I’m sorry, Canada

The personal apology of a powerless person in the United States doesn’t matter much, but I sincerely am sorry for what our country is doing to you. Actually, we should be apologizing to the whole world, but Canada is our neighbor and our “silly old deranged grandpa president” is lashing out at them again.

Donald Trump is imposing 50% tariffs on most Canadian goods in response to the country retaliating against previous US tariffs, the White House announced Monday, declaring Canada has unfairly discriminated against American cars, alcohol and dairy products.

Sorry.

Sometimes senile old people get institutionalized, and they are cranky and resentful, and they kick and pinch and slap at the people who are hired to help them, and the relatives (unless they are terribly entitled) feel horrible about it. At least, though, their deranged elder loved one is being confined for their own safety, and is typically too old and feeble to do serious harm. Unfortunately, our foul-tempered nasty old geezer is running free, and has the vast power of the USA at his fingertips, and all the hired help seem to be more interested in enabling him than in being responsible guardians.

Jamelle Bouie knows what he’s talking about.

The responsible thing to do here would be to take all his dangerous toys away from him and put him in a luxurious retirement home with lots of gold geegaws glued to the walls and let him rot away. Unfortunately, too many other people are profiting off their proximity to the demented old fart.

My terrible confession

I get up early every morning, and practically the first thing I do is check the news to see if our ghastly president is dead yet. I have high hopes that sometime in the near future he’s going to suffer a miserable painful death (or a quick painless one, I don’t care), and instead every morning I discover that he has instead done something incredibly stupid and destructive, and our representatives in government have done nothing significant to stop him. And then I feel deep disappointment.

It’s a poor way to start my day, but it’s every day right now. Yeah, I’m a terrible person, but that guy is worse.

Now I have to go for a walk to temporarily clear my head of all this despair.

I’m probably the only person to feel this way.

What? The all-meat diet isn’t a panacea?

I don’t follow the day-to-day activities of the Peterson family, Jordan and Mikhaila, so I had just assumed that they were still pushing that cure-all diet of eating nothing but beef and salt. They aren’t! They’ve given up and shifted to a series of new diets. Mikhaila in particular is a real flibbertigibbet on her claims. The all-beef diet is so 2018.

In 2018, the all-beef diet had cured Jordan’s depression, tens of millions of people learned. But in 2026, Mikhaila admitted that her dad’s mental woes had not vanished: “it’s not the kind of depression you can normally diet and exercise away.” The carnivore diet had helped, she now claimed, but the much-vaunted magic bullet had been an exaggeration. It hadn’t even worked for her: in 2020, she thought beef was making her sick, so she stopped eating beef and switched to lamb and bison. Why? She hypothesized—and so much of what she does is hypothesizing and marketing her unproven conjectures—that North American beef was aged more and the ageing of the beef somehow made her sick. Croatian beef, eaten while on a trip, apparently wasn’t aged and she could digest it fine, but since she didn’t live in Croatia, she had to make changes. So, her exceptional diet was in like a lion, out like a lamb.

But now the all-lamb diet is also obsolete. She flipped through a whole series of hypothetical causes for illnesses, and hypothetical treatments.

The answer, at first, was her breast implants, which she had removed. Then, it was the “terrible tree allergies”she experienced while living in Tennessee, giving her brain fog. Subsequently, she moved to Miami in 2022, but the ill health did not abate. It turns out there was mould in her Florida house, which forced her to completely renovate it, sell it, and move to Arizona to undergo “mould treatment.” (I will be using the Canadian/British spelling; it is written “mold” in the United States.)

And so she took to her microphone to denounce mould as an invisible cause of illness. She created the website biotoxin.com to share papers linking mould to every conceivable disease and condition—autism, migraine, pain, even Parkinson’s disease. Sure, you can find individual studies showing preliminary evidence that there might possibly be some kind of link between mould exposure and, let’s say, dementia; but this should not be understood as “mould causes dementia.”

It’s not mold (mould) anymore, though. Her latest fad is…mitochondria. Maybe health problems are caused by bad mitochondria?

Mitochondria are real: they are the little factories inside of our cells charged with turning our food into energy. Some people have actual mitochondrial diseases because a key component inside their mitochondria is mutated. A much vaguer phenomenon known as mitochondrial dysfunction is also real, but it has been grossly exaggerated and serves as one of many boogeymen du jour for the Make America Healthy Again movement. Mikhaila Peterson had to jump on the bandwagon, and her first mention of it on her podcast appears to be from early 2023. So, now, this is her main culprit.

It’s all garbage noise, lacking in empirical evidence or supporting clinical studies, but that’s what enables her incessant flitting from cause to cause to cause, endlessly using her speculations to promote products that she can sell on her website. She’s a classic snake oil peddler. You don’t need to invest in a wagon and a fancy painted sign, and go to all the trouble of traveling from town to town anymore — just put up a website and take credit card orders, and when the grift dries up, switch in a new website.

The author of this article points out how transparent and simple Mikhaila’s game is by playing it himself. For instance…

I want to show how easy it is to construct these stories. I opened my old molecular biology textbook (Molecular Cell Biology, 4th edition, by Lodish and others) at a random page (769, if you’re playing at home) and imagined a theory I could promote on Mikhaila’s podcast based on the information that was on that page. My textbook reminded me that myosin is a molecular motor inside our cells and that it moves, like a train, on actin filaments. And funnily enough, you can break myosin down using an enzyme called papain. In what is papain found? The papaya fruit.

I could now use this knowledge to go on her podcast and, with adequate confidence and calm in my voice, promote my papain-free diet, sure to cure brain fog and chronic fatigue and likely to help you build muscles. Myosin, after all, is crucial to cell function. You don’t want it to break down, now do you? I might also be able to find a molecule that blocks the action of papain and sell it as a supplement so that people could continue enjoying papaya without feeling sluggish. And if the papaya-eating masses are not a big enough consumer base, I could add that other fruits contain similar enzymes that break down—read “damage!”—the essential proteins we need: pineapples, figs, kiwis, mangoes. All the more reason to platform me and my theory.

This is how you take molecular research, grossly misinterpret it, and turn it into a profitable health crusade.

Oh my god. I have concerns about my loss of income with retirement, and I glanced to the left of my computer, and I have shelves full of books on genetics, the biology of cancer, cell biology, and evolution. I’m sitting on a gold mine! I have a lot of basic knowledge about cellular processes, and about the developmental and evolutionary history of those processes, and with a trivial amount of effort I could turn all that into a wonderful grift.

If only I could come down with Alzheimer’s in the next year, a specific form of neuronal deterioration that selectively takes out any sense of integrity, self-respect, and restraint. Or maybe a serious blow to the head that scrambles my frontal cortex? It’s going to take a serious bit of brain damage to allow me to compete with Mikhaila.

Ugly man, ugly statue

Serves him right. This sculptor thought he could cash in on the Charlie Kirk frenzy, but it backfired on him — now he’s left holding the bag.

A New York sculptor has been left furious after spending $100,000 of his own money to build a lifesize statue of Charlie Kirk, only to find that no one wants to buy it.

Sergio Furnari, originally from Italy, had hoped the statue of the deceased far-right activist, which he intends to display in Times Square, would raise “millions” of dollars. Instead, he said he has been inundated by messages from people saying they intend to urinate on the sculpture.

Not only do they want to piss on it because Kirk’s reputation is in the toilet, but man, that is one ugly-ass statue.

“I wasn’t a fan of Charlie,” he said. “Like one thing that I couldn’t stand about him while he was alive [was] when he was talking about Palestine. [Kirk would say]: ‘Oh no, Palestine doesn’t exist.’ I thought: ‘Well, this guy must be out of his mind.’”

Instead, Furnari said he made the statue in an effort to “glorify and to exercise the first amendment, this freedom of speech” – although at points during the conversation, Furnari also said he made it to support Charlie Kirk’s wife; to “glorify democracy”; and to “commemorate a person”.

Sergio Furnari with his statue of Charlie Kirk. Photograph: Sergio Furnari
He later added: “Why am I making the statue? The same reason why Michelangelo did the Pietà, or Michelangelo did the David, or Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa. Why? Just to commemorate a moment, you know, a person.”

Right, it’s all the same reason: to make money. He thought it would be lots of money, but it turns out to be negative numbers of money.

Until then, Furnari is left with a 6ft 4in statue of a renowned racist, which he has spent $100,000 making, and which no one wants to buy. Maybe it is cursed after all.

Nice summary. That should be how we remember Kirk — as a big ol’ racist.

Guess who else is back?

One of the virtues of the heat is that we have lazily allowed our backyard to run wild. Thigh-high grasses, thistles, strange forbs, all kinds of happy weeds are growing everywhere, and with them comes the fierce invertebrates. Welcome home, Argiope aurantia! The queen of our yard has returned, finding a bounty of grasshoppers and other insects thriving in her domain!

Our backyard is fenced off and isolated from the sidewalk and road, so I hope none of the philistines in the city works department are going to complain and order it all cut down. I like my personal backyard jungle.

A beautiful response by Talarico

The Texas GOP must have a “T problem”

Talarico takes the right tone in responding to accusations by Texas Republicans.

“He says you’re not manly enough to actually — this guy says you’re not manly enough to represent the people of Texas,” Scarborough said. “And he’s concerned about your Low T levels! Your manliness. Oh, yeah. Is this, is this a parody?”

As all three laughed, Scarborough asked his guest if he understood “their obsession with low-T.”

“I had to look it up,” the smiling Texas Democrat replied.

He then got his own dig in, adding, “Guys my age aren’t really worried about that kind of thing.”

Talarico then spoke seriously.

“People are really tired of this kind of professional wrestling in our politics,” he said. “These old guys who are lathered up in their fake tans, throwing these corny nicknames at each other. People are wanting serious leaders who are going to get this economy back on track, who are going to start to lower costs, who are going to start to raise pay. And people are catching on to the fact that these corny nicknames don’t lower the cost of groceries, don’t lower the cost of of prescription drugs, don’t lower the price of gas.”

I have to add that guys my (69) age don’t really worry about “T-levels,” unless a doctor recommends supplements in response to specific symptoms.

This is reminding me of a certain politician who keeps taking and reminding us all of his ability to take cognitive tests. We old people don’t generally worry about taking these tests, and we definitely don’t brag about passing these minimal evaluations of basic functions. We’re similarly not going to race in to our doctors to ask for extra testosterone, unless we’re experiencing difficulties. Are Ken Paxton and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick confessing to something?

Environmental inanity — it’s a good reason to throw this guy out of office NOW

We’ve had a couple of bad days here in Minnesota — the smoke from the wildfires up north has made breathing uncomfortable, and for a while Minneapolis was ranked somthing like the third most smoggy city in the world. It’s not too bad today, although more smoke is expected, but fortunately, Donald Trump is lurching into action with a solution. Blame Canada!

President Donald Trump on Friday blasted Canada for wildfires enveloping swaths of the United States in a smoky haze and said he would add the costs of that pollution to existing tariffs.

Calling the situation “totally unacceptable,” Trump accused Ottawa of failing to address what he said were the causes of the fires in Canada, whose smoke has sent air quality to dangerous levels in major U.S. cities in recent days.

The billions of dollars in costs inflicted on the U.S. as a result of the air pollution “must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

I am confident that Canada does not like to see their forests on fire, and that Canadians are as incapable of breathing smoke as Americans are. I don’t see the point in punishing Canada further, but all an authoritarian can see is an excuse to punish. This isn’t going to help at all. What does he think Canada needs a punitive incentive for?

“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air,” Trump wrote.

Oh, right. This is his weird idea that the proper way to maintain a forest is by raking up all the needles and brush.

“You’ve got to take care of the floors. You know the floors of the forests, it’s very important,” Trump said amid the charred ruins of Paradise — his first stop on the tour.

Trump went on to explain that the president of Finland, whom he met on an overseas trip a week earlier, told him about raking the forest floors. “He called it a forest nation,” Trump said, “and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don’t have any problem.”

The president of Finland never said any such thing.

But all you Canadians need to get out in 270 million hectares of wilderness and start raking.

(No, not really. I’m sorry, but our president is a goddamn motherfucking freaking MORON.)

Oceanoxia has a much more thorough post on this idiocy.

I do believe in foreign interference in our elections

Donald Trump gave a speech last night in which he he claimed that he only lost the 2020 election because foreigners interfered. He is obsessed with that ignominious defeat, because his ego is so huge that he can’t tolerate any contradiction of his self-regard.

Donald Trump accused China of interfering with the 2020 election in a primetime televised address that laid bare his continuing obsession with his defeat to Joe Biden, but which opponents warned was a smokescreen for him to meddle in the forthcoming congressional midterms.

In a 25-minute speech on Thursday that had been hyped by Trump himself, the US president cast extraordinary doubts on the integrity of the US electoral process, saying it was “catastrophically” short of standards of fairness and trust, and vulnerable to trespassing by foreign powers.

I don’t believe China had anything to do with it — that country is happy to sell us crap, and no doubt is savoring our ongoing collapse, but they don’t have to do anything to trigger our self-destruction. Republicans are pleased to do that to ourselves, because they are busy pursuing an illusory and contradictory fantasy of American greatness that is centered on racial purity and coddling of capitalists. There is no evidence of election fraud anywhere. Every time those accusations are tracked down they find at best a handful of fraudulent votes, never enough to have any kind of significant effect, but every time a Republican loses an election they start shrieking about Democrats cheating.

They are overlooking the insidious and entirely legal interference that has been going on for decades: the lies and propaganda of Fox News, masterminded by Rupert Murdoch, and how it has corrupted the brains of an entire generation of Americans. This is the seed that has grown into the idiocy that fuels our descent, which is now self-perpetuating. Barking at the Chinese is futile and irrelevant. Look into our systemic failures to regulate our own media.