Category: Little Known Facts

The Uniparty State

Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing Little Known Facts nannystate 38 Comments

I’ve noticed that political party lines are becoming increasingly blurred these days, and not just in Canada. Are we getting to the point where we don’t have many real choices any more, or is that just the way it’s always been?

Under socialism, government owns the means of production, which the U.S. government increasingly wants to do. In June, through $750 million in investments, it took minority equity stakes in two semiconductor companies. In July, through up to $874 million in additional funding, it took minority equity stakes in six more and increased its ownership of a seventh. The Cato Institute counts 30 companies in the federal government’s expanded corporate portfolio. “Republicans warning that communists are taking over the Democratic Party might first ask why their own administration is so eager to have the government acquire pieces of private companies,” Cato analyst Tad DeHaven suggested.

 

They Don’t Make Them Like They Used To

Little Known Facts 32 Comments

The International Harvester deep freeze in my brother’s basement is still in operation, 22 years after I first mentioned it here.

In an adjacent room, is an International Harvester refrigerator keeping beer and soft drinks cold. It looks like the one pictured below.

 

International Harvester, a farm equipment manufacturer (more here), produced refrigerators and deep freezes between 1948 to 1955.

I’ll let you do the math.

To be fair, I wouldn’t expect Emma to know this, given they just might be older than her grandfather.

Published This Month In The Journal Of The Blindingly Obvious

It's Probably Nothing Little Known Facts 22 Comments

Tattoos Affect Your Immune System in Ways Scientists Are Just Beginning to Understand

Plus;

“Many pigments currently in use were originally developed for industrial applications such as car paint, plastics, and printer toner, rather than for injection into human skin.”

Researchers have detected trace quantities of heavy metals in tattoo inks, including nickel, cobalt, chromium, and, on rare occasions, lead. Accumulated at high levels, heavy metals can be toxic, causing serious health problems such as internal organ damage, neurotoxicity, and increased cancer risk.

In some cases, these heavy metals triggered allergic reactions and immune sensitivity in the person receiving the tattoo.

Cuba Libre?

Little Known Facts nannystate There Goes The Narrative 6 Comments

Buried in the story about Cuba instituting some free market reforms is an interesting tidbit about loosening restrictions on imports. The common narrative implies that Cuba’s inability to function economically is a result of trade sanctions imposed by the US. But the reality is that many of Cuba’s sanctions are actually self-imposed: it’s less the case that Cubans can’t buy foreign brake pads for their cars because the US won’t allow it, but more the case that communist officialdom has always stood in their way.

The plan includes more space for private businesses, imports and exports without state intermediation, free hiring of personnel, authorization for private banks and investment by Cubans abroad. It even permits fast-food chains to establish themselves on the island.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Mirrors

Alternative Subsidy Little Known Facts 11 Comments

Doomberg: The media can’t seem to explain the collapse in China’s domestic solar installations.

We often quip that the best proof that something was predictable is having predicted it. While not totally accurate—dumb luck and broken clocks are still things—nailing a complex call in the face of cocksure counter-commentary is anything but unsatisfying. It also confirms that our mental model is still operative in the way that matters most: it remains useful for further predictions.

In August of 2025, we produced a bonus presentation for paying subscribers titled Cocktail Party Trivia: Winning the Renewables Debate With Friends and Family (available here). In it, we elaborated extensively on our current mental model in which a working understanding of electric grids became a tool for predicting when the forced introduction of intermittent renewables would cause things to break. Some 31 minutes in, we warned that China’s solar miracle was reaching the limits of feasibility, and that the breakneck pace of new construction would soon have to slow.

At the time, China was on pace to smash global records for new solar installations, and legacy media outlets were falling over themselves to heap praise on Beijing’s bold climate leadership. On social media, the Silicon Valley crowd was lamenting how the US was desperately falling behind its main competitor in the artificial intelligence race, hooked on “yesterday’s fuels” like natural gas. US President Donald Trump came under withering criticism and was pounded for his efforts to save the domestic coal industry. That China still relies on coal for the vast majority of its electricity was rarely mentioned.

Imagine our lack of surprise, then, when we opened our weekend edition of the Financial Times to find Adam Tooze’s latest lament, “Wasting China’s solar panel surplus is madness”…

Cocktail Party Trivia (35 minutes): Winning the Renewables Debate With Friends & Family

Sane Ideas

Little Known Facts nannystate Shiny Pony 52 Comments

At least a few boomers are quietly suggesting that Old Age Security spending be reined in by some means. Stephen Harper tried something similar by raising the age of eligibility to 67, but Trudeau Junior reversed that. Hopefully this gains traction this time around.

OAS is currently Canada’s costliest federal program, eating up roughly one in every six dollars of federal spending. This amounted to a total of $85.5 billion in 2025-26 and is expected to exceed $100 billion annually by the end of the decade. Paul Kershaw, head of Generation Squeeze, said in a media briefing on Tuesday that policymakers can ill afford to ignore ballooning OAS costs at a time of “heightened geopolitical instability and economic uncertainty.”

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