I say theoretically because there's no universe in which Mark Carney gives a single shit about the average middle-class Canadian, never mind the poorest and more marginalized in this place. He is gutting anything that could be used to make life more tolerable, to invest in oil, gas, guns, and AI.

I'm reeling at the gut-wrenching irony of a neoliberal central banker saying things like "we must take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be."

Drones, you wanna get into drones.

The wackier and more dystopian the better.

The front line of the fight against fascism is everywhere, whether we see it manifest out in the open or not. :(

I'm gonna need to compile notes about this shit. There's so, so, so much wrong about the way Toronto and Ontario is run. It's like a case study in neolibs successfully marginalizing progress of any kind and slowly killing anything that isn't funneling money to capital.

Our province's entire political culture exists because of reactionary backlash to minor left-wing political successes in the nineties amidst that era's wave of right-wing populism. It's part Mike Harris, part corp. capture of media & institutions being so complete as to kneecap all opposition

It's so much worse than I could explain within this character limit

Past experience working in this industry tells me this man is exactly as full of shit as he seems.

I worked for an Intuit competitor and spent the entire time being incredibly alarmed at the lax attitude taken to customer access to their data, to say nothing of security vulnerabilities.

(TY for your work as always. The BtB nuke eps reinvigorated my writing about the disarmament movement; I mentioned it to you back in Buffalo in Oct 2024.

Was my last visit to the US for a long while, but I'm glad it was a good one. Apologies if I was too parasocial! Wishing you & Rintrah the best.)

Do you think the existence of nuclear weapons is an insurmountable obstacle to Cool People who want to see a world without state oppression?

They seem to keep a lot of regimes around well after their expiry date, and they're a wildcard that past revolutionaries haven't had to deal with.

Which Bastard - past or present - would be the best podcast guest to cover a different horrible person?

Assume @whysophiewhy.bsky.social acquired an oddly specific time-travel & video conference program for the pod (+universal translator). Who is the best of the worst when it comes to guests?

Hat wishes Merry Christmas back!

...does folks not assume you were speaking off the cuff and kinda colloquially? Like as an example and not to the exclusion of other things?

No no clearly you meant ONLY the dolls get the couch. Then the boys stay on the floor. Enbys have to go in attics, crawlspaces, or voids in the walls.

Do you plan to cover recent political developments in Canada?

Fear of American takeover has been used by PM Carney and several provincial premiers to roll back privacy & env. protections, erode democratic norms, human rights & indigenous sovereignty. It's Happening Here too fast to keep up with :(

Looking forward to listening to this! I'm really fascinated by the relationship of nuclear weapons to state sovereignty.

I suspect @wellerstein.bsky.social would have a good take on Jacobsen's work & this scenario.

Here's his take on Curtis LeMay, who was as much a microcosm of the callous inhumanity of the global apocalypse machine as he was one of its primary architects: doomsdaymachines.net/p/i-have-sou...