Thursday, July 03, 2025

Some good reads: from Paul Wells, David Legree, Adam Olsen, Stephen Marche, Jim Coyle plus a Poilievre catchup and a vanishing Lego Homer

Just to entertain everybody while we wait for the apocalypse, here are some recent articles I liked: 
From Paul Wells' Substack:

I wrote about a national competition for Canadian portrait art that’s been going for 20 years, about the new book that tells its story, and about top-down versus bottom-up cultural policy. Story features spectacular illustrations.

- Paul Wells

Read on Substack

From David Legree at IPolitics:

New from me: An exclusive interview with David Suzuki, who talked about reaching the conclusion that humanity has failed in the fight against climate change, and why communities should start preparing for more destructive natural disasters #cdnpoli #cdnenviro www.ipolitics.ca/2025/07/02/i...

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— Davis Legree (@davislegree.bsky.social) July 2, 2025 at 12:55 PM

The narrative around First Nations being not ready to govern themselves is a paternal tactic used to delay, avoid recognition and blur the reality that the Crown maintains a tight grip on power and control, writes @adamolsen.bsky.social. #cdnpoli

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— The Tyee (@thetyee.ca) July 2, 2025 at 10:35 AM
From Stephen Marche at the Atlantic:

“Now Canada is increasing its defense spending and re-arming with Europe, not America. Trump didn’t give us much choice. In March, he announced the next generation of American fighter jets, which Canada has long purchased, by noting that he would sell an inferior version to other countries: “We like to tone them down about 10 percent, which probably makes sense because someday maybe they’re not our allies, right?” The idea that the American military would turn against Canada once seemed absurd. But the absurd has become almost predictable at this point. If the U.S. Marines are coming for American citizens, surely they could come for Canada too.” https://archive.ph/2025.07.02-114500/https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/07/canada-day-nationalism-trump/683373/

- Punk Rock Pixie

Read on Substack

From Jim Coyle at The Toronto Star (gift link): And here's a quick catch up with Poilievre's election campaign:
View on Threads
View on Threads

And a Vanishing Lego Homer
Finally, if you ever wanted your very own "Homer vanishing into the bushes" there is now a Lego kit:

4 comments:

Chuckstraight said...

I tend to agree with Suzuki. Hunker down.

Purple library guy said...

I think we should be clear though that "We can no longer avoid devastating effects from climate change" is not the same as "What we do no longer matters". It can still get plenty worse than what's already baked in.

Luckily, while we in North America are doing jack, the Europeans are acting fairly solidly, and the world's largest industrial economy by far (China) is pushing hard, and will sell its solutions to most of the world. Even if we continue messing up, North America will in the end be forced to the energy transition as the rest of the world leaves us behind. We will see bad outcomes, but we will not see the worst outcome.

e.a.f. said...

I remember him from. days at UBC when I was 19 back in the late 1960s. He is the smartest person I have ever heard and met. His ability to come up with a one sentence response to a comment by a friend of mine, sure gave every one pause for thought. It was on genetics. He has this ability to get to a point in a sentence or two and really that would all you had to hear to know what his point was. I still remember where we were sitting in the Ed. lounge and where he was standing. Most people who are young will only know him from being older, but at that time he was young, brilliant, and very good looking. He has contributed so much to this world and how we view it.

e.a.f. said...

and I agree with Chuckstraight. Even if governments and others aren't going to pay attention or care we can take care of ourselves and figure out what is going to be best for us.
Europeans are dealing with the issues because its not that large of a space for the population, which is growing constantly. Europeans have had war going back centuries and WW I and II. They can see how bad it can get when the enviornment is ruined. Climate change is just another war.
China has had disruptions to their society from civil wars to starvations, floods, upheavales. Xi and the government aren't looking down the road for the next 30 minutes, he is looking down the road for a century or more
We in North American have always had a great deal of land. If things went south, we just moved to new land but that isn't possible any more. For the type of life style maga and others talk about the U.S.A. would have to reduce the population by about a 100 million. I do think that is the long term goal of maga. To live the way they want people need to go and people need to stop coming. Miller and trump are simply taking a page from Himmler's play book.