I kept telling dw that you can see mountains from Calgary. Yesterday the sky was actually clear enough to prove me right!

Saw what I'm pretty sure is my photo on an exhibit at the Royal Alberta Museum. I worked on that dig back when the ex and i just started dating. It was a bison pound where the bones were so dense you had to walk across the site by stepping on humerus and femers, there was no bare dirt. Or skulls.

Canadian playgrounds are amazing. This may be the most ridiculous yet. The net climb up the inside of the tree, net bridge between trees, and really tall slide are all evidence of a much less litigious society.

Drizzle in Edmonton! Can't think of better weather for a museum day. Hope the rain lasts long enough to clear the smoke out of the air.

After years of being told that undocumented immigrants and small community healthcare providers were the source of rampant healthcare fraud, the report says the overwhelming majority of alleged fraud came from, corporations. 😡 #DemVoice1 #ProudBlue #Pinks theintercept.com/2026/07/31/i...

Corporations, Not Immigrants, Are Responsible for Vast Majority of Healthcare Fraud, OIG Report Shows

Trump officials are focused on immigrants, but the Department of Health and Human Services report on healthcare fraud doesn’t even mention them.

theintercept.com

Smoke isn't good in eastern BC. These mountains are only a few km away.

Jasper. Very nice

This is honestly one of the most shocking images coming out of this administration and that’s saying something

Murshed Zaheed@murshedz.bsky.social · 7d ago

“Trump has rejected disaster aid for Democratic-run states at the highest rate in the 47-year history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” Right now people in blue states are basically paying federal taxes as if they’re colonized territories of red states. www.politico.com/news/2026/03...

Stephen Miller said just the other day that all asylum claims are "fake." A couple deported from the U.S. to Guatemala were gagged, bound, and shot dead. Their 14-month old found crying next to their mother's body. People like Miller don't care though because this is the point: ethnic cleansing.

Overland couple shot dead in Guatemala after local ICE stop led to deportations

The couple’s 14-month-old daughter was found crying beside her mother’s body in a sugarcane field last week, according to Guatemalan authorities and media.

stlpr.org

Jasper is very calm this morning. A bit buggier, but not too bad. Unfortunately my stove pump is leaking and I can't figure out what else to clean/lubricate so just trying to keep it as far from the flame as possible because i need coffee to continue diagnosing.

Legislative splash park. Is there any more democratic use of public grounds? We like our first few hours in Edmonton.

Smokey day meant we hid inside rather than wander along the Bow. Calgary's downtown library is excellent.

Decided to bail on Calgary a day early and head to Edmonton tomorrow-partially because of the smoke (which as of this morning was forcast to be bad and stay bad here into tomorrow. Now Calgary is better and Edmonton is bad.

We found that the sepsis rate in second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations increased by more than 50% under Texas’ abortion ban. Here’s how we did our analysis. (Published Feb. 2025)

Texas Won’t Study How Its Abortion Ban Impacts Women, So We Did

Since Texas banned abortion, no one has studied the statewide effects on pregnant women experiencing complications. Here’s how we sifted through data on millions of pregnancy hospitalizations and anal...

propublica.org

Oh the smoke is bad in Calgary

660km to drive today with about 5 turns. We drive west!

Little Manitou Lake, we love you. If we every move to Saskatchewan, we will visit often.

I've wanted to visit Little Manitou Lake in the summer for decades. Time change means my brain work up a few hours before the rest of the family, so i took a solo stroll to the lake. Just me and my halophilic little friend in the water.

Alberta peeps. What's the bug situation like right now? Are you hiding inside to keep from being eaten alive? Manitoba may have traumatized us.

Mosquitoes Bugs: Walking a Dirt Path

Alt: Person witha backpack walking away on a dirt path swatting away bugs.

static.klipy.com

Manitoba bugs are intense

Read this and if you have a representative please let them know you want DC Statehood now “D.C. is having to raise taxes on its residents and business because Republicans in Congress, in 2025, refused to let D.C. use $1 billion in taxes D.C. had already collected.”

Mike the Mad Biologist and PM of the "Islamic Republic of Japan"@mikethemadbiol.bsky.social · 2w ago

Congressional Republicans Attempt to Blow Up the Mainland Colony’s Budget Last week, Republican congressman and rightwing crank (but I repeat myself) James Comey introduced… https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2026/07/20/congressional-republicans-attempt-to-blow-up-the-mainland-colonys-budget/

Should we do an overnight stop at Riding Mountain National Park? Or Saskatoon? We're going to watrous lake for 2 nights because I've never been to that lake in the summer. But have one day unplanned.

The revelations came out in a federal court case brought by Democratic states challenging ICE's access to Medicaid data to aid in deportation efforts. n.pr/4f9OdMn

ICE shared Medicaid data it wasn't supposed to have with Palantir

The revelations came out in a federal court case brought by Democratic states challenging ICE's access to Medicaid data to aid in deportation efforts.

n.pr

People should be able to work one job and afford their basic needs. Let’s remind Congress what the voice of the people sounds like. #costofliving #livingwage #corporategreed #aug11 #congressneedsasocialworker

We are eating our way through Winnipeg. Yesterday lunch at the forks and dinner at Gojo. Dinner was the best not too spicy Ethiopian I've ever had. The kids ate absolutely everything.

I’m not fond of sports metaphors. “Winners” & “losers” is Trump talk. We can defeat fascism, but “winning” talk erases the deep damage already done. Repairing what we can won’t take years but far longer. And some of it, especially around climate, is at best scar tissue.

We're out of the smoke! Now I'm back to actively trying to ignore my souvenirs from Pukaskwa's smaller inhabitants.

We didn't stop to see Ouimet Canyon since the smoke was bad. But at least I got to see an arctic plant in Pukaskwa.

stuff like this is why one important avenue for court reform is just nixing the shadow docket altogether and forcing these people to explain themselves to the public when they issue orders. also, making their records property of the united states and subject to publication when they leave the bench.

Alex Aronson@alexaronson.bsky.social · 3w ago

Amy Coney Barrett just told Congress that it would be inappropriate to explain the reasoning behind the Court’s unreasoned shadow docket orders. As if unreasoned judicial orders are a thing. They are not. The reasoning is the whole point.

Fires are now impacting our trip. We were going to stay in Thunder Bay to do a little exploring but the town/hotel is packed with people evacuated from the fires up north and the air quality is bad enough that I don't want to stick around any longer than necessary and take up a room.