WHEN IN DOUBT, RELY ON QUEBEC TO GIVE YOU A STORY GUARANTEED TO GENERATE HATE-CLICKS

Quebec has tabled a bill that would let the province prevent provincial employees from wearing hijabs, kippah, and other "symbols of religious observance." (Already, to nobody's surprise, socially conservative National Assembly members have started arguing that the crucifix isn't a "symbol of religious observance," which seems to rely on the idea that it is just some massive, centuries-old coincidence that it is a stick with Jesus on it.)

"But wait," you say. "Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms! Religion is in there somewhere, right? So they can't do this." And yes, religion is a guaranteed freedom under the Charter. But the problem is the notwithstanding clause, Section 33 itself, ol' Pierre Trudeau's official Worst Idea Ever (and bearing in mind we're talking about the dude who enacted martial law in Quebec to catch a kidnapping ring, which is probably the primary reason the Parti and eventually Bloc Quebecois came into existence to give us headaches about "distinct provincial character" forever and ever), which essentially lets a province opt out of following the Charter if they really, really want to not follow it, like I mean super don't want to follow it.

Until last year the general idea was that the notwithstanding clause should be reserved for actual true matters of provincial sovereignty, but the problem with this theory is that it essentially relied on an honor system and politicians are politicians. Once Doug Ford decided he was cool with using it to force Toronto to change its municipal government if he had to, the floodgates for the likes of what Quebec is pulling now were opened forever. (The moral of this story, in part, is that Doug Ford is a stupid fuckhead, but that's the moral of many, many stories in Canadian politics.)

Obviously this is a bad law: the number of workarounds they have put in to make it seem less abusive (existing government workers are grandfathered in and get to keep wearing their symbols, and supposedly it only counts for government workers "in a position of authority," which means whatever the government wants it to mean. (So far it definitely includes teachers, judges and anybody who carries a gun on the job, including all cops.) But, like most laws of this sort, the fact that it is bad is mostly the reason it exists. Or, to put it another way, it's not a badly designed law which fails to properly protect a secular society; it's a well-designed law with malicious intent that's designed to tell Muslims and Sikhs and Jews exactly where their place is.

ONE OBLIGATORY PARAGRAPH ABOUT BREXIT THAT YOU SHOULD PLAY "YAKETY SAX" TO

Okay, so in the past week Theresa May called for a "third meaningful vote" on her Brexit deal, which failed for a third time. (In most Parliamentary democracies when a meaningful vote tabled by the government fails that's supposed to trigger an election but for some reason it's not happening with Brexit anything.) Then Parliament tabled a bunch more motions from various members that were all sort of other options: what if the UK just leaves without a deal, what if the UK just stays in the EU, what if we have a second referendum, what if we ask for a Norway-type deal, what if we have Theresa May's deal but we ask the EU for more stuff that they won't give us, et cetera et cetera. All of those failed too because there is no majority vote for anything: the Remain vote is probably about 50 percent but none of the politicians are confident it's a sure thing (and some just don't want to stay), and the Leave vote is actually three or four different ideas about what "leaving the EU" means and they don't agree with each other. And now things are even more complex for other reasons. Partly it's more complex because Theresa May has figured out her career is over because she is one of the worst Prime Ministers of all time and various Tory jackals like Boris Johnson and Nigel Rees-Mogg and Tanthony Bladder-Upchuckingsworth are sniffing around trying to figure out if there's a way for them to become Prime Minister so their place in history is assured even if it's just "the dipshit who ruined everything" because hey at least your name is in the history books. And partly it's more complex because the EU parliamentary elections, the ones for the sort-of-Government Of All Europe, are going to happen in May but right now May is refusing to hold them and that might trigger a no-deal Brexit all by itself. In fact one of the motions that was tabled this week was basically a disguised attempt to ensure that no EU elections would be held in the UK, which would force Parliament to then either vote no-deal or May's deal because there wouldn't be any choices left. (That one failed too.)

What is happening in the UK right now is honestly the biggest failure of operational democracy that I can ever remember seeing, ever. Military coups make much more sense than this.

BUTTCOIN

hee hee hee second time in a month I've been able to use the word "butt" in a headline in a pun-oriented way, this rules

Ahem.

So Bitwise is an American investment firm that's trying to get approval from the Federal Exchange Commission to run a cryptocurrency-based hedge fund, and this week they released a report arguing that 95% of all of the trading volume in Bitcoin is, essentially, bullshit. On the one hand, Bitcoin being bullshit is simply not surprising at all if you know anything about Bitcoin. On the other hand, though, Bitcoin being bullshit in this particular way is sort of a new and novel way for it to be bullshit. But maybe you don't know why Bitcoin is bullshit? I mean, I wrote another story about cryptocurrency a couple months ago, but I only sort of glossed over why Bitcoin is bullshit, and hey why not go into detail on that, because arcane detail is what you're here for, right?

Okay. So Bitcoins - and basically all cryptocurrencies ("crypto" for us cool people) - work on the premise that there is basically this long string of math problems that are super-hard to do, so you need a computer to do the math problems. When you successfully solve a math problem (or, rather, your computer does), the Bitcoin software says "congratulations, you have mined Bitcoins" and gives you a "block," which is... some Bitcoins. (12.5 of them, to be exact.) The block is then added to the end of the "blockchain," which is basically a giant ledger of everything that has ever happened with every Bitcoin ever. (So: the first Bitcoins are created, that's block 1, and then the second dry, that's block 2, and then someone sells the first Bitcoin to their buddy, that's block 1a - this is oversimplifying somewhat but this is the general idea.) The amount of Bitcoins is purposely finite (only 21 million can ever be mined; about 18 million of them have been) and the now-insane difficulty of the math problems needed to get new Bitcoins requires so much computer processing power it can actively be measured by how much the energy use is contributing to the global warming crisis. (That isn't snark. That is real. Researchers aren't quite sure exactly how much energy crypto mining uses right now, but they have a good idea of the broad numbers and right now it's around "mid-sized first-world country.") Because of this, crypto investors are diversifying into other cryptocurrencies, which basically work the same way as Bitcoin does but don't have as much street cred.

The basic idea behind cryptocurrency is that it is a currency which is not tied to any nation-state and is therefore sort of more freedom-y than dollars or pesos or Euro or yen, and because of the blockchain being an open-source document which everybody has you can't carry off fraudulent transactions so it is inherently a secure currency. But, to paraphrase Edmund Blackadder, there is only one teeny tiny problem with the plan, and that is: it is bollocks.

The first problem is that the blockchain itself can be hacked in all sorts of ways. Various crypto companies and enthusiasts have proven this multiple times over, most of which involve methods of having transactions happen on the blockchain, and then deleting them after the fact so it is like they never happened, except for the part where Party A gives Party B thousands of dollars for their cryptocurrency and then never gets the money back. A variation on this is "double spending," which is using the same crypto for multiple transactions, effectively buying multiple things with the same crypto by forking the blockchain onto different servers, but then voiding all but one of the transactions - but you still get all of what you bought. Which in this scenario is almost always money. (The other prominent use of Bitcoin and other crypto is buying illegal things like drugs and weapons, but that's not really the sort of transaction where you want to defraud somebody.)

The second problem ties into that last part, which is that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are fucking useless at actually being money, because - despite their arguments otherwise - cryptocurrencies lack practically all of the features that make money useful. Even though they're electronic, they're not particularly portable and can only be used as money in very few places (which are mostly stores owned by crypto enthusiasts who are certain This Is The Big Thing). Because of blockchain issues they're not reliable or guaranteed, and even when the blockchain isn't being defrauded by somebody they're still mostly too slow to be useful as currency. Unlike money, it can't be inflated or deflated by any central authority, which is important because that power prevents massive market fluctuations. (Right now, because it's so hard to generate new Bitcoins, the Bitcoin market is trading in "bits," which is a fancy way of saying "one-millionth of a Bitcoin." Now imagine that somebody finds some of the estimated 2-4 million Bitcoins that are currently missing from circulation and completely unaccounted for. The ensuing market instability is fascinating to consider.) And unlike money, no nation-state guarantees them. If you have one Canadian dollar, you've actually got a promise from the Canadian government to say "this is a dollar, it is worth a dollar's worth of stuff." If you have one Bitcoin, it is worth... whatever the market deems it to be worth. Assuming you can find a buyer for it.

Because of all of this, Bitcoin and other crypto fails at the actual job of being currency. It is, however, remarkably good at being a risky speculative instrument, which is why so many hucksters have jumped onto the crypto bandwagon. And getting back to that Bitwise report that started this whole spiel: this is an investment firm trying to be respectable and saying "okay, nineteen out of twenty Bitcoin trades are probably garbage, orchestrated between accounts colluding with one another or owned by the same person, in order to make the crypto market seem much huger than it is so that people can launch ICOs." ICOs are "initial coin offerings," which are sort of like the initial public offering (IPO) of stock in a company, except when you buy into an IPO you get a share of ownership in the company, and when you buy into an ICO you get a little digital token which the company promises some day might be worth money.

And the guys saying this are the people who want you to invest in crypto! That is how insane the world of crypto is.

THE ENTERTAINMENT SECTION

Captive State (2019, Rupert Wyatt, theatre) - 2.5/5

Us (2019, Jordan Peele, theatre) - 4/5

Green Book (2018, Peter Farrelly, Google Play) - 2.5/5

The Inventor (2019, Alex Gibney, TV) - 3/5

Playing Aviary Attorney on Steam because it is relentlessly on-brand for me. It's fun if you like the Phoenix Wright game, and/or pencil-etched artwork of animals and bad puns.

Until next week!