2023-07-31

Here is the week that was, care of the Economist, in a single sentence: “Twitter is now officially called X, though everyone still calls it Twitter.”

It was never the worst social network—that honour is held by LinkedIn, for its fad-ridden credentialism and performative revenge fantasies (seriously, if you only did that thing to show up your grade school teacher she wins because you’re still talking about her)—but it did occupy far more space than it ever deserved. The site’s new management have gone ahead and solved that problem for us.

Speaking of the Economist, it’s heartening to see someone take Ottawa to task for their indifference to NATO’s benchmark defence spending requirement. Any country that prides itself on internationalism, like Canada, would do well to make sure it’s not a would-be burden on its allies, in any event from disaster relief to military deterrence, to say nothing of being able to help those in need.

Here’s a remarkable sentence from Fredrik Erixon’s latest column in the Spectator: “Nationalism is not a conservative creed: just as George Orwell observed, it’s inseparable from the hunger for state power.”