Take the money and run

Found a sublime bit of happy news in the paper today.

Ya, I said "paper."

I know, what kind of wackos are still reading newspapers in this day and age?

Well, me for one. It's a habit. I'm down to one a day, and sometimes I even conjure up the will-power to skip a day.

In the distant pre-internet age, the University of Guelph Library used to bring in a couple of dozen major papers every day. Depending on where it came from, you might have to read yesterday's news or even news from a week ago, but I used to sit in those over-stuffed loungers for hours getting caught up on news from around the world.

Now I'm down to a two-section Globe and Mail I'm expected to pay $4.20 for.

But I digress. Right there on the second page we meet Jens Haaning. Jens is an up-and-coming artist in Denmark. The Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Denmark's MOMA, gave him $107,000 to produce an artwork for an upcoming show.

At exhibition time, the curtain comes up on the blank canvas Jens had submitted, titled Take the Money and Run.

Now that's clever! 

I'll be hoisting a few pints in your honour tonight, Herr Haanin!

Class solidarity

Passed a couple of ravine dwellers in town this morning, one a Black dude and the other white. Judging from their animated conversation and the fact they were taking turns pushing the same shopping cart loaded with camping gear, I assume they were friends.

Seems to me the animus between the races is peculiar to certain socio-economic groups. While I haven't asked them, I have a hunch Black billionaires like Oprah or MJ are more than comfortable hanging with billionaires of a lighter hue.

Then, at the other end of the spectrum, you've got the folks who have nothing left to lose. Pretty hard to hate whitey for his white privilege when you're sleeping in the same ravine and taking turns pushing the same shopping cart!

Wang Dang Meng Wanzhou

After 34 months in Canadian custody, Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou pleads not guilty in a US court to all the stuff they had the Canadians arrest her for.

The Americans drop all charges, on condition she promises not to talk about any of the stuff she just pleaded not guilty to.

Case closed!

Wang dang, sweet… justice?

WTF just happened here?

Almost three years ago, Canadian authorities nabbed Meng, per US instructions, as she was on her way to Mexico.

The Americans were pissed with Meng because her Daddy’s company, the Chinese tech giant Huawei, was playing fast and loose with America’s unilateral, and based on nothing in international law, sanctions against trade with Iran.

At the time America’s extradition request came in, we could have showed a little spine and asked President Trump on what grounds we were obliged to honour unilateral extralegal sanctions on Iran. Instead, PM Trudeau, seeking to suck up to Mafia Don behind the scenes while pretending to be anti-Trump in front of the cameras, jumped at the chance to gain a few brownie points in Washington.

A few days after we snatched Meng, China snatched a couple of Canadians. These were not random Canadian tourists. They weren’t necessarily “spies” either, but who’s to say that China’s justification for nabbing The Two Michaels were any dodgier than our justification for the arrest of Wanzhou?

The Two Michaels have become a cause celebre in Canada. Their detention has spawned a thousand anti-China op-eds in our legacy media. The Globe and Mail has been counting their days in captivity on its front page - today was 1019.

Hey, no matter how you slice it, Meng’s been incarcerated longer. We acted. They reacted.

Yes, The Two Michaels Drama was instigated by Canada, not China.

Having had 1019 days in which to acknowledge a serious mistake, free Meng, and get The Two Michaels home, the Trudeau government has done absolutely nothing. We don’t want to piss off Biden either.

So today Washington is going to free Meng, and by extension, The Two Michaels.

Where does that leave Canada as an “independent” nation?

Puerto Rico has more independence from Washington than Ottawa does!

Who's "rich" when everybody's a millionaire?

Apparently every landowner around here is a millionaire now. Much to our embarrassment as lifelong pinkos, we're millionaires too.

When I was coming up, a million bucks meant something. When everybody on your concession road up here in hillbilly country is a millionaire, well...

Random real estate agents will drop in uninvited to discuss your millionaire status. It's all cool till you ask them where you might move to when you sell your hundred acres.

Well, if you want to move closer to the city, to be near your family, they've got a nice townhouse for you in Richmond Hill for a million bucks. You can imagine how many times I piss off the porch before somebody calls the cops. For a million bucks.

No thanks.

A little closer to home, you can get a 2 bed 2 bath condo for 750. Think of everything you can do with the difference!

What I would do with that $250k difference is split it five ways amongst the kids so they can all buy their own homes.

Oops... none of them will be able to buy anything in this crazy market, not even with a $50k down payment.

How pathetic is that?

So I guess I might as well just buy a boat.

Duelling Anti-Christs

 A couple of weeks back I used this space to let you know I was upping sticks and moving to Substack. 

Then I got some feedback to the effect that my new home was invisible on the internet.

I googled it. Nothing. I originally figured it was just too soon. But it was still going on today.

On a whim, I took a look with Bing instead of Google, and voila, there I am!

One of the disturbing aspects of our information universe is that the whole enchilada is controlled by half a dozen billionaires. These guys have way to much money, and can therefore bully everything and everyone to get their way.

That includes investing in AI so you can train algorithms to disappear offensive material out of that universe. Google can't find The Contrarian Ranter. Every other search engine can.

Which is funny. I would have pegged Bill Gates as the Anti-Christ before Eric Schmidt.

Hide-and-seek with the Contrarian Ranter

Couple of folks who read this blog have brought to my attention that they can't find the contrarian ranter on the internet.

Tried it myself. Googled various combination of that title, my name, and substack, and every time, Google tells me "it looks like there aren't many great matches for your search," before giving links to a bunch of German doctors and lawyers who happen to share my name.

Then I tried Bing, and bingo! No trouble at all. Whether you search "contrarian ranter" or "dieterneumann substack" or some combination thereof, it comes up instantly.

It also just came to my attention that I'm no longer able to embed links in the text here.

I guess this shouldn't be a surprise. I moved to substack to escape google's censorship. Why would they help you find me somewhere else?

There's an angry wind blowing in these parts tonight

The leftovers of whatever the last storm was to batter the gulf coast. And rain, plenty of rain. The Environment Canada has little raindrops in every pictograph right through till next Tuesday.

It's wreaking havoc on the power grid. We were down for about six hours earlier today. Not as bad as down south. There's pockets of Louisiana where they're closing in on six weeks.

It does seem to me we're getting more extreme weather events, as the climate alarmists have long predicted. Since nobody's prepared to do anything serious about that, maybe we should start thinking about a plan B. (Plan A being get everybody off fossil fuels by 2030.)

A sensible start to a Plan B would be to upgrade the power grid. And here's what I mean by upgrade. 

On a night like this we're well past the threshold for shutting down the wind farms. We need to upgrade our turbine technology so we can keep these puppies humming in hurricane winds. Otherwise, there's just way too much energy going to waste.

And of course, we'll need some advances in battery technology before we can properly utilize the windfall of new energy coming our way.

I've been doing some calculations that seem to suggest if we just acidify our oceans a little bit more, the oceans themselves with be the all-time mother-fucker of all batteries!

Think it through! All you gotta do is park your EV close enough to the ocean and drop the cord in the water!

And the winner is...

Democracy!

Had the CBC on the radio as I was driving down to Teviotdale for breakfast with my old pal Kipling. 

One of the recurring themes the journos were on, if those on-air CBC types can be considered journalists, was; since we ended up exactly where we were six weeks and six hundred million dollars ago, was the election worth it?

Every politician, regardless of party, had the same stock answer.

Democracy is priceless!

That's an answer pre-loaded with so much faux gravitas, you almost, for a second or two, think it's an actual answer to the question!

Anyway, God bless Kipling, because when he finally showed up in his 23 year old VW van with almost 3 million miles on it, towing a trailer full of firewood, he had no idea who won the election. My mental health would probably be better if I could have such a nonchalant attitude to the world of politics. 

But thankfully, there's always a toke and a beer to take your mind off it.

The Flying "V"

Not to be confused with the Gibson guitar or the Rolls Royce car with a similar name.

The flying "V" I'm talking about consists of Canada geese flying south for the winter. As I was contemplating life out on the stoop, which, let's face it, is pretty much all I do, a couple hundred geese flew overhead in what I assume was a trial run for the great migration.

This time of year is always busy with the trial runs. They gotta train up the rookies for formation flying, obviously. Didn't see much of a "V" overhead this afternoon.

Is was more a long string with a few tentative sprouts veeing out from it. They were low enough you could feel the wings flapping.  

There followed at intervals stragglers, a dozen here, six or eight there. Oddly enough, the stragglers had some mighty impressive "V"s going on. 

The stragglers will in all likelihood get to Florida first.

-------

It's election night and almost the end of summer. This is one of the few elections I've elected to not vote. I've got a handful of carefully curated options, none of which I find palatable.

Where's the party for Canadian sovereignty?

Where's the party for an independent made-in-Canada foreign policy?

Where's the party that won't reflexively kowtow to Uncle Sam?

The democracy circus comes to town

Tomorrow is election day in Canada.

The three leading parties are all pretty much about the status quo. The rhetorical flourishes of the leaders mask the fact they're all singing out of the same neo-lib hymnal.

Affordable child-care has been an "issue" my entire adult life. My entire adult life either the Libs or the PCs have been in power. Never have they done anything about the issue while in power, but on the campaign trail, they have suddenly seen the light?

Same goes for the affordable housing issue. The Liberals and Conservatives both cut back on non-profit public housing. They've done nothing in the ensuing three or four decades to solve the supply problem. But for a few short campaign weeks they'll regale you with their heartfelt solutions to a problem they created.

Once the NDP repudiated their roots as a "socialist" party, they've become the Liberal Lite party. Look how effortlessly Bob Rae segued from NDP premier of Ontario, to interim leader of the federal Liberal party.

Since there's next to nothing to choose substance-wise between the three main parties, it'll boil down to a Trudeau popularity contest. The Toronto Star endorsed him today, and while the CBC can't officially endorse a candidate, it's clear they're part of Team Trudeau too.

Which also explains their treatment of the fringe parties, the Greens and the PPC. Media coverage of the Greens was focused almost exclusively on in-party strife, while Bernier's party was pointedly excluded from the debates, even though not too long ago he came within a whisker of leading the PCs!

I have to say I don't have a horse in this race, and I'm pretty sure a lot of other people feel the same.

By choosing amongst "choices" offered by our political elite and their billionaire owners, we're just legitimising the circus.

It's high time we had a "none of the above" option on the ballot. 

Fast cars on Concession 20

Not sure what was going on out at the road today.

The neighbour was over helping re-arrange the scrap vehicles. 

But we couldn't help notice some very fine machinery passing by.    

Lambos and Porsches and the like. In beef country.

I don't need a lot of encouragement to cook up a conspiracy theory, but here's the deal on why fancy cars were going by my house at a good turn of speed today.

The Cobble Beach Concours has been cancelled two years in a row. Fancy folks with fancy cars had made reservations at Cobble Beach well before the Concours was cancelled by covid.

They showed up in style!

There's nothing funnier than a school board's "behaviour plan" for messed up kids

Behaviour plans are a thing. They're part of the Individual Educational Plan (IEP) policy that mandates tailoring a child's educational trajectory to their specific challenges.

Most kids don't have specific needs or challenges. They just want to get through their four or five or six or seven years years of high school without being fingered as "special."

I saw those behaviour plans all the time. In fact, I used to write them. IEPs too. 

When you got to the "behaviour plan" protocol, you were basically making excuses for a public health system that seems to miss a lot of folks.

Like the seriously mentally ill.

When you have to write in a kid's behaviour plan that, when he thinks he's Jesus, it is best to just evacuate the classroom immediately, shouldn't that kid maybe be somewhere other than in a classroom in a public school?

If you're not gung-ho for lockdowns and vaccine passports, you must be a white supremacist

Have you noticed how methodically our CBC and legacy print media link vaccine hesitancy with the far-right and white supremacy? Then they'll turn around and profess astonishment that the pandemic has been politicised! 

By the far-right, of course!

And they wonder why trust in media is going down the shitter!

They should take a break from politicising the pandemic and polarizing the populace, and take a crack at asking some questions and digging for some answers.

There's no evidence that lockdowns work. Short of the military-grade commie version used in China, where a guy in a hazmat suit delivers a TV dinner once in awhile and if you're found out and about you won't be found again.

Seriously, what have our lockdowns been other than a great way to kill small business? Oh ya, it's a lockdown, but it's business as usual at Walmart and the government liquor store. So the virus waits in the car while you go in the store?

And where's the science that these disposable surgical masks do anything to combat an airborne virus? Have you seen any?

Here's something I found at Zerohedge. I don't know anything about the source but the article seems well-researched; Why does no one talk about Sweden any more?

One thing that never occurs to the professional journos is investigating what's going on in countries that are a little further along the curve, like Israel and Germany. The linked article does that and more.

Well worth a look.

Culling the fleet

Had a chap in with a flat-deck tow truck today. He left with the Escape on the deck and the Torment on the stinger. He'll come back for the Subaru on Monday.

That a lot of hopes and dreams gone. That Escape, for example. I'd hoped I could use the almost new tires on my truck. Bought the entire vehicle for about half what a new set of tires would cost. Unfortunately, the Escape tires aren't rated for the F150.

So it served a couple of years as a all-round fun field car, which was in itself worth at least the $400. Today I got $300 for it.

As for the Pontiac Torment, that was my dream to prove nursing along a used car was financially smart. The Subaru was another. They both failed miserably. Between initial costs and cumulative repairs, they gave me six years for about $30k. If I'd just bought a Toyota Corolla before that madness set in, I'd have saved ten grand, and the car would give me another six years, at least.

But, live and learn, I always say. The problem is it takes so long to learn stuff that you pretty much need a second life to put all that knowledge to use.

John Deere 820

As you know, sitting on the stoop watching the world go by is my default setting.

Every farmer in Bruce County was spreading shit last week. My local guys were at it too. Saw the neighbour going by pulling a manure wagon with a 1956 John Deere 820.

Couple of days later he pulls up the drive on his ATV. He's wearing a helmet.

We've been here 15 years and we've never seen Buddy with a helmet on his head.

Turns out he had the misfortune of having an OPP officer coming the other way one day last week. We don't generally see a lot of those folks, so taking a run up to the other pasture without a helmet kinda got normalized.

But the cop didn't bust his ass. 

That's your white privilege, I told him.

Anyway, I quizzed him about the 820. She was a two cylinder diesel. He's a John Deere man through and through. He's also got a John Deere 420, if one can imagine such a thing.

That's the tractor for me.

They must have got the labels mixed up

I remember back in the spring, the Farm Manager went to the garden centre to pick up some tomato plants. She was going for one cherry tomato plant and five of big round heirloom types. We were hoping to put in some tomato sauce, and the cherry tomatoes are great in salads and pasta dishes.

It's hard to know what you're buying. They all look the same. She transplants her six little tomato plants into her 10 x 10 kitchen garden, along with some peppers, radishes, and onions. I slipped in a few cannabis seeds as well.

That all looked pretty good when we planted the last week in May.

You forget how big a tomato plant can get. Or a pot plant.

Long story short, that 10 x 10 kitchen garden became a jungle. And, unbeknownst to us at the time, we'd planted five cherry tomato plants and one of the others, instead of the other way around.

Do you have any idea how many cherry tomatoes you have to pick to make a few jars of tomato sauce?

Let's check in on the Contarian Ranter

As regular readers will know, I got into mindfulness just after I blew the retina out of my left eyeball whilst attempting to take a shit. I came out of my emergency eye-surgery confinement just in time for the first covid confinement. In the meantime, my dear mother-in-law had passed and I had gone into official retirement, and my world was a different place.

I'm starting to get the hang of my new address at Substack. Been there a week now, and so far it looks promising. 

But at the same time, I feel for the old-school digital retards like my old pal Kipling. Just to let you know I haven't turned my back on you, here's a few samples of what you're missing.

Managed to turn a trip to Letterkenney country into an homage to the Hells Angels.

Recycled something you read on this site ten years ago.

And here's my latest rant about how the pandemic has been more about politics than disease.

Speaking of mindfulness, a Dr. Jillian Horton had an op-ed on the topic in the Globe and Mail today. Well worth the $4.20 I paid for the entire paper.

Which is a happy thing, because it was the only story worth reading in today's Globe and Mail.

Hey Kipling, send me a f*cking email address!

My old pal Kipling is even more retarded than me when it comes to anything concerning all this modern shit, like computers and the internet.

He's somewhat befuddled by my move to Substack. Hey man, just click on this; Welcome to The Contrarian Ranter.

I moved because putting stuff on blogger is a dead end once you're on the algo shit-list. 

We'll see how it goes, but I'm hoping Substack lets more people see my work.

Flight School at Falling Downs

It's that time of the year when the geese begin training up for their Florida winter vacations. Once they're off, they'll be beshitting the beaches, golf courses, and sundry public spaces in Florida and the Carolinas for the next several months.

But before they can do that, they gotta figure out the "V" formation.

We witnessed a test flight today where the "V" looked more like an alphabet soup, but not to worry.

They'll figure it out and they'll be happily spreading their feces all over the southern states in a month, as if those folks don't have enough on their plates already.

Speaking of which, the 'mericans are celebrating 9/11 today, the 20th anniversary. Those Saudi dudes who piloted those passenger jets into the twin towers had never before piloted jets, and according to their flight school records, had a lot of issues landing a Cessna.

Go figure...

And how about lead terrorist Mohammad Atta's passport falling safely to earth after he crashed his jet...

Really?

How to solve the school-bus driver shortage

By now you’ve no doubt heard all about it. From Tampa to Toronto, there’s just not enough school-bus drivers to be found.

Typically, being a school-bus driver means an hour and a half to two hours of min wage in the morning, and then you do it again in the afternoon. Depending on where you’re driving that bus, that gives you daily gross pay of $50-$75.

You’re getting up early to start your route shortly after seven. You’ll be done around five or so. Sure, you’ve got that big patch in between you’re not being paid for, but seriously, what are you gonna do with that?

Walk the dog?

Mow the lawn?

Pick up a lunch shift at Tim Hortons?

Around here the hourly wage for dump truck drivers is roughly double that for school bus drivers. 

Mind you, the dump truck driver doesn't get to walk the dog in the middle of the day.

For many years the policy of school boards has been to give contracts for bussing to the lowest bidder.

The logical conclusion of that policy is the driver shortage you’re reading about today.

Since a bus-load of school kids should be considered at least as valuable as a truck-load of gravel, there is no logical reason to pay the bus driver half the wage. 

The learning curve gets steeper as you age

Still getting acquainted with the lay of the land at Substack. Figuring out new stuff has never been a strength for the pot-addled bumpkin. I eventually succeeded in sending my introductory essay to my email account and forward the email to a few people, but I'm guessing that's not how it's supposed to work!

When software is fobbed off as "user friendly" you should always ask, friendly to who? Something a millennial finds user friendly isn't necessarily user friendly to seniors.

Then again, my dear parents are both more tech savvy than I am, and they're even older than me!

The Contrarian Ranter

 I'm in the process of moving my keen insights to Substack. As an old dude who doesn't handle change well and is tech-challenged, the change-over could be a bumpy ride. 

One of the challenges is that anything of a technical nature strikes me as tedious work, whereas actual writing is fun. Creating a nicely polished paragraph gives the same sort of satisfaction as crafting a beautiful piece of furniture. I'm at that happy stage in life where I'm disinclined to do anything I don't feel like doing.

So I'll have to summon up some will-power.

Thanks for bearing with me!

Adult diapers and the inexorable diminishment of quality of life as one ages

I was watching a Stones concert vid from just a few years ago, and couldn't help but ruminate on the fact that, even though I'm now officially a senior citizen, all those guys could, at least theoretically, be of my father's generation.

Charlie Watt's just bought the farm at age 80. Who can imagine rocking and rolling with the greatest rock and roll band in rock and roll history at that age?

But he's gone, and millions of dollars worth of hair transplants buried with him.

What a waste.

The Rolling Stones have provided the soundtrack for the last fifty years of popular culture. They'll be touring again, sans Charlie. The ticket prices will be astronomical. No street-fighting girls and boys anywhere, except those Antifa kids with rich white parents, will be able to afford the freight.

But we love them all the same...

Aswim as we are in our grief at Charlie's passing, life goes on. I ventured forth on a junket to the Indian River Liquor Store this afternoon, to stock up on supplies for the weekend.

That's fifteen minutes one way, and another fifteen back home, for a total of a half hour round trip.

I couldn't do my half hour round trip without ducking down the Church Side-road for an emergency piss on the way home!

Adult diapers here I come!

The car of the future

Don't get too excited about what Elon and the rest of the electric car crowd tell you. There's not enough lithium in the world to make their dreams come true.

Oh, you might have an electric car alright. It'll have a big solar sail on the roof. On a sunny day you'll be able to go as far as you want, at a speed of at least 20kph, at least until sunset.

On a windy day, the sky's the limit, as long as it's blowing in the direction you're hoping to go.

More likely you'll be driving a hybrid of some sort.

That EV tech will be supplemented by a lawn-mower engine. But it'll have two turbochargers AND a supercharger! That'll be just the ticket for those days, or rather that time of day, when the sun sets and the wind dies down.

Running on nothing but that internal combustion engine, in the dead of night when the air is still, you'll get an astonishing .25 litres per 100km!

The fact that it'll take you three days to go that 100km will no doubt be considered a liability in some circles, especially among those who need to get somewhere.

But think about it. What's your rush? One of our big problems in society is everybody's in a big rush all the time. Let's slow down and get to know one another.

Plus, just think about how many deaths and serious injuries will be avoided when nobody's going over 20kph, at least as long as it's not too windy. 

By golly, I think we just solved the carnage on the highways! The billions we save on medical expenses can be ploughed into child care and affordable housing! Talk about a win-win and win again!

The car of the future will save the planet!

Chrystia Freeland and the Afghans Canada abandoned

According to the front page of today's Globe and Mail, people inside our embassy in Kabul have been lobbying for an immigration program for our Afghan collaborators since 2012. Ottawa did nothing on the file until July of this year, as the Taliban was steamrolling its way toward Kabul and our ambassador was on holiday.

Justin has called that "tangible leadership."

I call it an abominable neglect of responsibility. People will die.

Mind you, the Talibs have promised an amnesty for all collaborators. Maybe they're serious.

Guess our abandoned Afghan allies will find out soon enough.

Meanwhile, those responsible for this travesty are running for re-election in a vote called on the very day the Taliban rolled into Kabul! Now there's some tangible idiocy!

Heads should roll! Not just Sajjan and Trudeau, but Chrystia too. She's been either FM or Deputy PM since 2017. She needs to be held accountable too.

Google makes Chrystia Freeland Prime Minister of Canada

I just googled Christia Freeland and the first thing that comes up reads; "The Honourable Chrystia Freeland | Prime Minister of Canada." Her Wikipedia is the second of 950,000 results.

The link takes you to a gov't website, where it's clarified that she's the Deputy PM, not the PM. So why that Google tomfoolery?

In my recent post, Why billionaires invest in journalism, I mentioned that Chrystia considers Google boss Eric Schmidt a personal friend, according to her book "Plutocrats."

Maybe that explains it.

Experts stumped as deadly Delta variant not very deadly

Yet.

That's the trouble with predicting the future. Things could take a turn.

As you saw in my previous epistle, during previous covid waves the death curve lags the case curve by 1-2 weeks. That makes sense from what we know about the course of the disease. 

We are now six weeks into the fourth wave. The case curve has exploded in a luscious upward arc, from under 400 per day to well over 3,400. Meanwhile, the death curve lies flat on the mat.

But that doesn't mean it won't get up and boogie tomorrow.

The "fourth wave" hustle

Not that you'll read about it in The Globe and Mail or on CBC, but there's been a stunning collapse in covid mortality over the course of the pandemic.

1st wave case counts peaked at 1,700 per day in late April 2020 (all stats based on 7-day moving avg.) Deaths peaked about a week later at 176.  10.4 deaths per 100 cases.

2nd wave cases peaked in January 2021 at 8,000 per day. Deaths peaked about a week later at 160. 2 deaths per 100 cases.

3rd wave case numbers crested at 8,800 last April. The daily death count peaked about a week later at 50. .6 deaths per 100 cases.

4th wave cases numbers have been climbing since the third week of July, from under 400 per day to the current 3,400, an 800% increase. Daily deaths are currently at 15, a statistically insignificant increase of 5 deaths per day since the case numbers began to climb. Currently we stand at  .4 deaths per 100 cases.

These are numbers, not conspiracy theories. Given the inconsistency in testing, I suspect the 1st wave mortality to cases ratio was inflated due to relatively less testing than during subsequent waves, and also because by waves 2 and 3 the most vulnerable were already gone. The drop in mortality from the second to the third suggests vaccines have had a positive impact. 

I humbly submit that the current hysteria over vaccinating children and ostracising the vaccine-hesitant is based on something other than the dangers posed by the actual pandemic. 

***

I used the graphs at Worldometers because they are clear, simple, and it's easy to toggle between cases and deaths. They use the same gov't stats as the World Health Organization (WHO).

Climate crisis makes weather worse but better

Check out this story at CBC.

It's a good-news bad-news story.

The bad news is that due to anthropogenic climate devastation, we're having more climate catastrophes than ever. Floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, rising sea levels and melting glaciers; you name it. If we don't get off the fossil fuels right quick we're gonners.

Then again, maybe not.

The good news is that worse and worse climate catastrophes kill fewer and fewer people. 

That's gonna piss off Greta something fierce. 

I find it mildly amusing the way these bullshit emission targets the Western world resets every few years at their interminable "climate conferences," from Rio to Kyoto to Paris and beyond, are treated as our planet's only route to salvation. If that's even remotely true, we're well and truly screwed. We've never met any of those targets and we never will! It's one big fat exercise in PR and political grandstanding.

But the climate we're wrecking seems to get kinder to us the more we wreck it.

How does that make sense?

Perhaps humanity will keep evolving as it has for the past few hundred thousand years...

Adapt or die!

More covid confusion

As recently as last week CBC was trotting out experts reassuring us that "breakthrough infections" among the fully vaxxed were "extremely rare,"and in the rare event that you got covid once fully vaccinated, you'd at least be spared serious illness.

A week later, they've got different experts explaining that, in Israel, 60% of serious cases admitted to hospital are fully vaccinated.

In other words, last week's experts were sharing their wishful thinking, not their expertise.

But don't worry too much about it - there'll no doubt be a fresh crop of experts along by next week to tell you something different!

Yet they wonder why trust in media is going down?