- Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the Republican primary race and endorsed Donald Trump for the nomination. David Shribman has some analysis here; he quotes political scientist Andrew Smith as saying "DeSantis tried to be Trump without the Trumpiness, but the Trumpiness is the fun thing that the Trump people love". In other words, the fact that he's inarticulate, boorish, rude, hateful, and generally outrageous is not a bug, it's a feature - it makes him seem like "one of them". This should be no surprise to anyone who's read what Susan McWilliams said about Trump's followers back in 2016.
- Whatever the merits of nuclear energy, one thing that's undeniable is that it's expensive and slow to build, especially compared to solar and wind. While it's more consistent than renewables, on the face of it you'd think that you could build renewables and energy storage for less cost than a nuclear plant. Despite this, the UK is planning their biggest expansion of nuclear energy in 70 years. One might ask why; the most plausible explanation seems to be that the military wants it. Simply put, "civil nuclear energy maintains the skills and supply chains needed for military nuclear programmes". And they certainly don't want to forgo the latter.
- Speaking of nuclear, if we were to get nuclear fusion to work in something smaller than a star, it would be an almost unlimited source of energy, but the jury is still out on whether that will be possible. One alternative that's being touted is space based solar power that's beamed down via microwaves; a recent NASA report seems to indicate that this is feasible, though there are differing interpretations of the report. In any case, though, it probably won't be ready to go for at least couple of decades, so the climate problem will need to be addressed by other means.
- While the Biden administration, in theory, favours a Palestinian state, Netanyahu's response to this is, essentially, "what are ya gonna do about it?" Given the extra-special relationship between Israel and the US, the answer, almost certainly, is "nothing".
- There's no doubt that Canada (as well as numerous other countries) is experiencing a housing crisis. There's a lot of blame being cast around; one popular scapegoat for the right, even the more moderate centre-right like the Globe and Mail, is immigration. Others insist that it's real estate investors who are to blame. In truth, it's not an either-or thing; both of these, not to mention other factors like single-family zoning, play a part. Given the complexity of the situation, the focus on immigration is disconcerting, because it will tend to fuel xenophobia.
- Wab Kinew seems to have joined the ranks of those pushing for return to the office. I largely disagree, though he does have a point about the bad optics of people such as nurses whose jobs, by their very nature, have to be done onsite being managed by people working from home. It's not impossible to manage people remotely (I do it in my own job, after all) but I could see it being bad for morale when the managers are remote and the front line workers aren't.
- A passenger attempted to open a door of an airliner on a transatlantic flight. The matter appears to be mental health related and the man was not charged; perhaps Air Canada's lousy service finally made him snap.
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