iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Loren King @lorenking.org · 19/09/2026

It's easy to forget (because he has) that JD Vance has been on Bluesky for over fifteen months now, and his presence here is just as gut-churningly cringe-inducing as his live appearances. Maybe Peter Thiel will start paying him *not* to appear anywhere?

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 11/09/2026

I think Peter makes a really good case here, but I worry that, in our age of distortion and disinformation, and absurd excesses of wealth (bearers of which seem happy to let liberal democracy burn), fixing parties and reforming electoral systems may not be enough. www.thestar.com/gift-redeem?...

Alberta separatism reflects a basic problem in how political parties and our electoral process work, writes Peter MacLeod.

By Peter MacLeod, Contributor

Peter MacLeod is co-author of Democracy’s Second Act: Why Politics Needs the Public, and principal of the democracy organization, MASS LBP.

The morning after Alberta’s referendum, assuming federalists prevail, Canadians everywhere will breathe a collective sigh of relief. The constitutional crisis that wasn’t will be filed away alongside so many other brushes with national disunity. Before long, our attention will drift elsewhere.

If it does, Canada will have missed one of its last opportunities to understand how imperilled the country’s democratic system has become.

Put aside your priors: Alberta’s referendum is not only a story about long-standing western grievances. It is also a story about how seriously wrong things can go when previously mainstream political parties get hollowed out, then hijacked, and when an electoral system designed for another age no longer delivers moderate, popular governments, but radicalism.

Often the case for electoral reform is based on fairness and more accurately translating vote share into seats. A more urgent case may be stability and containment: let political currents appear in public, in proportion to their support, rather than encouraging them to find power through the narrow internal channels of weakened brokerage parties.

If federalists win in Alberta, relief will be understandable. A failed separation referendum would spare the country years of legal, political and social strain.

But it should not allow us to mistake survival for health.

Alberta may be giving Canada an early view of a problem that extends well beyond provincial borders. The institutions through which democratic societies organize disagreement have become smaller, thinner and less representative than the electorates they aspire to govern.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 24/08/2026

These bangers hit different now, knowing that Natalie Harp is feverishly whispering them into the mad king's ear.

Natalie Harp and the mad king, looking at something, perhaps the nuclear codes? who can say?

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 24/08/2026

I've said it before, I'll say it again: I do these crazy swims to avoid work emails. I've tried everything else. Those annoying 'away from my email' auto-notifications. Just turning my damn laptop off. Deliberately bricking my phone. Nothing. else. works.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 10/08/2026

BUT WE HAVE A MOUNTAIN!!!!!

Hamilton Mountain riding on Wikipedia ... not a real mountain, but a real electoral district ... maybe.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 01/08/2026

Ten years ago, I set off on my first marathon swim: the traditional Marilyn Bell route across Lake Ontario, from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Toronto. The core lesson of that first swim is the same lesson of every swim I've done since: these crossings never happen without an extraordinary team. 🙏🤙

Swimmer looking out across sunset on Lake Ontario from Niagara on the Lake.

swimmer and boat escort approaching the Toronto shore of Lake Ontario

Loren King and Madhu Nagaraja after a successful swim crossing of Lake Ontario in August 2016.

Team photo of the on-water and shore crew for Loren King's August 2016 Lake Ontario marathon swim.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 11/07/2026

... because GWR cancelled three of my trains?

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 20/06/2026

Years ago I backed off Snake Dike. Not on the long runouts, but early, on the step-out before the first crux (such as it is). It haunts me still. We were tired, had way too much gear, and I just wasn't ready for the exposure. But I'd never want it made easier. www.climbing.com/community/jo...

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 28/05/2026

We swim in it all the time 🤷

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 27/05/2026

Hey #HamOnt folks on #OurGreatLakes, this is serious: say no to selling out our harbourfront for the latest tulip mania driven by American techbros. #SwimmableCities #SwimDrinkFish @greatlakestrust.org ontariodatacentres.ca/post.html?id... www.wheresyoured.at/ais-economic...

Ontario Data Centre Tracker
TRANSPARENCY AROUND ONTARIO DATA CENTRE DEVELOPMENT

PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT - MAY 2026

The Steelport Data Centre — Why Hamilton Needs to Speak Up Now

Slate Asset Management has acquired the 800-acre former Stelco lands on Hamilton's waterfront to create Steelport. Their public pitch sounds significant: a $3.8 billion economic injection, 23,000 jobs, and the opening of the waterfront to the public for the first time in a century. But the first concrete step of that vision— a hyperscale and enterprise data centre campus — requires urgent public attention before a critical planning deadline passes.

Why the June 4 Hearing Is a Critical Opportunity

You might be wondering: why hasn't City Council voted on this? Due to a significant planning loophole, they are not required to. The Steelport property is zoned General Industrial (M5), which permits "Computer, Electronic and Data Processing Establishments” — a definition written in 2010, long before gigawatt-scale Al data centres existed. Because the proposed use technically fits the outdated zoning, Slate does not need City Council to approve a rezoning application. Instead, the decision on the 188-acre land severance rests entirely with the Committee of Adjustment, which will review the application at a public hearing on June 4, 2026.

Your Right to Appeal Is on the Line

Because this does not go to City Council, the Committee of Adjustment hearing is the community's primary public platform. If the Committee approves the severance, the only avenue to challenge it is an appeal to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT). Critically, the OLT can dismiss your appeal if you did not make a written or oral submission to the Committee before their decision is made. Missing the June 4 hearing means losing the right to appeal at the OLT. The submission deadlines are tight.

How to Take Action

The community must act quickly to get on the public record. Submissions can demand that the Committee refuse the severance due to the inappropriate scale of the proposed facility, or require strict environmental conditions on water and power usage.

SUBMIT WRITTEN COMMENTS
Written submissions must be emailed to cofa@hamilton.ca no later than noon on June 2, 2026.

SPEAK AT THE HEARING
Register to participate virtually or by phone. Registration must be completed by noon on June 3, 2026.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 27/05/2026

This conversation seems to be about #MarathonSwimming, but it's really about life: "I used to be very driven by results, coming from that competitive pool swimming background where it's very much compare and compete versus celebrate and collaborate ..." 🏊‍♂️✊🤙 youtu.be/3GaOYgwP9xI?...

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 10/05/2026

I'd forgotten about this short piece in @thespec1846.bsky.social from last year, on why universities, as deeply (and authentically) conservative institutions, need more public funding, not less. ... www.thespec.com/gift-redeem?...

The Hamilton Spectator

Opinion | Why universities need more public funding, not less

Name a technology vital to our lives. Chances are exceedingly high it originated in pure research conducted at a university.

Updated Jan. 25, 2025 at 6:02 a.m.

The Fraser Institute’s Matthew Lau has recently opined in these pages that universities may not in fact provide broader public benefits.

Indeed, Lau suggests ominously that they may instead generate “negative externalities.”

The idea of an externality is drawn from economics. Negative externalities are familiar from recent debates over fossil fuels and climate change — the growth of wealthy industrialized economies has resulted in climate costs largely borne by poorer countries, who didn’t cause the problem.

Lau wonders if universities might have comparable negative consequences for society.

The evidence: a “search of news reports on York University in the past year, in addition to many stories on its faculty strikes,” which, he hints ominously, suggest that “universities today might well do more public harm than public good.”

Hardly the stuff of serious academic research in economics.

Still, Lau does us a service by inviting reflection on what universities are good for, and why they’re worth keeping around as distinctly public institutions. Universities anchor communities and generate innovation. It has always been thus.

Name a technology vital to our lives. Chances are exceedingly high that it originated in pure research conducted at a university. Name a cultural trend, a great film or an enduring work of literature. Again, often that work will have emerged out of the intellectual ferment and cultural dynamism of the communities that grow up around universities.

Critics will concede all of this: despite their protests, almost all of them (including Lau) are products of a university education. They will insist, however, that the “goods” of the university — science and engineering faculties, usually — need to be disentangled from all the woke nonsense generated by the humanities and social studies.

This too is hardly a novel complaint, although the vocabulary changes from generation to generation. Complaining about cloistered, out-of-touch tenured radicals is as old as the modern university, and accusing teachers of dangerous ideas is much older still.

The difficulty for critics has always been that the university hangs together as a gloriously messy whole, and to date every effort to separate what they like (“innovation!” “rigorous thinking!” “marketable skills!”) from what they don’t (“woke nonsense!” “divisive ideas!” “useless majors!”) ends up losing what is truly distinctive about the university.

Many of these critics today posture as either hard-nosed libertarians (“let the market decide!”) or as populist conservatives (“let ordinary people decide!”). Given this, it is perhaps worth reflecting on the wisdom of earlier generations of Canadian conservatives, who recognized what even the most radical faculty leftist would concede: universities are deeply conservative institutions. ...

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 09/05/2026

Back home, #HamOnt coverage of our encounter with a silky shark 🦈 while I swam across the channel of bones! Thanks Scott Radley and the @thespec1846.bsky.social for sharing our story! #KaiwiChannelSwim #MolokaiChannel #MarathonSwimming @lynnsakuradr.bsky.social www.thespec.com/gift-redeem?...

Garmin GPS boat track of Loren King's recent Ka'iwi Channel swim between Oahu and Molokai. 47.2km covered in 13 hours 18 minutes and 55 seconds.

Maui Nui Swim cap with Effortless Swimming goggles

Garmin inreach sat track of boat escort for Loren King's Oahu to Molokai swim crossing, 21 April 2026.

A swimmer in the early morning Pacific between Oahu and Molokai, April 21st, 2026.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 31/03/2026

A friend sent me this. The comments are killing me! youtu.be/0Ssi-9wS1so?...

A selection of comments on a YouTube post of Angine de Poitrine performing live at ESMA in Rennes, France, during Trans Musicales 2025 ...

"I can't even remember what type of music I was into before. Now it's just this."

"This is how John and Yoko thought they sounded."

"AI: Humans are done with music
Angine de Poitrine: Hold my triangular Martian beer"

"30 seconds in:
"this is fucking stupid"
18 minutes in:
"this is the greatest musical performance of the century" ..."

"This is what happens when you divide by zero."

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 30/03/2026

Some of my urban politics students are presenting today on urban climate futures and the Toronto green roof bylaw that the Ford government recently axed. How can Doug and his merry band of amateurs be so consistently incompetent? From back in November 2025 ... www.thestar.com/gift-redeem?...

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 26/03/2026

Involving community partners in research isn't just a good thing for the communities our universities serve. It fosters better research and makes us all better teachers and scholars. #McMasterUniversity #CommunityEngagement @kimdej.bsky.social

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 17/03/2026

Back before the idiot warmongers ...

BASIC INCOME STUDIES

An International Journal of Basic Income Research

Vol. 6, Issue 1

RESEARCH ARTICLE

June 2011

Winner of the 2010 BIS Essay Prize

The Basic Income Road to Reforming Iran’s
Price Subsidies*

Hamid Tabatabai
Independent Researcher

Abstract – Iran has become the first country in the world to provide a de facto basic income to all its citizens. This article reviews the development of the main component of Iran’s economic reform plan – the replacement of fuel and food subsidies with direct cash transfers to the population – and shows how a system of universal, regular and unconditional cash transfers emerged almost by default as a by-product of an attempt to transform an inefficient and unfair system of price subsidies. The main features of the cash subsidy system are compared with those of a
basic income; then some lessons from this experience are drawn that may enhance the prospects of basic income as a realistic proposition.

Keywords – basic income, Iran, price subsidies, reform

In 2011, in response to heavy cuts to oil and bread subsidies, Iran implemented a program that guaranteed citizens cash payments of 29 percent of the nation's median income. Now, six years later, the results of that measure were released in a report by economists Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Mohammad H. Mostafavi-Dehzooeifrom for the Economic Research Forum.

The report found no evidence for the idea that people will work less under a universal income, and found that in some cases, like in the service industry, people worked more, expanding their businesses or pursuing more satisfying lines of work.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 08/03/2026

Well that's a ... curious contrast. One of these authors is a brilliant and compassionate thinker and one of the great scholars of our age. And one of the others would readily acknowledge that, I suspect.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 07/03/2026

Dunno, I thought this was cool.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 28/02/2026

Yes!! And yet another opportunity to stump for Proust and the Squid! Critical but hopetul. www.maryannewolf.com/proust-and-t...

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 06/02/2026

don't forget some of his finest work ... "how do I act so well?"

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 01/02/2026

Morbid curiosity drove me to read a bunch of these. I freely admit my scepticism of Attia among the wellness/longevity grifter-bros was attenuated by the fact that he was, briefly, one of us (he had two solid Catalina swims, in 2005 and 2009). Now? This Attia note to Epstein is creepily prescient.

16 July 2017 email from Peter Attia to Jeffrey Epstein, stating "Would love you to meet Sabatini", Subject line being "Talk at MIT is Aug 2. Hope you can make it!"

Science news piece from 6 November 2025, reading in part: "Prominent biologist David Sabatini, whose career imploded in 2021 following allegations of sexual misconduct, suffered another major legal setback this week when a Massachusetts superior court judge threw out his claim of gender discrimination against the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and its president and Director Ruth Lehmann. A different judge had already dismissed Sabatini’s defamation claims against his former employer, and the new ruling also sharply curtailed his lawsuit against ... the biologist who originally leveled harassment accusations at him."

November 2025 news article from Science continues, in part: "Sabatini rose to prominence with his research into a key molecular signaling pathway, which regulates cell growth and metabolism and malfunctions in diseases like cancer. That work won him a prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator position to continue studies at the Whitehead Institute. In 2021, an investigation conducted by an outside law firm found that Sabatini breached the institute’s consensual sexual relationships policy by engaging in a sexual relationship with ... a junior scientist launching her own lab there. It also concluded that Sabatini tried to influence the probe, misleading investigators and attempting to shape interviewees’ testimony."

November 2025 Science news update continues, in part reading: "The long shadow of the sexual harassment case has followed Sabatini since his departure from the Whitehead Institute, HHMI, and MIT. In 2022, following student and faculty protests, he withdrew from consideration for a position at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.

But the biologist appears to be making a comeback. Billionaire Bill Ackman and another, anonymous financial backer have pledged to give Sabatini millions of dollars to relaunch his research in a new lab. And in 2023, Sabatini began a new job as a senior scientist at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry Prague, a powerful arm of the Czech Academy of Sciences."

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 29/01/2026

The whole thread is important, but this, uggh.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 06/01/2026

Just a few short, erratic stumbles (while Stephen Miller rants furiously and JD Vance nods along obsequiously) from the Monroe Doctrine to the Melian Doctrine ... hoping Jim Keeley revisits these prescient thoughts from last spring. jmss.org/article/view...

Journal of Military and Strategic Studies

The Melian Dialogue of Donald Trump

J.F.Keeley

7 April 2025

In 216 BCE, the forces of the Athenian Empire attacked and destroyed the city of Melos, killing the men and selling the women and children into slavery. Before this, however, they called upon the Melians to surrender and become a tributary, or to face the consequences. The Melian leaders disputed the Athenian threats and
arguments in what has become justly and darkly famous, in Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War, as the Melian Dialogue.1 In that, the Athenians from the start called on the Melians not to resort to fancy arguments about right or “justice” but merely to address likely consequences. ...

... The last phrase is sometimes shortened to “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

The US is not yet Athens in extremis, though Thucydides’ account of the deterioration of Athenian democracy bears rereading and though Trump at times seems to be auditioning for the role of Cleon. Nor has American foreign policy hit quite the depth of the Dialogue or the brutality of its argument; his administration
has not yet produced an eloquent equivalent in either tone or content. However, the fixation on self and “strength,” the blithe disregard of others in words and deeds, and the matter of any overall coherent, realistic and rational policy and related strategy are surely issues to be raised. ...

The attack on Melos was followed by the disastrous Sicilian expedition.

Hubris is followed by nemesis.

Postscript

This was written mainly before 2 April 2025. On reflection, I paid too much respect to Trump and his administration by attributing even a modicum of rationality to him and it. I did not allow sufficiently for the force of sheer malign idiocy. Even the Dialogue cannot beat that. Or is this the final step in the Dialogue,
an attempt to terrorize everyone into submission? The two are not mutually exclusive.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 03/01/2026

A propos of nothing in particular. ... www.thisamericanlife.org/200/transcript

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 30/12/2025

All Cats Are Beautiful.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 25/12/2025

and the cat. Don't forget the Yule Cat.

Yule cat installation in Reykjavík, Iceland. (Photo: L King Dec 2019)

Yule cat in Reykjavík's KEF airport, Iceland.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 16/12/2025

I do wonder if several of those ... as you say, classic BSky replies ... would have been left in the drafts folder if they'd simply read on to the rest of the thread, which laid out context and broader meaning pretty clearly, I thought?

A recent Jamelle Bouie thread (that got a bit of pushback largely due to word choices), weighing in on the admonition that 'giving up X means giving up influence', pointing out that social media "influence" and reach tend to correlate with heavy use of video-based platforms, and integration of messaging across video and text platforms.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 15/12/2025

A propos of nothing in particular, I'd like to share with you one of the longer essay questions from this term's final exam in Pathways to Modern Politics, that only one student so far has tackled (you, however, may answer without drawing on Plato, Burke, and Marx!) ...

"A timely concern with capitalism and democracy is that the poor stay poor, the rich get rich. Vast differences in wealth, and especially inherited wealth, tear apart any hopes for a shared civic project, making it difficult to avoid democratic politics swinging wildly between complacent elites insisting (from their yachts, and luxury suites in Davos) that rising tides lift all boats, while the ‘have nots’ seek out populist rulers willing to burn it all down (while quietly selling fire insurance … and flamethrowers). Think through this problem ..."

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 12/12/2025

Waded through swathes of this last night, out of morbid curiosity. Can confirm. These two passages haunted my troubled dreams ....

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 22/11/2025

"The plan was negotiated by Steve Witkoff, a real-estate developer with no historical, geographical, or cultural knowledge of Russia or Ukraine, and Kirill Dmitriev, who heads Russia’s sovereign-wealth fund and spends most of his time making business deals."

Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic on the ridiculous US "Peace" proposal for Russia and Ukraine: "Why is the Trump White House pushing Ukraine to accept a Russian plan that paves the way for another war? The document offers some hints, declaring that the U.S. would also somehow take charge of the $100 billion in frozen Russian assets, for example, supposedly to invest this money in Ukraine and receive "50% of the profits from this venture."

Europeans, whose banks actually hold most of these assets, would receive nothing. European taxpayers, who currently provide almost all of the military and humanitarian support to Ukraine, are nevertheless expected to contribute $100 billion to Ukraine's reconstruction."

Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic on the ridiculous US "Peace" proposal for Russia and Ukraine: "For a decade, Russia has been seeking to divide Europe and America, to undermine NATO and weaken the transatlantic alliance. This peace plan, if accepted, will achieve that goal. There is a long tradition of great powers in Europe making deals over the heads of smaller countries, leading to terrible suffering. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with its secret protocols, brought us World War II. The Yalta agreement gave us the Cold War. The Witkoff-Dmitriev pact, if it holds, will fit right into that tradition."

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 19/11/2025

"In any other administration, at any other time in American history, this level of corruption would be a political disaster — a scandal that could bring down the administration. For the Trump administration, it is a Tuesday."

There is no question that American politics has had its fair share of corrupt acts and corrupt people. But the office of the presidency in particular has never seen anything like the petty jobbery and open malfeasance of Trump and the people around him. All misdeeds are not the same, and there is a real difference between the unseemly revolving door between business and government — the plum position on a corporate board or an easy lobbying gig — and a new status quo in which business leaders and heads of state give the president actual tribute in order to put themselves in the good graces of the White House.

When we look at authoritarian leaders abroad, we see a tight connection between autocratic governance and extreme graft. If the regimes of both Vladimir Putin in Russia and Viktor Orban in Hungary are models for Trump and his far-right allies in both ideological and practical terms, then it is worth observing the extent to which both men use their governments to siphon wealth from the public and hand it to small cadres of regime loyalists. Their obsession with national greatness — with ethnic chauvinism and so-called traditional values — is little more than a cover story for common thieves whose great aspiration is to steal and loot with abandon.

And if corruption and authoritarianism are tied together — if they are two acts in the same story — then the struggle against Trump’s authoritarian designs must also be a struggle against his personal corruption as well as the corruption of the political system.

“Just as good customs require laws in order to be maintained,” Machiavelli observed in his commentaries on the Roman historian Livy, “so laws require good customs in order to be observed.”

When either laws or customs degrade, when the body politic begins to drift toward corruption, the only recourse — if the people hope to preserve a republic — is to build new institutions and with them new ways of political life.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 14/11/2025

Is MarathonSwimmingSky a thing yet? It is now! Here with Elliot Hasler for the Toronto screening of his wonderful #MaratjonSwimming biopic, #VindicationSwim ! vindicationswimfilm.com

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 18/10/2025

While we're on the laudable theme of no kings no tyrants ...

Cover of James C Scott's Art of Not Being Governed (2009)

Trey Menefee, Seeing Like a ‘Sea Gypsy’: An Anarchist History of Hong Kong (2013)

add

Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (1991)

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 17/10/2025

True, but personally, I do have some training-related reasons for worrying about it, and finding safe plant-based sources ...

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 17/10/2025

Taking out Beatrix for a quick harbour jaunt in light winds. Rolling furler still temperamental. #HamOnt #ThisOldBoat #Northern25

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 15/10/2025

"if Mokyr’s work is right, then we aren’t going to have a strong economy if we let our colleges and universities go to seed." I've long thought that related economic work on agglomeration and dynamic information externalities was really at root about the critical role of universities in innovation.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 14/10/2025

I'm a slave to Strava 🫣

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 11/10/2025

Sure kid, whatever you say.

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Loren King @lorenking.org · 11/10/2025

... yeah, because it's not like economists and epidemiologists have ever considered the complexities of causal inference. But you, menoarenoniceguy1.bsky.social, without reading the paper, have identified the simple yet critical logical flaw in their peer-reviewed analysis. 🙄

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