Author: James Horncastle | Assistant Professor and Edward and Emily McWhinney Professor in International Relations, Simon Fraser University

Intro:

As the Donald Trump administration in the United States continues to threaten Canadian sovereignty — including a recent suggestion that Alberta could secede from Canada and join the U.S. — Canadians, like many others in the world, finds themselves in a period of extreme uncertainty.

Trump’s continued violations of the rules-based international order means Canada can no longer rely on its partners to the same extent as it has in the past.

The world must, as Prime Minister Mark Carney recently noted, accept the current climate as it is, rather than looking to the past.

To do so, Canada must develop a defence policy that can meet the country’s needs. The Canadian government’s recent budget envisions a significant increase in defence spending over the next several years. The problem Canada faces, however, is one that all middle powers face: an inability to compete with great powers in a conventional war.

The Canadian government must therefore pursue non-conventional means to overcome conventional weakness. Simultaneously, the country must be cognizant of the implications of alternative defence policies. The former Yugoslavia provides a harrowing example.

An excerpt:

The biggest vulnerability is the enemy eliminating their command-and-control functions early in the conflict. The U.S., as seen in Iraq in 1991, excels at these types of operations. Russia, while not as effective, attempted to do the same against Ukraine in the early phases of its full-fledged invasion.

For a smaller country to survive such an attack, it needs to ensure that resistance can continue regardless if centralized command is compromised.

Under the theory of total national defence, countries decentralize command and control functions to prevent them being eliminated.

The extent to which countries do so varies. Individual units may operate at the local level without centralized guidance to maintain the struggle against an opponent. In short, even if an opponent succeeds in eliminating the central command of a state, its army and people can continue the struggle.

From mining critical minerals, making batteries, recycling batteries, and even software, the electric vehicle (EV) supply chain is a wide-open sandbox. The only question is, where will Canada build its castle?

The Electric Vehicle Innovation Ontario (EVIO) program is trying to find out. The program launched in December with $2.5 million in federal funding from FedDev Ontario to embed 37 graduate researchers from Ontario universities into 20 of the province’s EV and mobility companies over nearly three years.

The thrust, as scientific director and University of Toronto professor Arvind Gupta explained to BetaKit in an interview on Monday, is to match the right academic mind to an EV company’s research and development project.

“If I was in a company and I was trying to solve some part of the problem, and I had to hunt around in 97 universities to find the right person, that’s a really tough proposition,” Gupta said. “But if we can make that match happen faster, get people in there faster, get the technology developed faster, it just increases your odds of success.”

People aged 14 to 20 are more often being diagnosed with psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, compared with those born earlier, a large Ontario study examining 30 years of data suggests.

To conduct the study, published in Monday's issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), researchers looked at health administrative data from more than 12 million Ontario residents born between 1960 and 2009 to look for cases of a psychotic disorder.

In the Ontario study, those diagnosed with psychotic disorders not linked to mood disorders, such as schizophrenia, were more likely to be male, live in low-income neighbourhoods, be a long-standing resident of Canada and have received care for mental health disorders and substance use.

Why isn't known. Myran and his co-authors suggest several possible reasons for the increases: older parental age, socioeconomic- and migration-associated stress and an increase in some negative childhood experiences like abuse in more recent decades.

Myran said there likely isn't a single explanation, but he called substance use — including cannabis, stimulants, hallucinogens and synthetic drugs — a leading possibility contributing to the rising rates over 20 years.

People aged 14 to 20 are more often being diagnosed with psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, compared with those born earlier, a large Ontario study examining 30 years of data suggests.

To conduct the study, published in Monday's issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), researchers looked at health administrative data from more than 12 million Ontario residents born between 1960 and 2009 to look for cases of a psychotic disorder.

In the Ontario study, those diagnosed with psychotic disorders not linked to mood disorders, such as schizophrenia, were more likely to be male, live in low-income neighbourhoods, be a long-standing resident of Canada and have received care for mental health disorders and substance use.

Why isn't known. Myran and his co-authors suggest several possible reasons for the increases: older parental age, socioeconomic- and migration-associated stress and an increase in some negative childhood experiences like abuse in more recent decades.

Myran said there likely isn't a single explanation, but he called substance use — including cannabis, stimulants, hallucinogens and synthetic drugs — a leading possibility contributing to the rising rates over 20 years.

Ontario's Wiarton Willie is a staple on Groundhog Day, one of the many animal prognosticators that emerge to give good or bad weather news, depending on if you love or hate winter. (Chris Young/Canadian Press)

Includes Jack in the Dark bonus adventure

A suspicious suicide. A chilling curse. A malevolent power. Finally, a wicked dark secret. This is Derceto, a legendary Louisiana mansion where, against your better judgment, you're drawn into a world of shadows to explore the darker side of Jeremy Hartwood's imagination.

Despite a paralyzing sense of personal danger, your quest for truth drives you to investigate the old house. But, you didn't know that, by entering Derceto, you'll be plunged into the daily nightmare that was Jeremy Hartwood's life. You weren't prepared for the torturous howls that resound from deep within its halls. You didn’t foresee the shadowy corridors that seemingly have no end. You couldn't anticipate the brooding, gloom-filled rooms, the pervasive weight of dread, the heavy sense of evil that gills the atmosphere and the very house itself.

Had you known, you might have refused this task. But alas, you accepted, and now you must make your way through this spine-tingling adventure alone... and in the dark.

Includes Jack in the Dark bonus adventure

A suspicious suicide. A chilling curse. A malevolent power. Finally, a wicked dark secret. This is Derceto, a legendary Louisiana mansion where, against your better judgment, you're drawn into a world of shadows to explore the darker side of Jeremy Hartwood's imagination.

Despite a paralyzing sense of personal danger, your quest for truth drives you to investigate the old house. But, you didn't know that, by entering Derceto, you'll be plunged into the daily nightmare that was Jeremy Hartwood's life. You weren't prepared for the torturous howls that resound from deep within its halls. You didn’t foresee the shadowy corridors that seemingly have no end. You couldn't anticipate the brooding, gloom-filled rooms, the pervasive weight of dread, the heavy sense of evil that gills the atmosphere and the very house itself.

Had you known, you might have refused this task. But alas, you accepted, and now you must make your way through this spine-tingling adventure alone... and in the dark.

On my homelab, the CPU usage spiked yesterday and calmed down after I updated it. Looks like it's related to changes from Calibre v9

For those unfamiliar with this project, here is the note from their README:

Why does this project exist?

Calibre, while a fantastic tool for its age, has several problems when containerised, including its reliance on a KasmVNC server instance for the UI, which is near impossible to use on mobile and is relatively resource-heavy if you're running a small, lower power server like I am.

For many, Calibre-Web has really swooped in to save the day, offering an alternative to a containerised Calibre instance that's resource-light and with a much more modern UI to boot.

However, when compared to full-fat Calibre, it unfortunately lacks a few core features leading many to run both services in parallel, each serving to fill in where the other lacks, resulting in an often clunky, imperfect solution.

Calibre-Web Automated aims to be an all-in-one solution, combining the modern lightweight web UI from Calibre-Web with the robust, versatile feature set of Calibre, with a slew of extra features and automations thrown in on top.

Here are excerpts from the changelog with the most recent update:

Release Notes: v4.0.2

🚨 Critical Updates

These changes are essential for database stability and compatibility with Calibre 9.

• Calibre 9 Metadata Compatibility: Fixed critical UI crashes (500 errors) caused by Calibre 9's removal of books.isbn, books.flags, and books.lccn.
  • The system now dynamically detects schema versions at startup.
  • For Calibre 9+, ISBNs are now correctly pulled from the identifiers table.
  • Maintained full backward compatibility for users on older Calibre versions.
• SQLAlchemy 2.x Migration Fix: Resolved InvalidRequestError during database migrations by utilizing engine.begin(). This prevents nested transaction failures when PRAGMA triggers autobegin.
• Initialization Fix: Fixed a regression causing AttributeError during login. The system now ensures minimal config fields (like config_books_per_page) are loaded even during background initialization.

[...]

The v.4.0.0 update had all the other snazzy new features. You can find them below:

Version 4.0.0 - Smart Automatic Duplicate Handling & Resolution 🔍, a Gorgeous & Powerful New Stats Centre 📊, Magic Shelves ✨, Robust OAuth, Auto-Send & Auto-Fetch ✈️ Huge Performance Uplifts and more!