Donald Trump has more of a plan for renovating the East Wing Ballroom than he does for starting another war in the Middle East.
05.03.2026 17:45
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Donald Trump has more of a plan for renovating the East Wing Ballroom than he does for starting another war in the Middle East.
I wrote this back in the Trump I administration. Whatever one may think of the heinous Iranian dictatorship, Trump's unauthorized & illegal war is a naked attempt at distraction & ginning up voter supportβmore slaughter in the name of the Dubya Doctrine.
www.nationalobserver.com/2017/02/06/a...
Beware of dog... May drool on you. Russell Books in Victoria, where I looked for the book Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy but struck out. Bought The Far Side Gallery 4 for our son instead
Come back!
I have the modest goal of 12 books in 2026. Finished KSR's Ministry for the Future last week, which took 6 wks. Then picked this up by @lizmoorebooks.bsky.social. Read it in three days. Been a while since I had that "can't put it down" compulsion. Very different books. Highly recommend both.
Does the Musk dog poop swastikas?
www.scientificamerican.com/article/beep...
This is America now.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
(RD) RESIDENTIAL - DETACHED AND SEMI-DETACHED HOUSING Purpose: To allow low density ground oriented residential uses including gentle infill which increases housing choice and retains existing neighbourhood character. Principal Forms and Uses: Single detached dwellings and duplexes. Principal units may also include a secondary suite. Single detached dwellings may also include a detached accessory dwelling unit (e.g. laneway houses, carriage houses). Complementary Uses: Small scale local commercial uses (e.g. corner stores), child care, public schools, utilities, transportation corridors, parks, open space and community facilities. Home based businesses and places of worship as an ancillary use.
οΌNew West Provincial Housing Legislation OCP Amendment Bylaw No. 8522, 2025 Interim Housing Needs Report Integration β’ Requirement to reflect the 20-year housing need identified within the City's Interim Housing Needs Report. β’ With the addition of Transit Oriented Development areas the Plan will include more than enough capacity to meet the 20-year housing need. β’ Updates also proposed to the Growth Management and Housing chapters of the OCP. Minor Administrative Changes β’ 'Public schools' is proposed to be added as a permitted use within the majority of residential land use designations. β’ Update land use designation names and colours. β’ Alignment across the Official Community Plan and Downtown Community Plan.
Ok maybe not zoning, but #newwest council definitely described this as the municipality wanting not to be an administrative barrier to good thing.
A political cartoon from Steve Sack on Substack. A massive crowd with ICE and NO KINGs signs are formed into the shape of a hand about to flick something away with its thumb and forefinger. The something is a masked and over-armed ICE agent.
From Steve Sack, now retired but for a long time the cartoonist of the Mpls. Star-Tribune.
"Fuentes has built an army of fans, who call themselves βGroypers,β and his style of bigoted trolling has become the lingua franca of the young, ascendant right. Each episode I watched garnered at least 1 million views on Rumble."
Re Fuentes:
www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
"Since Fuentes appeared on Tucker Carlsonβs podcast at the end of October, Republican leaders have started to ask themselves just how much sway he has over the party...."
Fuentes then fantasizes about βbreeding gulagsβ: βSo just like Hitler imprisoned Gypsies, Jews, communists, you know, all of his political rivals, we have to do the same thing with womenβ¦ They go to the breeding gulags. The good ones will be liberated. The bad ones will toil in the mines forever.β
Fuentes, yesterday: βOur #1 political enemy is women because women constrain everything, every conversation, every man, everything. They have to be imprisoned. They are the ones that are hurting the fertility rate. They're the ones making us sympathetic to poor people, which are also brown people.β
HUGE news for @thetyee.ca.
Our founding editor, Dave Beers, is retiring.
Who will fill these big shoes?
thetyee.ca/Tyeenews/202...
Photo, perched on branch with fish in beak. Description from ebird: βA spectacular medium-sized kingfisher of foothill and montane forest on Mindanao with a thick red bill, a white throat, a blue rump, and faintly scaled rufous on the underparts and cheek, extending around the back of the neck. The male has a blue crown, blue tail, and blue wings with buff spots. The blue is replaced by green in the female. The male also has an additional blue moustache stripe. Unmistakable. More often seen than heard. Song, given at dawn, consists of a single downslurred whistle with a slightly metallic quality, βwee-ooo,β repeated every few seconds.β
Kingfisher of the Day:
Blue-capped Kingfisher
π· Chaiyan Kasorndorkbua
2/ This touches on that feeling that we live now, in 2026, in a time of great sickness and corruption,where corporate power & all those who profit from it are not only denying it but accelerating it.
Imagine living without that ambient anxiety. KSR has done a fine job of it.
1/ Another one from KSR's Ministry, Ch. 97, a voice from the future looking at the gains made in biodiversity & reciprocity with the Earth.
And: It is a self-reinforcing, often rapid, cycle of in-group radicalization where moderate voices are ostracized and the groupβs focus becomes continuously more intense.
Just catching up. AI says:
"A purity spiral is a form of groupthink where members of a group compete to demonstrate superior commitment to a shared value, leading to increasingly extreme views, "moral outbidding," and the punishment of nuanced or moderate opinions."
Trees on bankside in foreground beside lake with reflection of distant houses, dawn sky, painting.
πΌ The Break of Dawn, YrjΓΆ Ollila.
Love this from page 459 of Kim Stanley Robinson's 'The Ministry for the Future.' (One of the most important books I've read in the past 10 years, and a bit of a marathon. Only ~100 pages to go)
Tax cuts for giant corporations and the super rich.
Paid for by cuts to the social safety net for everyone else.
Trickle-up economics.
There is no justification for a masked enforcement agency. FBI agents, police, government officials, all are exposed to bad actors but do not hide behind masks. βICE goes masked for a single reason β to terrorize Americans into quiescence."
www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...
@neil21.bsky.social maybe I'll have to do a "forever chemicals" PSA Pecha Kucha about couches, carpets & cooking pans
Also: they're still selling Teflon, offloaded onto their Chemours brand. Sick.
www.teflon.com/en/teflon-br...
Just watched 'Dark Waters' w/Mark Ruffalo about Bob Bilott's 20-yr battle with DuPont over their knowingly poisoning of an entire town, & the global population at large, with "forever chemical" PFOAs. On Netflix. Well done & highly recommend
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAO...
Stopped at the Lummi Seafood Market on the way back from Port Townsend & bought what I thought was a coho salmon but turned out to be a white King, a rarity. Brown sugar & coarse salt dry brine overnight, smoked it today outside. A bit saltier than I hoped, but delicious.
3/βThis is a government of the people, by the people and for the people no longer,β former president Rutherford B. Hayes wrote in his diary in 1886. βIt is a government by the corporations, of the corporations and for the corporations.β
2/Richard White, author of 'The Republic for Which It Stands,' says the Gilded Age was among the most corrupt eras in American history primarily because of βthe rise of corporations and the growth of modern means of communication that intensified the way corruption can work.β
