Quotulatiousness

April 12, 2026

The two kinds of enshittification

Filed under: Business, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, ESR explains the differences between the two kinds of enshittification we’re seeing these days:

It may be time to start distinguishing between classic two-sided enshittification and a more general single-sided variety.

When Corey Doctorow originally defined the term “enshittification” he was describing a very specific thing that can and does happen when a platform like Amazon or Google acts as a two-sided market-maker. They start by reducing friction for both buyers and sellers, get everybody locked in by the higher cost of doing volume business anywhere else, then start charging tolls on both sides and injecting spamware that nobody wants. Eventually even their search function becomes completely shitty.

The increasingly horrifying “agentic” train wreck that Windows 11 has become isn’t a two-sided platform in the same way, but the feel of its late stages is depressingly familiar. It’s so stuffed with bloatware, spamware, and spyware that its nominal function as an operating system to run programs for its users feels almost like an afterthought.

I’m going to call this “single-sided enshittification”, and point out that both kinds stem from the same fundamental disconnect. They’re both things that happen when the dominant revenue stream from a product is disconnected from the needs of its original users.

In both cases, an important factor, though not the only one, is the attack of the adtech vampires. So very much of the ugliness in enshittified platforms is downstream of the easy money that they offer product owners for allowing them to sink their fangs into the information stream.

I don’t have a solution to this problem. But if there is one, it starts with identifying the problem correctly. Enshittification — it’s not just for two-sided platforms anymore.

From the comments on the original post:

TKIV-85: Finland’s Ultimate Mosin Nagant Sniper Rifle

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 24 Nov 2025

Finland’s final iteration of Mosin Nagant sniper was adopted in the 1980s to replace a mix-and-match assortment of m/39-43, m/27-66, and m/28-76 rifles. The two options were a Mosin system using a new bedding block (developed by Border Guard officer E. Toro) or a purpose-made new rifle made by Valmet (the Model 86). The Valmet was clearly the better rifle, but the Mosin option was acceptably good and much cheaper — so that’s what was adopted. The parts for the conversions were made by Valmet and assembled at Asevarikko 1.

Two different models were made. One was a military specific type, and the other was a dual-use rifle for competition shooting as well as potential military use. The competition rifles had a lighter barrel profile to meet the international competition weight limit and were fitted with competition aperture sights in addition to mounts for scopes.

Thanks to Frozen Trigger in Finland for giving me access to these examples to film for you!
(more…)

QotD: “Disinformation”

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Media, Politics, Quotations, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

    Neil Stone @DrNeilStone
    X is coordinated disinformation packaged as Free Speech

The concept of disinformation is inherently authoritarian. It presumes some faultless source from which truth flows, such that all speech can be judged by its alignment with this source.

Yes, sometimes certain issues are fairly clear-cut and people are just lying, but more often people fundamentally disagree about both facts and methods. They disagree about who is trustworthy and what institutions and processes are most likely to produce truth.

I, as a private citizen, might call some claim a lie or some person a liar. That’s discourse. I hope to persuade others that I am correct. But to institutionalize disinformation is necessarily to institutionalize a priest caste of truth determiners. This is antithetical to the scientific method and the process of knowledge production in general.

Truth-seeking must start from a place of humility: we are not sure of our claims or our methods. We are doing our imperfect best. We demonstrate the value of our ideas via evidence, argument, and the practical utility they provide. Not by censoring competing ideas.

It is ludicrous to assume that modern academic or journalistic institutions are bias-free oracles, yet this is the basis of the “disinformation” concept.

Hunter Ash, The social media site formerly known as Twitter, 2025-12-27.

April 11, 2026

Declining educational standards are now “a civilizational catastrophe”

Filed under: Education, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Brandon Zicha points out that the declining educational standards across the west are now to the point of “a civilizational catastrophe”:

A student today at my elite university admitted to me today that she took a class so she could work on reading for more than 20 minutes at a time. She can’t read. She mainly skims and summarizes, she says and still gets A’s.

This student is, by professional standards, illiterate. Gonna have high GPA when she graduates.

This conversation was had after 6 of 22 students dropped my course because the maximum reading per week in one week was over 100 pages.

What people aren’t grasping is that this is literally *dangerous*. These people are going to be come doctors, engineers, etc. They are — by any metric — vastly less capable than prior generations. These effects are cumulative over a lifetime.

This grade inflation is part of the problem, but not even close to the entirety. And the problem obviously starts in K-12.

Students don’t know history because, you can’t actually become historically literate on the advice of “never assign more than 30 pages a week”. You can’t develop any of the skills that came with literacy. This is, quite honestly, a civilizational catastrophe.

Another student who seemed really interested in history … confirmed he was … but doesn’t read. He watches Youtube …

… which explained how the conversation went after when I pressed further.

I coteach a class with a colleague … but I am lead … for the past 15 years. I was discussing complaints from students and he pointed out that we have reduced the difficulty and load every 3 years or so since the beginning, and we probably have to stop.

I agreed. But, the students were absolutely irate, and complained about how it left them no time to “reflect” … a load about 30% less than when the course started.

That is an objective decline in ability.

Honestly, I hadn’t even noticed until he pointed it out. It was just incremental.

Changed how I approach teaching.

A good colleague is worth a thousand teaching development seminars.

(quick note … most of those 6 dropped for this reason … not each one … there was a double booking or two)

I feel like I need to point out that the student in the original tweet is a model of *what to do*.

This student is the hero of my tale, but is overcoming something they should not have to, and that is disasterous if it is as widespread as it seems it may be, and they aren’t all similarly driven.

This student? The hero.

Not a dunk.

Another clarification:

I’m a small account here … Didn’t expect the affection.

The student is literate. Not a professional university level (or what it’s ever been).

It was hurried poor phrasing.

The student seems aware that their reading retention and scope is not what it should be … And is addressing it!

Summarizing:

The concern isn’t my (actually heroic) student, but the trend that student is tackling under her own steam …

I routinely here professors complaining about students who:
1.) Can’t or won’t read at levels we have never seen.
2.) When they do, their ability to connect between texts and evaluate is poor. Indeed, grasping the text is not great. It’s increasingly the norm, and it used to be the opposite.
3.) They struggle to reason, honestly.
4.) Most weirdly, we struggle to talk about “reflecting on ones ideas”. They often struggle to understand *what that means*. This suddenly started where students didn’t understand what this meant.
5.) They have declining writing skills.
6.) They have lower interest in ideas
7.) They are less sophisticated in their ability to manipulate ideas
8.) They are much worse on many of the metrics associated with high level reading ability.

At the same time
1.) Study times have declined.
2.) Assigned workloads have declined a great deal
2.) Hiring employer complaints about graduate quality has declined increased continually.
3.) Grades have remained the same or gone up.

… in the past decades, but particularly the last decade to an alarming degree. This is not about one student’s situation, or whether or not one should be “readmaxxing” in college, reading 500 pages plus.

… and just look at the examples cited in this thread.

We have a major issue to address here, folks. Civilizational level issues. And, I genuinely don’t feel we are having the conversation we need to be having yet.

Update, 12 April: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

The Liberal Party is about pure politics, not principle

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In some ways, you have to admire the Liberal Party of Canada — often described as Canada’s “Natural Governing Party” — for their long-term success at staying in power. They do this because, unlike the Conservatives or the NDP, their raison d’être is gaining and holding power. No Liberal holds firm values in any other area and therefore can switch sides on a given topic at a moment’s notice. As long as believing A keeps them in power, they’ll believe wholeheartedly in A, but if believing B becomes more important, like a shoal of fish, they’ll instantly switch to believing in B. It’s an amazing phenomenon. In the Toronto Sun, Jamil Jivani (my local MP) documents this Liberal talent:

Aussies & Tanks: The Story of Australian Armour

Filed under: Australia, Britain, History, Military, USA, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published 30 Jan 2026

Australia has always been an outlier when it comes to tanks. The first time Australians fought alongside tanks, it was such a disaster they almost gave up on the whole idea. And the first time they fought IN tanks, they were pinched from the enemy.

They’re the only Allied nation to reject the M4 Sherman. More than once, they’ve used their tanks very differently to how they were designed. Yet somehow, they’ve almost always been successful.

So, why do the Australians use tanks so differently to everybody else?

Join James and Fam as they explore the weird and wonderful ways that our Australian cousins have used their tanks. From captured tanks in the desert, to heavy metal in the jungle, the Aussie methods of armoured warfare have always seemed a little upside down from the outside.

While Australian interest in tanks has come and gone, when the need has arisen, the Australian tank force has been up to the challenge. Simply put, Australian soldiers usually use tanks differently because they usually fight differently. And despite long periods of neglect, tanks in the Australian Army always seem to find a way to bounce back.

00:00 | Introduction
00:36 | A Bad Start
03:44 | Tanks of their Own
06:19 | Welcome to the Jungle
11:07 | Lessons Relearned
13:53 | Defence of Australia
(more…)

QotD: Kingdoms were not “nations” in the Middle Ages

Filed under: Europe, History, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Medieval kingdoms and Early Modern states were both built around the personal holdings of individual rulers. For instance, to talk of “Austria” or “Burgundy” in the 1400s as states/countries/governments is to engage in a degree of anachronism. There was no Austrian state, merely the collection of lands either owned or controlled by whoever the reigning Habsburg was at the time. Likewise, Burgundy in, say, 1440 was not a coherent entity, it was simply the collection of lands that Philip the Good (Duke of Burgundy, but also Duke of Brabant, Limburg, Luxemburg and Lothier, Count of Artois, Flanders, Charolais, Haniaut, Holland and Zeeland, and the Margrave of Namur). The “kingdom” was thus not a permanent, durable entity so much as a collection of possessions the same way my personal “library” is not permanent building but just a term for “books I happen to own right now”.

It is thus a bit odd that the regions of Westeros are seen by its inhabitants as being clear and unchanging. For instance, the Reach has borders, those borders do not move and everyone in those borders is loyal to House Tyrell. This is not how medieval rule works. The borders of, say, France, shifted over time (some places we consider “obviously” part of France were added only quite late, like French Flanders or Provence) as the ability of the French king to control those regions changed. For long periods of the Middle Ages, large parts of France were effectively controlled by the Kings of England (because they were also Dukes of this or that French duchy).

The idea that France, or Germany or Italy was a distinct, permanent entity with its own existence apart from a given royal family – more than just a space on a map – which comprised a people, their language and the government of those people, this is a modern phenomenon. Indeed, one may argue, it – that is, the nation-state – is the modern phenomenon.

Bret Devereaux, “New Acquisitions: How It Wasn’t: Game of Thrones and the Middle Ages, Part III”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2019-06-12.

April 10, 2026

Trump’s intemperate, irresponsible, unhinged rants … worked?

Filed under: Media, Middle East, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

For all that Trump’s habitual form of social media post seem to frequently dance on the edge of incoherence — if not insanity — his track record is far better than his critics give him credit for. I thought his most recent blustering threats against the Iranian leadership would be counter-productive, but something approximating a ceasefire began just before his deadline. As Brendan O’Neill put it, this gives Iranian civilization a bit of a reprieve, but what about the West?

Imagine calling for the destruction of a civilisation. Imagine dreaming about violently scrubbing an ancient nation from the face of the Earth. Imagine flirting with the idea of obliterating a land with thousands of years of rich history. I am referring, of course, to the activist class and its annihilationist hatred for the Jewish State. For nearly three years, these people have beat the streets and swarmed the digital networks to agitate for the erasure of Israel, all the way “from the river to the sea“. President Trump’s juvenile bluster on Iran has nothing on their existential loathing for the Jewish homeland.

The frenzy of the past 48 hours, following Trump’s potty-mouthed and threatening social-media posts about Iran, has felt unhinged. The nukes are coming, influencers wailed. Trump must be “removed as president” in order to “prevent a catastrophe that our species will never recover from”, said the Guardian‘s Owen Jones. Within hours of this giddy apocalypticism, this huddled descent of the chattering classes into the pit of End Times prophesying, Trump had done what many of us expected he would: struck a kind of deal. The great detonation was not of a nuclear bomb but of the common sense of the cultural establishment. That’s the only thing that got vaporised yesterday.

Then there was the sheer cant. It was Trump’s ominous yelp that “A whole civilisation will die tonight” that got leftists and liberals frothing. It’s genocidal lunacy, they said. Let’s leave to one side that the target of his digital ire appeared to be the Islamic Republic, not Persia. “Forty-seven years of extortion, corruption and death will finally end”, he said. The more striking thing is the industrial-level gall of a cultural elite that is devoted to the dismantling of Israel, puffing itself up in fury over Trump’s hyperbole on Iran.

I agree that “A whole civilisation will die tonight” is a chilling thing to say. That’s why I’m so horrified by the frenzied anti-Zionism of our times. Our intellectual classes furiously deny Israel’s “right to exist”. Our activist classes openly call for Israel’s excision from the family of nations, by intifada (violence) if necessary. Our celebrity classes cheer the armies of anti-Semites (Hamas, Hezbollah) that were founded with the express intention of vaporising the Jewish nation. One minute the keffiyeh set is accusing the likes of Pete Hegseth of being in the grip of an anti-Iranian “bloodthirst”, the next it’s chanting for the death of the Jewish nation’s soldiers.

Future historians will marvel at the brass neck of an influencer class that took 24 hours off from calling for the destruction of Israel to bash Trump for posting about the destruction of Iran. I raise this not to be facetious but to draw attention to the moral disarray here on the home front that has been so spectacularly exposed by events in Iran. For it is undeniable now – we are surrounded by people who salivate over the violent disappearance of Israel but who fret over the withering of the Islamic Republic. They have taken sides – the side of the barbarous regime that dreams of “Death to America” over the side of the democratic state rebuilt by Jews in the aftermath of the Holocaust. I’m delighted the Persian civilisation is safe – now what about the West’s?

“MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Another Canadian interest group decided that their already oversized abbreviation needed to be super-sized. Jonathan Kay provides some useful context for those not familiar with Canadian domestic politics:

Canadian here, with four (count em) points of clarification on the “MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+” thing, which has now escaped its absurdist Canadian genderwang containment chamber, and gone viral internationally:

1) the speaker here is @LeahGazan, a fringe minor-party politician. She’s not in the government. She regularly calls for dumb things, such as criminalizing anyone who dares talk candidly about the 2021-era unmarked-graves social panic. CBC types treat her as a serious person because she’s indigenous and because she always talks in the tear-drenched idiom of white-settler colonial evilness. But she’s not.

2) MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ is a mashup of two acronyms (each unique to Canada). Her decision to run them together is hilarious, which is why this has gone viral, but it’s not a common practice, even in rarefied leftist circles.

3) MMIWG refers to “Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls”. The problem of violence against indigenous women is a real and tragic issue. Unfortunately, a couple of years ago, a bunch of activists produced a ridiculous report on the subject that called it a “continuing” (!!!) “genocide”, and demanded that we all call it that. The whole movement collapsed when it was pointed out that something like 80% of the indigenous women who are killed are killed by indigenous men, which is very much off-message from the whole white colonial G-word thing. But the acronym still gets name-dropped when people are indicting Canada for all its infinitely genocidey genociding of everybody

4) “2SLGBTQetcetc…” Americans always ask me what “2S” stands for. It stands for “2 spirited,” a term that white academics popularized 50 years ago to give expression to their mystical reveries about sacred indigenous elf-people living in some precolonial eden-like genderwang Nirvana where everyone has three penises and five vaginas. No one is allowed to ask what the term even means, but our government made it official policy to use ridiculous words like this under Trudeau, so we’re stuck with it. Basically, if you’re an indigenous guy who likes to wear eyeliner, or an indigenous woman with blue hair and sensible shoes, you call yourself “2 spirited” on your govt grant applications. No one is even allowed to ask whether it’s a gender identity or a sexual orientation. It apparently exists in some exalted state that defies this kind of rigid colonial typology, or something like that.

Back in 2022, I read a whole report about how to teach two spirited concepts to Canadian students, and it turned out that even the authors of the report admitted they had no idea what the term meant. I wrote about it for @Quillette: https://quillette.com/blog/2022/10/0

A Brief History of GRAVY

Filed under: Britain, Food, History — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tweedy Misc
Published 2 Dec 2025

For the next instalment of the series of classic British sauces we take a look at the history of gravy.

In this video I look into some of the earliest historical references to gravy, then some 18th Century recipes. I investigate whether gravy might be a derivative of a classic French sauce, and look in some detail into one important component of traditional gravy recipes: the roux, used for thickening.

I also investigate some products which have emerged since the 19th Century to help with the process of making gravy, from gravy salt and gravy browning, through Bisto’s original gravy powder of 1908, and their fully instant product in the form of “gravy granules”, launched in the 1970s.

Also, have you ever wondered why Bisto is called Bisto? We’ll get into that too.

0:00 Introduction
0:32 What is gravy?
1:27 Early history of gravy
2:01 18th Century gravy recipe
2:25 The importance of the roux
3:37 More 18th Century gravy recipes
4:07 Is gravy actually…. French?!?!
5:29 Gravy salt
6:47 Gravy browning
7:31 History of Bisto
9:19 Modern Bisto
10:25 Conclusion

QotD: William Cobbett

Filed under: Books, Britain, Economics, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… The truest reason I love The King’s Head is that William Cobbett once gave a lecture there: an event commemorated by a nice print on the wall of the man — in red jacket, white britches and black boots, all properly Georgian — and a bit of accompanying biographical text.

Cobbett was a scrapper on the same majestic scale as our Henry V and our Horatio, except he dished it out to Vested Interest rather than Jean-Pierre Foreigner. He is the faded star of the British Awkward Squad (Capt. Jon. Swift; Vice Capt. Geo. Orwell) and he needs a boost. He needs a blue plaque on every place he ever visited. In his long life — he was born in 1763 and died in 1835 — Cobbett was a farmer, Tory, soldier, Radical, MP, agony uncle (his books include Advice to Young Men), and the founder of Hansard.

His obituary in The Times, after categorising him as a “self-taught peasant”, declared Cobbett “by far the most voluminous writer that has ever lived for centuries”. The funniest, too: when some town council somewhere banned his anti-Malthusian play Surplus Population, he riposted with a drama entitled Bastards in High Places.

Above all, though, Cobbett was the champion of the rural poor, the village labourer and the small farmer. He was their one true tribune. He spoke at The King’s Head in 1820 because country folk were suffering a triple wham from agricultural depression, enclosure and the rise of agri-business. Or, to precis, “Hodge” (his name for the generic farm worker) was low-waged or unwaged and deprived of the bits of land he had once enjoyed under commoner’s rights.

Cobbett railed against “The Thing” (the capitalist, manufactory system) and the centrifugal, corrupting force of smoky London (“The Wen”, in Cobbettian). But he was no bloviator: he was a farm boy, and hence entirely empirical and properly pragmatic. He spent a decade travelling around the English sticks to discover the true state of affairs. His descriptions of his horseback journeys were published in 1830 as Rural Rides, the first sociological study of the English countryside.

No dry-as-dust tome by the way, the Rides: it brims with pinned-to-the-specimen-board descriptions of people and places, nature, wit. Cobbett knew beauty and, the proper Englishman that he was, he loved horses:

    The finest sight in England is a stage coach ready to start. A great sheep or cattle fair is a beautiful sight; but in the stage coach you see more of what man is capable of performing. The vehicle itself, the harness, all so complete and so neatly arranged; so strong and clean and good. The beautiful horses, impatient to be off. The inside full and the outside covered, in every part with men, women, children, boxes, bags, bundles. The coachman taking his reins in hand and his whip in the other, gives a signal with his foot, and away go, at the rate of seven miles an hour.

    One of these coaches coming in, after a long journey is a sight not less interesting. The horses are now all sweat and foam, the reek from their bodies ascending like a cloud. The whole equipage is covered perhaps with dust and dirt. But still, on it comes as steady as the hands on a clock.

Speaking at The King’s Head coaching inn in Monmouth must have been the dream gig for Cobbett the horseman.

John Lewis-Stempel, “Why Britain needs a peasants’ revolt”, UnHerd, 2020-08-06.

April 9, 2026

The NFL’s “Rooney Rule”

Filed under: Business, Football, Government, Law, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

As the NFL in its modern incarnation exists as an exception to the normal rules governing corporate structure under US law, you can readily imagine that the NFL’s legal teams are extremely sensitive to the changing winds at the federal level. At a time that the federal government was emphasizing providing employment equity, the NFL scrambled to implement a hiring solution that gave black coaches a better chance of being hired for head coaching opportunities. The winds have shifted recently and the NFL risks being caught on the wrong side of evolving legal decision-making:

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles said he “absolutely” believed that he was sometimes brought in by NFL teams just to check the “Rooney Rule” box.

The Rooney Rule is an NFL policy instituted more than two decades ago that requires teams to interview — though not to hire — at least one minority candidate when hiring new coaches.

The rule was designed to increase the number of minority head coaches in the NFL, a goal it has failed to achieve. For years, it has been a source of moral controversy, but new developments suggest it may now be a legal issue for the league.

Last week, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) sent a letter to the NFL calling the Rooney Rule “blatant race discrimination“, adding that hiring decisions should be based solely on merit.

Though the NFL says it believes its policy “is consistent with the law” and promotes fairness, others have indicated the Rooney Rule may be on the chopping block, given recent legal challenges to other forms of racial preferences.

“There’s no question that the environment has changed in recent years“, said Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney II, the son of Dan Rooney, for whom the rule is named. “We do have an obligation to make sure that our policies comply with the laws, whatever the law is, and whatever the changes in law might be.”

Art Rooney didn’t specify the laws the NFL may not be in compliance with, but he might have been referring to last year’s Supreme Court ruling in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services. In that decision, the court unanimously ruled that separate standards for minority and majority plaintiffs seeking redress for racial discrimination were illegal.

The ruling undercut the ability of organizations to use race or sex in hiring decisions — even for ostensibly benign or diversity-promoting purposes — because majority-group plaintiffs are now allowed to sue under the same legal standard as minority groups.

As I wrote at the time, the Ames decision was likely to be a wrecking ball to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, which employers had used for years to discriminate against majority ethnic groups (and non-focus minorities, such as Asians), in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Carney gets another MP to defect, drawing ever closer to a Parliamentary majority

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

I’m not a Parliamentary history buff, but it strikes me that the number of Canadian Members of Parliament switching parties (always in the direction of the government) over the last year must be close to its historical high-water mark. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomed yet another “Conservative” MP to the Liberal caucus in Ottawa:

Call me a cynic if you like, but something is fishy about Carney’s talent for drawing turncoats over to his side. It would not surprise me to find that many more MPs have been offered all sorts of incentives to discover that they were really Liberals all along. Once upon a time I’d have been unbothered by this, but I’m coming to believe that an MP elected under a party banner may choose to leave that party but if they switch to a different party (that also ran a candidate in that MP’s riding), a byelection should be called. If the voters in North Bumbleford-Moosehip-Bongwater are happy with the MP’s decision, they’ll re-elect him/her/them. If not, well, shoulda thought longer before turning traitor.

Along with many others on the social media site formerly known as Twitter, J.J. McCullough clearly feels the same way: “This floor crossing BS is out of control. If MPs in this country can just change parties whenever they want, then voters truly have no control over who becomes prime minister and runs our government. The whole Canadian system is based on the premise that parties MATTER.”

At least one opposition MP did go public about Liberal approaches to switch sides — it’s my belief that he’s one of perhaps dozens:

Ian Runkle (“Runkle of the Bailey”) responds to a typical middle-of-the-Canadian-road take by Spencer Fernando:

L. Wayne Mathison is viscerally against such backroom shenanigans when it comes to Parliament:

I am disgusted, and I am not going to dress it up with polite Ottawa language.

Marilyn Gladu crossed from the Conservatives to Mark Carney’s Liberals on April 8, 2026, saying constituents want “serious leadership” and “a real plan to build a stronger and more independent Canadian economy”. Her move gives the Liberals 171 seats, one short of the 172 needed for a majority.

That is exactly why people do not buy the noble script.

This is how Ottawa usually works. The speech is about conscience.

The reality is about power.

Suddenly the language gets soft, patriotic, and lofty right when the political math gets useful. We are asked to believe an MP was hit by a lightning bolt of principle at the exact moment her switch strengthens the governing party and brings it within one seat of majority control. Convenient does not begin to cover it.

Gladu says this is about leadership and collaboration. Fine. Then let voters decide whether they agree. That is the part these people always skip. They act as if a personal change of heart magically rewrites the contract with the public. It does not. People did not vote only for Marilyn Gladu the individual. They voted for a Conservative MP, a Conservative platform, and a Conservative opposition role. Crossing the floor without first seeking a new mandate may be legal, but it feels like a bait-and-switch because that is exactly what it is.

And spare me the line about “doing the best thing” for the riding. Every floor crosser says some version of that. It is the oldest detergent in the political cupboard. It is meant to wash ambition into service. What it really signals is this: I think my judgment now matters more than the basis on which you elected me.

That is where the anger comes from.

Voters are already drowning in managed language, staged sincerity, and plastic promises. Trust in politics is weak because people keep seeing the same pattern. Politicians campaign one way, govern another, then call the switch “leadership”. They wrap self-interest in national purpose and hope the flag covers the fingerprints.

What makes this worse is the timing. Carney publicly welcomed Gladu into Liberal caucus the same day, and the result is not symbolic. It materially strengthens the government’s position in the House. This is not some minor personal journey. It changes parliamentary leverage. It changes committee numbers, confidence calculations, and the balance of power.

So yes, I’m pissed.

I am pissed because voters are treated like props in a story written after the fact. I am pissed because party labels suddenly matter a great deal during elections and apparently not at all when power is on offer. I am pissed because people who were sent to oppose Liberal policy can simply walk across the aisle and help entrench it, then expect applause for being “constructive.”

And there is another detail that makes this smell even worse. Local reporting says that in January, Gladu had advocated for byelections when MPs switch parties. If that report is accurate, then this is not just opportunism. It is opportunism with a side order of hypocrisy.

That is the real issue here. Not whether floor crossing is technically allowed. Not whether Ottawa insiders can invent a respectable sentence for it. The real issue is whether voters still mean anything once the election is over.

My view is simple. If you want to switch parties, resign and run again. Go back to the people. Make your case honestly. Ask for a fresh mandate under the new banner. Anything less might be lawful, but it is not clean. It tells voters their consent is temporary, conditional, and easily bypassed once the machinery of power starts humming.

That is why this disgusts me.

Because democracy is not only about counting seats. It is about keeping faith with the people who gave you one.

“Trump … scared us into doing the right thing”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Canada got into the incredibly bad habit of freeloading on national defence under Pierre Trudeau, and from 1968 onward, we’ve been leaning ever more heavily on US military power to fill in the gaps we’ve chosen not to invest in ourselves. At the same time, we’ve almost dislocated our arm in patting ourselves on the back for our “soft power” on the international diplomatic scene. The Americans, for reasons known only to themselves, rarely pushed back or called us out for our perpetual slacking … until Donald Trump came along. Now, as Matt Gurney regretfully points out, Trump seems to be the only accountability mechanism on the Canadian government:

Coming soon to a Jewish daycare centre near you, sadly.
Image from The Line

Every well-functioning society needs effective accountability mechanisms. It needs something that can reliably deter bad guys from doing bad things, or at least catch them and stop them when they try. Hell, it also needs some sort of immune system that simply prevents the good ones from getting flaky and lazy, and to prune out the soft corruption that can easily settle in in comfortable and generally affluent societies.

“Accountability mechanism” is a broad term, but it has to be. It can be many things. It can be as basic as a strict moral or religious code, enforced by a priestly caste or even simple scolds. Or, ahem, a thriving press, with reporters and columnists poring over all the information they can find for examples of bad things that need fixing and then making a lot of noise about them. In democracies, effective opposition parties are a key part of this; so are government accountability officers, like auditors and ombudsmen. In a pinch, even just a healthy sense of personal honour and shame can work.

In a perfect world, you’ll have many or all of these, and they’ll be mutually reinforcing. Does Canada have any? Or, as I’m increasingly worried, have we basically outsourced this key democratic function entirely to the United States, and specifically, Donald Trump?

This bleak thought occurred to me after I watched, with equal parts horror and relief, a recent video put out by the Toronto Police Service. You can see it for yourself here, but, in short, it’s a promotional video for the new public order mission that is putting heavily armed and armoured officers onto the streets of Toronto to secure sites at risk of attack. The video has an intensely martial vibe; the deployment looks much more like a military operation than a police patrol. Though the video doesn’t say so directly, the intended purpose is clearly stopping the sustained attacks we’ve seen on Jewish religious, commercial and cultural sites in Toronto since Oct. 7, 2023.

[…]

There was also border security and fentanyl. I’m fully aware that the White House exaggerated both issues so they could use them against us. But I’m equally aware that Canada tends to ignore issues even slightly related to national security. A few tweets from Trump changed that. Some of our initial responses, like a czar and a pair of leased Blackhawks, were symbolic, clearly intended for Trump’s consumption. But Mark Carney has continued to ramp up our border security, and make a point of saying so. Again, we did this to avoid Trump’s wrath.

The biggest example, though, is clearly defence spending and rearming the Canadian military. Canada had long pledged to hit the NATO target, but never did; indeed, the former PM reportedly told our allies he had no plans to even try, as it wasn’t a domestic priority. But then Trump comes along and scares the crap out of us and, voilà, we’re hitting the target. Some of that is creative accounting, but not all of it.

Again, Trump did this. He scared us into doing the right thing.

Aly & Kaufman AKB-23: Better Than the SA80 / L85

Filed under: Britain, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 19 Nov 2025

The Aly & Kaufman AKB-23 is a set of parts that allows one to use a Brownells BRN-180 upper to create an SA80 / L85 lookalike. It’s a very clever adaptation, based on the fact that the original British L85A1 was essentially copied from the AR-180 design. By creating a new bullpup lower for Brownells’ modernized AR-180 (the BRN-180), the basic mechanics of the SA80 are used, but in a form that is well tested and reliable.

The parts include, of course, the new lower (which is legally a firearm, and requires FFL transfer). The lower is milled aluminum, and uses standard AR fire control parts. It also includes iron sights that mount onto the BRN-180 picatinny rail and a high quality 3D-printed cheek rest and front handguard.

This is a really fun rifle, and a very clever way to create an L85 analog that is affordable and accessible.
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