We knew this. Everybody knew this. Ukraine still requested them.

Frankly, this isn't Canada's problem. The Senator isn't designed for actual combat operations. It's a glorified armoured car designed to protect against shrapnel and small arms fire. At best, it's an ERT vehicle.

A vigorous fascist is preferable to a corpse

Same reason the NDP in Canada runs Singh instead of Notley or Eby.

The dollar-crunched Global South is a direct consequence of the dominance of the USD in global trade. There's absolutely a third route here where China's pursuit of trade through local currencies decouples regional blocs from the USD (ASEAN, the AU, etc.), or where government borrowing in this countries begins to be RMB-backed with China acting as the supply of USD. The RMB's soft peg with the USD introduces many opportunities for forex fuckery.

Done

In 2020, I nearly died from mysterious industrial chemical exposure at my home. Later I discovered my employer (Apple) was dumping toxic waste into our windows from their Skunkworks semiconductor fab next-door. I tipped off EPA, who raided them in 2023. EPA just sent me the report

China’s economy grew 5.3% in the first quarter, beating expectations

Real estate continues deleveraging, and yet 5.3% GDP growth YoY.

Retail sales growth continues to be sluggish (3.1% vs. 4.6% predicted) and CPI is coming in cool (0.1% vs. 0.3% predicted). My theory for this is that China is actually seeing costs drop more quickly than CPI metrics can keep up. Traditional big-ticket household spending categories are housing, transportation, and education. Housing prices are obviously on the decline, but transportation costs are also decreasing due to the combination of cheaper EVs and an expanding HSR network. Education costs have been clamped down on after the crackdown on private tutoring, while average education outcomes have been raised by the crackdown on gaming. Meanwhile, traditional recurring costs like food and energy have been pushed downward by increasing trade with Russia as well as the rise of cheap solar.

It may be time to revisit the notion of ever-increasing consumption value as being important for economic growth. In this case, you can get the same quality of life with substantially less money. Why spend more to pad the top line retail sales number?

A shower thought on "Chinese vassalage":

The DPRK, whose dependence on China is extensive and extremely well-documented, still has an absurd amount of flexibility, self-determination, and independence from Chinese policy. It's essentially the "worst case scenario" in terms of Chinese influence... And the DPRK was still allowed to develop it's own nuclear weapons despite Chinese opposition. What are the odds that Canada would be allowed to develop an independent nuclear weapons program today? Cuba? Mexico?

Zero.

Being a rather frequent flyer from Boston, I want to talk about the Biden administration's vendetta against JetBlue. JetBlue is a airline carrier operating in the US.

The US airline market is made up of the Big 4 (United, American, Delta, Southwest) followed by regional (Alaska, Air Canada), low cost (JetBlue), and ultra-low-cost (Frontier, Spirit) carriers. The Big 4 dominate passenger volumes (160M+/year), while the others sit in the 40M/year range.

JetBlue is an airline carrier that's primarily focused on the Northeast (New York, Boston, etc.). Spirit and AA have more national networks, which crucially means more slots for flights. AA also has a robust international network.

Naturally, you might think that having more competitors for the Big 4 would be something desirable for the Biden administration... And yet?

JetBlue and American Airlines had signed an agreement termed the Northeast Alliance. This agreement allowed JetBlue passengers onto AA flights (and vice versa) and route coordination along with various status recognition and loyalty program integration benefits. In 2022, the DOJ began a trial claiming JetBlue and American Airlines were being "anticompetitive" in their operations in the Northeast. In 2023, the ruling forced the Northeast Alliance to disband within 30 days. The core elements of the Northeast Alliance were designed to help JetBlue and AA compete with Delta and United in the New York and Boston markets. This, naturally, fell through.

JetBlue and Spirit Airlines had signed an agreement aiming to merge. The DOJ also claimed that this merger was "anticompetitive" as it would remove ultra low cost carrier seats from the industry. This merger was also terminated by the DOJ.

In this context, it's important to note a couple of things:

Spirit Airlines is not doing well. Domestic leisure travel demand has not rebounded as they'd hoped and their planes are not in the best shape. They're worth a fifth of what JetBlue was offering to purchase them.

JetBlue is not doing well. They're running losses and had hinges the entire company on one of the two partnership deals going through. Now, with both deals blocked and losses racking up, they're forced to cut service and cut routes while raising fees. As a result of this, JetBlue is currently paying pilots to not fly.

American is the straggler of the Big 3 (Delta, United, American) traditional carriers. Their profit margins are lower than the competition post-COVID.

This is to say, while Delta and United have been doing great throughout this entire ordeal, JetBlue is fucked, Spirit is fucked, and American is slightly fucked. This is the type of competition that the Biden administration encourages: one where the entrenched players aren't touched and smaller/less successful players can go fuck themselves.

I'm sorry, who approved this tweet?

(Canada) Gaza protesters blockade truck access to Port of Vancouver

Public high school students are occupying Chicago City Hall chanting “Biden Biden you can’t hide, you’re supporting genocide!”

The kids are alright.