it's probably nothing...

Just found out there’s a kerfuffle here because of a 12-year-old post from Zohran Mamdani about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — reinforcing the truth that there is no place on Earth that offers refuge from news about a New York mayoral race.

Waking up early enough in Turkey to catch the Montreal Canadiens winning in OT: Priceless

A few weeks ago, he was dangling tariffs because of Canada‘s Middle East policy. Before it was fentanyl. And migration. And now it’s a TV ad. Maybe… stay with me here but… Maybe… he just really likes tariffs.

The food in Turkey is amazing. Translated menus amazing in a different way.

I started a blog about my current studies with a first post about a topic dear to my heart: Saving the news. On how I turned AI against itself. Used it to avoid algorithms; kill my doomscrolling habit; reduce screen time; and focus on what matters. Anyone can do it. Here's how.

7 full seasons. 6 Stanley Cups. The one year he returned to school, the Habs lost; after he retired, they kept losing. Lawyer. Federal cabinet member. Author. And nice guy - the kind who, after he was voted out of office, stood on a sidewalk the morning after the election to thank constituents. RIP.

Time to get to work. After two months of touring ancient ruins, and beaches, and in a couple of cases ruins *on* beaches, I’m going back to school today for the first time in 26 years. Only this time, my classroom is a laptop. The program is Georgetown’s AI master’s. Very excited to dig into this.

A call for colleges to return to their past, in response to AI cheating — to use oral exams and real-time assignments in class. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/o...

Canada created a foreign agent registry to track foreign influence. Except: “Funding (hasn’t been approved). Civil servants haven’t drafted the regulations. And the government hasn’t yet chosen the person who will head the registry.” www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/opi...

Counterpoint: Trump is very capable of drawing a hard line — if he cares about something. He did this for the digital services tax: “Do X or no deal.” Interesting he chose not to here. “..,very hard for us to make a deal….”

Organized crime. It’s embedded deep in the roots of our evolutionary tree www.wsj.com/lifestyle/mo...

An entertaining insider account of life at Facebook, Careless People, starts with an awkward meeting between Mark Zuckerberg and Canadian PM Stephen Harper at a 2015 international summit in the Panamanian jungle.

Multiple generations of Roman life, in one snapshot

Today’s Rome 101: Where do Christmas and Congress come from? Turns out: From the same neighborhood. Two buildings, 100 yards apart To the left: the Temple of Saturn that hosted the Dec 25 holiday later refashioned as Christmas. To the right: the Roman Senate, inspiration for the American republic

The Pantheon. 10:30 am and 11:30 am. Showing the effect of the light descending to floor level — positioned perfectly to illuminate the doorway every year at noon on Rome’s birthday. Every April 21, the emperor entered as if illuminated by a celestial spotlight. Heck of a visual effect.

The superhighway of the ancient world. The beginning, middle, and end of the old Appian Way. As seen in Rome, Puglia, and by the port of Brindisi which connected the trading routes of Rome to Greece and lots of other places. 🍷 🫒 🥖 🌶️

A definitive history of marketing hype in the AI field, with Artificial General Intelligence as the current pot at the end of the rainbow used to assuage to antsy venture capitalists that their hundreds of billions in investments will, eventually, totally, pay off ainowinstitute.org/publications...

Artificial Intelligence is a totally new area of focus for me. So far, it’s been fun. I’ve plunged into reading about it, to prep for school. I’m beginning at, well, the beginning…..

Every political movement has its Achilles’ heel. For a movement rich with low-social trust conspiracy theorists, it turns out it’s…. asking them to trust there’s no conspiracy theory.

Here’s my next project: Georgetown University’s new master’s program in Artificial Intelligence management. scs.georgetown.edu/programs/547...

Shocking that they settled

So Trump gets $16 mil while Paramount admits mo wrongdoing and they release interview transcripts which they already did anyway So it’s a bribe. It’s literally just a bribe.

Happy Canada Day from my home the next couple of years — Ankara, Turkey! Here I bid farewell to the U.S. With some reflections on the country as I experienced it in 12 years as a foreign correspondent. (And reflections on life covering you-know-who) www.cbc.ca/news/world/u...

A couple of years ago I struck up a conversation with a convicted gun smuggler. She was in jail. I’d heard of her case. I reached out, and we started chatting by email, at first. Then in video calls. She told me how she got guns into Canada — guns that wound up in the hands of criminal gangs /

I wrote a farewell column that describes the reality of covering Donald Trump and I keep asking editors to add fresh examples to one specific part and by the time it gets published this specific section is gonna look like the Encyclopedia Britannica.

.@PIIE has a report out on the global effects of Trump's tariffs. Here are its projections for Canada under different scenarios. www.piie.com/publications...

Doing some housekeeping as I prepare to move to Turkey, and how appropriate that I stumbled upon this On the left: my first article as a paid journalist. On the right: my last day on the job, 28 years later I have two unpublished articles still coming. Then getting ready to start the AI program

Me and Richard signing each other’s farewell cards in the office Friday. Him: Where you going next? Me: On a long summer vacation. Me: What about you? Where you going? Him: www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews...

This reads like the Canadian government doing what it can to assure the U.S. that if it drops tariffs within North America, the wall goes up on non-North American steel to avoid transshipment. www.canada.ca/en/departmen...

Trump just made it explicit.... He wants 'victory' over Iran. And he defines victory as = Iran having no path to nukes

You’ve gotta read the whole thread to appreciate this quip, but chef’s kiss

Here's Donald Trump's endgame in Iran: One nuclear site. Zero enrichment. And incalculable risk amid escalating threats www.cbc.ca/news/world/t...

The news cycle is relentless here so, amazingly, this story has slipped into the memory-hole, but I'm frantically reading up on it again today

Trump just twice blamed Trudeau and Obama for kicking Russia out of the G8, called it a mistake. It happened before Trudeau was PM. edition.cnn.com/2014/03/24/p...

I spoke to this 100-year-old woman at a protest today. Ellie Newman. She turned 100 the month Trump was reelected. She's lived through the rise and fall of fascism, the creation of the modern welfare state and civil rights. Here’s what she told me: www.cbc.ca/news/world/n...

Report: Trump admin pauses deportation raids on farms, hotels and restaurants. One similarity between mass deportation and tariffs: He’ll push, and push, til the elastic starts to snap on Americans. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/u...

Today one AI product’s getting sued by Disney. And there’s a report that another — Meta’s Llama — can recall 42% of Harry Potter. A blog on the possible copyright implications. www.understandingai.org/p/metas-llam...

Random tweet, or acknowledgement of an impending reverse-U-turn in deportation planning? Tune in next week…

Russian air attack damages Kyiv's historic St. Sophia's Cathedral, "a shrine that has survived centuries and symbolises the birth of our statehood" www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/202...

🚨 Job alert! There’s a position available: Mine. If you want my job, here it is, come get it —> www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/42...

A rare case of culture shock, visiting my own home country — Canada. I’ve gotten used to seeing $8 deodorant locked up behind glass cases the last few years. Currently at a downtown big-city pharmacy in Canada where $262.49 products are sitting out in the open

Canada, recently: We can never hit 2% on defence spending Canada, today: We will hit 2% by March www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

You’ll be shocked to hear this is escalating

Trump in the last hour moved to: -Ban travel from a bunch of countries -Proceed with the freeze on foreign visas for Harvard -Investigate overturning Biden pardons and executive orders, if they were signed by autopen

U.S. aluminum producers: Um, these aluminum tariffs are a bit much, no?

Here one of AI’s ‘godfathers’ announces a startup based on an idea he’s been discussing for a while: a new form of ‘Scientist AI’ programmed to avoid deception, with a more targeted mission and designed to deliver probabilistic assessments in answers rather than confident-sounding statements.

A masterpiece of a profile. Begins with a look at a post-democratic dark lord, then slowly builds a portrait, rich with anecdotes and examples, of an emotionally stunted idiot-savant. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Stephen Miller unhappy deportations happening too slowly, dismissing the line that the main target is dangerous criminals: “Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone. 'You’re horrible leaders.'...‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-11?'” www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-h...