If it’s not a regime change operation; if there is no intention to advance to a ground invasion; if the strategy is to provoke inter-ethnic uprisings and conflicts; if the plan is to smart bomb until there is none left, then switch to dumb bombs, then the practical objective is tacit: Genocide.
There is absolutely zero explanation for hitting targets like this unless your objective is to destroy any possibility of normal life and produce mass civilian death. Completely unjustifiable and another war crime. We saw this thirty years ago in Iraq.
Even a Costco membership, which saves me so much money every year, is not accessible for many people on fixed incomes or living in rural areas. And people in places like Minnesota are already dealing with mass trauma from the volume of violent immigration raids.
beyond switching to an electric vehicle and installing solar panels (financially out of reach for many people), there is little people can personally do to mitigate the costs of prolonged energy and gas price spikes, tariffs and/or disruptions from immigration raids
I keep thinking about how working class people will suffer so much if the price of gas spikes and the government continues to spend $1B/day on international conflict (plus ICE's budget for immigration raids) instead of education, research, international aid, clean energy, and healthcare
This is amazing. 😄
That 16 year timeframe is the culprit here. There was a brief window, about 1995 to 2015, when American tech wasn’t primarily a subsidiary of the US military. The original internet boom was an outlier and Silicon Valley has returned to normal now. It was always about killing people.
It’s almost as if talented folks are not willing to take the bait-and-switch for those files - or that “digital” as standalone from program areas doesn’t work when the program is gutted… 🙃
And if you think AI will solve this, I’d like to introduce you to the current “30% vacancy rate for digital roles” in the federal public service, “threatening delivery and leading to costly dependence on external
contractors.”
www.canada.ca/en/governmen...
People who previously complained about the size of the public service, and who subsequently complain about the speed of government or delayed services after the current round of cuts, will earn my best shrug.
Cheap onigiri AND barollo.
Thank you for visiting my Prime Ministerial platform
The EU is getting closer to Canada. Natural we join. 🤝 Then we can extend to Japan.
Blog entry: Why government software is so expensive.
In my experience, there are four major reasons: outsourcing the whole thing, the pricing death spiral, funhouse-mirror price tags, and procurement processes that don't favor quality development.
Sorry I'm not more open-minded about LLMs, it's just some fucking maniacs shoveled out a bunch of useless bloatware featuring that technology, did not give me any chance to opt out, reorganized the entire economy around it, zeroed out gains made by green energy, and made it impossible to buy RAM
NEW: “We’ve let the lies be far too successful, & that’s significantly hurt our cities. No more.”
@grantennis.bsky.social @tomflood.bsky.social & I have a blunt new @usa.streetsblog.org op-ed telling the story of why we’ve created @urbantruth.bsky.social.
Please help share it! @nyc.streetsblog.org
Vincent Gogolek: Yes, those Chinese EVs will be spying on us — just like all the other cars already do policyoptions.irpp.org/2026/03/ev-c...
Women are underrepresented in economics. Our research is overlooked. Yet women economists disproportionately work on income support, tax policy, care, labour market inequality. We study the economy we actually live in. That's not a coincidence. Happy IWD to the women doing the work anyway. 🌹
(Will also note that my application was entirely me-created - ideas, writing, compiling, every last bit developed 'the human way'. As declaration of AI use was not required for this cycle, I feel a lot of big feelings - good ones - about the fact that the work that got me here was of my own making.)
That's so awesome! 🎉 Congrats!!
Just the best news! Congratulations!
I'll be working with my pal Wayne Kelly at the Rural Development Institute out of Brandon University, building on the major methodological contributions from my doctoral research that sought to challenge conventional approaches to innovation systems by embedding them in place.
Delighted to learn I have been awarded a Canada Postdoctoral Research Award (new name for combined Tri-Council postdoc awards) to support a new project investigating the impact of the "digital revolution" in agriculture on rural community capacity for innovation + implications for policy agendas.
💯Would agree!
See also: municipalities, government agencies, etc.
(My major chafe is, as usual, the fact that 'efficiency' for its own sake is not a 'value' but we sure act like it is the highest aspiration.)
Canada needs to increase its productivity performance. But we keep talking about the wrong things.
What would actually help?
tl;dr corporations lobbied for a profitable regulatory environment they claimed would make investment more attractive, got what they wanted, and didn't reinvest. Instead they collect rents. The government needs to incentivize competition and innovation instead of oligopoly profits.
“If we elevate fighter jets as “strategic” assets but dismiss a functioning education system as “mere aid,” and if we always find money for missiles but not for water or electricity, we are not protecting our societies. We are weakening them”
www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/d...?
“Security policies that prioritize military force over governance and development do not prevent or shorten conflicts; they encourage and prolong them”
www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/d...?
I've been writing and speaking all year about what the future needs - fewer ribbon cuttings, less treating digital capacity as an add-on - the agentic era doesn't lessen the need for in-house capacity it makes it more important.
I'm organizing yearsahead.io at University of Michigan on March 27th
While much has been & can be said about the outsized impact our work tried to do (and all the stuff we weren't able to do)
In reality, I just miss getting to work with a cadre of smart, outstanding people who were trying to improve things for millions of people everyday.
