Strongest Of The Weakest
As economist Daniel Lacalle points out, the rising dollar price of gold does not mean the US dollar is on the way out. Things are a bit more complicated than that in a fiat currency world with no exit ramps.
The same sources that show soaring gold demand also show that there is no true “dedollarization” in the sense of a fiat‑to‑fiat substitution. This also makes sense. The US dollar is the world’s strongest weak currency because it has a higher level of liquidity, more independent institutions, and better legal and investor security than any alternative. The US dollar is losing its place as a global reserve to gold but not losing its position relative to the euro, yen, pound, or yuan.
IMF COFER figures show that the US dollar’s share of allocated FX reserves remains at 59.6%, and when adjusted for exchange‑rate moves, the IMF itself concludes that the dollar’s share has been broadly stable, with recent declines explained mostly by valuation effects, not active selling. The euro, at 20.3%, is not even close to being a contender.
What Did The Romans Ever Do For Us?
Why did Rome, rather than any of its many rivals in Iron Age Italy, become the core of an empire?
A muddy settlement on the Tiber turns into a machine that can raise armies, write laws that outlive empires, build roads that stitch a continent together, and carry water for millions through aqueducts, while running a Mediterranean-wide bureaucracy for centuries. The usual explanations are familiar: institutions, military discipline, geography, luck. All true, and none of them feels fully satisfying on its own. Many societies possessed some of these advantages. Rome was unusual in how consistently it turned them into scalable institutions.
There is another angle that is rarely discussed, mostly because until recently it was not testable. What if part of Rome’s advantage was carried in its people, as average differences in traits linked to learning, planning, and administration?
Ancient DNA makes it possible to ask that question directly. Using the AADR dataset and educational attainment polygenic scores, Iron Age and Republican-era Romans come out unusually high. Besides exceeding earlier Italian groups, they sit at the top of the entire ancient European distribution, even after accounting for sample age and genomic coverage.
That by itself does not explain the rise of Rome. But it does suggest a sharper hypothesis: Rome’s institutions may have been built and operated by a population that, on average, was unusually well suited to master and scale complex social systems.
You Can’t Park There
CTV- Via Rail train with passengers on board derails in Bas-Saint-Laurent after collision
According to Noovo Info, four people were sleeping in the two trucks when they were violently struck at 1:30 a.m.
Just Doing Some Laundry Over Here
Garry Clement- I Once Believed Canadians Would Demand Better. Fifty Years On, I’m Not So Sure
For most of my career, I believed that if Canadians truly understood the scale of criminal infiltration, foreign interference, and systemic mismanagement within our national institutions, they would demand better.
“Drive, Baby, Drive!”
The Great White North
A long but interesting read. Grab yourself a mid-strength beverage.
National Post- Older, 70% white, plunging fertility and lost faith: Who Canada is now
A deep dive into the population data paints a surprising picture of Canadian society and households
Love is Love
Mark Carney, “Muslim values are Canadian values”.
Catholic Weekly- A thousand forced marriages and conversions every year in Pakistan
“Young girls, often minors, are abducted and coerced into converting to Islam, followed by forced marriages with much older men. This practice is especially prevalent in Sindh and southern Punjab where religious minorities are concentrated.
“Once abducted, the girls are subjected to pressure, threats, and sometimes violence, forcing them to renounce their faith.
Honey, I Finished The Internet
Feeding Fido
The Food Professor- Fewer Kids, More Pets — and a Food System That Isn’t Ready
Today, roughly six in ten Canadian households live with at least one cat or dog. There are more than 16 million cats and dogs in the country. And a growing share of those animals are not owned by young families with rising incomes, but by seniors, people living alone, and households that explicitly view pets as family members and primary sources of companionship.
It Snows In Canada?
To be fair they’ve only been around since 1920.
National Post- RCMP battle deep snow responding to multiple assaults at remote cabin in early hours of New Year’s Day
…had to seek assistance from volunteers with Bonavista Bay Search and Rescue to get through the heavy snowfall.
The Biology Of Ozempic
Video — Miracles don’t exist in biology, mechanisms do. GLP1 medications (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound) are no exception. And every time you override a biological system that took two million years to evolve, you are making a trade. Every trade has an invoice.
Honey, I Finished The Internet
Snow fences explained.
The Deal With Silver
Silver is not like Gold. Gold once it is mined and refined sits in vaults or jewelry. All gold ever mined still exists.
Silver is consumed by industry. It is turned into a conductive silver paste that is applied to products. It is very difficult to recycle because such a tiny amount of silver is used in each. So it is not worthwhile to recycle. Only about 20% of silver is recycled from e-waste.
The $4.4 trillion “market cap” for silver is assuming that all 56 billion oz of silver that has been mined throughout history … is still around and available. It is NOT. Probably 80% of the silver has been consumed by industry. It is buried in landfills.
Fat Cats
Follow The Money
BC MLA Dallas Brodie is one brave woman for putting together a critical examination of the residential school issue. My opinion: we’re in the grip of another mass formation that has been building since the early 1990s. It’s time to put a stop to this before we experience the Zimbabwe solution in real time.
Why are Young People Fleeing New Zealand?
The founder of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, explains New Zealand’s decline.
We Need A Famine
The people who want to ban Round-Up are the people who want us to eat fake meat.
And defying all odds, farmers who sprayed first generation (now banned) crop herbicides from open tractors are still around in their 80-90's. https://t.co/8GDpyelrvi
— Katewerk (@katewerk) November 24, 2025
America First?
Weren’t the cost of tariffs being absorbed by importers? Apparently, that’s not always the case.
President Donald Trump announced Friday that he was scrapping U.S. tariffs on beef, coffee, tropical fruits and a broad swath of other commodities — a dramatic move that comes amid mounting pressure on his administration to better combat high consumer prices.
They Wouldn’t Do That
Would they?
David Clinton- Bill C-4: Join a Political Party in Canada and Mess Up Your Life?
All of which means that, for the low, low price of a single party membership card, you’ve bought yourself vulnerability to the threat of identity theft, harassment, and exposure of your sensitive (and likely controversial) political views. Employers, landlords, insurers, neighbors, old enemies, new enemies, future enemies? They’d be crazy not to drink deep from this Pierian spring.