Dispatches from Danielle Smith's members-only social media page. Plus: The Freedom Convoy gets its day in court. And: Candidates for most Bug-eyed and Shameless of the week.
Nice of Justin to leave the comments open so long after the article. I just felt a need to post, at some appropriate location, a fun fact. Global just did a filler listicle piece on "20 richest neighbourhoods in Canada".
Four are in Calgary, though they're a the bottom of the top 20: Roxboro, Mount Royal, Brittania, Elbow Park. The fun fact is that all four are inside the "Calgary Elbow" riding, which means it is the single richest electoral district in Alberta. And THAT is where Danielle Smith was afraid to run for office, literally a Conservative afraid of the votes of millionaires.
Did you catch the exchange this afternoon between Brendan Miller and Ottawa city councillor Mathieu Fleury? Miller wanted Fleury to define micro aggressions. He pushed (rather micro aggressively) and Fleury snapped that he was a francophone and if Miller wanted definitions he’d better ask for them in French. Fleury then proceeded to answer in French and Miller snarked something to the effect of, “can we get him a headset so he understand my question?”
I won’t recap the entire exchange but occupiers and their acolytes are thrilled with him. Hot topic on Twitter tonight.. if he (Fleury) doesn’t know what the word means, why did he use it over and over?
It’s going to be a long six weeks, but I can’t seem to look away.
By the way, I enjoyed your interview on CPAC with Michael Serapio. James Bauder and his MOU is what disturbed me the most during the occupation. I worry that our lack of civics education has spawned tens of thousands of Canadians who simply don’t know that they don’t know the first thing about how government works.
I was following a few recaps of the exchange. Honestly, I can't blame anyone for losing their patience with that lawyer — he thinks he's at a criminal trial, and he most certainly is not.
Truth be told, I don't know that we, collectively, are any more misinformed about government than previous generations. I think we're just in a cycle — that comes around every few decades — of bad people weaponizing that lack of knowledge for their own ends. I think if you disrupt that, you neutralize a lot of those harms.
I've never quite understood why some people (often on the left and right) have such a hate on for Sam Harris. He's a perfectly reasonable and rational centrist who's willing to have difficult conversations on just about any topic, and is willing to change his mind if presented with a compelling argument. I don't agree with some of his takes, but I don't see what makes him insufferable. Even the "Intellectual Dark Web" thing is something he quickly tried to distance himself from, and he wasn't shy calling out Peterson for basically spouting a bunch of psycho-babble nonsense when Peterson came on his podcast. Same thing with Bret Weinstein: they were friends until Weinstein lost his mind about vaccines, and Harris has called him out as well.
edit: I should have mentioned, Harris has been far too gentle with Rogan as well for my liking.
I don't hate Sam Harris. As I wrote in a previous dispatch, I absolutely identified with the rational atheist movement. I always found him to be a blowhard compared to, say, Dawkins.
I didn't mean to heap too much scorn on him. I just think he's tolerated being in a movement of people who have an open hostility to science, and who often trade in some pretty outlandish bullshit.
And going through his podcast guest list all I see are well respected scientists, academics, authors, politicians/think-tankers etc. with the occasional more controversial guest so I'm not sure why you'd think he's in a movement of anti-science people. That's very much not the case.
In any case, thanks for your work here and elsewhere, I've long enjoyed your journalism!
Nice of Justin to leave the comments open so long after the article. I just felt a need to post, at some appropriate location, a fun fact. Global just did a filler listicle piece on "20 richest neighbourhoods in Canada".
https://globalnews.ca/news/9309379/richest-neighbourhoods-canada/
Four are in Calgary, though they're a the bottom of the top 20: Roxboro, Mount Royal, Brittania, Elbow Park. The fun fact is that all four are inside the "Calgary Elbow" riding, which means it is the single richest electoral district in Alberta. And THAT is where Danielle Smith was afraid to run for office, literally a Conservative afraid of the votes of millionaires.
I can't recall the like.
Did you catch the exchange this afternoon between Brendan Miller and Ottawa city councillor Mathieu Fleury? Miller wanted Fleury to define micro aggressions. He pushed (rather micro aggressively) and Fleury snapped that he was a francophone and if Miller wanted definitions he’d better ask for them in French. Fleury then proceeded to answer in French and Miller snarked something to the effect of, “can we get him a headset so he understand my question?”
I won’t recap the entire exchange but occupiers and their acolytes are thrilled with him. Hot topic on Twitter tonight.. if he (Fleury) doesn’t know what the word means, why did he use it over and over?
It’s going to be a long six weeks, but I can’t seem to look away.
By the way, I enjoyed your interview on CPAC with Michael Serapio. James Bauder and his MOU is what disturbed me the most during the occupation. I worry that our lack of civics education has spawned tens of thousands of Canadians who simply don’t know that they don’t know the first thing about how government works.
Is there any way to reach them?
I was following a few recaps of the exchange. Honestly, I can't blame anyone for losing their patience with that lawyer — he thinks he's at a criminal trial, and he most certainly is not.
Truth be told, I don't know that we, collectively, are any more misinformed about government than previous generations. I think we're just in a cycle — that comes around every few decades — of bad people weaponizing that lack of knowledge for their own ends. I think if you disrupt that, you neutralize a lot of those harms.
I've never quite understood why some people (often on the left and right) have such a hate on for Sam Harris. He's a perfectly reasonable and rational centrist who's willing to have difficult conversations on just about any topic, and is willing to change his mind if presented with a compelling argument. I don't agree with some of his takes, but I don't see what makes him insufferable. Even the "Intellectual Dark Web" thing is something he quickly tried to distance himself from, and he wasn't shy calling out Peterson for basically spouting a bunch of psycho-babble nonsense when Peterson came on his podcast. Same thing with Bret Weinstein: they were friends until Weinstein lost his mind about vaccines, and Harris has called him out as well.
edit: I should have mentioned, Harris has been far too gentle with Rogan as well for my liking.
I don't hate Sam Harris. As I wrote in a previous dispatch, I absolutely identified with the rational atheist movement. I always found him to be a blowhard compared to, say, Dawkins.
I didn't mean to heap too much scorn on him. I just think he's tolerated being in a movement of people who have an open hostility to science, and who often trade in some pretty outlandish bullshit.
What movement and people, though? As I said, he's pretty emphatically distanced himself from the "dark web" moniker that was coined by Bari Weiss (who he's also criticized): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_dark_web#cite_note-28
And going through his podcast guest list all I see are well respected scientists, academics, authors, politicians/think-tankers etc. with the occasional more controversial guest so I'm not sure why you'd think he's in a movement of anti-science people. That's very much not the case.
In any case, thanks for your work here and elsewhere, I've long enjoyed your journalism!
Honestly, fair! I confess to not keeping up with his career that closely.