Louise in Ontario🇨🇦

@grammalou

Family doctor, end of life care, mom and grandma, native plant gardener, covid conscious, lefty Canadian. #MedSky

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Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· 20d

Unfortunately that doesn’t work. After the content page, all the pages look like this ⬇️

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· 21d

But of course all of those ironies pale next to the main one: smoke drifts across borders when there's a big fire, but carbon dioxide constantly drifts across every border every day. And if you could see carbon dioxide, and watch its flow over time, the biggest single cloud has emanated from the United States. China may catch us someday but we're the ones who have produced the current mess.
I'm sitting listening to David Wallace-Wells lecture this morning at the Chautauqua Institution, and he reminds us that the carbon humans have produced "weighs more than everything we have ever built on the surface of this planet. It weighs more than the total mass of life on the planet. It weighs more than the total mass of life and buildings combined"
So— if there are "damages" to be paid, who should pay them? Canada, whose forests are burning? Or America, who set those forests on fire.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· 21d

Erin Sikorsky’s article is worth reading ⬇️ Erin is an expert in geopolitical risk, strategic forecasting, and the national security implications of climate change, particularly the nexus of geopolitical competition and climate change.

This is what worries me. The smoke over the Great Lakes 2 will clear in a week or two
(hopefully!). The instinct behind the threats toward Canada won't. Every extreme weather event from here on out is going to arrive as two things at once for this Administration — an emergency and a cynical political opportunity — and leaders will keep grabbing for the opportunity, because it's easy and it feels like strength. But you can't tariff your way out of a warming atmosphere, and you can't sanction smoke. As I ask in the book: what good is
"beating" Canada, China or anyone else, if you're too smoke-choked, hot, wet, and hungry to enjoy the win?

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· 22d

The US has been committing war crimes. In its fourth strike on civilian water
infrastructure, the US destroyed two water tanks in Sirik, Iran, completely cutting off water distribution in all villages of the Bemani district and the city of Kohstak, the Hormozgan Water and Sanitation Authority says. Iran's people are still suffering from the effects of a long drought.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· 23d

Several great black digger wasps in my Ottawa 🇨🇦 garden today. They’re 2-2.5cm long, black with iridescent wings and a pinched waist. They are not aggressive to humans. Their larvae feed on living insects that the females paralyze and carry to the underground nest.

Great black digger wasp (2.5 cm long) on butterfly milkweed flower.

2.5 cm long great black digger wasp on butterfly milkweed flower.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· 26d

Environment Canada reported an Air Quality Health Index reading of 10+, classified as
"very high risk", for Toronto. Forecasts suggested that hazardous conditions could persist
through Thursday night.
IQAir, a Swiss air quality technology company, ranked Toronto as having the worst air quality across the globe, surpassing the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Kinshasa and India's New Delhi.
"The biggest contributor to Toronto's spike in air pollution right now is wildfires, though the higher-than-average temperatures are also playing a role," Armen Araradian of IQAir told the AFP news agency.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· 28d

In Ottawa 🇨🇦 this morning the sun is orange/red and is casting an eerie glow. We didn’t use to have days like this….

Ottawa 8am photo of sun which is orange red and the sky is smoggy.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· Jul 10

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

Reacting to that nomination, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) recognized the importance of the Fourteenth Amendment to equality: “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, Blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy….”

At the time, Bork’s supporters expressed outrage at what they insisted was Kennedy’s smear campaign, for surely the right-wing attack on the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment would never so completely undermine modern society.

And yet in 2026, here we are.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· Jul 8

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

In January, Robert Kagan warned that Trump's destruction of the order that has underpinned global security for the past 80 years was creating the most dangerous world since World War II.
With the end of open access to global resources, markets, and strategic bases and without reliable friends or allies, the U.S. will need more military spending than ever.
"Americans are neither materially nor psychologically ready for this future," Kagan warned. They are accustomed to the "basically peaceful, prosperous, and open world" and have come to think it is "the normal state of international affairs, likely to continue indefinitely. They can't imagine it unraveling, much less what that unraveling will mean for them."
Everything will be up for grabs, Kagan wrote, with myriad "flash points for potential conflict." "If Americans thought defending the liberal world order was too expensive," Kagan wrote,
"wait until they start paying for what comes next."

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· Jul 3

When I hear fisherman’s friend, I think of these lozenges…

Photo of a package of Fisherman’s Friend, original extra strong menthol cough suppressant lozenges.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· Jun 29

In a world of multiple crises what’s happening to the climate is the worst, but it’s often pushed into the background because the time frame seems so long. That’s a mistake. We no longer have the luxury of choosing one crisis and throwing all the resources at it before moving on to the next. We need to do them all at once.

And that’s the right approach because on some level they’re all connected.

The rise of Fascism across the globe is directly linked to attempts to stifle any mitigation of the climate crisis. The Ukraine War, what’s happening in the Middle East, the surging power of the Oligarch class, each one influences the other in some way.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· Jun 18

www.foodpolitics.com?lctg=61608392

On May 1, Amsterdam became the world's first capital city to ban ads for fossil fuel products and meat. It's part of the city's efforts to discourage consumption of goods linked with high carbon emissions.
Ads for airlines, cruises, and faraway destinations are no longer allowed because they implicitly promote the burning of fossil fuels. Ads for beef, chicken, pork and fish are also banned because of the environmental harms caused by animal agriculture.
...Amsterdam's law applies to city-owned properties and public spaces, such as buses and bus shelters, benches, trams, trains and metro stations, and billboards. Advertising in privately owned stores and in media such as newspapers, radio and online formats is exempt.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· Jun 13

First Canadian Tiger Swallowtail I’ve seen this season. Ottawa 🇨🇦

Canadian Tiger swallowtail butterfly is yellow with black markings around its wings. Feeding on a pink rhododendron blossom.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· Jun 13

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Poverty is manufactured. That is the bad news
- and the good news. What has been
manufactured can be dismantled and replaced.
We are putting concrete options on the table, all backed by detailed policy profiles that spell out evidence, implementation steps and real-world examples. We call on political leaders at all levels to use them, to listen to those most affected, and to treat the end of poverty, the reduction of inequalities and the effective realisation of human rights as the measure by which economic policy should be judged.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· Jun 10

Taunton Mills Retirement home (Whitby Ontario 🇨🇦) has a gigantic balloon Pride display in the main lobby for Pride month. Allyship fosters community for residents who are LGBTQ2+ and/or for residents who have family members who are LGBTQ2+. Opens up conversations. Thank you Schlegel Villages 🏳️‍🌈🌈

A giant multicoloured arch of balloons in the main lobby of a retirement home with "Happy Pride 2026" at the top of the arch. Taunton Mills Retirement Home in Whitby Ontario Canada, one of Schlegel Villages.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· Jun 10

Poppies are vibrant in the evening golden hour #BloomScrolling

Poppies backlit by the setting sun at the edge of a woodland garden.

Bright red poppy standing at attention with 2 nodding buds in lower left corner getting ready to bloom.

Red poppies in a woodland garden appear to glow in the evening sun golden hour.

A simple red poppy remains still despite a breeze. Backlit by the setting sun.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· Jun 10

Blooming in Ottawa 🇨🇦 now #BloomScrolling

Lupin bloom in front of shade garden and white pines with a large bumblebee approaching the bloom stalk on right side.

2 large clematis blooms (white/pale pink background with deep pink streak down the midline of each petal)

Pale pink rhododendron flowers in bloom under a spruce tree in dappled shade

An allium giganteum at the end of its bloom time. Looks like a starburst with central green seeds surrounded by tiny pink petals at the end of each starburst ray.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· Jun 6

www.thenerve.news/p/carole-cad...

"This is censorship," he later told the audience at Hay. "This is a demonstration that some of the worst abuses in our time are not confined to kings, emperors, governments ... but to a class of companies that have assumed the sovereign affect, and seek to assert their power the same way that some of those despotic nation states do."
It was authoritarian. And it was also both pointless and performative, a punishment beating with one audience in mind: any past, present or future Facebook employee inclined to spill the beans.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· Jun 3

The water, carbon and land footprints of AI data centres are too large to be sustainable.

By 2030, the global data centres powering artificial intelligence are projected to consume 945 terawatt-hours of electricity. This is nearly
triple the combined annual electricity use of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria-countries collectively home to more than 650 million
people. Their associated water footprint will equal
the basic annual domestic water needs of all 1.3
billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa, and their land footprint will exceed 14,500 square kilometers, roughly twice the Jakarta metropolitan area, home to more than 32 million
people.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· Jun 2

Pink lady slippers in bloom today in Mer Bleue Bog, Ottawa 🇨🇦 #NativePlants

Large pink lady slipper bloom in bog on outskirts of Ottawa, Canada.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· May 29

"The secretive, unilateral establishment of an Ebola quarantine facility raises grave constitutional concerns regarding the rights to life, health, fair administrative action, public par-ticipation, and parliamentary oversight," the Katiba Institute said in a statement.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington intended to commit $13.5m towards Kenya's Ebola preparedness efforts, though he did not publicly confirm details of the proposed quarantine arrangement.

Washington's refusal to repatriate US nationals for treatment but to send them to third countries, where quality of care may be ques-tioned, has also led to criticism from US doc-tors, with one calling it "a moral abdication of what this country owes its own", according to The Associated Press news agency.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· May 27

U.S. disease experts now need senior staff approval to communicate with the World Health Organization

• The U.S. withdrew from WHO in 2025 and reduced funding for global health initiatives like USAID

Key health agencies, including the CDC and NIAID, currently lack permanent leadership positions

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· May 26

Bill C-22 could align Canada’s surveillance laws more closely with the US

A CLOUD Act agreement could let US agencies conduct surveillance in Canada without Canadian oversight

Ottawa has not been transparent about the bill’s implications for privacy

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· May 24

"The critical question is not whether AI can “do” science but whether science—as a social, evolutionary system that generates trustworthy knowledge—survives the way AI does it."

However, science is not simply a sequence of tasks that can be optimized. It advances through a process analogous to Darwinian evolution: variation across many independent efforts; selection through critique, replica-tion, and competition; and retention of robust results. This distributed structure is what allows science to correct itself and to generate novelty. Independence is not incidental; it is the mechanism that produces both reliability and discovery.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· May 24

With Alt Text

At a high-level summary for the defendants, who do not have the benefit of having seen the transcripts yet, several potential issues jumped out at me immediately and glaringly.

First, improper prosecutorial vouching to the grand jurors, with the AUSA putting her personal credibility and trustworthiness on the line in support of the charges.

Second, improper prosecutorial communications of a
substantive nature with the grand jurors outside of the grand jury room.

And, third, the prosecutor excusing grand jurors who
disagreed with the government's case from the deliberations process.

Which brings me to problem Number 4, which is the fact that all of this was redacted out of the versions of the transcripts that I got. And frankly, it is that that I find the most problematic. Mistakes happen. They happen to all of us. But as I tell my children, you own it. You admit to it. You apologize for it, and you move on. What you do not do is hide it.

I relied on all of you and your personal representations in this case about what has been issued in discovery, about the types of searches you have done for exculpatory material, about what arguments you will and will not make in this case. And I do that because, first of all, I treat every attorney who appears before me as an officer of the court. But secondly, because I put even more reliance on Department of Justice attorneys. Your sole goal is to do justice. Your client is justice itself.

I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing.
That trust has been broken.

Louise in Ontario🇨🇦@grammalou· May 21

In Old Quebec City, overhead a couple complain no one speaks English. I asked if they needed help. Them: You speak English! Where are you from? Me: Ottawa Them: Blank looks Me: 🇨🇦’s capital city Them: oh. We’re from Vancouver (said with 🇺🇸West Coast accent) Americans, don’t lie - we 🇨🇦s know