John Michael McGrath

Ontario angle here: Trump and his viziers threw a tantrum about Ontario's Reagan commercial claiming that the province was trying to improperly influence the SCOTUS decision

Suddenly of possible interest:

"President Trump Cannot Legally Impose Tariffs Using Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974"

I appreciate all of these detailed analysis of what’s wrong with the policy, but the crucial thing to keep in mind here is that Donald Trump sincerely, literally does not understand what a tariff is and when that is your starting point, nothing beyond it really matters.

ah I see this was an error by the OP, it's a different legal rationale for new tariffs but that comes with its own fun

Canada welcoming the rest of the world to S232 tariffs

ANALYSIS: Are Ford’s OSAP changes a preview of what’s to come? | TVO Today The days of easy money are over.

Two headlines out of QP this week were reaction to ON's university funding & warnings of long-term deficits. At TVO, I argue they're not incidental to each other, and we'll see more of the same in the future. www.tvo.org/article/anal...

Locations of new homes built in Switzerland in 2018

Country-wide effects of new housing supply: Evidence from moving chains, by Lukas Hauck and Frederic Kluser

Another new paper on housebuilding and vacancy chains, this time with data on every Swiss resident & housing unit! An interesting context given Switzerland's high immigration, very large rented sector and strong tenancy rent controls... frederickluser.github.io/files/Moving...

*very* striking to me that trump's two big losses at SCOUTS--first the fed, now tariffs--are both about core macroeconomic institutions, namely free trade and an independent central bank. "go nuts on culture, go nuts on immigration, but DO NOT TOUCH the neoliberal consensus"

when you reflect for a second it remains wild that there are substantial constituencies on the Supreme Court (never less than 3, and as many as 6 justices depending on the day) who'd eagerly invalidate both the structure of the 1790 constitution & the reconstruction amendments of the 1860s

the glorious constitutional principle of "the president can't fuck with Supreme Court justices' investment portfolios" stands strong

Well what do you know

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/o...

Couldn't waterboard this out of me

In Toronto Council Chambers, about to watch CHANGING LANES co-hosted by @joshmatlow.bsky.social and @anotherglassbox.bsky.social. Matlow jokes they're actually going to seize control of council and rule by decree.

(I could have but did not yell "YOU DON'T HAVE QUORUM")

This is just really embarrassing for these guys. Your intellectual hero is an amphetamine casualty from the Britpop years. It would be less ridiculous to be queuing up for a lecture by Ginger Spice.

For what it's worth, the House had a chance to effectively ban floor-crossing in 2012: C-306 would have required an MP to run in a by-election before sitting with another party.

It was defeated by a vote of 181 to 91 at second reading.

Just 3 Conservatives voted in favour, 142 voted against.

One of the great problem with journalism prizes is that they are mostly awarded based on the year a piece is published and not once their true power has been recognized.

But if ever there were a case for a special award...it should go to Julie.

I find "the law must take its course" kind of funny since the King can't exactly say the more conventional "no one is above the law"

U.S. Trade Deficit Surged in December The trade deficit has followed a rocky course over the past 12 months, buffeted by Trump’s aggressive renegotiations with trading partners.

Oh. www.wsj.com/economy/trad...

Of course it was.

Photo of R290 heat pump

“is there a technology that the left is excited about?”

Yes, but this kind of smart, energy efficient, all-electric, heat generating machine is illegal in the US and Canada.

Spoiler for tomorrow's piece. In 23 metros across Canada, median incomes for 25-34-year-old dual-earner couples are up 76%, in nominal terms, since 2004.

And the price of newly constructed family-sized starter homes? Up 265%.

Was today years old when I learned that developing the B29 cost more than the Manhattan Project (and not by a small margin.)

Bas relief of a man sitting on the ground leaning back elbowd bent backward hands trying to hold him up as a lioness sinks her teeth into his throat. the way the man's hair is depicted May indicate that he has kinky hair

Lioness Devouring a Man, palace of Ashurnasirpal II (Nimrud, near Mosul), Iraq, ca. 750 BCE

IM SORRY, THE WSJ IS RUNNING A “hey elderly stop rigging the system” PIECE? THE WALL ST JOUNRAL!??

oh. did the company run by a visibly deteriorating unstable wirehead make an erratic move

Article: The political effects of X’s feed algorithm Abstract: Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects1. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk’s platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users’ feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X’s algorithm has persistent effects on users’ current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

Figure 2. ITT estimates of feed-setting changes on engagement and political attitudes. ITT effect estimates of switching the algorithm on and off (in s.d.). Left, effect of moving from the chronological to the algorithmic feed for users initially on the chronological feed. Right, effect of moving in the opposite direction for users initially on the algorithmic feed. For each outcome, the results of two specifications are reported. Blue, unconditional estimates with robust s.e., controlling only for the initial feed setting and, where applicable, pre-treatment outcome levels. Orange: conditional estimates, controlling for pre-treatment covariates using GRFs; 90% and 95% CIs are reported. Numerical effect sizes and P values correspond to the conditional estimates (all tests are two-sided). The unit of observation is respondent. From top to bottom, sample sizes are n = 4,965, n = 3,337, n = 4,965, n = 4,965, n = 4,596, n = 4,596 and n = 4,850. Tests are described in Methods. Supplementary Information Table 2.16 reports the exact numerical point estimates, s.e., CIs and sample sizes for every specification. All outcomes are standardized. Additional results are presented in Supplementary Information section 2. PCA, first principal component from principal component analysis.

X's algorithm is in fact doing what you think it's doing. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

truly I would like to hear the guy who believes the west is ailing from suicidal empathy explain his understanding of the teachings of the Son who died for our sins

Niagara County voted 57% for Trump. All of the counties outside Buffalo and Rochester favoured Trump — many of them by 60% or more.

Americans voted for belligerent nationalism and isolationism, and they're getting it.

It's wild how "Do what you love and do it well" is becoming the only way to sustain a media company.