Generally Recognized As True

Canada-US trade, oil prices, and the minimum wage

2025-10-18T12:23:00.002-04:00

Two things that seem to have been dropped from the conversation about how Canada's economy will fare as it tries to disentangle itself from the US.

First of all, I don't think it will disentangle itself. Geography is powerful, and our supply lines and habitation patterns are oriented toward trade with the US. Changing those things just to enable the same level of output as what we already had before does not seem like the "investment" we're told is forthcoming from the next federal budget (see: green transformation for another thing that did not make sense for the same reason, absent artificial taxes on the "non-green").

So, PM Mark Carney is doing the right thing in the way he is handling the US trade negotiations - preserve what we can, and reach out to other countries to backfill some of the trade losses where possible as a mitigation strategy (but not a trade replacement strategy).

But, what's not being talked about what should be, at least in the places I am looking?

Oil prices. They have dropped significantly in the past year, yet rather than talking about how we can put cheap energy to use to increase our value-add (which is what the US, EU, and Russia see when they see cheap energy) we seem to be focused on investing in how we can ship it offshore. Energy prices are a moving target, so you need to have a long-term vision, but it's been an ongoing issue in Canada that we are far more oriented toward shipping commodities offshore than we are with turning those commodities into things that are more valuable - adding value and economic capacity - and using plentiful energy as an accelerator in the endeavour.
Minimum wage. The EU and the US have low-wage districts that provide them with flexibility. In the EU it is Eastern Europe; in the US it is the southern states. Canada has no such districts anymore - all provincial minimum wages are in a narrow band of agreement - which essentially means it's illegal to hire people in Canada if the business you're running is labour-intensive and can't support the minimum wage as a result. The EU and US have the option to grow the economy by having lower-value work done domestically in those places where it's allowed by the minimum wage. There used to be regular discussion about minimum wage when it was poised to increase but that seems to have gone away, despite being important.

I'm interested to know how much #2 plays a part in the difficulty that so many Canadian students and citizens are having finding entry level jobs, tied to the concern that temporary workers and international students seem to have taken so many of those jobs. Perhaps the minimum wage is so high that unconventional deals (illegal wages, kickbacks, pay-to-work, etc) are in play in those positions because the business requires lower wages to persist. Just speculation, of course, but it's based on real hearsay.

Sweating to the oldies (some thoughts on music from the 1990s)

2025-08-07T19:31:00.009-04:00

Hi, blog! I thought you were dead.

The reason I'm getting in touch is that I've had some thoughts coalescing around the topic of music from the 1990s, which were my high school years.

The capstone that made me think about writing this was a Mary Chapin Carpenter (MCC) concert that I went to last night at Massey Hall. It was actually a joint concert between Brandy Clark (who I know more as a songwriter than a singer) and Ms. Carpenter. They shared about equal solo stage time with one set following the other and some songs together at the end. Very good concert, and amazingly (at the request of the artists) hardly anyone had their phones out. I can't remember the last time that happened.

But that's not my point.

Although I was aware of her and consider MCC an artist of the 1990s, I didn't start listening to her until later in her career, after she'd left the more country-pop sound behind and moved on to singer-songwriter folk. It was around the time of the "Ashes and Roses" album, and I moved into her back catalogue after that. I knew people that listened to her but her original sound didn't (and still doesn't) appeal to me. I have not listened much to her earlier albums and prefer those songs interpreted through the lens of the her current style, which she's done on a couple of albums.

Case in point: my favourite songs of her are aligned with "Mrs. Hemingway", "Sometimes Just the Sky", or "Chasing What's Already Gone" rather than songs like the earlier "Down at the Twist and Shout" that a lot of the concert crowd went nuts for.

And, Brandy Clark? I briefly listened to country-pop artists like Collin Raye, Deana Carter, Kenny Chesney, and a few others back in the 90s, before getting myself back on the straight and narrow. So, I'm not a big country-pop listener but I still have a few select "likes" from the genre whose new music I always listen to and often buy, such as Kacey Musgraves (for/with (?) whom Brandy Clark has written numerous songs). But I liked Brandy Clark's set.

So, anyway... it got me thinking about all of the 1990s artists that had retrospective appeal to me in the same way that MCC did.

To start, from an unreliable memory, I'd say that my reliable go-tos active in the 1990s that I still listen to are:

Morrissey

The inimitable Morrissey. Unbelievably, even though I grew up in the UK, I was not a fan of The Smiths before I was a fan of Morrissey. When I went into their back catalogue after discovering Morrissey, I only recognized exactly one song ("Sheila Takes a Bow", which must have had significant radio play around the age I started paying attention). I became a fan of Morrissey around 1992-1993 based on radio play; the time of the "Your Arsenal" album. Had not heard of him before then.

Tori Amos

Her most prominent albums were in early-mid 1990. I first became a fan around the time of Choirgirl Hotel, released in 1998, and came to like all of the back and forward catalogue, but not at the time the earlier albums were released.

Sting

Sting was obviously a pre-90s act, but I caught onto him in the 90s and still listen regularly today.

Pet Shop Boys

Also a pre-90s act, but they have continued strong output ever since they debuted. One of their best albums was released in the 1990s ("Very"), though for me some of their best albums were also released in the 2010s.

Pearl Jam

One of the few grunge acts I liked from the beginning, but I only ever go back regularly to their first album. Grunge was not as big as we think it was during the 90s - look at the 1990s charts for proof. But if you were in high school it was big.

Lifehouse

They came into the mainstream in 1999 and they are one of my favourite bands today (along with Jason Wade's solo output). To me they are a crypto-Christian rock band - listen to "Everything", "Storm", and "Flight" (three songs that span 1999 to 2015) and try to deny that there are spiritual elements to those songs. Their music and image is just so wholesome.

But there are so many other bands that I wasn't interested in at their peak that I caught up with later, and it mostly revolves around bands you'd call grunge:

Oasis

OK, I still don't like them much, but I listen to them occasionally now and I never listened to them in the 1990s at their peak. I shut my ears when "Wonderwall" was constantly on the radio and played by peers. I didn't and still don't like that song and it closed me off to whatever else they were doing.

Smashing Pumpkins

I recognize many of their songs from the first few notes just by being exposed to the second-hand smoke of them in high school. I was not interested at the time. And by the end of my university days in the early 2000s I had Machina - the first album of theirs that I bought (because it was cheap and I wanted to try it!) on repeat for what felt like an entire semester. I've since gone to their back and forward catalogue and can appreciate most of it (thought my affinity is still for post-2000, except for a few hits).

Porcupine Tree

This band came out of nowhere for me. Formed in 1987, I had never heard of them until their "Fear of a Blank Planet" album, released in 2007, and I didn't discover it until 2011. Most people have still not heard of them, even though they sold out big concert halls (and did so again in Toronto in a recent a one-off reunion tour). Incredibly, they'd mostly broken up by the time I discovered them, and then I moved onto frontman Steven Wilson's excellent solo career who may be a little more recognized but not much.

Radiohead

Another one that I was not interested in when they were big but caught up to some time later and like most of their catalogue now. Can't remember where. Some of the members went on to form The Smile, which have done some incredible albums recently.

It's interesting to me that this happened with so many 90s bands, and isn't really nostalgia. You'd have to be listening to this music because of the memories for that to be the case. I'm just listening to it because I like it. The memories of the music that I have, if I have any, are not bad but they're more a shade of bad than they are of good.

So, just to prove I'm not the 1990s version of a Rolling Stone album reviewer (where only Paul Simon or the Rolling Stones will do), I do have some more recent likes and I will list a few of them for balance

Sophie Hutchings (Australian - contemporary pianist) sample
ELIO (Canadian - (catchy) pop) sample
Röyksopp (Norwegian - electronic) - almost classifies as 90s, but the first commercial album was released in 2001 sample
Ólafur Arnalds (Iceland - modern instrumental) sample
Nils Frahm (Germany - modern instrumental) sample
PinkPantheress (British... TikTok music?) sample
Riverside (Polish - prog rock, for lack of a better term) sample
Katatonia (Swedish - melodic metal) sample
Opeth (Swedish - reformed death jazz/metal?) sample
Jason Wade (Lifehouse frontman) sample
David Douglas (Dutch (I think) - electronic) sample
Boards of Canada (Scottish (!) downtempo electronic) sample

Lots more, but that's good for now.

I forgot Nirvana.

OK... Nirvana.

I did not like Nirvana until about 5 days ago. I still do not like "Feels Like Teen Spirit" - this has about the same effect on me as "Wonderwall" - but I've lately gone fully into most of the stuff on other albums (particularly the Unplugged album, which sounds timeless to me), am reading one of the definitive Kurt Cobain biographies.

So, there's my story, book-ended by Mary Chapin Carpenter and Nirvana. Imagine that.

fin.

Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada (2025 - ?)

2025-03-15T10:39:00.005-04:00

I hardly ever write here anymore, but you already knew that (if you - readers, that is - still exist).

But, I wanted to scribble down a few thoughts about our new Canadian prime minister and the ongoing fentanyl/tariff/NATO spending/governor Trudeau/that woman/51st state dispute with the US.

First, it's the first full day of Mark Carney's time as Canadian prime minister and these are some immediate thoughts on the landscape:

I've seen otherwise-sympathetic media commentary talking about how "boring" or "politically unskilled" he seems. The latter is understandable, although I don't know how you have the career that he's had, working across the political divide in different political cultures, without being politically-skilled. Maybe they are talking about his abilities in retail politics. But it nags me that some people are looking for our prime minister to be entertaining. Donald Trump is entertaining. Boris Johnson is entertaining. Javier Milei is entertaining. Surely there is room for leaders that are not entertaining. Entertainment is cheap but good leaders are not; can't we just have leaders that are good leading and trust them to get on with it?
Why is he so euro-centric? I found it difficult to accept that, while running to be Liberal leader, he was off giving more substantive interviews to places like the BBC in the UK than he did to any of the Canadian media. And now, as leader, his first trip as Canadian prime minister is to the UK and France when most Canadians barely know him at all. How about touring Canada before going abroad (again)?
The only thing that I can really call out as being different about his plans to date are those about splitting the budget into operational and capital buckets. Without deep operational (government administration) cuts, that doesn't change anything unless you are going to use it to blow out the deficit even more, but justifying it by saying that it's for growth. Even then, we've had infrastructure banks in various forms for a long time that have not been highly-effective. But, if anyone has the ability to surprise in this area then I think it must be him (though this is tempered by point #5).
The expediency to which he came to this position is mysterious to me. The conspiratorial part of my brain wonders if there's a non-democratic national desire to have this man in power to restore a business-as-usual-in-Canada program. The Conservative party were starting to sound a bit too populist. The frequent presence of Jean Chretien around Mark Carney when he was not visible around Justin Trudeau is a symbol to me, like a raven in winter. As a result, maybe the Canada/US divisions were amped up to give him a cause? I don't know. It was very neat.
I've become more conscious recently that hardly anyone I listen to about anything is actually involved in primary production of anything. They are either from thinktanks, news organizations, academics, content creators, political organizations, or banks. The number of people making money just writing and talking about stuff must be unbelievable. Do most of these people understand the real world, I wonder... and when the real world diverges from their understanding, how long does it take for them to realize it?

Second, on Canada/US relations:

I think it's a mistake to try and forge closer relationships with the UK and EU than we have with the US. The US is on the same continent as us, the easiest to trade with, are critical to our mutual defence, and are not going anywhere. While true that the current leadership is looking difficult to deal with (and it's not just one man; it is a movement), we should recognize that the UK and EU have never seen Canada as a peer or critical nation and if they run into critical political and/or economic problems (as they seem to be doing), Canada will be an afterthought. We have to make the US relationship work and it has to be our most important relationship. But, it still is and will continue to be; a lot of what's going on is temporal political and media noise (it's also jingoistic).
It is hard to understand what will improve the soured trade relationships with the US. It is an erratic and volatile conversation. Via tariffs and the resultant economic cost, the US are essentially putting a price on various perceived transgressions such as imbalanced trade (which is not as imbalanced as they say, but has become less-balanced since the pandemic), insufficient commitment regarding NATO spending, drug control, and money laundering. Now that these things have a price, we are more incentivized to tackle them. That's a very business-centric approach to relations.
Based on the more serious commentary I've seen on this, the US are trying to tackle an out-of-control deficit that will get more out of control the more the government is forced to refinance cheap, short-term debt taken on during the pandemic at higher rates or longer terms. That is what the tariffs are ultimately about; they are a new revenue source. And it's not a mystery because Trump created the External Revenue Service early on his presidency to collect them. Although the US has made their own political decisions that what social programs they provide to their citizens, why would anyone expect another country that is faced with such a problem to subsidize the defence and trade of countries that have more generous social programs? It bothers me that there isn't much visible self-reflection in Canada or Europe about their own role in this rift.
The notion that deficits don't matter has bothered me since it came into the scene because I know that they don't matter until they do. When deficits do come to matter it requires a drastic response that too many people will not acknowledge was tied to their not caring about deficits for so long. Canada and Europe are able to afford social programs that the US doesn't have because they rely on the US to disproportionately foot certain bills, with defence being the main one. It reminds me of the Alberta-Quebec imbalance to some extent, where the latter has many social programs that the former doesn't have because they are able to wield national political influence that forces proceeds of Alberta energy to subsidize Quebec while also criticizing Alberta for the things that provide that subsidy.
I can send $800 US worth of goods to the US without incurring duties or tax. I can only bring $40 CAN worth of goods from the US into Canada without incurring tax. There's an imbalance there, just as there's an imbalance that lets Canada collect HST on digital services that Canada had no hand in producing. The US would be right to have concerns about that. But, regardless, I have never liked the idea of cross-border shopping, and never do it (unless it is online and for something I can't get in Canada). It was never good for Canada to shop cross-border so you don't get kudos for stopping it for the time being. Many people that do it exhibit the characteristics in the above point: criticizing the US and talking up Canada while shopping in the US because it's cheaper because of many of the underlying currents in the country that you don't like. Unreliable narrators.

So, ultimately, I wonder if the US having put a price on non-compliance, whether it's going to be cheaper to move toward compliance. If our GDP is going to suffer by 1-2% because of tariffs, as some economists predict, then would it be better for Canada to simply make their 2% NATO defence spending commitment sooner? And since much of any defence spending will go to the US military industrial complex and feed needed revenues into the US (not to mention supporting their industrial base and improving the perception of fairness, which are two other key interests of the Trump presidency), would something like that be enough to make the tariff situation mostly go away? I would not be surprised if it did. The fentanyl issue is just the basis for emergency moves that allow the president to act unilaterally.

I assume that's why Mark Carney is going to the UK and Europe first: to get the background (scuttlebutt) on their very active US negotiations over NATO and Ukraine. In that light, it makes sense and it's the right priority. I just wonder why he would not be transparent about that. There's no reason for secrecy. I hope that he has an interest in Canada for Canada's sake and not mostly as a chess piece in a global chess game. Given his background and the natural inclinations of someone involved in global finance, I don't have a lot of reason to hope, but he can still be good for Canada wherever his allegiances lie.

Whatever happens, I won't demand that he be entertaining.

Burning more fossil fuels to enable renewable energy

2022-08-20T11:51:00.004-04:00

The opening paragraph in a recent EnergyNow article on energy export from Canada's east coast was interesting:

Providing clean hydrogen to Germany and the rest of Europe is a better opportunity for Canada than trying to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals as the world moves away from fossil fuels, said Canada’s natural resources minister late on Thursday.

"As the world moves away from fossil fuels"?

Germany is dealing with their current energy issues by importing more liquefied natural gas and burning more coal. They are EU leaders in renewable energy but their renewable footprint does not deliver consistently year-round and its benefit is concentrated in the summer months. They will extend the life of nuclear plants that are currently running but will not restart those that have been retired. They make much of their renewable "biomass" generation, but it's largely fed by clear-cutting forests in the US with fossil fuels, turning the wood into pellets with fossil fuels, and shipping it across the ocean using fossil fuels. EU carbon accounting tricks do not require them to record the carbon created when supplying the fuel.

France is heavily-nuclear but is having issues with corrosion and with the water temperature of some of the rivers that feed their plants. The water has become too warm for some of the plants to function and after the reactor is done with it, it exits at a temperature harmful to aquatic life.

In Ontario, Canada, the government has confirmed that its Pickering nuclear plant will be shut down in a few years and will be replaced with natural gas generation. They are refurbishing other plants, to their credit.

Is the world really moving away from fossil fuels?

Nuclear is the only practical option that gets us off fossil fuels. Renewables do not have the reliability and consistency required to run a stable grid. Battery installations can smooth the supply curve, but there aren't enough resources in the world to build batteries that would be required to store large renewable surpluses to match supply and demand over a longer timescale of days.

And, besides, batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines are made using metals harvested using fossil fuels and by processes that run on fossil fuels. This can be a net benefit, however, if used judiciously - we must get more energy back than we invest and must be careful not to induce demand with "guilt-free" renewable energy. All renewable energy requires fossil fuel inputs, ultimately.

Renewable energy might be cheap to produce when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, but it's not cheap when you attach a cost to supply stability and reliability, which any electrical system has to do if you value having electricity when you need it and not only when it is available. The grid also needs to become more sophisticated to accommodate the inconsistent supply.

If renewables were a great business - if it was really a matter of just capturing free sun and wind and selling it on to people for a price like Nestle bottles up spring water - businesses would be in it without hesitation rather than needing to be subsidized or ESG'd into it.

But what is the western world doing about nuclear? Very little.

Some US states and Canadian provinces are doing trials with small, modular nuclear reactors. Maybe that will lead to something. But nuclear planning generally takes decades, and we seem to be planning more decommissions than new builds at this point.

But what about China? China has the largest manufacturing base for renewable infrastructure but they are planning or building scores of nuclear reactors. Why would they be doing that if renewables were such a sure thing? They are doing it because they do not have secure supplies of fossil fuels in the quantities needed to supply their massive population; they don't yet have the capacity to go and invade oil-rich countries to take their oil and protect the new supply chain back to China; because using coal is finite and dirty; and because once you have decided to choose electricity over fossil fuels, nuclear is a big part of the answer to clean electricity.

What does our position seem to be in Ontario Canada? That we will increase our use of renewables - optimistically to the extent that we can replace a nuclear plant here or there - and plug the hole with dynamic natural gas generation. If the renewables don't materialize, we'll just be burning more and more natural gas. Thankfully we have that option, but are we really "moving away from fossil fuels"? It sounds more like we want to ensure that we have enough to burn for ourselves within a fixed carbon footprint that we have imposed on ourselves.

Thoughts on Russia / Ukraine

2022-02-27T20:38:00.003-05:00

I know very little about this conflict and I'm not about to start posting pithy declarations about what must be true. If you want that, go to Twitter!

But, there seems to be a clear communications exercise in play that, despite very little concrete information about what is going on on the ground, paints the Russian invasion as an abject failure. The contrarian side of my mind doesn't like a wholly one-sided story.

The media coverage of this situation is confusing. Long periods of time go by without any real news for such an allegedly active conflict, and much of it is devoid of context. There's a lack of significant photography - significant because the worst possible photos are quick to make it to the fore when they are available - and some of it is said to be fake, misinterpreted, or from prior conflicts. It's almost as if there is no meaningful long-term foreign media presence (or interest) in the country.

So, there are some of the factors that interest the contrarian side of my mind:

If you don't know what Putin's goals are (as almost everyone says that they do not), how can you say that he has failed?

He has not yet invested serious firepower in the conflict.
It was always and still is unreasonable to expect that an army of 150K people would invade and occupy/hold a country as large as Ukraine - especially inclusive of multiple, large urban centres. That's why nobody expected it to be done.
What if this is a "mowing the grass" exercise? Or one with explicit targets that are not easily understood or not tasty enough to report on?
The idea that Putin "would not have realized" how hostile some parts of Ukraine were to Russian involvement and misjudged the effect of this on their ability to advance seems laughable. I knew about this hostility and I know hardly anything about Ukraine. The whole premise for the invasion (faulty or not) was on hostility toward pro-Russian areas of the country.
Extend #4 to the idea that the difficulty of taking urban areas was misjudged. Russia has been active in Syria for years, and Syria is a very urban country.

Russia's government debt as a % of GDP is under 20%. Impressive.
China now knows what to expect if they have designs on Taiwan. Most Western hands have now been played, and have been shown that they can be cohesive in a hurry. Sanctions on China would more directly affect US prosperity and would presumably therefore be less severe (though military involvement may be on the table there, whereas it is not here). The sanctions against Russia presumably expose the worst case.
Canada has cut off Putin's funding. He must be as dangerous as those protestors that occupied Ottawa a few weeks ago. It puts it into perspective how extreme that "go after their money" aspect of the move against the protestors really was.
Hopefully Russia doesn't have technological backdoors into US or European infrastructure. This is the time you hold those types of things in reserve for.
Russian gas supply to Europe. It'd be a shame if something was to happen to that. I'm sure it'd be an accident if it did.
Unlike Donald Trump, Putin has not yet violated Twitter's terms of service and the Russian presidential account is still active.

I generally believe that, if you are dealing with smart people and something doesn't make sense to you, then it's because you don't understand their perspective or don't have the same aims or value system. That is to say, what they are doing makes sense only when you figure out how to look at it properly.

And on top of that, I say all of this recognizing that autocratic rule as exists in Russia is of a very different nature to democratic rule. The power dynamics are different; the personal costs and risks of failure to the leader are different. I recognize it, but I don't understand it. I can barely identify the real motives of democratic governments most of the time!

COVID-19: federal election, and low-interest / high-inflation

2021-07-28T21:22:00.007-04:00

COVID-19 messaging and the federal election

The upcoming federal election timing seems to be based on the idea that lockdowns will be over, borders will be reopened, and citizens will be vaccinated.

We're then just waiting to give the government that made this possible a majority mandate so that they can lead us into the genuinely and truly unknown. Really: I don't know, and nor does anyone else.

So, that is the strategy, but they'd better get going on a parallel strategy to bring people onside with the idea that rising case counts are OK in a world where people who wanted to be vaccinated have had the opportunity.

First: the Federal government doesn't control lockdowns to a large extent. That's up to the provinces and PHUs.

In Ontario, we have no date for full reopening, and further reopening is conditional on vaccination targets that may never be met. There is no visible plan beyond the current stage of partial reopening.

The message pushed by the media continues to be that case counts are the primary concern.

Since the vaccine doesn't prevent infection, it's reasonable to expect that case counts will start rising again in September and October like they did last year. However, you'd expect the cases to be mostly non-serious for the vaccinated. It seems clear that this virus is not going away, unless it naturally weakens and goes away on its own.

We haven't yet brought people onside with the idea that high case counts are OK as long as other metrics are under control. To be fair, other countries are struggling to do this as well, but I expect the UK to arrive at a proposal. They have gone full steam ahead on the reopening as of mid-July, removing most if not all restrictions, and are seeing major case count increases but low death rates. They have been about 2 months ahead of us on reopening.

For our messaging, I'd propose focusing entirely on the actual hospitalization and death risk to under-12s and the vaccinated. Everyone who wants both vaccine doses will have had the opportunity very soon, so presumably the unvaccinated are happy to take the risk, and we'll have the healthcare resources to handle them.

This will need to become like the flu, where plenty of people get an uncomfortable case periodically; some people get hospitalized; some people die; but largely it does not affect most people beyond an uncomfortable few days of symptoms.

So, unless they the Federal government gets going on working that messaging through the system, the narrative come Election Day may be "well, they opened the borders to US travellers in August; and then they opened the borders to foreign travellers in September; and look at our case counts! We can't reopen and he wants an election?!". Other countries have had elections during the pandemic, but this one is not mandatory and as a feature of our minority government would need to be instigated.

Low-interest / high-inflation

At some point, I have a feeling that it's going to become obvious (rather than be revealed) that this low-interest / high-inflation world we are growing into is not transitory, but is a new normal to be managed by a stronger state.

I can't say I'm 100% confident about this, but how can anyone be at this point? I just don't think it's a sure thing that "high inflation means we will raise interest rates to bring inflation back on target". That was just what we did yesterday.

Part of the "great reset" narrative is about moving from asset ownership to asset rental, and low interest / high inflation puts assets out of reach for many while providing an opportunity via wage inflation to rent more of what you would otherwise have owned.

Another reason high inflation is wanted is to inflate away the piles of debt that have accumulated during COVID-19. Not only does it inflate away the debt, but it also increases taxes through the back door, because higher receipts and/or higher wages both lead to higher GDP and higher taxes, even if the tax rates stay the same.

It also transfers wealth from savers to debtors. Savers get lower returns on their capital and debtors get higher prices on assets purchased with cheap debt.

The notion that monetary policy is a science where you have rules that you apply consistently to get a result is not true. Monetary policy is bent toward what society needs from the monetary system at any given time. We need something new because the old tools aren't working anymore.

We haven't done inflation targeting forever, so it's perfectly reasonable that we'd change course if it's not doing what we'd want anymore. It will screw up people who are rigidly attached to the old system, however, and anyone that made assumptions based on it (i.e. retirees). I assume Millennials will be fine to let retirees (Boomers) sweat a little bit.

I think many people could have seen this coming. It has been decades in the making. We're just now getting confirmation of what many suspected was the case - that is, that governments and people are far too indebted for significant interest rate hikes to be a reasonable response to excess inflation.

The part that's missing from the picture is the part where governments have to control the flow of capital in other ways. Less "invisible hand" and more "nasty government hand". For example, the stress test on mortgages, which makes you qualify at a higher rate than the market demands in order to borrow to buy a house. Essentially, this is a government-influenced qualification that is higher than the market rate and applies only to houses. This type of thinking would be perfectly in line with the general economic shift away from "one size fits all" systems and toward crafting solutions for specific purposes and use cases.

I didn't say anything about yield curve control, which is presumably a necessary part of this if it is in fact a thing. I don't want to think about that yet.

Electric vehicles and what they mean to me as at July 28th, 2021

2021-07-28T20:57:00.003-04:00

So here are the mental notes I've made over the past couple of years on this electric vehicle experiment:

You have to drive an EV around 30,000km before you break even on the carbon emissions required to build the battery over and above the emissions required to build the common components between gas and EV. That is, when you drive an EV off the lot you have to drive 30,000km before the lower carbon emissions of driving on a battery have offset the emissions required to make the battery. After 30K, you pull ahead.
With the exception of Tesla, fast chargers are on multiple networks, in odd locations, and there is no reliable source of charger availability. You can find charger locations easily enough and it contains availability data, but the data on whether or not they are working or occupied is not reliable.
EVs are more expensive up-front but their maintenance and operating costs are much lower.
EVs are heavier than their gas equivalents due to the battery, and as a result they contribute more to wear and tear on roads (which is primarily driven by weight-per-axle). Presumably they will also turn out to be more fatal in collisions. Example: the forthcoming F-150 Lightning truck is 1800lbs heavier than the gas version.
Fast chargers may only work at half-speed if someone is charging in the bay next to you.
Unlike gas vehicles, you get less mileage on the highway than in the city. The range drops fast if you drive the car fast, and you can't take advantage of regenerative braking if you aren't braking. If you're one of those people that drives 130km/h on the highway, you are going to get less range - maybe significantly less - than going at 100.
This isn't fully clear yet because the market hasn't been fleshed out with larger vehicles, but with chargers having a fixed supply rate, I imagine that larger, heavier vehicles like crossovers, trucks, and SUVs with less-aerodynamic postures are going to take longer to charge to achieve the same range as a smaller car.

And this leads me to these conclusions:

My personal focus is on driving as little as possible and using transit where I can. Driving less in any car is better than driving more in an EV. As an infrequent driver, the carbon emission reductions are not going to be significant for me.
EVs are better for the environment in some cases, but not good for the environment. Mining battery metals is not a clean process, all things considered, but the impact will be more on things that you never notice, like polluting someone else's local environment, employing someone else's child labour, dragging a deep ocean floor you never see, or depleting someone else's groundwater than about carbon emissions. We seem to be on track to prioritize carbon emissions over all else.
There is no such thing as a car that is "good for the environment". All cars are made from mined metals, coated with toxic paint, have plastic interiors, and ride on rubber tires. All cars require roads that are usually made from asphalt or concrete.

And I'm reminded that one of the arguments for diesel cars was that they had fewer carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline cars, at the expense of emitting more pollutants that had a more direct, localized effect on the people that lived around them.

"Healthy in moderation" is an exclusive statement

2021-07-18T20:58:00.002-04:00

It occurred to me the other day that if your diet is mostly made up of things that "can be part of a healthy lifestyle" then you must have a very unhealthy diet indeed.

How quickly the ways to listen to music have changed: Luka Bloom, etc.

2021-07-18T20:50:00.001-04:00

I recently went to look up an artist to whom I listened to quite enthusiastically when I was in University, but to whom I haven't listened to in some time.

I don't like to bucket musicians into genres because, whether true or not, I secretly suspect that they hate it. But, Luka Bloom was the artist I went to look up, and he would fall roughly into the "Irish folk singer-songwriter" genre. I first heard Mr. Bloom on one of those Windham Hill collections that were popular in the 1990s, and went on to admire his back catalogue.

I was happy to find that he was still active and had released some new material. But, I could not believe that it was not on Spotify.

I pretty much listen to everything on Spotify now. I have muscles that have memorized how to listen to music in any given situation and they have only been fully-trained on Spotify.

Back in the day, I was one of those people who amassed stacks and stacks of CDs organized into multitudes of CD towers. As time went on and I moved from place to place, it got to the point where I didn't get them out of the moving boxes anymore, and they stayed in storage.

Initially, the reason they stayed in situ was because I had converted the purchased CDs into MP3 files as soon as I added them to my collection. Over time, the CDs had been mostly been for display. For many years, I listened to most of my music digitally using the Squeezebox line of digital music players, many of which were scattered around the house. Squeezebox eventually got discontinued, though I still have a number in use.

But, then came Spotify. In most cases, it became easier to listen to all of my music - purchased or not - through Spotify.

So, coming back to Luka Bloom, I was surprised to find that he'd made an executive decision to not release his latest music on Spotify and to make it available only on his website, where all of the money goes directly to the people that made the whole package possible.

I fully respect with and agree with this decision. I don't understand how great artists with loyal but modest followings manage to make any money off the platform. It seems optimized for superstars with millions of plays each month. Beyond just respecting this decision, I like it a lot. But it nonetheless threw me a curveball: I've mostly forgotten how to listen to MP3 files that I own in all the places I listen to Spotify.

I've figured it out, of course, and found a way to make it accessible wherever I am - I'm one of those technical people - but the point is that there must be many people out there who have no idea how to listen to music that's not on Spotify (or Apple Music, YouTube Music, etc.), and people who risk their visibility and income by not using that platform may be shut out of an audience altogether.

Regardless, I bought the albums blind. Another moment of discomfort occurred when I couldn't actually listen to them before I bought them. I used to visit record stores regularly and buy albums unheard, but now it feels like a huge risk even as I spend less money than ever on music.

Anyway, the albums are great and I highly recommend them:

On music in general, I still follow the general approach to paying for music that I wrote about in HMV Canada bankruptcy and thinking about digital music and Spotify streaming, which is:

Spotify is a discovery and convenience tool, not a replacement for buying music.
I still buy a fair amount of music, but it is mostly digital now, via iTunes.
After I've purchased music, I still tend to listen to it on Spotify for convenience.

In my mind, that supports the artists twice (to the extent that you can call Spotify streams "support").

During the pandemic, I bought a number of concert livestreams to support artists I like.

I have bought only one physical CD this year: Steven Wilson - The Future Bites

Here's one from the new Luka Bloom album:

Homemade (and grown!) English-style pickled onions

2020-08-04T08:27:00.001-04:00

English-style pickled onions in malt vinegar are an acquired taste, but I have firmly acquired it.

I picked, prepared, and pickled the onions in the space of one day. The onions were Barletta type (they have early maturity and are naturally small in size) and I used this recipe. I haven't eaten one yet (they need to mature for a few weeks) so I can't vouch that either of things are net positives!

PowerShell and passing command-line arguments to external scripts

2020-08-03T12:38:00.005-04:00

I like PowerShell a lot, but occasionally you run into something that seems mind-bendingly over-engineered. The simple act of calling an external script and passing command-line arguments to it is one of those things.

To avoid wasting any more of your time, here is the best way I have found to do it.

I will call the following Python script my_script.py from PowerShell, which simply prints out the arguments passed to Python:


import sys

for i in range(len(sys.argv)):
	print("my_script args: " + str(i) + ": " + str(sys.argv[i]))

The script is called from PowerShell by putting the Python command-line arguments into an array and passing them to the external script using the Splat operator.

# Put Python command-line arguments into an array

$cmd_args = @("c:\temp\my_script.py", "-f", "c:\myfile.txt", "-t", "5")



# Call the Python executable, supplying arguments using the Splat operator

& python.exe @cmd_args

Which produces the expected output:

my_script args: 0: c:\temp\my_script.py
my_script args: 1: -f
my_script args: 2: c:\myfile.txt
my_script args: 3: -t
my_script args: 4: 5

Splunk and the self-signed certificate on port 8089

2020-08-03T11:57:00.002-04:00

I'm writing this post after finding a solution to this problem. Pieces of the solution were scattered around the web but I didn't find them all in one place.

Problem

Splunk's ports when accessed using SSL/TLS are by default protected with a self-signed certificate. Many Enterprises are beginning to scan for these cases and flagging them for remediation so that the encrypted communications are protected by a certificate signed by the Enterprise itself.

Using an alternate certificate for the Splunk web UI (port 8000 by default) is well-documented but I did not feel that it was documented well for the management port (port 8089 by default).

Solution

The solution has a few steps:

Generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) and private key.
Use the CSR to obtain a signed certificate from a Certificate Authority (CA)
Obtain the Root CA certificate chain for the organization that provided the signed certificate
Combined outputs of steps 1-3 as required by Splunk
Configure Splunk to use the items in step 4
Restart Splunk

Before going further, consider whether you need the management port to be enabled for Universal Forwarders (UF). It is not required for forwarder management from the web UI, nor for deployment apps. It is required for API or CLI communication with the UF. If you don't use these features then you can simple disable the port by putting the following in server.conf and restarting the UF.

[httpServer]
disableDefaultPort = true

However, if you want to leave the port open and protect it with your own certificate then read on.

And, unless you have changed the default configuration, Splunk KV stores on the same server will also be protected by the configuration applied in this post.

Step 1: Generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) and private key.

These steps will leave you with a CSR stored in server_conf.csr and a private key in server_conf.key

Linux

openssl req -out server_conf.csr -new -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout server_conf.key

Windows

REM SPLUNK_HOME is the root of your Splunk Enterprise installation
set SPLUNK_HOME="C:\Program Files\Splunk"

REM TMP will hold the generated private key and CSR files
set TMP=C:\TEMP
REM Generate the private key for the certificate.

%SPLUNK_HOME%\bin\splunk cmd openssl genrsa -des3 -out %TMP%\server_conf.key 2048

REM Generate the CSR request file
%SPLUNK_HOME%\bin\splunk cmd openssl req -new -key %TMP%\server_conf.key -out %TMP%
  \server_conf.csr

You should leave this step with two outputs:

CSR file
Private key

Step 2: Use the CSR to obtain a signed certificate from a Certificate Authority (CA)

Step 3: Obtain the Root CA certificate chain for the organization that provided the signed certificate

The method to accomplish Step 2 and 3 will vary by CA, but you will normally need to provide your CSR file as part of the process.

You should leave these steps with:

CA-signed certificate provided by your CA
Root CA and Intermediate CA certificates provided by your CA

Step 4: Combine outputs of steps 1-3 as required by Splunk

All of the files you have created so far are plaintext files. They need to be combined in specific ways:

Root CA and Intermediate CA certificates combined into a single file (example: server_conf_root.pem)
CA-signed certificate and private key (example: server_conf.pem)

By "combined", I literally mean to copy and paste the contents of the files you received into a single file, one after the other. The example filenames above will be used in subsequent steps.

Store the files in a location accessible by your Splunk installation that will not be affected by upgrades. For example, you may choose to create a directory like $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/auth/mycerts, giving you these files:

$SPLUNK_HOME/etc/auth/mycerts/server_conf_root.pem
$SPLUNK_HOME/etc/auth/mycerts/server_conf.pem

Step 5: Configure Splunk to use the items in step 4

Modify your server.conf file to include these attributes:

[sslConfig]
enableSplunkdSSL = true
serverCert = /opt/splunk/etc/auth/mycerts/server_conf.pem
sslRootCAPath = /opt/splunk/etc/auth/mycerts/server_conf_root.pem
sslPassword = <key password entered during CSR creation>

Note that, when you restart Splunk in a subsequent step, the sslPassword value will be replaced with a hash of the value by Splunk. As long as everything is working you do not need to worry about it.

Step 6: Restart Splunk

This step hopefully does not need any elaboration!

After the restart, you can use a browser to access the management port (i.e. https://splunk.mycompany.com:8089) and confirm that it is using your CA-signed certificate using the browser's certificate inspection functionality.

Unless you have changed the default configuration, Splunk KV stores on the same server will also be protected by the configuration applied in this post.

Real estate and the 5-year outlook

2020-06-17T16:33:00.001-04:00

One thing about the real estate industry.

If you were to ask them today what the housing market will be like in 5 or 10 years' time, they may hum and haw about pros and cons but tell you that there's no way of knowing what conditions will be like in 5 years' time.

However, I have never - ever - heard a standard real estate agent say that now is not a good time to buy a house.

So, really, they do know what the market will be like in 5 years' time: it will be a great time to buy or sell a house.

While politicians regain control of the COVID-19 narrative, a void...

2020-05-25T09:01:00.003-04:00

Like a lot of people, I'm confused by the apparent lack of a roadmap for COVID-19 recovery in society. Newspapers float a lot of ideas, but it's increasingly hard to tell which have serious intent behind them and which are just the napkin scribblings of career jockeys that find the notion of recovering through methodical, nose-to-the-grind diligence and hard work increasingly boring and tedious.

At first I perceived this to be an issue with our leaders and a lack of planning or vision. After all, most leaders simply look at what other people are doing and copy it within their own fiefdom. And there's no-one to copy in this situation. But, lately, I'm becoming convinced that this recent void is intentional.

I think what we are seeing is a weeks-long transition from a strategy led by medical advice based on data, testing, and targets, focused solely on virus case management, to one that is led by politicians who are accountable for the longer-term health of the economy of which all other goods (including the healthcare system) depend.

I think it has become increasingly apparent that we can't afford to have the recovery led solely by medical advice. It seemed prudent at the beginning when there was so little information about how the virus would spread, but it's now emerging that their concerns are very solitary and, really, the models were overly pessimistic. This mirrors the public's own reaction - very cautious at the beginning, but increasingly relaxed as they see no or very little impact within their sphere and are emboldened by each inconsequential, tentative step outside The Village.

What we are doing in lockdown isn't "scientific". It's likely good advice, and the advice comes from scientists, but it's not science because it has never been tried before, there are too many variables, and there is a strong cultural component to outcomes. There's no "if you do X then Y will happen". It's a hypothesis that we can't afford to complete controlled tests on at the scale required. Scientists aren't elected, and they don't have to consider the broad variety of concerns that politicians do, yet politicians are the ones that will take fire when the results take too long to materialize.

So, I think what we may be seeing is a void while the deckchairs are reorganized and the politicians regain control of the narrative. I don't think it's a coincidence that we are seeing exposés in the international media of politicians that didn't follow their own advice. Months ago they'd have been expected to resign, but now they are defended. They're just like everyone else, wanting to get on with their lives. Soon, I think we'll start seeing things that go against the medical advice given out weeks ago. We can't afford to follow it. And hopefully people will forget what that advice was... and as long as new cases don't start to surge in any significant way, they will.

This is the way it should be.

Learning to get along with COVID-19 (and possibly take a selfie with it)

2020-04-16T17:53:00.002-04:00

Everything I'm seeing tells me that we've painted ourselves into a corner on COVID-19.

To encourage people to take the short-term lockdown seriously, a significant number of people have been put into a panic about the virus. To be sure, it is to be taken seriously, but perhaps not this seriously as long as you are following the rules of social distancing.

The people who are dying in Canada from COVID-19 are dying during a lockdown with many precautions in place, and with full access to ICUs and ventilators. They are not dying because of unavailable critical care. There is no shortage of ICUs and ventilators because of actions taken so far to divert resources to deal with the epidemic - in fact there is a significant excess.

This is good news, but it's only good news for a short period of time. At some point, it begins to look like a misallocation of resources during a time of economic collapse.

So, once we are confident in our ability to consistently help those that can be helped, excess resources need to be reallocated where they will be more likely to save lives. Such as resuming cancer consultations, pre-emptive surgeries, and similar things that have been put deprioritized and put on hold. Putting people back to work is also effective medicine where the unemployed condition involves over-eating, alcohol or drug abuse, depression, and other grotty things that fall under the banner of "idle hands syndrome".

Without a vaccine and/or some other anti-viral therapy that is discovered to improve survival rates, that percentage of susceptible people would still die with or without a lockdown. But without a lockdown, or with a relaxed lockdown, it's now going to be seen by some as the government's fault to some extent if lockdowns are relaxed and people suffer, as they inevitably will.

Unless seasonal weather changes things. Hopefully, but hopefully not - because, if true, then come June it becomes the southern hemisphere's turn to deal with this.

We don't know if you become immune after you've caught it once, and if we suspect that you are then we don't know for how long... but hopes pinned on a vaccine are high.

We don't have the means to know broadly whether someone has already caught it and acquired some immunity.

But, it sounds like mutation of this particular type of virus is a red herring as far as vaccination goes.

Like many others, I can see a way that life gradually returns to normal by gradual easing of the lockdown. I don't know how businesses that were marginally surviving at full capacity would survive at half-capacity. Live events and restaurants that normally need to fill 90% of seats may not survive filling 50% of seats. Airlines won't. Transit won't. But it's better than nothing and perhaps government programs can compensate in part where they are currently compensating in full, which is still a net benefit. At some point it has to end in full because we can't afford to do otherwise, and this is independent of whether or not there is a vaccine.

Even with all sensible measures in place, this doesn't stop a certain % of susceptible people from meeting an early death as restrictions are relaxed, nor does it help governments that have taken full responsibility for the lockdown absolve themselves in the public eye of responsibility for outcomes.

To be clear, I would not hold the government responsible because (a) I don't see any of this as the government's fault and (b) I see relaxing the lockdown as soon as possible as an absolute necessity and accept that mistakes will be made. If that's evil then it is a necessary evil. But that's just me and people that think like me. Click-bait media (most mainstream media) would hold them accountable; political opponents would; and undoubtedly would reddit. Even if those factions didn't believe the government was responsible in their heart, they would still blame and provide encouragement to those looking for a scapegoat.

Here's one communication point that would set the stage: start emphasizing now that the goal is not to prevent everyone from being afflicted by COVID-19, but to ensure that we have all necessary resources available to assist when someone does catch it and needs attention. That has always been the goal, but it is not at all clear.

Proof? Grocery workers, transit workers, and nurses refusing work or agitating over work that they believe mean "it's only a matter of time" until they acquire COVID-19. Well, it's only a matter of time until all of us catch it.

The concern about kids catching this ("...and she has 2 kids at home!") seems particularly misplaced. I'm sure someone has a link they can send me of one child that has died from it. That is beside the point, but it's also part of the irrational hysteria that cohabits with the rational hysteria around COVID-19.

The people I have most affinity toward during these times are those special epidemiologists who say that we can't just be listening to medical professionals on this issue. These people are out there. Medical professionals are not elected and have no accountability to keep society functioning. Nor do the media. Scientists go where their scientific specialty leads them and the media are starved for revenue, with attention being a proxy for revenue. Both have had an overweight say in public policy on this issue until now. Medical professionals very clearly have valuable advice to impart, but we also need the equivalent of "engineers" that are going to put that scientific knowledge to effective use (and I mean real engineers - not software ones).

And with the production pipeline shut down this year, there will be very few new Hollywood movies next year.

Dark skies ahead, but hopefully warmer weather.

Have some self-control: COVID-19 subsidies are for the people that really, really need them

2020-03-19T19:47:00.000-04:00

In semi-lockdown like most other people due to COVID-19, I'm a bit disappointed to see people who can well-afford to maintain their lifestyle for the time being trying to apply pressure via social media or elsewhere to get free benefits such as cheaper electricity, increased Internet caps, and other similar things.

Some of these people are even people I know to be on fixed-income. Times like these are when fixed-income is a blessing rather than a curse. Imagine that: someone else is responsible for making sure you get paid when they themselves may be losing!

The impact to the economy of this lockdown will be incredible. I would not be surprised to see a "pandemic tax" come out of this, and for good reason. Subsidies are for the people who will suffer extreme hardship.

The role of anyone who can still afford to pay their bills for the time being is to continue to pay them as promised for the services they chose, and be glad that they are in a position to do that.

And why not donate any money you are saving from driving less, taking fewer transit trips to work, or buying fewer coffees or take-out meals to a local charity that will help people in your community who will soon begin to struggle?

The post on COVID-19 that nobody asked for

2020-03-12T20:57:00.000-04:00

The last thing anyone needs is another post on this topic. But, at this point it is therapeutic for me to try and connect and resolve the many conflicting pieces of information I've absorbed from the five sources of quality news that I pay for, together with the highly interesting and insane cross-section of information gleaned from free clickbait sources and back-alley slums of ill-repute like reddit.

Plus, it'll be interesting to look back and see how wrong or naive I was in retrospect.

What have I learned about COVID-19?
The fact that I've learned it doesn't mean it's true, but this is where I think it is at:

When the virus first appeared in China, efforts were focused on quarantine and elimination of the virus.
Most people who get the virus are no worse off than if they'd got a cold or the flu. Some people have an extremely serious infection that requires mechanical ventilation and intensive care facilities.
Mechanical ventilators and intensive care facilities are in short supply around the world. This is reasonable.
Global efforts are no longer focused toward elimination of the virus, but instead on controlling its inevitable spread so that it doesn't overwhelm healthcare resources such as available ventilators and intensive care units.
If healthcare resources are overwhelmed, triage will determine who will live and who will die. More people will die than would die if resources were unoccupied. The deceased may include among them people who did not have COVID-19 but had another serious accident or illness at the wrong time - for example, a severe case of regular influenza or an unrelated heart attack that required intensive care facilities.
Healthcare systems have generally have not been good custodians of the supply chain. Important tools in the pandemic toolkit such as masks and other protective equipment have not been stockpiled. Further, many are produced in China along with certain important medications and these supplies are now quarantined along with a large chunk of the Chinese population.
With all of the above in mind, reducing the opportunity for all types of illness, injury, and accident while COVID-19 is a clear and present risk makes sense, and to me this is why shutting down events and travel makes sense. If you have a serious car accident travelling to an event when COVID-19 is in full swing, you may be out of luck.

What I don't understand: why not inverse quarantine?

I don't fully understand why we are roping everyone into the cancellations and restrictions that are now becoming widespread. There is a clear profile of the type of person that is vulnerable and they are in the minority: older people with existing health conditions. These are the people who have the most self-interest in protecting themselves, and they are also the reason that everyone else should be trying to avoid catching the virus - not so much for themselves as for someone who is vulnerable that they may pass it on to.

Why wouldn't we get in touch with the most vulnerable people, have those people quarantine themselves with supports to ensure they have what they need for the duration, and let it blow through everyone else as quickly as possible - the vast, vast majority of whom will not suffer greatly though may be contagious for 2 weeks? Perhaps it is too large of an effort to orchestrate reliably and quickly, but it seems that most people are hyper-aware of this issue so the communication would surely not be a problem. If there is a vulnerable person that does not know that they are at risk from this virus by now, I would be extremely surprised.

I can't help think, in the back of my mind, that this has largely become one big exercise to see how quickly and deeply governments can bring people under control should a more serious emergency or outbreak warrant it in future. How often does this opportunity come along with commensurate public support? The largest social experiment ever conducted - so much will be learned from this.

Ontario schools closed for 3 weeks - where do the kids of healthcare workers go?

March Break - an annual week off school in March - was to begin next week. It happens every year and parents plan around it. Parents have now been told that schools will be closed for an additional 2 weeks after March Break to reduce the chances of propagating COVID-19. Fair enough, but I can't help wonder what this does to healthcare workers with children not old enough to stay home alone. A great government support would be to do everything it can to provide free, priority daycare for children of healthcare workers. If this virus kicks off, the last thing you will want is healthcare workers torn and stressed between home and work-life issues.

The logic of closing down schools for 2 weeks after March Break appears to be that children returning from March Break travel to locations where the virus is more prevalent than in Canada will not have a chance to spread the virus among their classmates on their return. After 2 weeks, it'll be clear who does and does not carry the virus but immediately after March Break it will not.

Donald Trump and US Election 2020

It seems to go without saying that Donald Trump's prospects of re-election look worse at the moment than they did at the beginning of the year. I'm not sure they were ever that great - he won in 2016 by an extremely slim margin and lost the popular vote. It's hard to imagine that he has brought more people onto his side in the last 4 years, but there's no accounting for public affinity for an opponent who is older, appears confused a lot of the time, and will not bring out the youth vote... and that is what you have in Joe Biden.

If you look at the core of this COVID-19 issue and the havoc it has wrought in general to the economy and healthcare system so far, you see a fundamental issue of over-dependence on China both in the supply chains of every day products and in medical supplies that are critical to the health of the country. It really does seem feasible at this point that even the US military may not be able to function completely without the Chinese supply chain being intact, which seems unimaginable.

So, all I want to say here is that Donald Trump has made reducing dependency on China a central and highly-visible part of his presidency for the duration. He has been attacked from all angles for doing it, and primarily by his opponents (some of whom had a direct hand in implementing the over-dependencies). There is political gold to be mined for Donald Trump if done in the right way and at the right time, though I'd still have doubts in his ability to sway such a polarized population.

Donald Trump and the ban of EU travel

It was wrong to impose such restrictions without letting his counterparts know it was coming. But the immediate cries of "this won't work!" were really strange. China did it, and was praised for it. Granted, the US will not be able to be so draconian and complete in their shutdown. But how do the EU naysayers know that it won't work, and what position are they in to say so with all of their most prominent countries grappling with this virus more severely than is the US?

The US has some unique healthcare struggles with such an apparent lack of integration or common goal of public good within its fragmented healthcare system, and I have to wonder whether border restrictions may really be the best (if not the perfect) approach for that type of system.

Over-reaction and stockpiling

I went to the supermarket on the evening of March 12th to pick up a few things, but none of them were must-haves. It was worse than the height of Christmas. All aisles packed with shoppers and shopping carts going queued around the perimeter of the store waiting to be checked out. I've never seen anything like it, and I can't imagine what could be so urgent for so many people! I left.

I went back the following morning at 7:00am. Not as bad as March 12th but definitely abnormal - more on the scale of a busy Saturday afternoon, though with very few checkouts open.

India

I am absolutely amazed that this virus hasn't kicked off in India yet. but here you have it - as of today, only 73 cases and 1 death in an extremely crowded country of 1.3 billion people.

But life goes on...

For the most part, people I interact with on a daily basis are going about their day and getting things done. There's such a sharp contrast between portrayals in the media of absolute chaos at every turn and the calmness of every day life.

How would you live if you really cared about the environment and climate?

2020-02-02T14:32:00.000-05:00

I don't remember the trail of breadcrumbs that led to it, but I recently found myself watching a YouTube video of a Millennial lifestyle influencer type who was about to show her audience how she made her dinner.

Par for the course with lifestyle influencers.

The thing that stood out for me was the profuse apology for having brought home the groceries for said dinner in a single-use plastic bag. There was a rational explanation, she assured.

Nothing was said of the stream of single-use plastic clamshell fruit and vegetable packaging that emerged from said plastic bags, nor of a subsequent video of weekend trip by plane to British Columbia (a trip of over 4000km).

It's been in the back of my mind for years that the people that are highly vocal professionally about their concern for the environment and climate don't seem to be doing very much in their own lives to suggest that they really do take it seriously.

It has for some time been my thinking that healing a sick planet is not so much about doing more, but doing less.

And so I think that if I really cared about the issue to the extent that I was moved to do something about it, I would:

Not use the car, except where there was no real alternative. Electric cars are not a solution.
Live closer to work. Or at least live closer to a transit hub.
Forego or reduce certain things that require the use of a car because of my poor choice about where to live.
Not use a gym. There are plenty of things that need doing that can be done as exercise - including walking / biking / running to places that don't need to be driven to.
Work from home to the extent that it will not be a disruption (certain type of work is done better in the office). Not only does this save money and energy, but it frees up transit spaces on crowded transit for people that can't.
No more long-distance vacations. Planes especially are out. Cruises even more so.
Avoid the use of hydrated products where dehydrated products are as good or better (for example: bar soap and not body wash; ultra-concentrated laundry products; dried beans and not cooked/canned beans). The packaging is wasteful and it's more wasteful to produce and ship the products.
Look at things more as an issue of waste and less as a business proposition. For example: it's not better to buy the thing that will need replacing 5 times over the one that will never need replacing just because I could buy 5 of one for the cost of 1 of the other. It's not just about my personal bank account, and I don't need to "get my money's worth" from municipal waste services.
Resist "events". The amount of garbage that comes from organized events is astounding.
Resist useless additives. Fabric softener, air fresheners, scents, and dyes, for example.
Reusable produce bags? How about no produce bags?
Air-dry laundry. This is a no-brainer. It's very energy-intensive to dry anything with stored energy. In the summer things hung outside dry quickly outside with free energy from the sun; in the winter, things still dry quickly because the indoor air is so relatively dry and provides much needed humidity.
Leave time to care, stay informed, and reflect. Busy lives are sometimes necessary but often self-inflicted and they leave you in a daze. It might be worth it to you if you are making lots of money from doing it, but there's a cost to everyone else in the form of the above.
Remind myself that the cumulative effect of making small changes is significant. I usually think back to a previous post previous post to remind myself of this.
Remind myself that every single dirty industry exists to provide me as a "consumer" at the end of a chain with goods and services that I buy. There's a dirty industry out there to produce the twist ties that hold together the cord on your new kitchen gadget of questionable utility. You can't buy your way out of this problem - only do and buy less.

There are so many other things. This is a place to start. I am doing well at some of these things. Some I have regressed, and some I have earmarked to deal with on a certain timescale. This is my biased list and I'm sure others have their own.

Aside, I am less concerned about the energy consumption of data centres and digital services. To be sure, there is a lot of waste and needless digital activity out there (I shudder to think how many resources are diverted to keeping online and backing up near-identical photos of the CN Tower in the cloud, for example - to name just one world landmark). However, think of what data centres offset:

Manufacture, storage, and distribution of video material on plastic. Trips to the movie rental store to buy/rent.
Manufacture, storage, and distribution of paper books, newspapers, and magazines. Trips to the library to borrow them.
Trips to the bank.
Paper statements and the paper they are printed on (by a very dirty paper industry)
Postal mail and the paper it is printed on.
Plastic bags to carry all of the above.

All of the above were essentially dependent on harvesting natural resources and transforming/delivering them using fossil fuels. It is now possible to replace them with digital distribution powered by electricity that in theory could be renewable. Isn't that the dream?

Selectively angry about having to use self-checkouts

2020-01-14T19:21:00.000-05:00

People are quite selective about where they get offended on this one.

Self-checkout for gasoline is apparently fine. I seldom hear people clamouring for a return of the full-service gas station.

Having someone pick, box, process payment, and deliver your stuff is in a near-sweatshop type of operation is apparently fine (i.e. Amazon).

And so is pushing your cart around a large supermarket to pick out your own groceries rather than going to a counter of a general or department store and telling someone what you want, as would have been done prior to the evolution of the self-serve supermarket.

But what's not on is to make you use a computer to check out and pay for groceries you've picked out yourself.

Halifax, Nova Scotia - 14 photos

2019-08-18T14:31:00.001-04:00

Fourteen photos from my recent trip to Halifax and Taylor Head Provincial Park in Nova Scotia.

Facebook's uncanny ability to convert information into aggravation

2019-07-24T19:40:00.001-04:00

There's a lot said about Facebook and its negative effect on mental health.

While I generally resist the whole effort to drum up sympathy, benefit of the doubt, or funding, by classifying everything under the sun as a mental health issue, I do observe the following about my own experience:

Almost everything is designed to make an impression or provoke a reaction. There's very little that is designed to inform or educate.

Some news sources over-represent crime stories. Some are trivial crime stories but the overall tone is negatively-leading and foreboding. I don't know if this is driven by a decline in serious local news reporting, police wanting to use social media to get the word out, or both, but it leaves an impression that society is becoming a worse place in general and it's an impression that noticeably peaked after following certain local news sources.

I like backcountry camping. I joined a backcountry camping group. What do I see? People trampling over the backcountry (sometimes quite proudly). People enquiring about how they may better trample. Interest in trampling on unregulated land. Trucks loaded up with gear whose noise and smell somehow traverse my computer screen. Technology brought into the backcountry to document the trampling. The occasional decent photo that in no way does justice to the experience, just like the cameras block my view at the last concert I went to. And somehow it occupies a less peaceful place in my mind than it used to and makes me feel guilty about participating.

I follow my local library. There's often some interesting information but there has also been regular promotion of this novel idea of hairy men in drag reading stories to young children. Fair enough - it's grotty, but that ship has sailed - however, to me it's flotsam and Facebook isn't flexible enough to filter within a source.

The one redeeming quality is to keep abreast of what's going on with family and friends. Depending on what they post, of course. It can go either way.

It's very possible that Facebook makes you feel worse because it shows the world as it really is, rather than how you thought it was. Or maybe not. If life imitates art then we are in serious trouble. But it's devoid of breathing space and it does not encourage thoughtfulness or consideration. I feel sorry for anyone who relies on this platform as a source to passively consume information.

Wild bees in Argentina building nests with plastic

2019-06-08T09:15:00.002-04:00

A recent article in the National Geographic referred to a discovery that wild bees near Argentinian crop fields have been found to make nests out of plastic sheeting debris gathered from around the farms they haunt.

The plastic had been cut and overlapped to provide a foundation for further construction.

The article itself has a neutral tone, but there is the requisite "other perspective" that thinks it's really sad that our rampant use of plastics has led to them ending up in places that they don't belong.

I think that plastic debris is a real problem, but also recognize that while plastic creates unwanted debris in the oceans, waterways, and farm fields of the world, it's also an extremely resource-efficient way to solve many problems. Finding "environmentally-friendly" alternatives would likely require more resources, and would make life more expensive for everyone. I'm fine with that, but we have others to consider. The only solution is to do less - not to find replacements for plastic. Stop "doing things". Stop "looking for solutions" and instead avoid the problem to begin with. Incrementally, of course. Everything you do matters because there might be 7.53 billion of you out there doing the same thing (or aspiring to).

The article speculates that bees incorporating plastics may build nests that are more durable and more resistant to mold and parasites, thereby improving the health of the species. The same thing we use it for.

And so it's great that bees are finding some use for this plastic. They are, in effect, reusing and sequestering it rather than landfilling or recycling it, thereby avoiding the energy inputs that recycling normally entails. The plastic that these bees have harvested will not be blowing into the ocean. We'd be celebrating this if humans did it.

One more reason to protect the bees. Or at least the wild ones in Argentina.

Apple News and where it fits in my life

2019-04-09T07:56:00.001-04:00

As part of Apple's iOS 12.2 release, Apple News was finally made available on Apple phones and tablets in Canada. Before now, it had been available in other countries but not in Canada. This availability coincided with the North American availability of their Apple News+ service.

Apple News is a curated and aggregated news app. In the abstract, it's similar to Google News but it only lives on Apple devices in the form of an app and is not available on the web.

So, what is Apple News+? As far as I can tell, it's Apple News plus these things:

Full magazine content
Articles designated as premium articles within Apple News
Offline reading

Here's what I like about it:

Clear identification of news source (every single article has a logo indicating the source before you click through to it)
Mixing of magazine with news content. Magazines do a better job in some areas than newspapers.

Here's what I don't like:

Locked in to Apple devices. I have a Windows PC and notebook with no intention of changing, and I can't access Apple News at all from there.
Does not provide full access to news sources. For example, while you get premium Wall Street Journal articles in your feed you can't go back and read the whole WSJ.
Loss of artistic layout and flow of newspapers - there's no concept of what a newspaper has deemed "front page material", or relatively more important than other content. Apple takes over this role with a uniform utilitarian approach through the app.
Magazines have table of contents but they show the title only and are not helpful in understanding what an article is about.
Not very searchable, and the UI for finding sources is a bit confusing (though it makes some sense once you get used to it).

Good luck finding something you read and want to revisit, or if you want to search historical perspectives on a story. That's not what this is about - it's about the here-and-now, and it's why it's more of a supplement than a replacement.

It essentially turns newspapers into time-boxed content providers. But this is similar to how many people watch TV, where channels provide content and the TV service provider presents everything on a level playing field as channels organized in a common schedule.

Imagine if you had to watch TV by going to the schedule for each network and browsing the channels offered only by that network. That's the current state of news. It's not terrible that some companies want to try a new way of doing things.

From what I can tell, though articles display is usually quite clear of clutter, news sources are still free to interject in an article with suggestions of other articles of theirs that you may find interesting, and there does seem to be some formatting control at the source level. Artistic independence is diminished but not fully lost.

I'm trying it out in trial mode at the moment. The big question is: is it worth continuing at $12/mo? A number of times, I've told myself "no", but then I've thought about how much I like using the app. You can use the Apple News app without paying, but you can't read everything in that mode and you lose the magazine integration. It's not a straightforward answer.

I think this needs to be looked at in the context of how news is going to be consumed rather than how news was consumed in the past. I have a newspaper subscription. I have a couple of news magazine subscriptions. To try and stay balanced, the newspaper I subscribe to works against my natural political bias. However, I don't like to get all of my news from one source.

I'd like to have more newspaper subscriptions, but that does get very expensive. If I wanted to add another digital newspaper subscription, for example, it'd be $20/mo. Through newspaper partnerships, I could add additional content to my existing subscription starting at $5/mo.

This adds up and it's hard to justify unless you make your living from discussing news. I have limited time in the day to spend reading news. If I had more subscriptions, I'd read less content from each one but spread my reading across multiple papers meaning the value I obtain from each is lower.

I find news increasingly difficult to read digitally because of intrusive advertising that is getting increasingly aggressive - even on the online edition of the newspaper I pay to subscribe to.

My newspaper contains a lot of syndicated content. It is also now regularly making certain online content unavailable unless I pay more. It regularly "forgets" who I am and requires me to sign in, moreso than many other sites do.

I increasingly read my content digitally because of how portable it is, especially when I am interested in many sources.

I don't like the idea of having a separate source or app for every single news source I want to read - especially not for sources that I consider secondary preferences.

So how does Apple News help with this?

It provides access to a diverse set of high-quality sources and clearly identifies those sources so that I can assess how much I trust it.
It lets me monitor topics rather than sources (but lets me read more from specific sources if I want to) and gives different perspectives on that topic that I can dive deeper into if I want to.
It blends magazine content - magazines do better in some areas than newspapers.
It presents the content beautifully whether you are reading on a phone or tablet
It removes many or most distractions from advertising and clickbait (which also helps with battery life and data consumption).

It essentially gives me what I want in a modern, digital "newspaper" and provides a solution to all of the problems above. If I continue past the trial, I'll be sending money into the world of journalism that likely wouldn't have gone there before.

It's a great start. I hope it only gets better.

Christchurch mosque shooting, Twitter, and unhealthy dialogue from all sides

2019-03-16T10:06:00.000-04:00

I occasionally but not often veer onto someone's Twitter page in the same way that someone may accidentally take a wrong turn down a backcountry lane.

What exactly is the value of the Twitter platform? Even without "fake news" it does not seem to support healthy dialogue in any way, shape, or form. It might be a great way for a musician to announce a new album, an author to announce a new book, or a comedian to hone their efficiency, but what else?

Nuance is impossible on Twitter without dribbling it out in drips to subvert the format. I have no idea what most people hope to achieve other than vanity. I would not be surprised if the polarization on that platform contributes to violence and that many people leave it feeling angry and distressed without having learned anything of value or changed their perspective about any issue other than about the state of human nature, negatively.

What reminded me of this is the recent shoot-up of a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. A terrible situation, no doubt - and there is no excusing it.

But the very next morning while listening to the radio, I heard a host and his guest saying that if you're one of those people who question the rate of immigration in your country then you are contributing to such shoot-ups because you "let it take root" ("it" being the seed that gestates as a concern about the state of their country and ends up as a bullet implanted in plural sternums).

I assume the seedling is fed with some kind of anti-depressant or other recommended mind-altering medication along the way as it often turns out to be, but that is beside the point.

I have also heard Donald Trump blamed in relation to the type of rhetoric that seems to energize much of his political base.

But there's a big piece of the root cause missing, and its absence suggests that we've learned nothing about the "why" of things like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.

I should preface this by saying that I see immigration as necessary. We need to maintain the skills we need in this country, and we need to sustain what we have built. Diversity in immigration would be appreciated - we do not want to import the biases of another culture wholesale into our own - but we have to go where the skills that we need are found and where people are willing to leave their homes to come to our own.

But when people have legitimate concerns about the direction that their country is going - the very thing we hope to expose to air and discuss in a healthy democracy - it's not right to try and shut them down with polarized political rhetoric, zings, histrionics, or other things that attempt to make them look stupid, dumb, racist, homophobic, or some other form of safe-to-ignore lifeform.

Dismissing someone concerned about the rate of immigration and therefore the changing nature of the culture and country that they grew up with and have so much affection for is as much a contributor to this type of violence as anything else, but it's not treated that way.

We are told by different sides that people don't kill people - guns kill people. Or that guns don't kill people - people kill people. As usual, the answer is in the middle and both are contributing factors to gun violence; but if you fall on the "guns kill people" side then why also try to shut down the genuine concerns and feeling of people about a country that we all have an interest in building? Do you really value diversity like you say you do? It seems not.

People do not wake up in the morning wanting to shoot up a mosque after having a great night out the night before. More than almost anything else, I wonder about the genuine trajectory that led to this point, and I wonder how much attempts to silence, belittle, and minimize a point of view played a part in this. I wonder if we'll ever find out. I wonder if that finding would be politically useful enough for us to find out.

The very people who tell us that it takes a village to raise a child, that we live in a global village, and that no man is an island, should know this better than anyone else.

A small corner of the waste problem: elastic bands

2019-03-13T21:29:00.000-04:00

I've accumulated this small collection of elastic bands over the past few years. Actually, the bird's eye photo doesn't quite do it justice because it's a pile that is 4-5 inches deep, 5-6 inches wide, and another 6-7 inches long.

Where do these elastic bands come from? The first and most significant source by far is supermarket vegetables -- holding the broccoli heads together, keeping the head of lettuce closed, or bundling an allotment of carrots. The second source is the newspaper -- on the days that it's dry enough to toss the paper onto my front step without protecting it from the elements, an elastic band is used to hold it together in flight. Other sources are insignificant.

I think it's a pretty impressive collection, seeing as you might not notice the size of the problem if you threw them away one at a time. Multiply by the 12 million-or-so households in Canada, and the 130 million-or-so households in the US and you have a massive problem at the landfill.

If I have made my own 120 cubic-inch pile of elastic bands then the cumulative pile of elastic bands from 142 million households would be 17 billion cubic inches in size. How might that be configured? A 6-foot tall pile measuring 236 million square inches -- in other words, a 6-foot-tall pile that was 5 kilometres long and 1 kilometre wide. That's just a small dot on the map of the world, but still... it's worth thinking about. These are, after all, garbage and not purchased because someone actually had a use for them once the product they were holding together was used up.

I reuse them from this pile as needed but, ultimately, the pile will keep growing because these bands are durable and they come in far more frequently than they go out.

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