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The AP reference to “Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro” and TorStar’s to “Venezuela’s ousted leader Maduro” are both incorrect. There is as yet no indication that the acting president (who is currently assuming his role while he is constrained from performing it directly) has any intention of supplanting him, or that anyone else has taken control, or that any institution within the country has revised its position on his status. So he has been neither “deposed” (which usually means replaced by some other authority that does not recognize his status) nor “ousted” (which implies being pushed out rather than extracted by some external agency).

NEWS ALERT Venezuela’s ousted leader Maduro makes first appearance in U.S. courtroom after his capture Monday, January 05, 2026. 12:25 PM EDT The deposed leader is making his first appearance on the narco-terrorism charges the Trump administration used to justify capturing him and bringing him to New York. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. 8 Spadina Avenue, 10th Floor, Toronto, ON M5V 0S8. 416-367-2000

So the correct word is still “abducted” or perhaps even “kidnapped”.

Source: The Latest: Maduro pleads not guilty in US court appearance

One thing that clicked for me in this is the fact that UNWRA has an interest in identifying people as refugees, presumably a temporary status which includes a right to either re-settle or to return to where they came from rather than stay where they are.  And I can see why many Israelis might find this problematic.

On the other hand, I don’t see how the “right of return” claimed by Palestinian refugees and their relatively immediate descendants is an “ideology” that requires “destruction” any more than that claimed by the multi-generational descendants of the Jews who were expelled from the same land 2000 years ago. Or how “destruction of the ideology at the heart of Palestinian identity” would be interpreted by the people in this podcast if the word “Palestinian” were replaced with “Israeli”.

Source: Peace in the Middle East? The first thing that needs to happen is the destruction of the ideology at the heart of Palestinian identity.

Aeon has just re-sent this essay from last spring in which Jim Baggot discusses, and thereby contributes to, the ongoing public fixation about Schrödinger’s un(?)dead cat. But while Baggot’s professed emphasis is more on the history of the meme than its implications, the (now closed) comments focus more on the latter. And despite the evident irritation in his responses, this should be unsurprising as he persists in identifying things that are seen by some as paradoxical and/or indicative of incompleteness in the theory without giving any indication of widely accepted resolutions. One such alleged resolution is the understanding that the quantum state of a system is not a property just of the system itself but of its relation to an observer from which it is temporarily isolated. The question of whether or not such a state is all that is “real” or just a “mathematical trick” begs that of what, if anything, is meant by “reality” in the first place. And the question of how big a system must be in order for classical physics to apply should not be raised without giving the obvious answer that it’s not the size of the system but its isolation that matters – and there is no inherent limit on the size of a system that can in principle be suitably isolated. With increasingly sophisticated experiments it is becoming possible to truly isolate larger and larger systems, but to truly isolate the cat in the story would require a mechanism of such complexity that it might seem quite natural to accept absolute uncertainty as to whether anything “real” was happening inside it.

Source: No, Schrödinger’s cat is not alive and dead at the same time | Aeon Essays

As we approach the winter solstice here in the Northern hemisphere, it may surprise you to note that the evenings have already been getting longer for over a week now – with the Vancouver sunset having been as early as 4:13pm just over a week ago around Dec 12, but on Dec19 (when I started writing this) it was not until 4:15 and today on the actual solstice it will be at 4:16. (Source: Sunrise and sunset times in Vancouver). That’s three more minutes of sun every afternoon!

How can this be if Dec21 is actually the shortest day of sunlight? Continue reading →

I can think of no good reason why it should be possible for the default setting of a phone to allow the incurrance of extra charges merely by dialling a phone number. It should require a conscious act of a verified user in order to enable any such setting and the range of possible “premium” numbers should be limited to whatever has been clearly specified by the user.

Source: “One-ring” cell phone scam can ding your wallet | Consumer Advice

Source: (1000) Alan Cooper’s answer to How can you believe that CO2 at 280ppm was good for the planet when the northern hemisphere was cooling to a return of 100,000 years of ice sheet? – Quora

It is only when mass killings break new records, seem directed at particular groups, or involve large numbers of children, that they persist for long in the collective consciousness. But when they do there is (almost) unanimous empathy for the victims – even from (most of) those who may feel that the victims have misunderstood either the motives of the shooter or the relevance of firearms to their suffering.

Perhaps it is natural for the widely reported killing of a single individual to attract more attention than the daily slaughter of large numbers of unknowns. And in such cases perhaps it is also natural that the character of the victim is sometimes called into question by some and unduly elevated by others. This has happened in the cases of both George Floyd and Charlie Kirk.

What particularly disturbs me about reactions to the recent murder of Charlie Kirk though, is the extent to which no-one seems able to comment on any aspect of the horrible situation without trying to make political points. This includes the case of Jimmy Kimmel’s comments on the MAGA reaction (which came dangerously close to mirroring Kirk’s own deplorable comments about the attack on Paul Pelosi), but it also applies to an otherwise excellent piece on Forgiveness by Auguste Meyrat in ‘Crisis’ magazine which, by referring to “the leftists celebrating Kirk’s death and the leftist ideologies that fuel this evil”, conveys the false impression that anything but a fringe of “leftists” are celebrating and that “leftist ideologies” fuel this evil any more than rightist ideologies have fueled many corresponding evils such as (most recently) the murders of Melissa Hortman and her husband (and shootings of John and Yvette Hoffman).

Source: What It Means to Forgive Our Enemies and What It Doesn’t – Crisis Magazine

Google AI Studio did a pretty good job when asked to “colorize this photo”

I then asked it to “place the little girl from the previous photo in a class full of others of a similar age”

And it confidently replied with

Here’s the little girl in a classroom setting with other children:

Oops! (I hadn’t asked for a scene from ‘The Exorcist’!). So I gave it a thumbs down, told it what was wrong and gave it a new prompt to “Fix it so that she is facing forwards and viewed from the front of the class” – which produced the following reply:

Here is the updated image with the girl facing forward, viewed from the front of the class:

WITH EXACTLY THE SAME IMAGE AS BEFORE!

So I complained again and repeated the prompt. Which produced this reply:

It seems like the previous image already had her facing forward from the front of the class. Could you please clarify what specific changes you’d like to see? Are there any adjustments to her pose, expression, or the perspective that you had in mind?

So I told it “The previous image has her facing away from the front of the class but she should be facing forwards relative to her own body and towards the front of the class with the picture showing a scene from the front and towards the back of the class (showing the faces of all the children)”

And now it appeared to understand! :

Got it, thank you for clarifying! You want her facing the front of the classroom, and you want the image to be taken from the front of the classroom looking towards the back, showing all the children’s faces.

Here’s the revised image:

WTF?!!!

However, by going back up to the top of the session and editing the original prompt to say “place the little girl from the previous photo in a class full of others of a similar age with the picture taken from the front of the class so that the faces of all the children are visible” I did finally get it to produce this:

(though for some reason Connie’s expression and features seem to have been made a bit more generic than in the original)

Source: Google AI Studio

This picture of smarmy old smug lizard people explains it all for me

Source: (39) Why does everyone still hate the Democrats? – by Noah Smith

People often ask why we should worry about increasing CO2 concentration when the world was full of life back in the time of the dinosaurs when it was much higher. But what is important is not the level itself but its rate of change.

In Mesozoic times the CO2 level was maybe ten times higher than the “historical” level of the million or so years during which we and our current environment evolved, and so back then the world was about 6 to 10 degrees warmer. And of course we (and an ecosystem to support us) could certainly have survived under those conditions. But what the ecosystem (and so many of us) may not be able to survive is a sudden transition to those temperatures – which forces the habitable zones for various species to move faster than the species themselves (especially plants) can move to keep up.

Source: (900) Alan Cooper’s answer to Why is the historical CO2 level of 280 parts per million important, and what happens if we go far beyond it? – Quora

One reason why I suspect that Dunning-Kruger is on the rise (in all areas, not just wrt vaccines) is because advocates for all causes (in their need for credible corroboration) and the media (in its thirst for sensational opinions) so often accept false claims of “expertise” if it either supports their view or makes claims that are sufficiently outrageous

Source: Why vaccine opponents think they know more than medical experts

Of course no-one has any idea of how many people actually read any book! But I am one who did read Darwin’s 1859 book On the Origin of Species, and who (as a result of that reading) became a fan of his beautifully clear and convincing writing and of the insight he shared with Wallace and others that the entire variety of living organisms might be just the result of a process of natural selection acting on the results of some (as then unknown) source of random variation between parents and offspring. That the words “might be” can almost certainly be replaced by “is” depends of course on subsequent discoveries about the process of inheritance and the mechanisms and rate of “mutations” that lead to the assumed random variation, as well as on the fact that the age of the Earth is actually much greater than was understood at the time of his writing. But the fact that everything we have discovered since then (from the existence of nuclear fusion to keep the sun and earth warm for long enough, to the details of how the rate at which DNA encoding of protein structures can get altered by radiation and other factors) all support his idea… Well that just increases my admiration for the power of his insight!

Source: (1002) Alan Cooper’s answer to How many Charles Darwin fans actually read his theory of evolution? – Quora

Unlike last year’s firebombing of my local synagogue, yesterday’s murder of two Israeli embassy workers in Washington was not antisemitic. Regardless of whether or not the murderer has general antisemitic feelings, the act itself was directed specifically at supporters of the State of Israel (with the actual victims being agents of that state), and the perpetrator clearly expressed a perceived grievance against that state in particular and not necessarily against the Jewish people as a whole

Source: Netanyahu: Blood Libels Against Israel Cost Lives; Trump: ‘Obviously Antisemitic’ – Israel News – Haaretz.com

Thomas Homer Dixon, in the course of urging Canada to prepare for war, refers to Aisha Ahmad’s claim that the result of such a war would destroy the US – in a way that I think is like the so-called “poison pill” defense often used in business to resist a hostile takeover.

Source: Why annexing Canada would destroy the United States

Canada doesn’t need the F35 – or any other fighter aircraft for that matter. The only conceivable military threat to us is from the South, and possesses such overwhelming conventional military strength that any traditional resistance would be futile. Our defense priority should therefore be the training and equipment of all willing Canadians for a period of asymmetrical warfare – with emphasis on drones, sniping, sabotage, and assassination of leadership. Fortunately we share a language with the potential aggressor and have such a deep understanding of their psyche that many of their top comedians are Canadian. So infiltration to their heartland and most sensitive places should be relatively easy for us. And as a nation with many active hunters and the highest per capita rate of long distance sniper kills I have no doubt we can ensure that whoever orders an attack on us will basically be signing their own death warrant.

Source: (281) Alan Cooper’s answer to Sweden and France have no real answer to the F-35. In fact Turkey and South Korea have more viable answers, so if Canada wants to buy something that is all but useless from France and Sweden, they can be my guest. How about it

An article that explicitly acknowledges that the “effect” it reports is probably explained by confounding with other factors (in this case social isolation and lack of access to medical services) should not be titled in a way that suggests the effect is due to “excess” of the relevant parameter.

Source: Time Spent in Nature Is Good for Your Brain, but an Excess Can Negate These Benefits | Scientific American

It is true that water vapour causes more warming than CO2. But what is also true is that the concentration of water vapour in the atmosphere is determined by the sea surface temperature and so is not something we can directly affect. So what water vapour does is provide a feedback mechanism that amplifies the effect of any other influence (such as that of CO2). Fortunately the feedback effect diminishes with increasing temperature and so just leads to a new higher equilibrium temperature rather than causing a run-away. But the fact that water vapour acts like an amplifier does explain why tweaking the small CO2 direct effect causes a much bigger end result than that which is frequently suggested by uninformed and over-confident denialists.

Source: (178) Alan Cooper’s answer to Is it true that water vapor causes more warming than CO2? If so, why is CO2 still considered a main cause of global warming? – Quora

A Quoran asks:

Is there a contradiction between the idea that population growth is necessary for economic growth and the fact that eventually we run out of food, fresh water, arable land, and so on? Are economists driving us over a cliff?

My Answer:

Absolutely! And congrats for catching on to the biggest Ponzi scheme ever.

What population growth is “necessary” for is enabling each generation to live with less work and more luxury than they can afford by expecting the next generation to support them rather than by saving properly for their retirement. And yes, eventually it will all collapse.

Economic growth driven by population growth does nothing for the average standard of living, and will just accelerate our progress towards the inevitable cliff.

But even without population growth, continued economic growth causes unsustainable resource pressure (unless the growth comes exclusively as a result of increased information density). And in any case the benefits are typically (especially in recent decades) stolen by a wealthy subclass so that even when GDP per capita is increasing the median standard of living is not.

Source: (170) Alan Cooper’s answer to Is there a contradiction between the idea that population growth is necessary for economic growth and the fact that eventually we run out of food, fresh water, arable land, and so on? Are economists driving us over a cliff? –

Not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are dickheads … but look.

The fact that traditional antisemitism always shows up alongside antizionism is entirely to be expected and in no way “makes nonsense” of the claim that antizionism is merely criticism of Israel. Some “antizionists” are indeed just using that as a cover for antisemitism but the claim that all are is basically a dickhead move.

Source: Antizionists and Antisemites – by Brian Henry