FIFA's (Own?) 'Goal'.

AllTheirBrandings

'RUsVille


Well, well, well...

It looks like the always above board, super-fine folks from FIFA have Vancouver city council in their back pocket.

Lisa Steacy of CTV News has the story:

A FIFA-specific bylaw was approved by Vancouver city council Wednesday, enabling $1,000 tickets to be issued for a range of infractions during next year’s World Cup.

The bylaw covers the period from May 13 to July 20 of 2026 and will allow city officials and police to issue tickets levying hefty fines for things like “distributing advertising matter on streets” and “defacing or postering furniture, light standards, poles on streets” and “placing advertising matter on vehicles on streets.”

The goal, staff said at Wednesday’s meeting, is to ensure “brand protection” and target bylaw violations that run afoul of the city’s contractual obligations...

Gosh.

One can only wonder what 'brand' specifically the super-finest of the fine folks from FIFA are trying to 'protect'

Is it, perchance...

This?


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And, perhaps the worst part of the new 'bylaw', especially for Bigger E?...They will also be curtailing street performing...Aargggh!



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Aux Champs Elysées (Bigger E. Cover)

Buskateering
EnFrancaisVille


Bigger E. spent the fall doing her thing in Montreal, see above.

Ain't that something!


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Pineapples Neither Upside Down Nor Caked.

WhatDidArtFlemingAndMervGriffin
KnowAnywayVille


Longtime reader and lyric purveyor, Dr. Beer 'N Hockey, did not agree with the thesis of a recent post in which we tentatively concluded that the world is getting dumber because of all that the internet has wrought:

...I don't know. Dude's thesis does not seem too far off the olden days parents' groups who saw Satan in every rock 'n' roll record. Similar arguments to his could be made blaming micro-plastics and wildfire fire smoke for our increasing dimness, if indeed it is increasing. Seems to me the unfettered ability of all of us listening to all of us might just teach us a thing or two about ourselves well worth knowing. I'm certainly paying attention. Could be we have all just taken too much acetaminophen after all...

Upon further reflection, I reckon Beer has a point.

Especially regarding the young among us. I certainly know that my own two kids, who are in the early stages of adult hood, seem to be able to use the digital interconnectedness to their intellectual advantage.

As for us olds?

I'm not so sure.

Cases in point, Jeopardy(!) and remembering the names of people that I run into but don't know so well....

I'm convinced I'm better at both when I've been off the box and its to connections to everything, everywhere all at once for awhile.


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Regarding Jeopardy - I am routinely trounced by both kids except, of course, if two of the categories are Watergate and sports trivia from the 1970's.



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Nevermind The Qualifiers.

US'ianDemocracyCannotBe
HalfFoxAndHalfFreeVille

Nevermind qualifiers like 'approaching' or 'adjacent'.

Why?

Because the 'ism' that we all fear, whether we live there or not, has taken root in today's United States.

Mike Brock, writing at TechDirt explains:

Mark Kelly—former Navy combat pilot, astronaut, sitting United States Senator—stated a simple legal fact on video: members of the US military can refuse illegal orders. Not as opinion. Not as political positioning. As established law codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and affirmed at Nuremberg when “I was following orders” was rejected as defense for war crimes.

The Trump Administration opened a federal investigation into him for saying this.

Jesse Watters praised the investigation on Fox News: “You have to make examples out of people.”

Slow down. Read that again. One more time. Let it register fully.

A sitting senator stated constitutional law. The executive branch opened an investigation into him for stating it. State propaganda praised this as making an example.

This isn’t approaching fascism. This isn’t fascism-adjacent. This is fascism—the actual thing, not the metaphor, happening in real time on national television while we debate whether calling it fascism is too divisive...

Put another way - there once was a time like, say, maybe two weeks ago, when the great majority of US'ians and all US'ian institutions apparently hated things like Nazis and lynching.

Now, even that is much less clear.

At least for the institutions.

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Subheader?...This!



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Pineapple Upside Dumb Cake.

SurvivalOfTheDumbest
NothingNaturalAboutThisSelectionVille


We all know it's happening.

The world is getting dumber every day.

But why?

Well, Lane Brown, writing in NY Magazine, makes the case that it is because we all have an ever growing and metastasizing babbling tower of dumbness inside our own house (web archive link):

...Not so long ago, the dolts among us were free to think their thoughts quietly to themselves with no easy way to share them. At worst, a person would usually just embarrass himself in front of his own family or bowling team. Bad ideas had a harder time scaling and reproducing, so lots of stupidity stayed local, and everyone else could happily overestimate the average person’s intelligence because they saw less of it. But then we connected everyone on the planet and gave them each the equivalent of their own printing press, radio station, and TV network. Now, even those with nothing useful to say can tell the whole world exactly, or more often vaguely, what they think...

It's pretty hard to argue with that I reckon.


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The Swedish Double - Down.

TheArtOfAnActual
MaybeKindaSortaSolidarityDealVille


It's no longer just an offer to build the Gripen fighter jet in Canuckistanmikitaville as a replacement for those 60 odd US'ian F-35's that we haven't bought yet.

Now the Swedes have further sweetened the pot according to Eric Reguly writing in the Globe (web archive link):

Swedish defence company Saab is intensifying its campaign to secure Canadian aircraft sales by offering to build the entire GlobalEye military surveillance plane in Canada if the Department of National Defence orders it.

In an interview at the Saab factory in Linköping, in southern Sweden, David Moden, senior sales director for the GlobalEye, said that building the entire aircraft in Canada would create 3,000 jobs. “We are offering a made-in-Canada solution by building and installing the plane’s sensors there,” he said...

Hmmmm....

If it were to happen, that sure would be some pivotal realignment away from that whole 51st state-type thing don't you think?

Regardless the ultimate outcome, just giving it a serious look, as the Carneyites have signalled they're doing, is sure to be a heck of a trade talk bargaining chip.


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Who You Gonna Call?

LeaveNoCaramelized
ChlorophyllUnturnedVille


Leaf Busters!


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Things Happen...

AlmostFree
PressGangVille


From Michael Grynbaum, writing in the New York Times:

President Trump assailed an American journalist in the Oval Office on Tuesday for asking Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, about the violent death of a Washington Post columnist at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. U.S. intelligence has said the attack was carried out on the prince’s orders.

“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Mr. Trump told the journalist, Mary Bruce of ABC News, later referring to her query as “a horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question.”

“A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the murdered journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. “Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”...

Things do happen, indeed.

Things like, say, dismemberment, presumably by bone saw.

Sheesh.

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Image at the top of the post?...This.

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I Read The News Today...

ThreeChordsAnd

AlmostAllOfItWasTrueVille

Well, actually it was Sunday.

And the news was lousy.

Because it told me that Todd Snider had died.

This, below, might be my favourite story of how great it can be me when you get to meet one of your true heroes, musical or otherwise...



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Otis Gibbs knew the man well...


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Casino In Pocket.

AllTheWorld'sALine
SkinnerBoxVille


From Reuters:

...The Turkish Football Federation suspended 149 referees and assistant referees earlier this month, after an investigation found officials working in the country’s professional leagues were betting on football matches...

{snip}

...One referee had placed bets 18,227 times and 42 referees had bet on more than 1,000 football matches each...

Gosh.

Not sure about you, but I'm pretty sure I haven't been so juiced about anything that it has resulted in me doing that thing 18,227 times in my entire life.

Unless, I guess, I were to count PCR reactions...

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The Land Of Satire As Propaganda.

NoMilkNoHoney
Propagannon'sTravelsVille

From Mike Masnick writing at TechDirt:

Over the weekend, the President of the United States fell for obvious satire from a website literally called “The Dunning Kruger Times.”

Donald Trump—a man with access to the best, most accurate information on basically any subject—posted to Truth Social a screenshot claiming that “DOGE halts yearly payments of $2.5 million to Barack Obama for ‘royalties linked to Obamacare.’ Obama has collected this payment since 2010, for a total of $40 million in taxpayer dollars.”

Trump’s comment on this fabrication? “WOW!”...

Gosh.

One can only wonder what would happen if...

Jonathan Swift flew in today?


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Subheader?...Low competence/overestimation of abilities, indeed.
Pseudo-subtle ear worm in the kicker?...This!



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Are We, We Are The Scraping?

ForgetMeNots
AndSecondThoughtsVille


For most of its life, this little F-troop list blog has averaged about 30,000 page views per month.

In the old days, those numbers would swell considerably in the run-up to provincial elections, most notably in the Year of Horgan/Weaver (i.e. 2017).

Other than that it was pretty much a steady thing that went up and down somewhat depending on how often I posted. 

That all changed in early 2023 when bizarre things started happening (see above).

Initially, I deluded myself into thinking that large swaths of the online citizenry in places like France, Vietnam and Singapore had suddenly become interested in my morning bike rides and/or walks with the Whackadoodle II.

Of course, that was silly.

Because what was really going on was that the AI scrapers had arrived.

So.

If your large language model of choice suddenly starts spitting out faint praised phrases that describe the worst among us as super-finest-of-the-uber-fine-type folks?

Well...

You'll know where they came from.

OK?


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Earworm in the slightly less obvious than usual machine?...This.

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The Great Replacement Theory, Revisited (Part Deux)

GiveMeYourTiredYourPoorYourHuddledMasses
YearningToBeFreeVille


Zohran Mamdani is the new mayor of New York City.

A self-proclaimed US'ian Republican Party operative and 'reality' journalist responds:

Jack Posobiec posted a video purporting to be from the streets of Manhattan in 1993, showing mostly white members of the public, with the implication that the population had been transformed by immigration.

“NYC in 1993. Now exists only as a memory,” he wrote.

Gosh.

One can only wonder what that statue in New York harbour was all about from 1886, the year the statue was installed, and the ensuing one hundred and seven years.


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Tip O' The Toque to reader GarFish on this one...



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Mr. Miller's Great Replacement Theory, Revisited.

MayorOfStatenIslandToo

FiveBoroughsVille

Zohran Mamdani is the new mayor of New York City.

A member of Mr. Trump's administration responds:

...Stephen Miller, the powerful and ultra-hardline White House deputy chief of staff, who has spearheaded Trump’ anti-immigration crackdown, posted a screenshot from New York City government website to imply that the Uganda-born Mamdani’s win had been brought about by immigrant votes.

“Almost 50% of New Yorkers live in family households with at least one immigrant,” the post read...

Yes, you read that right.

It's no longer the 'theory' that super-fine folks who look and think like the good Mr. Miller will be replaced by immigrants directly. Instead, the new 'theory' is that they will be replaced by people who look and think like their family members who are the actual immigrants.

Or some such ridiculously illogical thing.

Especially in a country of immigrants.

Sheesh.


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Pudge And The Giraffe.

HeyBeantown!

DifferentBreedsVille

We only went to one Vancouver Canadians game at Nat Bailey Stadium last summer and my scorecard says we did not see Trey Yesavage make one of his four starts in Lotusland  in the middle of his meteoric rise from rookie league ball to the big leagues.

So, apropos of pretty much nothing at all, late one afternoon last week I was talking with a friend, a fellow old guy science-geek type, and we came to the conclusion that the last time we had seen a rookie who had been called up late in the season so dominate the play-offs was Ken Dryden back in 1971.

With this shared bit of historical wisdom that, to the best of our knowledge, had not been jammed down our throats by any of the 37,000 sports shows and/or branded content foisted on Canadians of all stripes by the Rogers Family Empire throughout the Blue Jays World Series run, we patted ourselves on the the back and headed for home.

Unfortunately, while Yesavage did get five outs and the hold in a relief appearance during Saturday night's Game 7, he also give up that 8th inning homer to Max Muncy which took a little shine off that rose.

However...

This got me thinking laterally in the most digressive, tangential way possible, as is often my want.

Which brings me to the connection between Carlton Fisk and Mr. Dryden.

First, here's an account of my not so close encounter with Mr. Fisk during his last season in the Big Leagues, which is more than thirty years ago now:

...I saw Carlton Fisk, for real, in 1993.

Which was a time when both baseball and American exceptionalism still meant a lot to me.

And on that particular day Fisk was toiling near the end of his career for the Chicago White Sox warming up a guy named Jeff Schwarz in the right field bullpen of Oakland Alameda County Coliseum.

Truth be told, I was actually more interested in Mr. Schwarz that day because, after 11 years in the minors as a draft and follow straight out of highschool, Schwarz was finally getting his first shot in the show. To put that in perspective, Schwarz made more in meal money in that, his only full season in the big-leagues, than he made in all of 1992 when he was toiled for the Vancouver Canadians.

How do I know this?

Because Schwarz told me so himself later that very afternoon as we sat in the bar of the Oakland Airport Hilton where Goose Gossage was holding court a scant six feet away.

Another interesting thing about Schwarz was the fact that he liked to loosen-up by long-tossing with both his right and left hands.

I never did find out what a crusty old customer like Carlton Fisk, who by then had been in the majors for more than 20 years and had caught more games than anyone else in baseball history, thought about Mr. Schwarz' feats of ambulatory ambidextriosity.

I do, however, know that Pudge hated watching himself on T.V.

In particular he said he never, ever, watched video of himself hitting that walk-off shot in Fenway Park during the 1975 World Series.

Why?

Because, Fisk said, he had his own memories of that moment and he didn't want the eye of the camera to turn them into something they were not...

So what, you may be asking yourself, does this have to do with Mr. Dryden?

Well, soon after he died earlier this fall,  Mike Boone had Steve Paikin and Bruce Dowbiggin on his podcast to talk about the former Cornell University goaltender, and one of the things they discussed was how Dryden refused to watch old videos of his games and highlights.

Dryden's explanation, as told to Dowbiggin:

"I have an image in my head of what I looked like, sounded like, and played like back then and I want that to be what stays with me."

Imagine that!


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Apparently, it was Greasy Phil who first called Dryden the 'Thieving Giraffe', although the future senator was also known as the Octopus and the Four Storey Goalie.

And here's an even crazier thing that also came up on Toronto Mike's very independent podcast...Dryden was originally drafted by Boston Bruins in 1964 but they traded his rights to the Canadiens when he did the then blasphemous thing and went off to the Ivy League to get an education while he went 76-4-1 at Cornell, back in the days when the world still allowed ties...

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