John Last 🇮🇹 🇨🇦
@johnwlast.bsky.social
Collector of trivia, sometimes for profit
“The notions of borders, nations, alliances & war that helped sustain ‘the long peace’ of the late 20th century are crumbling. In their place, something far less stable has emerged: a world in which the gray zone is no longer the exception, but the rule.” — @johnwlast.bsky.social #war #geopolitics
Why Conflict Feels Constant Now | NOEMA
“Gray zones” were meant to describe places on the brink of war. Increasingly, they define the entire world.
noemamag.com
With an increasingly erratic U.S. breathing down our necks, #Canada feels a lot like #Finland in 1948 — only our options are a lot, lot worse. New from me in @foreignpolicy.com ⬇️ foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/25/c... #cdnpoli #politics #foreignpolicy #InternationalPolitics #geopolitics
Canada Faces Its Finland Moment
Like Helsinki during the Cold War, Ottawa today is threatened by a bellicose and powerful neighbor.
foreignpolicy.com
Extremely online conspiracy theorists are plotting to take down Canadian federation. And the U.S. government would like to help. My latest for @newrepublic.com: newrepublic.com/article/2069... #cdnpoli #ableg #abpoli #51ststate
The MAGA Plot to Take Down Canada
A growing movement of MAGA-pilled Albertan separatists would happily break up the country to be closer to Trump.
newrepublic.com
Recent months have seen the escalation of a brazen campaign by separatists in the oil-rich province of Alberta to dismember the country and lease its resources to an expansionist American regime—with direct support from officials in the U.S. government. trib.al/jPu1QtT
You may not even realize it, but Canada is an outlier in demanding women seek a prescription to get birth control. Is it about patient care — or patriarchy? www.cbc.ca/news/health/... @canadahealthwatch.ca #health #sexualhealth #birthcontrol #sexed #pharma #otc #drugs
Why do Canadians need a prescription for birth control when most of the world doesn't? | CBC News
Some Canadian doctors say patients on birth control need monitoring. But medical authorities in other countries increasingly disagree.
cbc.ca
I'm back in the pages of National Geographic with a piece about wolfdogs — why people can't stop loving them, despite their dangerous qualities, and why they trouble conservationists working to keep the wild wolf alive. www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...
Demand for wolf-dog hybrid pets is surging—and that's a huge problem
Wolfdogs are becoming a popular choice worldwide with people looking for furry companions. Conservationists are growing increasingly concerned these hybrids could interbreed with wild wolf populations...
nationalgeographic.com
Lots of nostalgia for the golden age of magazines/expense accounts/travel and decadence. But whenever I take a spin through the Atlantic's archives, I yearn for the days of magazine writing where people were literally like, here is simply a piece of food/geography that exists
Well it certainly seems like everyone's worst expectations of Carney's cabinet have been confirmed, looking forward to the liberal doom spiral of the next 2.5 yrs
The Catholic Church has been undergoing a long, slow shift, playing out on the timescale of centuries: a shift to distance itself from the popular enthusiasms of its most devout parishioners. Read @johnwlast.bsky.social on the tensions within sainthood: longnow.org/ideas/saints...
Saints Without a Cause
The Catholic Church has been undergoing a long, slow shift, playing out on the timescale of centuries: a shift to distance itself from the popular enthusiasms of its most devout parishioners.
longnow.org
look, I made a podcast about cod codcast.transistor.fm/episodes
The CODCAST | All Episodes
This four episode podcast series explores the discovery of a sound. It is a faint but distinct sound produced by a fish, the Arctic cod. Only recently have scientists realized how important sound is i...
codcast.transistor.fm
Pope Francis is probably going to be fast-tracked to sainthood, so this time I want GOOD miracles, people. No random healings — I want translocations, exorcised demoniacs, strange odors!
Been a while since I've been in Canada but are people really living in terror??
Surprised to see this article fail to mention arbitrary search and detention as a reason for falling travel. Surely outside the minds of the California tourism board that's the biggest reason, no? www.cbc.ca/news/politic...
Nearly 900,000 fewer people went to the U.S. in March as cross-border travel plummets | CBC News
The number of cross-border travellers going from Canada to the U.S. dropped by nearly 900,000 in March compared to the same month last year, according to the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection ...
cbc.ca
I swear to God people are so fking stupid we're not making it out of this decade alive. "What are your sources" and he just asks a different habitually wrong AI (this one from Elon Musk ffs!). Meanwhile TWO WEEKS AGO there was a full factcheck from the public broadcaster: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
I don't really have anything especially profound to say, but yeah man this is it. They won't obey even the most milquetoast SCOTUS orders and are talking about sending US citizens to foreign gulags. It's happened here.
White Lotus S3's ending is the most depressing and unedifying possible from all its many storylines and I'm not sure why I sat through a whole season for it.
This is a very satisfying read: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Liberals and Conservatives said their rallies drew thousands. We decided to count | CBC News
Crowd sizes have become a discussion point in this election. The CBC News’s visual investigation unit looks at some of the images from those rallies to try to determine whether the reality fits with t...
cbc.ca
[at the front of a bread line] uh yeah, uh. uh, i’ll have the uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. huh. i’ll uh, i’ll. oh you know what? here’s what i’ll do. i’ll get the uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Got a close friend's wedding coming up. Half of the party is Moroccan, and half the party is from the Midwest. I don't envy him in this moment.
You know, one of the main threads running between Trump, Musk, and El Salvador is cryptocurrency, and if I’m a country who’s concerned about preventing what’s going on in America from happening there, one of the steps I would take, and quickly, would be making cryptocurrency illegal.
This is from Goldman Sachs, predicting the next US recession. Let no one tell you boycotts are not effective!
It is 2008. I am starting my first career and watching the stock market tumble double digits in a single day. It is 2020. I am making a career change and watching the stock market tumble double digits in a single day. It is 2025. I am making another career change and watching the stock market tumb
Opportunistic price gouging in Canada?? Hard to believe.
Lol called it www.cbc.ca/news/politic... NDP I'm available for hire as a strategist just give me a call already.
NDP's Singh drops 'I'm running for prime minister' messaging two weeks into the campaign | CBC News
As Jagmeet Singh heads into his third week of campaigning, the NDP leader is dropping his assertive messaging that he is running to be prime minister.
cbc.ca
John Last 🇮🇹 🇨🇦@johnwlast.bsky.social · last yr.I've never understood the NDP tactic of pretending, in the face of all evidence, that they are campaigning to run the country. Why not say explicitly you want to control the balance of power, offer policies that pull the liberals to the left, and focus on a few dozen winnable seats?
You just know some overfed "strategist" has told them that people don't vote for parties they don't think can form government. They're wrong! For the love of God, get new staff!
John Last 🇮🇹 🇨🇦@johnwlast.bsky.social · last yr.I've never understood the NDP tactic of pretending, in the face of all evidence, that they are campaigning to run the country. Why not say explicitly you want to control the balance of power, offer policies that pull the liberals to the left, and focus on a few dozen winnable seats?
