Today's news: CUSMA is On Tilt, Trump's Nelson moments, About the World Cup, Canada Good News, and some interesting reads by Colin Gorrie, Mike Sowden, Howard Yu, and Culture Explorer

CUSMA is On Tilt
US Ambassador Pete Hoekstra told a meeting in Toronto that Canada needs to kowtow to Trump, and here's Tod Maffin's riposte:

youtube.com/shorts/zYk2F... What he said 👇🍁☮️🇨🇦💯

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— This Canadian 🇨🇦💯 (@adeighton.bsky.social) June 11, 2026 at 7:16 PM

Canada isn't fooled:

As the CUSMA talks veer toward failure, we are reminded July 1 is not a cliff. Minister Leblanc is right. July 1 is a glide path to a restored Canadian sovereignty. By failing to trigger a renewal, the current talks will result in a countdown to July 1, 2036 when CUSMA will cease to exist entirely. That gives us - at most - ten years to land somewhere that Canada can be as free, as prosperous and as powerful as possible. We share a continent an authoritarian and predatory nation, and that won’t change anytime soon. I’ve written elsewhere about how CUSMA is a Dead Man Walking. Without a functioning dispute settlement mechanism, it is not free trade. The June 10 statement by President Trump just reminds us the U.S. does not accept us as sovereign equals. He wants us to submit to U.S. dominance, and of course we will never accept this. Of course, the glide path to Canadian sovereignty will be bumpy. We’ll have to deal with gusts of U.S. tariffs as they blow here and there. We’ll have to manage panicky passengers, as some stakeholders weigh their specific interests in a deal with the national interest in sovereign equality. And we will have legitimate debates about the destination we should glide towards. Where do we want to land? Who do we partner with to present the largest possible market of a free and open exchange in goods and services? How do we make sure trade and investment actually brings wealth to Canada and Canadians? How do we structure our economic relationships on a way that reinforces our security and our freedom rather than compete with them? We may have much less than ten years if the wreckage of CUSMA is swept away through an invocation of the six-month termination clause. Whether we discard the scrap metal of CUSMA now or in 2036, it’s important that we not get distracted from the real work. We should continue to negotiate with the U.S., to mitigate the brunt of their attacks. But while we protect our flanks let’s focus our principal energy on guiding our nation’s flight to its new destination. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6yzvz6unV8

- Canadian Sovereignty

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Trump's Nelson moments

 

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Oh, I guess it's all Joe Biden's fault...

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Trump is declaring daily that his war with Iran is over, and Iran is saying, nope

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Update: I checked what’s moving on the Iranian side after Trump’s “wrapped up” deal announcement. Iran has flatly rejected it. The IRGC-linked Tasnim agency says no agreement has been approved at all, and notes that Trump has now announced an imminent deal 38 times in two months, advising that this statement be treated exactly like the previous 37. Fars cited a source saying Iran has not agreed to any memorandum of understanding. Even a senior Israeli official told Channel 12 they are “not aware of any agreement being reached,” per N12. So who knows. The man has a documented habit of announcing things that exist only in his own head, and Tehran is now openly keeping score. When your negotiating partner’s state media maintains a running tally of your imaginary breakthroughs, the deal is not “pretty much all wrapped up.” It is announcement number 38, pending number 39. Stay informed, follow @Gandalv

- Gandalv

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One thing that should be very clear now, is that every one of Trump's claims in the last two months that an agreement with Iran was close, imminent, just around the corner, and that Iran had been militarily defeated and desperate for a deal....was made up. All were lies, every one.

- Phillips P. OBrien

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About the World Cup
I don't plan to keep up with the World Cup results, because the entire event is just too big to deal with. So if you want check the standings and matches, click here for the 2026 FIFA World Cup Wikipedia page and Canada's group page is World Cup Group B. 

But I've already seen some interesting comments and posts about the World Cup, so I plan to post these occasionally.

The World Cup has started and everybody is grumpy

Just put on the FOX World Cup coverage and it was so offputting that I went to the Telemundo broadcast in like 15 seconds, would rather understand 10% of what’s being said than get irritated by 100% of it

— Rodger Sherman (@rodger.bsky.social) June 11, 2026 at 12:31 PM

Booing the American flag at the World Cup Opening Ceremony was sad but not unexpected.

But the Scots in Boston are happy to be on this side of the pond.

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From Vancouver

If you wanted Vancouver’s all-in approach to the World Cup to succeed I think you’re pretty happy today. Aside from the inevitable fiasco of the amphitheatre being half full because of $100 tickets, the watch parties were packed, the energy was high, and the city’s diversity really shined through.

— Justin McElroy 🇨🇦 (@jmcelroy.bsky.social) June 11, 2026 at 10:44 PM

Tomorrow you’ve got the first Canada game and the day after you get the first home game, so the real test on whether the hype can be sustained will come next Sunday-Wednesday next week. But you get 10,000-20,000 different fans heading out each day to cheer their favourite country, and it can work.

— Justin McElroy 🇨🇦 (@jmcelroy.bsky.social) June 11, 2026 at 10:51 PM

Canada Good News

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I'm not exactly sure how the age limitation will work in practice, but otherwise I hope this is going to be a good bill

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— The Globe and Mail (@theglobeandmail.com) June 11, 2026 at 6:47 PM

One of the problems with how we do digital policy in Canada is we pass laws based on what sounds good (protect children! protect privacy! make big tech pay for links!) without understanding the implications of these laws or how they’re all supposed to fit together

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— Luke LeBrun (@lukelebrun.ca) June 11, 2026 at 6:10 PM

This strategy is going to be worthwhile, I think.

PM Carney just dropped a multi-billion dollar national food strategy to put more local produce on Canadian tables and drive down grocery prices. More choice. Lower costs. Made-in-Canada solutions. 🇨🇦🍁🍁🍁 #Canada #MarkCarney #USDemocracy #Pinks www.ctvnews.ca/politics/art...

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— Marie 🇨🇦 🐸 (@pawbaby2.bsky.social) June 11, 2026 at 3:26 PM

Today, Prime Minister Mark Carney introduced Canada's first-ever National Food Security Strategy. Backed by more than $3 billion over 10 years, here is what it does and who it helps. Breaking the grip of the Big Five Five companies -- Loblaws, Sobeys, Metro, Costco, and Walmart -- control 75% of Canada's grocery market. That level of concentration drives prices up and keeps independent grocers from competing effectively. The centrepiece of the new strategy is $1 billion in food infrastructure: new terminals and distribution hubs specifically designed to let independent grocers buy directly from Canadian farmers and processors, bypassing the big chains entirely. The goal is to inject real competition into a market that has had very little. Direct relief for Canadians right now The strategy also includes immediate financial help. A family of four receives up to $1,890 this year through the new Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit, and roughly $1,400 annually for the next four years. Single Canadians receive up to $950 this year. More than 12 million Canadians are eligible. Building domestic food capacity The strategy addresses why Canada imports so much food it could grow itself. Immediate tax expensing for new greenhouse construction will boost domestic production of fresh fruits and vegetables. Support for small and medium food processors will help them modernize and compete. And $20 million goes directly to food banks and community food organizations through the Local Food Infrastructure Fund. The bigger picture As Carney put it: "A country that can't feed itself or fuel itself or defend itself isn't truly sovereign." This strategy is partly about affordability and partly about resilience -- reducing Canada's dependence on foreign supply chains that global disruptions and trade tensions have shown to be fragile. It is an ambitious plan. The real test will be implementation, and Canadians will be watching.

- Glen Lancaster 🇨🇦

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Interesting Reads

Some days I find fascinating pieces that don't relate to politics at all. Or mostly not.

On his Dead Language Society substack, linguist Colin Gorrie talks about the beginning and maybe the end, of Modern English:

...While in previous centuries the written word had a standard of its own, which was rather distant from the spoken language, the 20th century brought in a norm of writing more like we speak. Of course, we don’t write exactly like we speak, even now. But that’s a topic for another day.
These differences may lead you to the conclusion that the 20th century beginning sometime between 1900 and 1950 marks a new phase in the history of the English language.
I’m not entirely convinced. I think we’ll only know the true importance of the changes of the 20th century after we’ve had another century to digest them.
There’s a quotation attributed to Chinese statesman Zhou Enlai, who, when asked by Henry Kissinger about the impact of the French Revolution — which had occurred almost two centuries prior to this conversation — is reported to have said, “It is too soon to tell.”
I feel that way about the changes the English language has undergone in the twentieth century. For now, I’m going to say the same thing the monk in Peterborough would have said. We’re speaking the same language today that we spoke 200 years ago. It’s all English, or, Modern English, in our case. We just speak it a little differently now.
But ask me again after another 200 years.

At Everything is Amazing, Mike Sowden ponders whether AI is improving writing or butchering it, and he relates some of his questions to Ursula K Le Guin's Earthsea series. He ends this way:

...I’d love to ask Le Guin herself, but that time is long passed - and hey, maybe she wouldn’t quite know either. The entire Earthsea cycle took her 33 years to write - and as magnificently coherent as it is, it also reads to me like someone thinking through their big themes as they go, which Le Guin herself confirmed here:

“What I’d been doing as a writer was being a woman pretending to think like a man … I had to rethink my entire approach to writing fiction … it was important to think about privilege and power and domination, in terms of gender, which was something science fiction and fantasy had not done… All I changed is the point of view. All of a sudden we are seeing Earthsea … from the point of view of the powerless.”

Isn’t that one of the joys of reading someone’s work, to have the immense privilege of going on that journey of discovery with them, in that illusory “real-time” that good storytelling creates?
An AI summary, on the other hand - well, it’ll summarise. It’ll collapse the boundless wave-function of all that time-won knowledge and experience down into one deafeningly hard answer - with all the self-assured confidence of someone (some-thing) knowing that if they’re wrong, hey, they can just apologise for it later, no harm done!
This will also happen instantly: THUD. Behold the answer! With our help, you’ll never have to sit with the actual question at all. Oh, how efficient that’ll make everything. Information gaps? Pah, who needs ‘em? The thrill of discovery? Yawn, life’s too short, let’s optimise that shit away. What do you mean you’re “undecided”? Can’t you read?
(An AI Overview will also never reply with, “Sorry! No idea really - philosophers have been chewing that one over for at least 2,000 years. Any answer I give would be reductive, misleading and painfully dumb in a way I’m incapable of recognising [see: Mastroianni, 2026], so your best bet is just to go out and try a bunch of stuff for yourself. Best of luck!”)
Anyway, as you may have already gathered, I find a lot of AI discussion tremendously un-fun - and it’s also happening whether I like it or not. So if you don’t mind, I’ll just raise my own shields and get back to writing in the way I’ve done for the last 5 years, about all the sciencey things that recently made me go wow - at least until a better idea comes along.
Hope that’s okay with you?

In One Inch Ahead, business consultant Howard Yu says Your Next Customer Is A Machine:

Sometime last fall, in a cafe near the Bund in Shanghai, a woman picked up her phone. She did not open an app, nor did she scroll, read the reviews, compare restaurants, or check the delivery time. Instead, she spoke the following nine words: “Order my usual lunch; deliver it 20 minutes later.”
The phone paused for about three seconds. An agent named Xiaomei, built by Meituan, China’s largest food-delivery super app, read the word “usual.” It knew the restaurant where the woman always ordered her food and the delivery window that she normally wanted. It applied her preferences, paid for her, tracked the driver, and pushed the arrival back by exactly 20 minutes, because that was what she had asked for. She never clicked. She had no reason to check. Of course it would come. It always did.
That convenience is the end of the internet as we have known it....

And finally, Culture Explorer talks about The Moby Dick Most People Never Read

The modern school habit of cutting Moby-Dick teaches students the wrong lesson before they even meet the whale. It tells them that difficult books must be made manageable before they deserve serious attention. It tells them that the strange parts of a classic are secondary to the famous parts and that the purpose of reading is to extract a theme, name a symbol, write an essay, and move on.
That approach may produce cleaner lesson plans. It does not produce enlightened readers.
Moby-Dick has been reduced in many classrooms to a shorthand: Ahab, obsession, the white whale, the chase, and the final disaster. That version supplies conflict, character, symbolism, and a memorable ending. However, it removes the experience that makes Melville’s novel necessary.
The book contains 135 chapters. The plot about Ahab and the whale occupies only part of it. Around that plot Melville places sermons, jokes, stage directions, whale anatomy, legal arguments, labor scenes, racial encounters, biblical echoes, old travel writing, commercial statistics, and sustained attempts to classify a creature that keeps defeating classification.
Modern schooling often treats this abundance as an obstacle. It should treat the abundance as the point....