Don Curren 🇨🇦🇺🇦

The Conservative Movement’s Intellectual Collapse Trump is both a product and a cause of the decline in intellectual standards on the right.

“The debacle at #Heritage illustrates the impossibility of abiding by the long-standing intellectual values of #opendebate and #truth-seeking while retaining any influence in a party led by Donald #Trump.” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Persistent, too, hanging on into late November …

I was surprised to see them showing those little faces in late November in Toronto, but there you go …

Why should I have to verify that I’m human to unsubscribe from a #newsletter? Don’t #robots have #privacyrights?

At some point reading about things in the US just becomes a form of #societal #collapse porn.

“Deprive #children of #stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their #actions as in their #words.” - #AlisdairMacIntyre, #AfterVirtue

Photo of a pansy with light and dark blue patches surrounded by fallen leaves and green vegetation.

Another #Pansy, #RosettaMcClainGardens in the East End of #Toronto. Nov 24/25 #bloomscrolling #flowers #FlowerSky #Fall #Autumn

Photo of a dark purplish pansy amid fallen leaves.

#Pansy, #RosettaMcClainGardens in the East End of #Toronto. #bloomscrolling #flowers #FlowerSky #Fall #Autumn

The #AndyWarhol version of B-ing and Time.

A pinkish rose surrounded by fading leaves is depicted photographically.

One more #rose.
#RosettaMcClainGardens in the East End of #Toronto. Nov 24/25
@brainchain.ca #roses #bloomscrolling #flowers #FlowerSky #RoseSky

Photo of a pink rose.

A not-so-faded beauty at #RosettaMcClainGardens in the East End of #Toronto. Nov 24/25
@brainchain.ca #roses #bloomscrolling #flowers #FlowerSky #RoseSky

More fading beauties at #RosettaMcClainGardens in the East End of #Toronto.
@brainchain.ca #roses #bloomscrolling #flowers #FlowerSky

Things almost every culture has in common:

• some sort of dumpling
• history of misogyny

Photo of a fading yellow-ish rose.

There’s officially a ceasefire in place in the #Toronto #WaroftheRoses, but as has been known to happen in ceasefires, occasional hostilities may still erupt. Here’s a faded beauty from #RosettaMcClainGardens in the East End. @brainchain.ca #roses #bloomscrolling #flowers #FlowerSky

A photo of an orange-coloured tree amidst evergreens in a park setting.

Even at this late date there are many #leaves, some of them rather attractively coloured, on the #trees of #Toronto. This particular #tree is in Rosetta McClain #Gardens in the East End. #Fall #Autumn

A Bloomberg chart showing monthly outflows from US crypto EFTs since October 2023. At $6B the outflows this month are the biggest on the chart.

Bloomberg: $6B has flowed out of global #crypto #exchange-traded products so far in November, the largest monthly withdrawal on record going back to 2018. Even so, #investors are largely staying put. US #Bitcoin #ETF redemptions total only 3% of their $110 billion in assets.

In a journal entry made in 1844, Kierkegaard wrote: If Hegel had written the whole of his logic and then said, in the preface or some other place, that it was merely an experiment in thought in which he had even begged the question in many places, then he would certainly have been the greatest thinker who had ever lived. As it is, he is merely comic.

Imagine keeping a banger like this in your diary and failing to share it with the world. A different age, really.

2 BMO: … with the #market now building in an almost 75% chance of a 25 bp #ratecut - recall that pricing was leaning well toward no move at one point last week. #Oil #prices are steady with #WTI at $58.50, while the #loonie starts the day at $1.412/USD (70.8 US cents).

1 BMO: #Equitymarkets point to a modestly lower open this morning following yesterday's AI-led rally, while #Treasury #yields are little changed. The 10-year sits just above 4%, near smack in the middle of the two-year range. Pricing for the December #FOMC meeting, however, continues to swing … 🧵

November 24, 2025 U.S.

“If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work.” open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

DOGE Was a Harbinger of Trump’s Assault on Decency and Privacy Democrats will have to repair the damage

“If #Democrats regain power in 2028, which seems increasingly likely given Trump’s cratering popularity, they can’t do another Merrick Garland, repeating their past mistake of letting past lawbreaking go unpunished.” open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

2 Bloomberg’s John Authers: “These beliefs aren’t unreasonable, but an awful lot of money is now being stacked on them.”

1 Bloomberg’s John Authers: “There’s great excitement about #AI, as there should be. But this #market continues to roll forward on the belief that inflation is slain and that the #Fed will have its back if #stocks begin to fall.” 🧵

DOGE Was a Harbinger of Trump’s Assault on Decency and Privacy Democrats will have to repair the damage

“In addition to the needless loss of hundreds of thousands of lives around the world and the trashing of America’s global reputation, all for some flashy headlines, #DOGE also seriously compromised the functioning of the US government” open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

Waiting for Lunch
Linus Woods ~ Dakota, Ojibwe
n.d.

“But, as I have said before and will say here again:
Job 1 = Keep. The. Country. Together.
That has to mean at least a plurality of #Canadians. And that has to mean governing in way that demonstrates an acuity, an #empathy even, for enough of us to hold us together” open.substack.com/pub/robsonj/...

Me too.

AI Meets Aggressive Accounting at Meta’s Gigantic New Data Center Favorable treatment off the balance sheet hinges on some convenient assumptions.

The really weird thing here is that they want to keep the debt off their balance sheet in order to preserve the credit rating, but capitalising a finance lease is extremely easy for raising agency analysts to do, who did they really think was going to be fooled?
www.wsj.com/tech/meta-ai...

Column | Try a ‘fart walk’ to ease the pressure after that big Thanksgiving meal Whatever you do, resist the urge to lie down.

I worry about the future of newspapers
wapo.st/4riF9sC

Côte des Neiges Road, Montreal
Kathleen Moir Morris
c. 1930