You seem confused about the purpose of my post, acting as though I disagree with you.

That’s the funny thing. It’s so small. Almost all the anger is about optics.

Also, I’d wager a guess that the 49k limit (which increases over time to like 70k) is probably about the realistic demand for Chinese EVs in Canada in the first place. It’s not like there’s an enormous million-person line of demand for Chinese EVs.

Canada lowered tariffs on Chinese EVs to similar levels of a few years ago (up to a limited number, and still 6% tariffs rather than zero).

US politicians are angry about about it, despite the fact that the US literally had/has a free trade agreement with Canada involving cars and many other products.

In the US, we keep dunking on our neighbors to the north about how lefty they are, since indeed they’re a lot more lefty than us, when ironically this decision by Canada is historically a conservative position: freer competition and lower taxes, and yet that’s the one we’re most angry about.

It's an example of how quickly perceptions can shift, the Overton window can shift, political parties ran rotate policies, etc. Everything becomes about optics and tribes.

A few years ago if someone said, "So Canada used to put 100% punitive tariffs on Chinese EVs, and now they're going to lower those a lot so that Canadians can buy more affordable EVs if they wish, and China will do the same for some Canadian stuff," most people would be like, "well, good."

You ever read a book in one sitting? I did that with the 1979 sci fi novella Electric Forest by Tanith Lee last night when going to bed. Ended up getting to sleep a bit later than intended because of it.

Anyway, here’s a review.

In a far future world where humanity exists on hundreds of planets, most people are genetically engineered to be beautiful, and not just the wealthy, but everyone. However, some rare accidents happen.
Magdala was born crippled and ugly in a beautiful world. Given up by her prostitute mother to a state-run orphanage, she was mercilessly bullied by other kids. Now in her 20s, she works a menial job, lives in a tiny apartment, and has no friends or partner. She has considered plastic surgery, but it’s too expensive, and for her full-body condition it wouldn’t be enough to fix the issues anyway. Thus, she lives in a perpetual state of loneliness and melancholy.

Then one day, a scientist shows up and says he can make her beautiful. And as a reader will expect, it certainly does come with a catch. What follows is a generally social-intrigue type of plot, where beautiful-Magdala has to do various things for her benefactor.

Overall, I’m glad I read it, but cannot really say I liked it. I’ve been meaning to read more of this era of sci fi.

The prose was quite good. The opening premise was interesting. I genuinely couldn’t really predict where the plot would go. A few individual scenes were great.

But I did not particularly like the characters, nor did I view them as making understandable choices. Of course, plenty of characters in fiction make bad choices, but when well-characterized, those bad choices are understandable, like we see the cause and effect, we know the character enough to be like, “yep, they’d do that.” I mostly didn’t feel that here.

I did not like the details/choreography of the one action scene (I mean, if you have exactly one, then do it really well), nor did I like the epilogue.

Back in 2018-2020, I wrote a lot about how the upcoming issue of fiscal dominance would contribute heavily to populist politics.

For example, 2020:
"Populist politics then become more commonplace, and while some strands of it can be quite rational based on countering prevailing policies that are rightly viewed as needing reform, there are also more dangerous or extreme strands that begin to emerge as well, particularly if those initial and more rational strands go unaddressed. Policymakers historically face the choice of doing something to alleviate the financial burdens of the broad population, or risking outright revolution."
https://www.lynalden.com/fiscal-and-monetary-policy/

During eras of fiscal dominance, the state tends to take more control of the economy, tends to restrict capital movement, and tends to limit personal freedom, whether it's a right or left government. And they drum up as much public support as possible with a narrative.

But witnessing it playing out first hand has still been a sight to behold. I could jot it all down on paper but then admittedly have still been surprised at times as it keeps playing out. And we see both left and right varieties occurring.

For folks who want to keep government pretty limited where possible, these past six years have been absolutely wild to watch in practice. So many people forget the basic principle that any power you give your current government, a future government that you don't agree with can use that power against you.

The poles of right and left keep drifting outward, and the horseshoe theory of politics is on full display as the two populist extremes are closer together than the moderates of each side are (but then ironically, some of those moderates also unite to oppose those extremes as well). So many people lose their minds and go full communist or full fascist. And then some normal things get labeled as extreme, so people who just believe in a handful of principles that were normal a few decades ago are like out in the wilderness now.

And the centralized algos certainly contribute to it. As someone who has been active on social media for a long time, 2025 really stuck out to me, at least as much as 2020 did. I see people reorienting their positions so rapidly around new things in a sort of mass groupthink, I see people retweeting so many things that support their view despite being obvious AI slop or clearly false or out of context with just a 2-minute factcheck. Some real populist momentum waves build, and then centralized algos give them rocket fuel. Both the main wave, and the reactionary wave on the other side, are fueled by the algos for maximum engagement.

When I interviewed @nprofile1q... at the Oslo Freedom Forum back in 2024, he focused on algos affecting not just what people can say, but what people think. And in the year and a half since then, I think that has very much played out.

There is an enormous premium these days for being able to recognize the algo's influence on you, and to continually factcheck and emotion-check yourself, take a breath and step back, touch grass, get sun, and assess what your foundational principles are.

I think fiction can build understanding on certain topics in a way that nonfiction struggles with. It’s the closest approximation of walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.

Additionally, it can entertain us while we get something from it, making us consume more of it.

Fantasy and sci fi can also explore certain ethical dilemmas or concepts with our real-world biases removed. Topics related to politics, religion, etc can be explored more easily in fictional versions than the real ones people are already used to or have opinions about.

You know what would be neat? Going back and reading some of George RR Martin's pre-Game of Thrones books.

Anyway, I finished the sci fi novel Windhaven during lunch today, so here's a review.

Martin co-wrote Windhaven with Lisa Tuttle in the 1970s. It was a series of three novellas, which where combined into a completed novel in 1981.

It's a story about a woman, Maris, who is a flyer. The gravity on this world is lower, and the atmosphere thicker, and the world consists of islands separated by dangerous seas. This combo allows people to fly with specialized wings, and it's the best way to send messages, although there are limited numbers of wings (without the tech to make any more) and so flyers are in a special caste.

The initial story follows Maris as she tries to change some of the caste dynamics. Specifically, wings are passed down through bloodlines regardless of skill or desire, whereas some argue that those with greater skill and desire should get the wings instead (especially because, whenever flyer crashes at sea, the wings are lost forever, and so bad flyer skill affects the whole world over time). Maris, as one might imagine, is highly skilled but lacks the bloodline, hence the problem.

Without spoilers, the book then jumps forward in time, and looks at various ethical dilemmas. Sometimes changing one aspect of society for the better, introduces new problems people didn't expect. And then solving those problems can create other problems, and so forth. It's a really interesting set of socioeconomic dynamics to explore.

There's no combat or on-page violence in the book (very little off-page as well), and the rating for the book is middling (basically anyone expecting Martin's Grimdark Game of Thrones type of stuff will be disappointed). But I think it was a very unique and quality novel that stands out vs many others I've read. It's more like, political intrigue across this island world, and the evolution of various personal relationships.

My criticisms of the book are mainly around dialogue. Martin and Tuttle were early in their careers when this was written, and it's not as well written as later stuff. Characters, despite holding different positions on a given topic, generally all speak with the same matter-of-fact voice to each other. Higher-caliber writing tends to make character voice jump out of the page more.

In contrast, a book like The Lies of Locke Lamora is pretty far on the other end of the spectrum, with character voice that just punches you in the face from the start. Most books are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, and I felt this was too far in the robotic/sameness end of it.

The reason I found it is because Bookborn, a reviewer on YouTube, decided to read through Martin's entire backlog and said this was her favorite one, and arguably in her top five books of all time.

While I wouldn't rank it like that personally, I definitely found it interesting, especially the second two thirds, and was curious to see the evolution of Martin's work over his career. There was also one particular sad thing in it that (the Ballad of Aron and Jeni) that made me tear up for a moment, and I was thinking about it for a while afterward.

The DOJ served the Fed with a subpoena and threatened Powell with a criminal indictment related to the Fed's expensive renovations.

Powell, rather than releasing the minimal version of a statement that merely disagreed with the accusation, instead released a statement and video that pretty much went scorched earth, saying this isn't really about the renovations and is instead about the Fed's independent control of interest rates.

Historically speaking, this is the biggest direct clash between the Fed and the Executive Branch since the 1940s/1950s.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/powell20260111a.htm

The printing press and moderately high literacy rates are basically the threshold for that.

imo, one of the only things more valuable than time, is principles.

Rather than choosing their tribe based on shared principles, most people just reprogram their principles around whatever their tribe is doing.