Sikk Pow

It's not enough to be contrarian. You have to be right, also.

Healthcare, bioengineering, blockchain.

Working on something ~new~

[Alex Tabarrok @ATabarrok]

Texas produces more than Canada with three quarters of the population.

Note this isn't about which is better or where you would rather live or burritos or life expectancy--it's about why isn't Canada more productive?

[Sikk Pow @SikkPow]

@Conservative_BC It was such a Trump-y campaign promise, identical except in name and amount to the one currently promised by Trump.

[Pessimists Archive @PessimistsArc]

1501: Pope Alexander VI criticizes Gutenberg’s printing press safety

“The art of printing can be of great service in so far as it furthers the circulation of useful & tested books; but it can bring about serious evils l..it will, therefore, be necessary to maintain full control”

[Conrad Black @ConradMBlack]

Prime Minister Carney’s address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg rested on several foundational errors.

The claim that freedom was won “thanks to the heroism of the European resistance” is historically false. Western Europe was liberated by the armed forces of the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. The subsequent emancipation of the Soviet empire was the product of the American strategy of containment. Canada’s role was particularly notable: a volunteer force from a country that had never been attacked or threatened by the Axis powers.

The European institutions have succeeded in reducing internal economic barriers and managing inter-state cooperation. As an economic administration, however, they have not been a success at all. In 2008 the GDP of Europe and the United States were roughly equal; the United States now stands at 140 percent of the EU’s. Much of this relative decline is attributable to the prolonged suppression of fossil fuels—an agenda Carney himself promoted for years.

Carney also omitted the decisive commercial reality: Canada sends roughly 70 percent of its exports to the United States (98% of which is unaffected by the recent tariffs) and only 6 percent to Europe. The United States accounts for half of the Canadian economy; Canada accounts for three percent of theirs. These proportions are not altered by elaborate metaphors about the transplantation of trees between Vimy and Milliken.

Until Canada recovers the relative prosperity it enjoyed with the United States a decade ago, there is little strategic sense in the prime minister travelling to the Rhine to deliver a wistful reflection on the failure of Canada and Europe to produce a superior political ethos while remaining economically competitive.

[Sikk Pow @SikkPow]

@yegwave This is the new normal in #YEG but @AndrewKnack says climate is what you really need to be worried about.

[Duncan Dee 🇮🇱🇺🇦 @duncandee]

Utterly shameless.

"Buy Canadian" posted on X while wearing a Patagonia zip-up.

[Sikk Pow @SikkPow]

@nenshi Edmonton spent $60 *million* on electric busses that go nowhere. The City isn't broke, it just prefers to waste money on performative virtue signalling instead of providing basic municipal services. Choices have consequences.

[Alex Zoltan @AmazingZoltan]

Seeing as the BC NDP is running on its healthcare record, here's a throwback to a 2024 election debate when David Eby said every British Columbian would have a family doctor by the end of 2025.

[Marc Nixon @MarcNixon24]

Mark Carney decided to tell New York Times Canada is preparing for risk of U.S. Invasion even after U.S. admiral said do you also want my battle plans for the Martians too? That’s the level of absurdity we’re dealing with.

[Matthew Lilley @MattGLilley]

A bunch of Nobel Prize-winning economists have endorsed California's proposed billionaire wealth tax.

I can't oppose them on authority. But I know some academics who can.

[Steven Sinofsky @stevesi]

Initiate AI hyperventilating (already heard on CNN and CNBC on 10 min drive) and no one (MSM) is reporting that this was a basic OpSec failure. Known: CVE, patch-level problem, broken implementation at OAI SSO.…

They need to pause. Hire the right Security team. Be Engineers.

[Steven Sinofsky @stevesi]

When Microsoft "paused" Windows, Office, and Server to fix bugs that made viruses possible people were surprised and then relieved because they knew we could fix bugs and make the products better. We too were working 18 hour days to add features (aka potential vulnerabilities.) Wall Street worried a lot but then decided security was a good idea.

But we took this as our responsibility. We did not appeal to Congress to make us "pause" or to get the other companies to pause first.

Grow up. Add logging, checking, debugging, and more to your products. It needs it.

[Steve McGuire @sfmcguire79]

This op-ed can’t be real:

“Students on University of California campuses may struggle with basic math, but they are graduating at record rates.”

“What has made the University of California exceptional is its commitment to increase access without sacrificing excellence.”

[Sikk Pow @SikkPow]

@trevortombe A lot of words for her just to say yes let's throw rocks in our own harbor because they did it too; let's raise our own costs, let's harm our own economy, let's lower our own standard of living, because wow, that'll show 'em.

[Fahim Anwar @fahimanwar]

The world doesn't want Al art. We want art from children of rich parents. The way it's supposed to be.

[John Arnold @johnarnold]

MMT as a brand peaked around 2021. MMT as a governing philosophy has never been stronger.

[Sikk Pow @SikkPow]

@ExnerPirot @cbcwatcher Firefighter arsonist is, I believe, the correct term for anyone setting fires and then ensuring they're seen heroically putting it out.

[Sikk Pow @SikkPow]

@RobynUrback Quick question: Has Eby ever appeared to "stand strong"?

[Sam Bowman @s8mb]

Throwing rubbish in a landfill is (usually) better for the environment than recycling it. With few exceptions, recycling ends up emitting more CO2 and costing more money, while landfills are cheap and secure.

- Recycling mid-tier plastics (like plastic bottles or butter tubs) costs thousands of dollars per ton of CO2 saved. It's cheaper to do direct air CO2 capture than that! And there is no shortage of plastic, nor any problem with sequestering it in the ground once we're done with it.

- Modern landfills are extraordinarily secure and are *much* more than just big piles of trash. They capture 75%–95% of methane gas. Groundwater contamination is doesn't really happen with landfills built since 1990. A study of 31 landfills built since 1988 in NY found no adverse effect at all on local groundwater quality.

- The crusade against single-use plastics has driven us to products that use far more materials and energy and would need to be used an absurd number of times to actually be an improvement. A steel straw needs to be used 150 times to be worth using. A ceramic mug needs to be used 1,000 times to beat a polystyrene cup. A cotton bag needs to be reused 173 times to beat single-use.

- Some things ARE worth recycling. Recycling metal saves a huge amount of energy and material – recycling aluminium saves 95% of the energy spent on making fresh stuff. So we do a lot of it already: about 30% of steel worldwide is recycled.

Modern, well-run landfills cause minimal environmental damage. We have plenty of space for them – less than 0.01% of the US is used for landfill and only about 0.02% of Germany. We can even build on top of old landfills, so the land area is not spent permanently.

New in @WorksInProgMag, @robertwiblin and @chalmermagne on why it's usually best to just bury your trash. https://t.co/TsGJdcwG76

[Sikk Pow @SikkPow]

@bradktennant correction, they're fabricating the case against them