Some acronyms are helpful and useful and elegant. SCUBA, self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. LASER – Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (technically, LABSEOR but poetic license allowed apparently). PIN – Personal Identification Number. KFC (no one wants to admit they know that one). All have become common words and save oh so much talking. Ever heard of MBWA? Too bad if you haven’t. Look beyond its inelegance, and the fact that it sounds stupid if you try to [Read more]
Photo ops are easy, turning the wheels is another matter
In 2025, China opened a breathtaking rail terminal facility called Chongqing East. The city is in mountainous terrain, and so building a large rail terminal is a compounded challenge. Nevertheless, at an estimated cost of $8 billion, a 1.2 million square meter facility over 8 levels was constructed after carving a flat space out of the side of a mountain. An estimated 2 million cubic meters of concrete went into it, along with 366,000 tonnes of steel. The terminal includes, as in, one facet, [Read more]
Positive national energy momentum at risk of being swamped by…everything else
There are a thousand inspirational wall hangings and memes and coffee mugs that all exhort similar messages, to think positively, to avoid negative energy and negativity in general, that humans are just better overall by doing so. They are in general all correct. The words are simple, high-quality life advice that we probably know deep down but that are hard to live by. Which is why so many of those things are sold. We need the reminders. A lot of people have made careers doing exactly that, [Read more]
To get out of the hole we are in, first stop digging
Many people I chat with these days that are outside the energy sector, if they know that I am in the energy sector, extend complex salutations, superficially and congenially voicing a kind of high-five vibe along the lines of Hey, congrats on these oil prices, you must be so happy…and yet as those words come out, it is obvious they paper over a simmering cauldron of rage and/or confusion and/or fear about the Middle East brouhaha unfolding live before our eyes in real time, and what it is doing [Read more]
Global scarcities pound on Canada’s door
Among the several hundred browser tabs open on various devices - not joking, you should see my annoyed devices - are an assortment of (very) random pieces that are too interesting to abandon. The odd part is when some event happens in real time that pulls a bunch of these together into some previously non-existent coherence. Not necessarily cause and effect but more like second or third order consequences that were beyond me to spot until humanity’s unfathomable complexity upchucks a clear [Read more]
Old men and cell phones – three won’t-lose lions race to master drones and rule the world
Long in tooth and soul Longing for another win Lurch into the fray Weapon out and belly in - Invincible by Tool (similarly for quote at bottom) I slept through history class as often as possible, though in hindsight I can see value in knowing some of that stuff. My rebellion was mainly against being tested on persnickety elements like exact dates of major events rather than the overall meaning in the context of the time. In defense of my teachers, maybe they did cover exactly that, but [Read more]
Will Canada unshackle itself in time? The global energy and minerals window of opportunity
“We are touchingly prone to mistaking our models of reality for reality itself, mistaking the strength of our certainty for the strength of the evidence, thus moving through a dream of our own making that we call life…we are simply not capable of processing the full scope of reality. Our minds cope by choosing fragments of it to the exclusion, and often to the erasure, of the rest.” - Maria Popova/The Marginalian Great words, hey? All part of the human condition. All of us suck, in this [Read more]
Canada and natural gas and fertilizer and get on it
Is anyone else out there having trouble keeping up? A week ago I thought AI was the topic of the decade, either going to render humanity useless or lead to some sort of free-high-income ‘paradise’ where we don’t have to do anything at all. Kind of a big deal. And yet this past week I’ve hardly heard a word about it. It must be all over. AI must have slipped us into the matrix so quietly and efficiently we didn’t even notice. But probably not. Nothing like a good old war to bump AI off the [Read more]
Thinking things through
Buddhists say that life is suffering. Don’t we all just feel full of life these days? Everything feels crazy and painful, or infuriating, or all of the above. I can’t tell you how many people say they just tune out, especially the news. Tuning out and going for a walk in nature is a great way to deal with it all, but that isn’t always an option. So what to do then. Well, there are ways to get through it all intact… Growing up near a small rural town, where country people gathered from a [Read more]
Some things about AI are becoming clear – the demand for “real” stuff is going to skyrocket
Elon Musk seemingly can perform the impossible. He, in a sense, invented a whole new segment of the automobile industry, building and commercializing electric vehicles when major manufacturers said it couldn’t be done. He built a rocket company that runs laps around NASA, the long-predominant US governmental space agency. He also made the biggest leap in human history, when he went from environmental hero (for EV breakthroughs) to a Trump-team pariah within the blink of an eye, all while siring [Read more]
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