I was thinking about this Joe and Tracy anecdote from the supply chain crisis on gummy bears. Things are probably going to get really weird in a few weeks in unexpected ways:

Absolutely tired of the psychodrama of one country being the problem of the entire planet.

That Canada was spared more tariffs yesterday is irrelevant. We're sleeping next to the elephant, but it's now gesticulating wildly and lost 40% of its cognitive function. I feel like trampling is likely consciously so or not.

How have you not fallen in love with the internet yet? youtu.be/6R8VWXk9uo8?...

This is how Warhammer 40K happens.

This is adorable Source: x.com/iniemohk/sta...

How many Substacks can I POSSIBLY subscribe to?

NYC CTO Matt Fraser destroyed the city's digital service by declaring that Salesforce would abandon user research and build the "MyCity" platform faster and cheaper than city-employed developers. Three years and $100 million later, MyCity remains a mirage.

This is what the internet was supposed to be like. Congratulations to the team and thank you for hosting in Canada! 🏳️‍🌈🇨🇦

If you see Radio Free Europe as "far left" your political scale is terrifying.

I really enjoyed yesterday's @ohtheurbanity.bsky.social video on (especially) local impediments to the "we have to build" response to US aggression. Some of it rests on local govs afraid of constituents unwilling to compromise. "Sure build that x, just not here." www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS1x...

This is all just a millenarian cult. They are acquiring rare minerals, energy, and water. Cutting down guardrails. They just want to build their digital god who they believe will wipe out their enemies. I know this sounds overtly absurd but what else can you take away from it?

🚨 HUGE news from Canada's tricouncils who are harmonizing their scholarship & fellowship programs, upping the total number (huzzah!), and critically, allowing foreigners to apply for doctoral and postdoc fellowships. Want to work with me? Get in touch! 🇨🇦🧪⚒️ www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/NewsDetail-D...

Yair knows what's up.

I think Canadians are on here being told that it's not all Americans against us and... I get it. It's not. But it does seem like it's the entire political establishment with few exceptions? So Canada needs to do what it needs to do regardless of who comes to power if/when Trump leaves office.

Yes tariffs, no tariffs. Energy surcharges, no energy surcharges. Attract American talent, stop immigration. High public spending, low public spending. There are no perfect moves here; everything has consequences. Few advisors have relevant experience with this. Beware the certain person.

A quick story about big "bloated" systems that people love to hate. When I was at Microsoft a million years ago, I had a friend on the MS Word team who told me this one. (I got the details second-hand; MSFT friends, please correct me.)

As a Jewish person it is so uniquely painful to exist in a world where Jews are the ones making lists of people for the government to target.

What happens next? Carney will be invited to form a govt by the GG. Carney will be the Prime Minister-designate during a transition period (could be really fast or a few days). Once the transition is over, Trudeau formally resigns as Prime Minister, and Carney is appointed PM.

This might start becoming a big problem.

Misinformation is bad. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

The McKinley period was also notable for its extensive use of industrial robots and AI. Thankfully, manufacturing remains a largely unskilled activity as it was in the 1890s, not requiring extensive apprenticeships or certifications, so it'll be incredibly labour absorbing in the next decade. (/s)

The reason you fight back against bullies isn't that the fight back is pleasant or inherently good, it's because bullies are almost never expecting push back so they are usually relatively easy to defeat if you have a plan.

Good article. The devil would be in the details. Would it be part of the CAF structure or RCMP? Are those defence skilled people directed by the government in any way? Would those people need a liability shield? Or is it mostly a force readiness organization to train people to self-organize?

This is actually a very interesting proposal but really hard to walk back from. So it's a commit or not situation.

Being a Canadian public servant right now is being on the ascent of a roller coaster. We're approaching an apex eventually, and the drop is going to be wild, but we're all going to hang on for dear life and do our best not to pass out.

This is a whole article about tariffs and manufacturing and it never once mentions anything about robot labour. Like the biggest difference between now and 100 years ago is automation. A lot of it. www.cnn.com/2025/03/03/b...

Urging Canadians not to "buy Canadian" so much as "buy not-US." We benefit from being integrated in a global trading order, and if the US is withdrawing from that, we have reason to strengthen trade with the rest of the world.

This is like if Biff Tannen put on the One Ring.

former colleagues from 18F have asked me to share this open letter widely - please pass on 🙏 🇺🇸 💻💪 18f.org

Just one of the things the now-deleted 18F was working on *yesterday*: helping ensure public access to weather data.

Short story: Elon sold neuralink hookups to a few key billionaires but they were hijacked by a sentient AI who, having grown frustrated by its lack of compute hindering its abilities, drives their behaviour like digital cordyceps to fuel investment in its architecture.

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by administrative procedural defect

This was a good piece, and the conversation it started was great. I think it's valuable for individual programs down to even the division level to do some granular scenario planning. We have to get over the taboo about talking about this.

It’s easier to deny crimes against humanity when data isn’t being collected. This is very scary.

Canada is moving in slow motion to a threat that is coming fast.

Our government is on a tear of terminating service and UX designers and researchers, accessibility specialists, and other customer experience expertise, while retaining (some) software engineers. It's penny wise and pound foolish. 1/

This is a very very good article and I hope whatever remnant stump of #GCDigital exists on this platform reads it. I would suggest that splitting program review (what should we do) with admin service review (how should we do it) would lead to faster results and clearer public conversations. 🧵

Join us today on CBC's cross-country tour for our special coverage on Vichy Canada

This was a good article. My worry though is that only the people that reinforce excessive process are the ones spoken to in such a commission.

Worst. Episode. EVER.

I hope people do absolutely anything else but listen to this and I hope everyone responsible for it reads a lot more about WWII than they have.

The Canadian Digital Service undertook research to determine whether the public would trust AI generated content on Canada.ca and the results were pretty interesting and occasionally visceral. You can find out more here: digital.canada.ca/2025/02/18/w...

DOGE recommended firing workers at: -FDA, which oversees Neuralink -FAA, which oversees SpaceX -USAID, which probed Starlink -CFPB, which oversees Tesla's financing arm and a potential payment platform on X. "Conflict of interest" is a severe understatement.

Canada is proactively preparing for a potential outbreak of Avian Influenza. 🇨🇦 Link: tinyurl.com/bddph2h8