Short version this week due to a packed weekend. Granted, I could have skipped seeing Once Upon A Time In Hollywood earlier tonight, but I felt you would all want me to see it.

DUMB CANADIAN POLITICAL PROPOSALS THIS WEEK

Two biggies! Both of them are gloriously stupid! Both of them are also racist (one much moreso than the other)!

THE PEOPLE’S PARTY OF CANADA: Maxime Bernier, in a speech to the 98% white nationalists/2% useful idiots who comprise the base of his awful party, promised that a People’s Party of Canada government would slash incoming immigration levels for Canada in half. This is quite possibly the single dumbest policy any candidate could propose. (I mean, yeah, the Tories are hinting at immigration being bad, but they haven’t yet come out and demanded cuts, presumably because at the federal level there are a few Tories left who can explain, in short phrases, why this idea is disastrous.)

The “why” of this policy being terrible - other than, you know, the obvious racism since immigration to Canada is at this point overwhelmingly nonwhite and everybody knows it - is really quite simple: Canada’s population gains at this point are only driven by immigration, since being that we are a successful and rich first-world nation we are doing the thing that all successful rich first-world nations do: we’re seeing our birthrates drop, because when you are a rich country with good access to contraception that is what always happens. Cutting our immigration intake is largely equivalent to shaving percentage points off our tax base at this point. It’s stupid, and what’s more it’s pointless because immigrants to Canada overwhelmingly adopt Canadian societal norms within a generation anyway.

The only reason to oppose immigration to Canada is racism, pure and simple. This isn’t surprising coming from Maxime Bernier, of course, who has been dogwhistling harder than an animal trainer on the latest Hollywood movie where a dog’s inner monologue is voiceovered by a veteran screen actor, but it’s still depressing to contemplate.

THE GREENS: Elizabeth May this week proposed that perhaps the water infrastructure crisis on First Nations reserves could be resolved by making SNC-Lavalin cut a deal where, in exchange for avoiding charges with respect to their corruption charges (or as part of their sentence) they would fix or build clean water infrastructure on reservation lands. It is easy to see why May proposed this: it is a policy idea that attacks two Liberal Party weak points at once (their failure on First Nations aid and the dodginess of dismissing Jodi Wilson-Raybould from the party over her conduct following the fallout on the SNC-Lavalin file). Given that the Greens just hired Warren Kinsella last week to conduct election strategy, I would be surprised were this not his idea, to be honest. But it’s a bad idea.

The First Nations crisis needs to be dealt with - desperately so. But if you want to deal with it in a way that will actually help tribal bands in the long run, it’s going to cost money, and quite a lot of it, and a contractor that is actually motivated to do its best possible job. SNC-Lavalin operating under a punitive deal is not going to be so motivated: it is a recipe for doing the minimum possible amount of work to satisfy the terms of their plea bargain/no prosecution deal (or whatever it ends up being). Any meaingful oversight will end up costing time or money or both in a way that will almost certainly mean that it would be more productive to simply fine SNC-Lavalin and then spend the money on water rehabilitation projects on indigenous lands.

Bottom line: this is a dumb idea advanced for political gain. The Greens should be better than this.

MOJO BOJO

Boris Johnson is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom now, in western civilization’s continuing trend of “what if we simply have the dumbest, most selfish motherfuckers run everything” that’s been such a hit over the past few years in country after country. There was a little scuttlebutt that he was going to face a revolution within his own party ranks and that might still happen but it’s looking less likely now; Johnson will likely be the Prime Minister for at least a couple of whiles, and has made it clear that he plans to push through with a no-deal Brexit immediately, aiming for an October 31 exit date, and that he will prorogue Parliament if it looks like he’d suffer a no-confidence vote (which would likely happen, given that all the opposition parties want to force an election and there are enough Tories who hate Johnson passionately to tip the scales on such a vote).

Technically the Queen is supposed to stop prime ministers from abusing government process like this, but on the other hand the Queen is very old and prone to not interfering in government for numerous good reasons and, let’s be honest, how well has “let’s rely on conventions to protect our system of popular governance” been doing at protecting anything else these days?

Anyway, unless an election somehow happens I would recommend finding whatever British stocks exist and shorting them, if you are so capable. Or short the pound, if you are an international money manager type person. Short everything British, really, because the country is about to shoot its collective dick off.

THE (REALLY TALL) GREENHOUSE EFFECT

Sustainable architecture groups have started calling for bans on glass tower skyscrapers, on the basis that they are not sustainable. (Makes sense!) The basic logic here is pretty simple: glass towers are popular because A) they look striking and/or pretty, B) they let in lots of natural light, which people tend to like, and C) they give the people inside a good view, which they also tend to like. But, as one of the architects pointed out, glass lets solar heat in very easily, and since glass towers are typically sealed buildings (either completely sealed, as most office towers are, or functionally sealed, as most apartment towers with balconies are), this basically means they’re really tall greenhouses when you get down to it. This is kind of important when you realize that we’ve just spent the last week in an all-time-high global heatwave which saw record temperature spikes across the northern hemisphere.

And yes, of course these towers have air conditioning, but AC uses electricity and that’s a problem right there because the energy has to come from somewhere and it’s not all clean energy yet in most places. So that makes it a global warming contributor on top of everything else. Which means that, in the medium term, a lot of these glass towers will likely have to be refitted or replaced if we want to halt climate change.

As a longterm advocate of brutalist architecture, though, I am all for big blocky stone buildings with harsh angles and smaller windows.

THE ENTERTAINMENT SECTION

Movies watched/rewatched this week:

Booksmart (2019, Olivia Wilde, theatre) - 4.5/5

*The Matrix (1999, The Wachowski Sisters, TV) - 4/5

Fast Color (2019, Julia Hart, Google Play rental) - 3.5/5

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019, Quentin Tarantino, theatre) 3.5/5

I picked up Bad North in a Steam sale a while back and I’m playing it now. It’s pretty good - a nice light strategy game, you can get a couple rounds done in about ten minutes and then come back to it later, that sort of thing.

See you in seven.