Is it ADHD or a scattershot mind that compels me to be all over the place? When I try to do anything I need to keep a lasso on hand to keep myself in that mental corral. Otherwise my brain roams free, in tabs, in writing, in links, in content, in life. Aimless link dumps are a symptom of this.  

There’s a method to the madness though. As a kid one of my favourite shows on TV was Connections (2) and in hindsight it’s easy to see why: it connects a thread, through history and science, between events and discoveries. My mind tries to do the same to organize ideas on timelines, and with links, and footnotes, even if sometimes that thread is invisible, or not yet clear, to me. My self-editing, my restraint, likely cuts that thread even more in my writing.

It’s that thread that is – I was going to write “radicalizing me” though it’s not that, it’s more subtle – laying bare the machinations of imperialism and capitalism. Say what you want about Trump, and I can say lots of things that would probably get me kicked off of buttondown, but he has pulled that thread so explicitly (man can’t do subtle) that the systems at work are naked. The empire has no clothes.

Though not getting much attention on this side of the Atlantic, I sometimes think about the Prisoners for Palestine hunger strikers. Earlier this year it looked like they had a partial victory as some of their demands were met and stopped the hunger strike (though I think some are back on it again and even on a more dangerous thirst strike.) One of their demands was for the UK government to not make a multi-billion dollar deal with Elbit, an Israeli arms company.

Then you read the fine print and it’s not that the strikers’ demands were met, it was mostly because Elbit lost it on its own. The Israeli company was using bribery, probably espionage, and ‘breaking procurement protocols.’ You should expect an Israeli arms company to not act ethically.

Much like events at Davos last week, the whole thing summarizes European neoliberal thinking in a nutshell: I can excuse the genocide, but I draw the line at ignoring the rules of procurement.  

Anyway, back in mid-December 2025 when the hunger strike was still very much active the New Socialist interviewed the strikers and for a month the words “the alternative is intolerable” have been ringing in my head:

We’ve reached a point where people see the fundamental cruelty of the state, and they've lost the fear that the state usually wields over them. This is because the alternative is intolerable.

Written in December 2025 was Nora Loreto’s newsletter about Canadian made machines of war. I had it in a tab for at least a week, I don’t remember how I got there, though after ICE murdered another person in cold blood, and the subsequent counter-protests, I saw this altercation: ICE literally pushing a person with that Canadian made Roshel vehicle. A vehicle used in warzones.  

Vancouver’s HootSuite is providing social media services to ICE. They too are using the rules to defend themselves saying the contract “will stand as long as agency honours terms and conditions.” Empty words on paper. Terms and Conditions are not enforced linearly. Neither the Constitution.

GardaWorld, a Canadian security company, supports ICE and ICE concentration camps. The list goes on.

It’s easy to feel safe and secure in Canada. Most of us – though not indigenous folks – have avoided that kind of state violence¹. Especially those of us in liberal city centres. Yet while liberal Minneapolis is occupied and the United States turns into an ideological powder keg, we too are on the edge of getting there. Just a couple of weeks ago we had an “anti-immigration” (ie. racist) march in Toronto, with the protestors afforded the kind of police protection not afforded to the counter protestors or other protests.

Hootsuite and similar surveillance tools are already being used by Canadian Police forces. All it takes is one leader to loosen the leash and all these made-in-Canada weapons will be deployed here too by cops eager to enact their Call of Duty fantasies.

Drop Site reported yesterday about Eject Elbit protesting Capital One in the USA, for their $90M loan to Elbit.

“This is what happens when we base our whole society on profit,” Max continued. “If you are the CEO of Capital One, you are legally obligated to make the most money for your shareholders, whether it’s through hiking credit card rates or giving a loan to a weapons manufacturer. The shareholders see what’s happening in Gaza as an opportunity to profit on the hundreds of billions of dollars churned out for the killing machine.”

And you pull the thread, and see that BMO, here in Canada, had a $90M loan to Elbit in 2021 too. RBC owns shares in Elbit. TD owns shares in Elbit. Scotiabank owns shares in Elbit. CIBC does not (at least, at time of this report), but all of them have loads of shares in Palantir. And so on and so on. Liberal Canada is entrenched in the cruelty and unless we divest from it wholesale it will be used against us too.

1. And let’s be honest: even though it might be presented as being nicer, Canada’s Border Services does have a deportation machine running all year long and it has a history of deaths in captivity too. At least they aren’t cosplaying as the Gestapo. Yet.

Related Links

‘This is what fascism looks like’: terror in Minneapolis reminiscent of civil war (January 25, 2026)

“The Homeland” Is War on America: The Blood-and-Soil Nationalism That Killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti | Vanity Fair (By Ta-Nehisi Coates, January 26, 2026)

For years, a certain kind of liberal has either minimized such culture war rhetoric coming from the other side, or urged political actors of all stripes to ignore this, in favor of “material” and “kitchen table” issues—as though the state regarding one’s life as “garbage” has no tangible consequence, as if the terms of a fight can be determined by the person getting punched. But Trump has clarified an inconvenient fact—the culture war is an actual war.

The commenters won - by Max Read (Substact - January 23, 2026)

The Gawker comments section! We are ruled, as it turned out, not only by ghouls, fascists, sociopaths, salesmen, influencers, mediocrities, and abusers, but by something stranger and potentially worse: Gawker commenters.

Listen to this

Somewhere PressOne (Runaway), by Spool

Spool is a multi-disciplinary, collaborative project by musician and producer Florian TM Zeisig and artist and perfumer Angel Paradise. The project came about when both artists were living in Hinang, a small farming village in the Bavarian Alps. The work embodies a period of isolation, reflection and personal awakening.

Over here in sometimes land it’s been one hell of a winter so far, and we’re not even in February yet. Hope you’re staying warm and get some sunshine

sometimes.