Good reads about big events: Carney and the Premiers; Election post-mortem; Ukraine Spider's Web; the GIGO of AI

Carney and the Premiers 

Complete press conference is here and the communique is here.

“We’re united, we’re going to build together, and we’re going to build for all—we’re going to build for all Canadians. That’s what came out of this meeting,” says PM Carney at a news conference in Saskatoon following his meeting with provincial and territorial premiers.#cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/LceAqXCHWi

— CPAC (@CPAC_TV) June 2, 2025

I've never seen such an upbeat, unified, First Minister presser in my life. PM Carney might be a magician. Lots of work to do, but he seems to have put all oars in the water, prepared to paddle hard upstream. Even Smith sounds only slightly boorish and small. #cdnpoli

— Steve Valeriote (@stevev68.bsky.social) June 2, 2025 at 3:58 PM

The premiers and I want to make Canada a global energy superpower and build the strongest economy in the G7.   We’re working together to break down trade barriers across the country and get big, nation-building projects off the ground faster.

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— Mark Carney (@mark-carney.bsky.social) June 2, 2025 at 2:42 PM

Laura Stone and Nojoud Al Mallees / The Globe and Mail (gift link)

Carney lays out federal criteria for fast-tracking infrastructure projects
Prime Minister Mark Carney released his government’s criteria for fast-tracking major infrastructure projects after a meeting with premiers on Monday, with a focus on proposals that could create a more independent economy and that have buy-in from Indigenous communities.
Mr. Carney’s government is promising two-year approvals for a range of projects that could include critical mineral corridors, ports, nuclear energy projects and pipelines. He has argued such projects are needed to boost Canada’s economy while also making it less reliant on the United States – a dominant theme of Mr. Carney’s election platform that was emphasized in last week’s Throne Speech....
“The point is to build the certainty, the stability and the ambition that builders need to catalyze enormous investment, investment to make Canada into an energy superpower and to build the strongest economy in the G7,” Mr. Carney said.
The criteria he outlined for projects include strengthening the economy, offering economic benefits, having a high likelihood of successful execution, being a high priority for Indigenous leaders and potentially contributing to clean growth...

Election post-mortem 

This is an excellent series. 

Althia Raj / Toronto Star (gift links)

Trudeau was done, Carney was new, but Poilievre made a critical mistake. Here’s how the Conservatives set themselves up to fail
The Star’s Althia Raj explores how mistakes and missed opportunities saw a near-certain victory slip from the Conservatives’ grasp.
Trump made Poilievre’s path to the Prime Minister’s Office more difficult, in part, because Poilievre had tried to emulate some of Trump’s political strategy. His aggressive and irreverent language, the demonizing of political opponents, the dismissive nicknames, the spreading of misinformation, the culture wars, conspiracy theories, attacks against the mainstream media — even Poilievre’s rallies recalled Trump’s events.

Donald Trump turned Canada’s predictable election into a chaotic race. Behind the scenes, Pierre Poilievre was struggling to adapt
Part two of Althia Raj’s three-part series details how Trump’s tariff threats dominated the campaign, how Carney emerged as the election front-runner, and Poilievre’s scramble to redefine his message.
Some Liberals felt they had to play catch-up in a race the Conservatives had started running years ago. “They’ve done a really good job convincing a lot of diaspora communities that they are Conservatives, and that crime is the number-one ballot box issue,” said a GTA incumbent.
It was a race they were bound to lose.
“There’s not a lot you can do in a 30-day campaign to fix two or three years of non-stop Conservative attacks on immigration, on public safety,” explained the Carney organizer.

We talked to 106 political insiders. Here’s why Pierre Poilievre lost his seat and Mark Carney couldn’t land a majority in Canada’s surprising election
As the last days of the campaign approached, the outcome of the election was far from certain. The final part of this three-part series by the Star’s Althia Raj unpacks what both parties got wrong — and what comes next for both Carney and Poilievre.
The 2025 election marked the end of a campaign with multiple storylines.
It was a campaign that Trudeau had hoped to run — that he’ll never know if he could have won.
It is the story of a Liberal party coming back from the brink — from a likely third- or fourth-place finish — to a fourth term in government.
It was an election that Conservatives won on the issues but lost before it started.
And it was the story of two men who each dreamed decades ago of becoming Canada’s prime minister, whose fortunes were in no small part determined by a foreign adversary no one saw coming.

Yes, I can accept most of what Raj wrote. Here in the West, I didn't know as much about Liberal weakness in the Golden Horseshoe (the Ontario ridings around Toronto) but the negativity toward the Liberals had been so intense here, for so long, that it didn't surprise me when they didn't get the Prairie seats they had wanted. After the surge at the Advance Polls, I think the relentless negativity from Poilievre, the Cons and much of the TV media did succeed in making the country a little less certain about Carney as the election loomed. 

All in all, I think the six months from November 2024 to April 2025 will be seen as one of the strangest, most convoluted, but also most consequential times in Canadian history.  

Ukraine Spider's Web

And speaking of consequential....

Phillips P. O'Brien

Weekend Update#135 (Update): The Ukrainians Just Pulled Off The Most Successful Operation Of The War
...The Ukrainians have just shown what enormous damage can be done by a (relatively cheap) drone swarm released close to a base. That has to be terribly worrying to every country in Europe and North America.
Most importantly, however, I would argue that this operation shows the value of ranged strike and reinforces the point that Ukraine can win the war is properly supported. The Russian military remains a very beatable, in some ways shoddy instrument. Ukraine has just hammered it using simple weapons, relatively speaking. If we armed Ukraine to take on Russia at range in a real and fulsome way—the Russian military would be in for a very rough time.
Just first impressions, but I think we have witnessed the most impressive operation of the war so far.

Wayne Horton

Operation Spider’s Web: The Raid That Shook Russia
A story of sabotage, strategy, and what it means when Russia’s bombers burn.
...On the morning of June 1, 2025, something extraordinary happened.
Ukraine launched a coordinated, long-range drone strike that burned through Russia’s airpower and its sense of impunity in one night. Strategic bombers were hit at multiple airbases, at virtually the same time. At least 40 Russian aircraft were reportedly damaged or destroyed—including Tu-95s, Tu-22M3s, and possibly an A-50 airborne radar plane. The attack was launched not from Ukrainian territory, but from inside Russia’s own borders.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) spent over 18 months preparing what it called Operation Spider’s Web. The mission: infiltrate Russian territory, position disguised drone launchers, and coordinate the most daring sabotage operation of the war.
This wasn’t just a tactical win. It was a strategic, psychological, and doctrinal shift. It showed that Russia’s long-range bombers are vulnerable. That distance is no longer defense. And that a plywood shed and a gamepad can now take out a billion-ruble aircraft.
Part I: The Sting
What happened, and why it mattered more than most realized.
Part II: The Bait
How Ukrainian operatives smuggled drones, hid them in plain sight, and launched a long range attack within a short distance from their Russian targets.
Part III: The Bite
What was destroyed, and how the math of the war just changed.
Part IV: The Web Tightens
Russia’s scrambled response and the propaganda spiral that followed.
Part V: The Reckoning
What this operation means for the future of the war, diplomacy, and airpower.

An excerpt from Horton's last article:

 ...The effect of the strike on diplomacy is still unclear. Some analysts believe it strengthened Ukraine’s position—proof that Kyiv can fight and negotiate at the same time. Others fear it hardened Russian resolve. But one thing is certain: the illusion of Russian invulnerability is gone.
If Ukraine can strike anywhere, then the old military math—range, deterrence, distance—starts to fall apart. And so does the diplomatic leverage that comes with it.
Western officials avoided comment, but military analysts did not. The operation was widely praised as a landmark in asymmetric warfare. It was precise. It was proportionate. It avoided civilian targets. And it was executed entirely with Ukraine’s own resources.
One former NATO commander called it "a masterclass in high-risk, low-cost strategic disruption."
The fact that it worked—and worked at such distance—will reshape doctrine. Not just in Ukraine. Across Europe.
...Russia now faces a choice. It can escalate—risking more loss, more exposure, and possibly more humiliation. Or it can negotiate, knowing Ukraine has both reach and resilience.
Ukraine, for its part, has announced that this is just the beginning. More strikes may come. More risks may be taken. And if diplomacy fails, Spider’s Web may only be the first tug on the thread.
This wasn’t just an attack. It was a reckoning...

The Garbage In-Garbage Out of AI
This is one of those funny-oddball stories, but it seems like AI is turning into "Lord of the Flies"

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / The Register

Some signs of AI model collapse begin to reveal themselves
Prediction: General-purpose AI could start getting worse
...Ordinary search has gone to the dogs. Maybe as Google goes gaga for AI, its search engine will get better again, but I doubt it. In just the last few months, I've noticed that AI-enabled search, too, has been getting crappier.
...Welcome to Garbage In/Garbage Out (GIGO). Formally, in AI circles, this is known as AI model collapse. In an AI model collapse, AI systems, which are trained on their own outputs, gradually lose accuracy, diversity, and reliability. This occurs because errors compound across successive model generations, leading to distorted data distributions and "irreversible defects" in performance. The final result? A Nature 2024 paper stated, "The model becomes poisoned with its own projection of reality."
,,,For all the crap about how AI will encourage us to spend more time doing better work, the truth is AI users write fake papers including bullshit results. This ranges from your kid's high school report to fake scientific research documents to the infamous Chicago Sun-Times best of summer feature, which included forthcoming novels that don't exist.
...Some researchers argue that collapse can be mitigated by mixing synthetic data with fresh human-generated content. What a cute idea. Where is that human-generated content going to come from?
Given a choice between good content that requires real work and study to produce and AI slop, I know what most people will do. It's not just some kid wanting a B on their book report of John Steinbeck's The Pearl; it's businesses eager, they claim, to gain operational efficiency, but really wanting to fire employees to increase profits.
Quality? Please. Get real.
We're going to invest more and more in AI, right up to the point that model collapse hits hard and AI answers are so bad even a brain-dead CEO can't ignore it....

And here is a satirical look at one of those CEOs:
Amanda Bachman / McSweeney's Internet Tendency

A Company Reminder for Everyone to Talk Nicely About the Giant Plagiarism Machine
Hey team. It’s your CEO. I know your time is valuable, so I’ll cut right to the chase: It’s come to my attention that some of you have been bad-mouthing the Giant Plagiarism Machine™.
I’d like to remind you that our company policy is pro–Plagiarism Machine™. We’re a tech-forward, future-oriented company that doesn’t shy away from the promise of new innovation—even if that innovation is a Giant Plagiarism Machine™ that copy-pastes existing innovation into fake sentient sentences.
Lately, it feels like some of you aren’t the techno-optimists I took you to be. You’ve been heard uttering slurs like “I’m worried about my job stability” and “I just don’t think it’s positive for humankind,” neither of which sounds remotely optimistic or techno. I’ve even heard shocking reports of teams failing to incorporate plagiarism into their processes, because—I can’t believe I have to repeat this—“it’s not helpful.”
Team, hear me when I say that this is harassment, and it must end...