table of contents and index.
Otherwise, use RD (Referenced Document) fields to pull in information for a table of contents or index.
{ RD “Chapter 1.doc”}
If you are using chapter-page numbering add \s Chapter to the TOC or Index field code. Do not check the option in the Page Number Format dialog box to include the chapter number. Doing so will result in a duplicate chapter number in the TOC.
For cross-references inside a file, you can use the standard Word command: References > Cross-reference.
Because you cannot edit the subdocuments as part of the container document, you cannot use the References > Cross-reference command for cross-references between files. Any cross-references would be lost as you as you update the INCLUDETEXT field that contains the file’s data.
Instead, you have to create a bookmark at the cross-reference target and use an INCLUDETEXT format where you want the bookmark to appear. The INCLUDETEXT field will have the following form:
{ INCLUDETEXT “B.doc” “Bookmark_name” \! \* Mergeformat }
where B.doc is the target file.
To include a cross-reference that references a page number, you must first include a hidden {PAGE} field on the page that you want to cross-reference in the target file, then create a bookmark of the {PAGE} field. Then use the INCLUDETEXT field method as described above.
A container document may be needed if you have to have a single Word file that contains all of the content; for example, to make it easier for people to print a document. However, it is difficult to maintain and can be unstable.
A simpler approach is to create a file just for the front matter of the document, which would consist of the cover, preface (copyright, approvals, etc.), and table of contents. After the table of contents, use RD fields to pull in the headings and page numbers from the subdocuments.
To control pagination, you can use chapter-page numbering or manually force continuous page numbering using bookmarks and REF fields. Chapter-page numbering is probably simpler in most cases.
With this technique, you will need to override heading numbering for the first Heading 1 paragraph in each file (likely there will be just one).
There is enough evidence that Word's Master Document feature is unstable to make most technical writers avoid it. That being said, if you do want to use it, follow these guidelines rigorously:
If you are using Mozilla Thunderbird for your email in Windows 10 or 11, and you have installed Thunderbird from the Microsoft Store, you may want to look at this article.
I spent about three hours on Saturday trying to find the location of Thunderbird's data files on Nancy's laptop, after I realized that the files in the default location were out-of-date and not being updated. This made no sense as Thunderbird was running perfectly. It also meant that I did not have a current backup of her email, as I had just been putting the standard location in my Free FileSync program and assuming everything was OK.
It turns out that if you install from the Microsoft Store, it puts the data files in a non-standard location. Instead of being in
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird
they are in
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\packages\MozillaThunderbird.MZLA_h5892qc0xkpca\LocalCache\Roaming\Thunderbird
(I think that the .MZLA_h5892qc0xkpca portion of the directory name may vary by machine).
It's been 18 months since I set up Thunderbird on her laptop. I remember having trouble getting it to find the files from the previous PC, which I had copied to the default location. I'm not sure how I got it running in the first place, but I did get the mail from our desktop PC into Thunderbird. I made the mistaken assumption that they were now in the standard profile location, and those were the ones I was backing up.
Incidentally, in this situation, Thunderbird will give you an error message if you try to open the Profiles directory in Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profiles Folder. The error message does show the correct path of the Profiles directory, but it won't open it.
Looking at the AppData\Local\Packages directory containing the Thunderbird files leads me to suspect Windows is using this directory for other programs as well.
Movies and TV shows that Nancy and I watched in February. I do these posts mainly so I can keep track of what we've been watching, so the reviews are cursory.
Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.
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| A model train layout at the Ganarska Railway Modellers show |
We still have snow up here in the Great White North and may get more, though hopefully not another 50 cm. dump like we had a couple of weeks ago. Today's picture was taken with my Pixel 8 Pro.
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| Snow trying to melt |
This week's musical treat is another blast from the past: Steely Dan recorded live at the Rainbow Theatre in London, UK on May 20, 1974. It a very high-quality soundboard recording of the classic band at their performing peak. Although the embed below is from YouTube, there's no video. This is probably the best recording of early Steely Dan that I've heard. Enjoy!
Band personnel:
Time stamps:
When I was working as a technical writer, I had to use Microsoft Word for some large, complex documents. Word has a feature called Master Documents that is supposed to be useful for that situation, but I didn't use it, as Master Documents were notorious for corrupting files and losing your work. (I have heard that some writers used them successfully, but they had complete control over document templates and formatting; that was not the environment in which I was working.)
You would think that given how much Microsoft is pushing OneDrive, that it would be compatible with Master documents, but you'd be wrong.
The feature handles the master and sub-documents moving location well but only if they are local folders on the computer. Assuming all the files are in the one folder (a very wise move), you can move all the files to another folder. Open the Master Document and you can see the sub-document links like this.
Move those document to another folder on the computer and Word will change the links for you.
But watch what happens if we move those same documents to OneDrive (strictly, moved to the \OneDrive\ folders on the local computer). Word completely loses track.
Apparently, it's been this way for a long time and Microsoft hasn't shown any indication that it will be fixed any time soon.
My solution was to create a container document that used REF fields to pull in the subdocuments. It was more work to set up than using the Master Documents feature but reliable as long as I was careful. I did write a guide for our other writers and developers and perhaps I will publish that here as it may be helpful to some.
I've come across yet another newsletter to subscribe to. Given the craven capitulation of the mainstream media to the autocratic regime in the US and the general alt-right trend almost everywhere else, newsletters are becoming the best way of getting untainted news and analysis.
Carole Cadwalladr is a journalist who has been writing for The Guardian and it's magazine, The Observer, for more than 20 years. Sadly, The Guardian seems to be moving rightward and she's losing her position in April. She's decided to start a newsletter and podcast called "How to Survive the Broligarchy", a term she coined in 2024 to describe the fusion of right-wing autocratic government with the new tech industry.
Just after Trump’s re-election in November 2024, I wrote a column headlined ‘How to Survive the Broligarchy’ (reproduced below) and in the three months since, pretty much everything it predicted how now come to pass. This is technoauthoritarianism. It’s tyranny + surveillance tools. It’s the merger of Silicon Valley companies with state power. It’s the ‘broligarchy’, a concept I coined in July last year though I’ve been contemplating it for a lot longer. Since 2016, I’ve followed a thread that led from Brexit to Trump via a shady data company called Cambridge Analytica to expose the profound threat technology poses to democracy. In doing so, I became the target: a weaponized lawsuit and an overwhelming campaign of online abuse silenced and paralysed me for a long time. This - and worse - is what so many others now face. I’m here to tell you that if it comes for you, you can and will survive it.
This week represents a hinge of history. Everything has changed. America and Russia are now allies. Ukraine has been thrown to the dogs. Europe’s security hangs in the balance. On the one hand, there’s nothing any of us can do. On the other, we have to do something. So, here’s what I’m doing. I’m starting a conversation. I’ve recorded the first one - a scrappy pilot - a podcast I’ve called How to Survive the Broligarchy and I’ve re-named the newsletter too. This first conversation (details below) is about how we need a new media built from the ground up to deal with the dangerous new world we’re in. That can only happen, in partnership with you, the reader. The days of top-down command and control are over. Please let’s try and do this together.
I enjoyed the discussion in the podcast and will continue to read and listen to her as they come out.
Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.
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| Model train layout at Ganaraska Railway Modellers show in Port Hope |
Here's another winter picture from by backyard: water barrels and downspout buried under snow. We've had a lot of it recently. I don't expect it to really start melting until mid-March. I took this with my Pixel 8 Pro and converted it to black and white in Google Photos.
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| Buried water barrels |
This week's musical treat is another blast from the past: Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band on July 26th, 1984 filmed at their third show in a run of three at the CNE Grandstand in Toronto, Ontario.
I was at the first of the three concerts on the 23rd and loved every minute of it. This video is of the second set. Checking the setlist online shows that it was almost identical to the show I saw.
Video quality is vintage 1984 and has been remastered so it's watchable and the audio is from a soundboard. Comparing it to the show I saw last November, I'd say the performance is more energetic, but the current E-Street Band is better musically and way more powerful. Either way, you can't go wrong.
Canadians tend to view US politics with a mixture of disdain and apprehension. Disdain because most of us think our system is better and apprehension because what happens in the US can have a big affect on Canada. Right now, we seem to be in the sights of an unhinged leader with no grasp of economics and no respect for international agreements. It's causing quite a stir up here in the Great White North.
So this post is a grab bag of some recent Canadian political commentary with some cultural asides.
First, here's Andrew Coyne from an opinion piece in The Globe and Mail (gift link).
The United States that openly threatens to invade Panama or Denmark – or to annex Canada – has not just stepped outside international law, including the basic Westphalian proscription of attempts to alter borders by force. Neither does a country that launches trade wars on a different country every day, including countries with which it has longstanding free trade treaties, reveal a simple lack of commitment to a rules-based approach to international trade. It is engaged in an all-out assault on both. It has become an outlaw state.
And in this regard, too, it is aligning itself with the dictatorships. That is what dictatorships do. It is intrinsic to their nature. Just as they refuse to be bound by law internally – we are counting down the days to when the Trump administration defies its first court order – so they recognize no law in their dealings with other states. (Or rules of any kind: you’ll have noticed they also cheat at sports. As does Mr. Trump.)
It is not just that the democratic world can no longer count on America. It is that America, under Mr. Trump, is no longer necessarily part of the democratic world: neither fully democratic in its own affairs, nor committed to the welfare of other democracies, but hostile to both. If the international order is to be preserved, then, it will have to be preserved, in part, from the United States. Certainly it will have to be rebuilt without it.
This article from Emmett Macfarlane looks at Canadian federalism and how it's being affected by Trumps antics and the spillover of the MAGA movement into Canada.
Instead, the problems created by federalism are political in nature, and it does not help that our country suffers from a juvenile culture of intergovernmental relations. In short, and to be blunt, our provinces tend to be run by mewling teenagers, who bitterly complain about the exercise of the federal spending power all while routinely demanding more money from the federal government and engaging in buck passing - constantly attempting to shift blame to the feds for problems within their own jurisdiction.
Worse still, the intersection of partisanship/ideology and federalism is a serious detriment in the context of US economic attacks and Trump’s rhetorical assaults on Canadian sovereignty. In short, while none of the premiers like what Trump is doing, some of them have ideological sympathies with Trump and seem entirely ill-equipped to dealing with him.
The recent misadventure of Canada’s 13 premiers visiting the United States to ‘negotiate’ with the White House is illustrative. The trip was a farce; some of the premiers appeared to genuinely believe that Trump, a total chaos agent, is someone who could be negotiated with. They ended up not meeting with either the President or any senior official but with staffers who promised to pass on the message and then snidely tweeted about Canada becoming a 51st state. And it appears the premiers have foolishly been paying a Trump-connected lobbying firm at its rate of $85,000/month for the privilege.
| How Canadians feel about Trump's 51st state idea |
From author and NDP Member of Parliament, we have this.
In Canada, some leaders – the Prime Minister, Premier Furey, and Premier Eby – have been blunt regarding just how deadly and serious the Trump threat is. But despite these unprecedented statements, the political realm keeps dialing itself back to a false normal.
To be fair, there isn't a single political strategist or Comms person with any experience charting our way through these times. Canada hasn't faced a threat this serious since the 1930s. It’s okay to admit that none of us really know what to do now.
But rather than thinking outside the box, political strategists are sticking with the tried and true as if this will get us back to the world that existed before November 5, 2024.
I'm sorry, but the same old won't cut it.
On Wednesday, the CBC Radio One program, The Current, had a segment about how Trump has changed the Canadian electoral landscape. For those who may not be keeping up with Canadian politics, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced his forthcoming resignation, which will likely lead to a federal election after the Liberals choose a new leader in March. Ontario is in the middle of a provincial election campaign with an election coming on Monday with Premier Doug Ford spending a lot of time lobbying US politicians to fight Trump's proposed tariffs.
You can listen to The Current's segment here or read the show's transcript here. This part is from a discussion about Mark Carney, who may be be our next prime minister. (If only the US had a president with as much economic experience, sigh).
MG: Susan, Mark Carney won't say what he'll do in response to the Trump's, the tariffs that Donald Trump is proposing. He has not been elected. He has not led a party. Why is it a good idea for Canadians to gamble on him and for the party to gamble on him with all of those big question marks?
SUSAN SMITH: Well, he's not an unknown quantity. I think the rest of the sentence when he was speaking to Rosie was that I haven't been elected the leader yet, so not my place to insert myself in the negotiations. Look, I think when you elect a leader, he will be speaking about the policies. He's addressed some of the dollar for dollar tariffs that he would take on. But what he has said he is is he is an experienced negotiator. He worked at the Bank of Canada under Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty, and he helped us navigate the economic crisis in 2008 as the governor of the Bank of Canada. Then England, Brexit, managing that. Then the private sector. Pierre Poilievre was elected as an MP when he was 26 years old. He hasn't worked in the real world in financial markets, dealing with the kinds of things and the kinds of global leaders and businesspeople that Canada's going to have to deal with. What we need in this turbulent time with Trump is a steady hand, a calm, a calm manager.
Finally, the idea of Canada becoming the 51st US state has united Canada in a way we haven't seen since at least the Vancouver Olympics. Here are a couple of songs that I've seen recently.
And here's another for you.
