This week's musical treat is from Girma Woldemichael, an Ethiopian-Canadian saxophonist living in Toronto. I was completely unfamiliar with him or his music until hearing an interview with him on CBC radio. His music synthesizes African elements with jazz, and funk and I quite like it. Nafqóté is his most recent album. You can find several more on YouTube Music.
Recently, I read an article by Charlie Angus: What Keeps Me Up at Night.
In it he says:
We are like the three little pigs hanging out in a straw house.
The war in Iran, climate fires across North America and Europe, the political chaos of Trump — would be a serious test of global resilience at the best of times. But now these issues are beginning to lay across each other like terrible ley lines.
So let me lay out four areas where global leaders have left us dangerously vulnerable.
He goes on to discuss four areas of vulnerability in more detail.
An analysis published Wednesday by the United Nations’ World Food Programme shows that the strengthening El Niño is on track to significantly worsen food insecurity in some of the world’s most vulnerable countries. The record-strong El Niño that occurred between 2015 and 2016 impacted the food security of 60 million to 100 million people, and WFP’s preliminary analysis shows that the 2026-2027 El Niño could push at least 49 million more people into acute food insecurity by the end of 2027.“El Niño is a massive threat to the food security of millions who are already vulnerable,” Carl Skau, WFP’s acting executive director, said in a statement. “The sooner we help families to prepare for these climate shocks, the greater our ability to save lives and protect livelihoods.”
A polycrisis is a situation where many different and separate crises happen at the same time. These problems mix and make each other worse. The total damage is much bigger than just adding the problems together.
Key Features of a Polycrisis
- Simultaneous timing: Multiple major shocks happen right next to each other or overlap.
- Interconnection: Systems like the economy, the environment, and politics link together. A failure in one area feeds into another.
- Amplification: Fixing one problem can accidentally make another problem worse.
- Overwhelm: Governments and leaders struggle to handle everything at once
Things were bad enough before the current and burgeoning El Nino and the multiple economic and political crises caused by Trump's abysmally stupid attack on Iran.
But now? There's another term for the situation we find ourselves now, coined by writer William Gibson in his wonderful novel, The Peripheral. The Jackpot. I hope I'm wrong about that, but I am very afraid that I'm not.
The winners of the 2026 Aurora Awards for the best Canadian science fiction and fantasy were announced last weekend.
These are the fiction winners.
Last week, I had to be up in North Toronto so I took a ride on the new Eglinton LRT. I got off the bus on the southeast corner of Avenue Road and Eglinton but had to cross to the northwest corner to get to the LRT station.
I was surprised at how deep it is, nine flights of stairs or five escalators to the platform level. The train cars are more like streetcars than subway cars. I didn't think the layout and seating made good use of the space and the doors are very narrow. The cars are also noise in the tunnel than the subway. It was half full at around 2:00 p.m. which is a good sign.
I got off at Eglinton and took the elevator up to the subway level. If you do that, make sure you go two stops up to the upper concourse. (I mistakenly got off first on the lower concourse.) I don't know why there is a lower concourse as it doesn't seem to go anywhere.
It's unfortunate that Metrolinx didn't run the line the extra mile to Eglinton GO station instead of ending it at Kennedy. That would have made an easy connection for anyone coming in from the east and wanting to take the LRT to midtown. As it is, I probably won't be using the line much.
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| First and second sets of nine escalators |
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| The platform at Avenue Road station |
This week's photo is of the marina at the foot of Liverpool Road. I should have taken a picture of the excellent ice cream cone I had just before taking this picture. Taken with my Pixel 8 Pro and unedited.
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| The marina at sunset. |
I recently broke down and subscribed to YouTube Premium because the ads were getting too annoying. A subscription to YouTube Music Premium was also included, and I've been browsing through the music library. So today, here are three recent albums of Philip Glass's music and one special treat. (YouTube Music doesn't allow embeds so I'm just providing links to the albums).
Short reviews of movies and TV shows I watched in July.
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| Boats on the bay |
It's time for another compilation of articles about the continuing frosty relationship between Canada and the US. At least the Gordie Howe bridge is finally open and the wildfire smoke has abated somehat, here at least.
Trump’s New Tariffs Are Designed to Tear Canada Apart. "Washington can now reward some provinces and punish others. The political danger may be considerable."
Lessons We've Learned from Gordie Howe - Elbows Up and Beyond. "his new Canadian built and paid for Gordie Howe Bridge celebrates a Canadian icon who played all his hockey for American teams but was always one of ours."
As Wildfires Ravage Canada, A Trump Puppet From Michigan Is Now Threatening Canada To "Stop The Smoke" Or Else. LOL. "Toronto has the worst air on Earth this week. The north is burning, people are fleeing their homes by boat, and a Congressman from Michigan thinks the problem is that Canada won’t rake its forest."
Mark Carney won’t let Donald Trump see him sweat, but it comes at a cost (gift link). "Watch Mark Carney, not long ago thought to be a political novice, work a press scrum. We’re now used to the half-beat pause before the prime minister answers, the banker’s habit of restating the question in duller language, draining it of drama, and the refusal, almost physical, to take the bait. That composure can come across as a personality quirk but it’s more likely a construction. This week, a remarkable two-part Wall Street Journal (WSJ) investigation shows us what it was built to withstand."
Canada is taking an outsized role in the construction of the post-American world. "Mr. Carney is a continentalist, too – he just has a different continent in mind. But his ardent pursuit of the European connection is in the same counter-balancing mould, not only of Liberal leaders past, but of statesmen through the ages: calling the Old World back into our existence, to redress the balance of the New."
Trump's Threat to Canada is Deadly Serious. "A new report in the Daily Beast has revealed just how far the White House is willing to go to upend international law and to attack allies."
Midwestern Republicans blame Canada, level threats for drifting wildfire smoke. "'FINAL WARNING TO CANADA: Manage your forests to prevent these fires. American lungs are paying the price for Canadian inaction, year after year,' wrote a Michigan congressman running for governor."
Why this Toronto man is being flooded with requests from Americans about their Canadian ancestors (gift link). "The Canadian Citizenship Act has opened doors to foreign nationals who want to reclaim citizenship by descent. Archivists are suddenly in demand."
Why This Might Actually Be The Beginning Of The End In Moscow
Here’s the historical part, and I want to be careful: nobody can predict the end of a regime, and Putin has survived plenty. But Russian regimes don’t fall to elections. They fall to lost wars. The Russo-Japanese War gave you the 1905 revolution. World War I ended the Romanovs. Afghanistan helped bury the Soviet Union. The pattern is losing a war while the economy collapses and the elites lose faith — and check the scoreboard: growth stagnant at 1 percent, the deficit doubled, Putin reportedly passing the hat to oligarchs for “donations,” fuel rationing for 50 million people, an army losing more men than it can recruit, and Sberbank’s own CEO, German Gref, telling shareholders in June that nobody in Russia cares about anything except ending the war as fast as possible.That’s the head of Russia’s biggest bank saying the quiet part into a microphone. When the money men start talking like that in public, it’s because they’ve already said worse in private.
It's a bit loose as a prediction, but I think the intent is clear. Let's check on this one on October 31.
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| CJ in a box |
This week's musical treat is a new album from none other than The Rolling Stones: Foreign Tongues. It's a good one, as the last couple of their albums have been. It's not Exile on Main Street but it's a pretty decent effort for a group of 80-year-olds. Play it loud.
This is part of a series of posts to feature articles that make verifiable predictions. My intent is to review them at a later date to see how accurate they were.
Today's post references an article by Dean Blundell published on July 21: Trump Just Declared Economic War on Canada. Again, and Mark Carney Just Eviscerated Him For It. "He did it on a Monday. Of course he did it on a Monday. Set your TACO timer for 30 days."
At the end of the article, he says:
Here’s the punchline, and you already know it: these tariffs don’t take effect for 30 days.
Thirty days. The standard Trump escalation window. The exact runway he always builds himself so he can strut, threaten, watch the markets gag, watch American consumers scream about prices, watch the lawsuits pile up — Section 338 is going to get shredded in court, just like the Supreme Court already shredded his emergency tariffs in February — and then “graciously” announce a pause, a deal, a framework, a beautiful letter from Mark. Trump Always Chickens Out. He did it after “Liberation Day” cratered the markets. He does it every single time the bill comes due.
Review on August 21.
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| Sail boat on the bay |
Today's photo is of a yucca growing in our front yard. We had a brief thunderstorm yesterday afternoon and after the sun had come out, the rain drops were glowing like diamonds on the top of the yucca. Taken with my Pixel 8 Pro.
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| Raindrops on the yucca |
