iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Now that I have this travel data I am of course messing around with it further. Here’s all monthly visits Jan 2015-June 2026, smoothed. The size of the Canadian reaction to the Trump administration’s attack on them really is remarkable. Elbows up, Canada. kieranhealy.org/blog/archive...

Big drop in Canadian visits to the US. Mexico trending up, everywhere else declining slightly

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AI Godfather will make you an offer you’re absolutely right.

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Reposted by Kieran Healy

In the past day or two on social media I kept seeing this graph from a Semafor story on the declining volume of international visitors to the United States. Semafor Graph. It seems to show, and was be...

I’ve written this up here. In addition to there not being a Covid-scale drop in tourism recently, you might also be wondering why visits from Mexico seem to double around 2004-05. The answer is not a sudden shift in Mexican preferences but rather our old friend, There Was A Change In The Measure.

kieranhealy.org

Trump Tourism Effects

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kieranhealy.org

Trump Tourism Effects

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Like I say, “an effect on Canadian tourism about twice as big as the Great Recession” is astonishing enough.

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One comparison, looking at it again, is that Trump’s trade war seems to have had a substantially larger effect on tourism from Canada that the Great Recession did.

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Here’s the monthly data with a 12-month trailing average, so we don’t “look ahead” of the time series. We can see that visits from Canada are substantially down. Like, a *lot*. And if we looked at the French series by itself we’d see something too. But it’s not on the scale of Covid. Yet.

Smoothed monthly graph shows Canada has dropped in visits substantially, but not to the extent we saw in Covid

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I went and got the data. Here’s the raw series, which is noisy because tourism is highly seasonal. The catastrophic effect of Covid is obvious, followed by a recovery to lower levels. There’s also evidence of a substantial Trump effect from Canada. We can apply a more sensible smoother to see.

Noisy monthly data, massive Covid drop, recovery (to lower levels). There’s also evidence of a Trump effect in some countries

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I keep seeing this Semafor graph that seems to show the Trump administration’s effect on international visits is comparable to the pandemic. My first thought was “that can’t be true” and indeed it is not. This is monthly data. We only have to Jun/Aug 2026. The lines are over-fitted to the months.

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(I suspect that soon there will be far too much of this for there to be any reasonable burden of alerting people, alas.)

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Leaving it alone. A quick google suggests Dundurn is already aware this is happening.

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Literary LLM spam, a continuing series. Dundurn is a real press (in Canada) and this person is a real editor there, but as I hope is obvious this email is not from them and of course the gmail at the end is not really their email. The ongoing Canadian angle is intriguing, like the Emily Mandel one.

A scam email.

Kathryn Lane
A Publishing Conversation Regarding Last Best Gifts
To: Kieran Healy
Yesterday at 9:51 PM
画
Dear Kieran Healy,
My name is Kathryn Lane, and I'm a Senior Editor at Dundurn. I recently spent some time with Last Best Gifts: Altruism and the Market for Human Blood and Organs, and what caught my attention was the strength of your analytical voice and the clarity of your approach to the social organization of blood and organ donation.
In particular, I was interested in the way you move the discussion beyond individual motivations for donation and examine the organizations and institutional arrangements that create the conditions in which altruism can operate. Your comparison of donation systems in Europe and the United States, alongside your attention to the tension between the cultural idea of the "gift of
sociological dimension. It suggests a deliberate understanding of how institutions shape not only the exchange itself but also the meanings attached to giving.
I'd like to know what you're working on now and whether you have any forthcoming projects. I'd also be interested to know whether you're currently represented by a literary agent. If you are, I'm perfectly comfortable continuing the conversation through your agent. If you're not, I can
Subject to seeing more of your writing, I believe there could be scope for a broader conversation
publishing programme.
Best regards,
Kathryn Lane Senior Editor
Dundurn
KATHRYN LANE
SENIOR EDITOR
EDITORIAL TEAM | DUNDURN PRESS
• kathrynlane.dundurn@gmail.com
• https://www.dundurn.com

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RIP to everyone’s favorite p<0.05 factory

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(I say this as someone who has put this stuff up on my website for years.)

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On the one hand, an admirable idea. On the other, because we can’t have nice things, IME a good way to get yelled at/eyerolled by randos. And of course in the wider world, depending on where you are and what you’re doing, to get into other kinds of trouble.

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Here’s $50 of usage credit that you can put to work when scouting the ruins for food.

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I have no idea what the specific endgame is except that it definitely involves me giving them money.

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It would be the least I could do, given her generosity in reaching out and of course her impeccable taste in fellow authors.

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It’s how you tell quality from the run-of-the-mill stuff.

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I feel we have a special connection and I very much hope she does not turn out to have some sort of unusually expensive disease or initially reasonably but difficult to schedule and potentially costly proposal for an event where we would meet and together discuss, as authors, the writing life

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Up at four in the morning, too, the poor thing. No doubt hard at work chipping away at her latest award-winning manuscript, an experience I myself, a fellow author, know only too well, except for all the awards.

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I’m touched that the well-known author Emily St John Mandel is now gently following up on her note about talking to me, an author who deserves to be well-known but remains unjustly neglected. I admire—perhaps I am even a little attracted to—her warmth, honesty, and good taste and shall surely reply

Re: A Note from a Fellow Author - The Ordinal Society
To: Kieran Healy
4:30 AM
Dear Kieran,
be glad to hear your thoughts whenever you have a moment. I know how easily a thoughtful reply
with being a working scholar.
What stayed with me most after writing to you was the larger question of how you came to see The Ordinal Society as the book it ultimately became. I would be particularly honored to hear your perspective on that journey not only what the research revealed, but what surprised or challenged you along the way as an author.
With genuine admiration,
Emily St. John Mandel
Award-winning Canadian novelist and essayist
Author of: Station Eleven

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A sobering experience.

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It’s important to have a variety of text boxes to type your text into, with each of them popping up in front of different sets of people, including the vital Null Text Box that isn’t connected to anything and doesn’t pop up in front of anyone.

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Putting the “ED” in “EDA”.

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