“The public, on the other hand…The public was like one of those huge Pacific jellyfish, one enormous, pulsating mass of indifference, drifting wherever the current carried it; an organism without a motive, ambition, or original sin to call its own, but which somehow believed, in whatever passed for its brain, that it chose its own leaders and had a say in its own destiny.” – Mick Herron, Real Tigers (third book of the Slough House series, best spy series ever) Cynical? Maybe a bit. Accurate? [Read more]
“Get a job” will always mean “get a job”
About 50 years ago, a time span which is somewhere between “ancient history” and “I remember when”, depending where you are on the Gen Z <-> Boomer continuum, accountants plied their trade in a way that would blow most young minds of today. Transactions were recorded line by line in ledger books, in pencil. Ledger books are still available today, but you’d have to be some sort of luddite kook to use one. Absolutely no one is into retro accounting. Each transaction’s debits and credits were [Read more]
Weekly Word Wandering: Canada in Global Firepower rankings (ouch); LNG exports not thrilling everyone; Ford promises a new Model T moment, underwhelms everyone
Engaging Articles of the Week Look out, here comes Canada! Or not…A peculiar and fascinating report somehow showed up in my inbox the other day called “Global Firepower 2025”. It catalogs pretty much what it sounds like, plus a bunch of other stuff, and offers some fascinating metrics. Canada is one weird country. Or rather, we seem weird in the sense of our collective fightin' assets relative to other countries. For example, MLRS count – we can thank Russia for one thing, no one knew at all [Read more]
Driving across Canada
This summer, I did something I haven’t done in a while - drove across Canada. Or most of it anyway, from the NS Atlantic to Calgary. It is a formidable journey, of limited variability. I saw countless millions of trees. I saw at least 31 dead raccoons, possibly many more, but in the spirit of statistical integrity only identifiable carcasses were counted, and only if identifiable from behind the wheel. I saw scant benefit in putting in more effort. In a similar vein, the trees of northern [Read more]
Rig counts don’t add up like they used to
Do you know what day of the week it is? Or what week it is? Month? No, not those, not the Thursdays and the third week of July, not that stuff. I mean the out-of-control catalogue of diseases and feelings and occupations that have declared their own "day". Did you know that this past Monday was "World Chimpanzee Day"? Or that the week of July 14-18 is "Dust Safety Week"? Or that according to a hair-brained site named "Always the Holidays" the month of July has 43 "official" awareness [Read more]
Weekly Word Wandering: A great Trump initiative, a terrible Trump initiative, and a potential excellent use for depleted oil reservoirs – bio-engineered hydrogen production
Engaging Articles of the Week US Electrical grid trajectory: “The status quo is unsustainable.” Thus speaks the first Highlight of a report from the US Department of Energy called “Report on Evaluating U.S. Grid Reliability and Security”. Under the previous US administration, the Department of Energy was gutted of anyone that might have even thought “hydrocarbons are kind of useful.” The entire upper echelon was staffed with energy transitionists; those who knew it was all happening and fast [Read more]
Weekly Word Wandering: Impressive fuel-cell tech from auto powerhouses; the shocking scale of tradespeople shortages; and China’s wild energy consumption path
Interesting articles of the Week Cool energy tech is cool energy tech, no matter what it is: Honda and Toyota (and a few others, but these in particular) have been soldiering on in the development of hydrogen-fuelled fuel-cell vehicles despite naysayers and governmental insistence that battery power is the way to go (for e.g., the government of Canada has dumped tens of billions into EV-battery facilities and almost none into fuel-cell production, despite the fact that China (and 20 other [Read more]
Mission Incomprehensible: Forced EV mandates wreak industry havoc and drive up all auto prices
What? A complete ceasefire? Now what are we supposed to watch? Oh yeah right. Other stuff. Sadly, for a car nut, the current auto scene is in need of a ceasefire, if you’ve looked at new car prices lately. Or, even used autos – demand is ridiculously high for even those, because new car prices are almost unattainable for many people. The reasons for that are complex and many – supply chain issues, for example, that began during the Covid years, have never been recovered from, it seems. [Read more]
Weekly Word Wandering: Stop watching rockets and read about interesting shipbuilding news, the final fallout from Dieselgate, and wild new AI chip power consumption
It is not a bad assumption to say that no one is reading anything these days beyond staring at screens waiting to see if the US openly enters the Israel-Iran fray and things really go boom. Considering that Iran is a key piece of the BRICS axis, the consequences are not to be taken lightly. So we all look for clues, and, since he’s not exactly shy, Trump’s social media feed isn’t a bad place to start, if you can handle it. He did, for example, throw out the fairly unambiguous all caps scream: [Read more]
AI hype is off the charts, but maybe for good reason, and anyway whatever, as energy providers you’ll all be very happy
By some estimates, such as from pawn shop observations or my storage room, there must be a billion guitars out there gathering dust, almost unused, bought in some burst of enthusiasm somewhere in life, abandoned before even "Smoke On the Water" sounded half decent, when the first sore fingers showed up. Same for keyboards. Or drum sets. Along the same lines, there are likely a similar number of embryonic manuscripts sitting in computer folders across the world, when similarly people watch a [Read more]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- …
- 43
- Next Page »