When your friends ask
if you have heard
about the parasite
responsible for
making people dangerously ill,
before you reply “yes,”
be sure to ask them
if they are talking about
the trillionaire or
the stomach parasite
causing explosive diarrhea.

Apparently the Swastikar doesn’t really “wade.”

Another Tesla fail.

https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/grapevine-lake-tesla-cybertruck-arrested-wade-mode-jailed/287-f60869e6-bd78-4008-9241-6e5e61a013c2

Our trip to PT has been wonderful (so far — it’s not over). Lovely, and lovely, tolerance, generous people.

Yesterday, I drove up one of the narrowest, windiest roads I've ever seen (and I have *seen*). Making 3 point turns to make the corners (so did others) to get up onto the high, old city in Coimbra. My spouse found it VERY stressful. But we ended up finding this lovely bar/restaurant with a gorgeous view up/down the Mondego to watch the sun set from.

This week: war, ICE, Trump losses in court, Mueller, and when a puppy meets a kitten. https://weeklysift.com/2026/03/23/not-a-game/

When you see the news
about all the energies
being devoted
to turning the world
into a wasteland,
it is vital to remember
that applied differently
those same energies
could turn the world
into a garden.

@jnl

Hey, I know you have scads of free time these days for reading for pleasure, but I was curious — since you were the person who first mentioned Becky Chambers’ writing to me — if you’d read her The Galaxy and the Ground Within.

It feels like a beautiful argument for how and why to create a caring and tolerant/accepting community — or society, or world.

This week: ICE protests, Epstein, Don Lemon, seizing 2020 ballots, and a giant rolling finger. https://weeklysift.com/2026/02/02/through-the-looking-glass/

Housing policy in BC finally starting to bear fruit:

"Rental prices seem to be taking a dip in B.C. as the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) released its 2025 Rental Market Report, which showed that Greater Victoria’s vacancy rate rose to 3.3 per cent, the highest it’s been since 1999…. The report noted that the steepest rent declines are focused in B.C. and Ontario, with B.C. being host to seven of of the top 15 cities recording the largest annual rent declines for apartments.”

A largest-ever national population decline helps a lot too!

https://albernivalleynews.com/2025/12/19/vacancy-rates-improve-to-highest-level-of-the-21st-century-in-b-c-s-capital-region/
#CanPoli #BCPoli #YYJ #Victoria

2022 media: what is making people sick?

Scientists: it’s the immune dysfunction from repeat COVID infection.

2023 media: what is making people sick?

Scientists: we already told you why

2024 media: what is making people sick?

Scientists: are you fucking kidding.

2025 media: what is making people sick??

Scientists:

Just spent five days driving 2650 miles. Which is longer when you consider that the time also included a very important family visit and three meal-and-a-too-short-visit visits with various friends.

And that we started fatigued from a week of hard work.

And that we three were packed into a car for which I won a Tetris close-packing award, and the sardines in the can protested every time we got in.

Tired. Sore.

My American friends: In Canada I had prostate surgery, radiation treatment, knee replacement, physiotherapy, numerous X-rays, scans, tests, specialist appts, hospital stays, & drugs. Cost to me total: under $1,000, mostly for travel, some partial payment for drugs, & parking. That's what universal not-for-profit healthcare offers.

This week: SNAP, shutdown, tariffs, elections, and a parody of a Paul Simon classic. https://weeklysift.com/2025/11/03/despotic-encroachment/

One of the bolgia is renovating a kitchen.

And the worst part of that bolgia is doing it from a distance. With multiple time zones separating you from the vendors and contractors, so that on top of everything else going wrong that can, you get calls at unspeakable and implausible hours — most of them from bots that only 50-50 work right.

Family gathering.

(Adult) son asks if we recall Chumbawumba. And then — as my beloved begins to sing — “No, not that song, this one, from 1998. I don’t think I ever heard it.”

And… I don’t think I ever did, either.

But, well… it’s weirdly on point and prescient.

"The Day the Nazi Died"

https://youtu.be/WSqUBwlHld4

During the birdsite's heyday, it was a place where we engaged with other people who cared about sending #books to incarcerated #readers. We followed and retweeted #prison book programs in the US, Canada, UK, and France. We also chatted with many of our volunteers and supporters.

We love Mastodon, but are finding it a bit lonely. We would love to follow other groups that send books to people in #prisons. Does anyone have recommendations for whom we should follow?

Boosts welcome.

People keep telling me
despite how things look
that it isn’t as bad
that it really isn’t as bad
as it seems,
but the closer I look
the more evidence I see
that this society
is coming apart
at its seams.

Much of the US is currently in mourning that FOX News wasn’t broadcasting Swan Lake this morning.

Some analog of Gresham’s Law at work. The lively, vibrant, interesting, and fun is driven out by whytness and profits

Observation:

Having cruised a couple of once seriously funky and interesting art/design, architecture areas that have been around for decades… gentrification really fucks them up. Largely boring and predictable, mostly taken over coffee table books, tchotchkes, overpriced clothes and such. Plenty of not-cheap coffee shops with decent (limited, not creative) food.

As I said, gentrification. Rentiers and too much money and… <yawn>

#StrangeBedfellows

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/23/marjorie-taylor-greene-bernie-sanders-famine-gaza