He was only talking to pieces of a man
He was only talking to pieces of a man
This newsletter feels fine, why do you ask?
Cooler heads, in terms of global average temperature, are dealing with crypto in the good, moral way that one deals with nerds - crushing them with great prejudice. It’s the right thing to do. From fiction to our everyday lives an uncastigated nerd will wreak havoc on an unsuspecting populace and feel justified to do so based on their unearned entitlement to power, riches, and women. In a place like Alberta you would expect anti-nerd machismo to prevail. Alas, our institutional stupidity will always win the day. As a people we desire nothing more than to make profit in the most comically ruinous way possible. Our cheap local energy mean that RTX 3080’s will soon stream by the hundreds into the province, but not into my rig god fucking damn it, so we can remain the extraction and mining centre of the country against all rationality in every arena possible.
The lakes of natural gas under our feet have been a siren song to the type of person who likes to pay nothing for energy and loudly wishes for mass death in Iran, lest 17% of the world’s reserves become unsanctioned. (A unique feature of Calgarian oil sheiks - you’ll share a beer with one and out of nowhere they’ll wish for some bombing campaign in the Middle East. They’ll have one eye on providing for their kids but will chuckle sardonically at Iraqi children dying to drive the price of energy higher). So it goes that Alberta would be the ideal spot for history’s dumbest invention - blockchain tokens, cryptocurrency, a pure speculative product that turns electricity into U.S. dollars with great difficulty. When you make concrete or a Tamagotchi or a surfboard you can say you traded some fraction of a tonne of permafrost for a function but cryptocoins are an idea that can only turn into other agreements. Like all products of a carbon economy they too warm the Earth but have to be the closest thing humans have to a psychic heat ray. We’re all Cyclops now.
The yearly refrain is that the alarm bells are going off, now it’s really serious, now climate change has really taken hold, but it’s been this way for at least 60% of my life, this threat. I think new startups like this and new investment in oil and gas in Alberta aren’t happening in spite of a phase out that will start any day now yep any day. I think the real owners, the real constituents of this country know that these are good, smart investments that will reap dividends for decades to come. I think they have reliable intelligence and actionable plans with high probabilities of success to continue as normal for the rest of their human lives. Those plans include enough capital for their kids to hire all the security they need to probably live in comfort through whatever violence begins. Those two sentences seem so rote, so cliche after two decades thinking about what the rest of my life looks like, but we’re out of the pool and at the top of the diving board now. It looked high from the water but it feels so different up here, feet on the rough grip surface, feeling the wobble.
🍖Concerns mounting, says international body.
🦔Some levels of government believe that clean drinking water might be good going forward.
🍤Local boomer tells judge to go fuck themselves, gets slap on the wrist. Must be nice.
🍕The bad news is that Canada is on fire all the time, but the actual bad news is that all places like and unlike Canada are also on fire.
🎱Giant baby elected MLA.
🍲People really think virus spread prevention is the same as the Holocaust my goodness.
🥎Matt Wolf spends all day on Twitter just like me! Unlike me he is a cranky little butthole. I’m going to confiscate his DXL club card, he is uninvited from the High BMI cookout. I sit on the board, I can do this.
🎨Edmonton statue has labelling errors, is corrected.
👃Sons of Anarchy remains the most damaging piece of pop culture in North America since Elvis changed pelvis thrusting forever.
👅Dumbass Western armies bailed on Afghanistan after pissing all over the country, the Taliban is hilariously mocking them and driving their whips, and Afghan neighbours are readying the rifles to keep refugees out. It’s all going great.
👗Shareholders at sexual harassment factory get upset, will still collect cash from factory proceeds.
👑We got rid of our national vaccine manufacturing capacity but, don’t worry everyone, we will heavily subsidize an American company to build a new factory AND we will then buy those vaccines at top dollar. Things work as they should.
🌀Apple is going to scan metadata to see if you have child pornography on your phone and then get a human to confirm. This is clearly to ensure that iCloud servers don’t host illegal material but yowza I want to sled down that slippery slope and those “confirmers” should unionize immediately.
🃏Germany is boned, but at least they’re going to try and expropriate some real estate.
🧸It would be great if people could afford housing.
🧬Finding restorative justice.
🕹Class and kids at school during COVID.
📉Off Court takes on the original rise and grinder - Kobe Bryant. One imagines that grinding in this context means “doing sexual assault”.
🎧Paris Marx accurately points out that Australia secretly sucks ass.
🔇Progress Report explores my coolest political view, which is that all minorities should be armed against genetic white aggression.
🎚️Avi Lewis is running for office so he did an interview with the podcast nerds.
⚓️Protect Our Province continues to hold daily protests at the McDougall Centre in Calgary and at various locations in Edmonton. For more information on this weekend of action consult their page on Facebook or their website.
A Quick Note: if you want us to include an article, petition, link to an event, or just want to drop us a quick line, reply to this newsletter or reach us at albertaadvantagenewsletter [at] gmail [dot] com. We’d love to hear from you! If you want to send some old timey mail, grab those stamps and send tributes/cake/not anthrax to Alberta Advantage Podcast, PO Box 52167 Edmonton Trail, Calgary, AB, T2E 8K9.
Our editor is Clinton Hallahan. Newsletter subject lines are stolen from these songs.
