Hey New Westies, this is happening now: www.eventbrite.com/e/new-west-s...

Looking forward to this. "At a time when many British Columbians are looking for credible, accessible information about the health implications of fossil fuel expansion, we need dialogue grounded in public health expertise and frontline community experience."

This is happening in New Westminster on May 2. Great event with guided bike tour, talks by smart folks like Tim Takaro on induction ranges, Utta Nagel on attracting pollinators to your yard & SFU BREATHE on DIY wildfire smoke filters: www.newwestclimateaction.ca/shis-sustain...

Donald Trump has more of a plan for renovating the East Wing Ballroom than he does for starting another war in the Middle East.

I wrote this back in the Trump I administration. Whatever one may think of the heinous Iranian dictatorship, Trump's unauthorized & illegal war is a naked attempt at distraction & ginning up voter support—more slaughter in the name of the Dubya Doctrine. www.nationalobserver.com/2017/02/06/a...

Beware of dog... May drool on you. Russell Books in Victoria, where I looked for the book Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy but struck out. Bought The Far Side Gallery 4 for our son instead

I have the modest goal of 12 books in 2026. Finished KSR's Ministry for the Future last week, which took 6 wks. Then picked this up by @lizmoorebooks.bsky.social. Read it in three days. Been a while since I had that "can't put it down" compulsion. Very different books. Highly recommend both.

Does the Musk dog poop swastikas? www.scientificamerican.com/article/beep...

This is America now. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Peak Vancouverism. youtube.com/watch?v=QmWJ...

Ok maybe not zoning, but #newwest council definitely described this as the municipality wanting not to be an administrative barrier to good thing.

From Steve Sack, now retired but for a long time the cartoonist of the Mpls. Star-Tribune.

Re Fuentes: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2... "Since Fuentes appeared on Tucker Carlson’s podcast at the end of October, Republican leaders have started to ask themselves just how much sway he has over the party...."

Fuentes then fantasizes about “breeding gulags”: “So just like Hitler imprisoned Gypsies, Jews, communists, you know, all of his political rivals, we have to do the same thing with women… They go to the breeding gulags. The good ones will be liberated. The bad ones will toil in the mines forever.”

Fuentes, yesterday: “Our #1 political enemy is women because women constrain everything, every conversation, every man, everything. They have to be imprisoned. They are the ones that are hurting the fertility rate. They're the ones making us sympathetic to poor people, which are also brown people.”

HUGE news for @thetyee.ca. Our founding editor, Dave Beers, is retiring. Who will fill these big shoes? thetyee.ca/Tyeenews/202...

Kingfisher of the Day: Blue-capped Kingfisher 📷 Chaiyan Kasorndorkbua

1/ Another one from KSR's Ministry, Ch. 97, a voice from the future looking at the gains made in biodiversity & reciprocity with the Earth.

Just catching up. AI says: "A purity spiral is a form of groupthink where members of a group compete to demonstrate superior commitment to a shared value, leading to increasingly extreme views, "moral outbidding," and the punishment of nuanced or moderate opinions."

🖼 The Break of Dawn, Yrjö Ollila.

Love this from page 459 of Kim Stanley Robinson's 'The Ministry for the Future.' (One of the most important books I've read in the past 10 years, and a bit of a marathon. Only ~100 pages to go)

Tax cuts for giant corporations and the super rich. Paid for by cuts to the social safety net for everyone else. Trickle-up economics.

There is no justification for a masked enforcement agency. FBI agents, police, government officials, all are exposed to bad actors but do not hide behind masks. “ICE goes masked for a single reason — to terrorize Americans into quiescence." www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

Just watched 'Dark Waters' w/Mark Ruffalo about Bob Bilott's 20-yr battle with DuPont over their knowingly poisoning of an entire town, & the global population at large, with "forever chemical" PFOAs. On Netflix. Well done & highly recommend www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAO...

Stopped at the Lummi Seafood Market on the way back from Port Townsend & bought what I thought was a coho salmon but turned out to be a white King, a rarity. Brown sugar & coarse salt dry brine overnight, smoked it today outside. A bit saltier than I hoped, but delicious.

1/ Gilded Age II brings us back to the good old days of the late 1800s, & we remember how good those were for women, working people, & anyone who wasn't white. www.history.com/articles/gil...

As in the first Gilded Age, in this one there appears to be no shortage of bootlickers.

When Republicans do it / When Democrats do it

Ossoff: "You're seeing what I'm seeing, right? The president posting about the Obamas like a Klansman."

Downtown Port Townsend. I've seen these folks and chatted with them every time I've been down here in the past 18 months.

When family members arrived on the scene, their loved ones had been disappeared by federal agents. But what they found inside the vehicles was disturbing: a customized ace of spades playing card — a “death card” — that read “ICE Denver Field Office.” theintercept.com/2026/02/03/i...

BC voters need to call this out. Shareholder profit, ecological ruin, taxpayers on the hook. Excellent feature by @zoeyunker.bsky.social thetyee.ca/News/2026/02...

One more for @danielweiss7.bsky.social

@danielweiss7.bsky.social You and Jeff share a photography aesthetic

*John Mearsheimer Voice* I would argue that has Putin has good, rational reasons to burn up half a million of his own people.

Customer: "What time does the Melania movie start?" Theater: "What time can you get here?"

A general contractor in Tennessee is behind bars for texting his crew that ICE was on-site so they could get to safety. Just trying to build homes in a housing shortage. www.wbir.com/article/news...

If they can do it, anyone can. #EnergyTransition #canpoli

🇺🇸❗️🇨🇦 Trump administration officials have secretly met with Alberta separatists seeking independence from Canada, - FT The Alberta Prosperity Project, a fringe far-right group, held several meetings in Washington and is seeking US financial backing if a future independence referendum succeeds.

'The Ministry for the Future': "Although still, in the months that followed, people's biases emerged. It was the South where it had happened. It was mostly poor people, in particular poor people of color. It couldn't happen in the North. It couldn't happen to prosperous white people. And so on.…"

Let's remember that the tragic brownshirt murders in Minneapolis pale next to the generational crime of Trump's oil & gas funders ($454M last election)—literally destroying the planet & billions of lives to plunder the last $$ they can. Here's one example. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/b...

I think the power of a song like Bruce Springsteen's "The Streets of Minneapolis" is not just that it cuts right through the moral smoke screen the feds are putting down, and not just that it is very direct, but that it claims the wider scope and vindication of history and the future to come.

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

Really?

Milan mayor, Giuseppe Sala: “This is a militia that kills,” he said. “It’s clear that they are not welcome in Milan, there’s no doubt about it. Can’t we just say no to Trump for once? We can take care of their security ourselves. We don’t need ICE.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

As my teen says, this is fire. Love to see scrappy independent media keeping New West up to date with on-the-ground reporting and community news. Way to go @freshetnews.bsky.social

“Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive - because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority.”