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do crazy train.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
the celtic boii were thought to be an old austrian celtish group (although that's hard to prove due to a lsck of evidence) that lived in the area we today call bohemia and also conquered an etruscan city in northern italy that it renamed to balogna, and which became an important italian city in the roman and post-roman periods.
you won't find a lot of galatians today. they were just straight up gauls, like the gauls in other places in europe, but they were settled in turkey by the successors of alexander during the macedonian period. the galatians were so irish that their warlord, at about 280 bce, was named brennan. you could take their freedom..
however, the galatians/gauls/irish left huge traces in central anatolia. to begin with, they founded the city of ankara, which is today the capital of turkey (not constantinople). much of the local culture in the region of central turkey, including a lot of the musical culture, is not central asian (where the turks came from) in origin but celtic and western european in origin. that distinctive arabic pentatonic tonality in string music, and which is also present in celtic music, was brought to the area by the galatians, who became the folk people of the region, in contrast to the emperors in greece and persia and rome and mecca. they eventually assimilated into the kurdish and armenian populations.
the galatians are probably one of the primary sources of remnant red hair variability in central turkey, but you need to be careful. yes, there are red-haired turks. in fact, it's not that uncommon:
this woman is a successful model and actress in turkey and if you think she looks pretty darn irish it's because she's likely galatian:
however, the region was settled by an indo-european group called the hittites a very, very long time ago. the hittites were displaced by further waves of people from the steppes, and eventually assimilated into the greek world and then conquered by the persians and then the greeks and romans - all indo-european groups that would have had some red hair.
but by the time of the arabs and turks, the galatians were all that was left of this, along with the armenian and kurdish groups, which were still developing identities. the galatians disappeared in the end, but there would have been a time when all of these other groups rode up into the mountains to live with the remnant, wild celts. they survived here longer than they did in austria, in spain or in france.
i am broadly in favour of a concept of pan celtism, which would include iberian celts, the belgians, the boii, the galatians of turkey, the polish and ukrainian silesians and the austrian and german celts, in addition to the gauls, the welsh and the irish, who only became the scots after invading an area known in ancient history as pictland.
A writer from the Irish Press interviewed Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger who spoke of Celtic heritage of Austrians, saying "I believe there is a deeper connection between us Austrians and the Celts. Names of places in the Austrian Alps are said to be of Celtic origin. For that reason, the celts can be seen to be both alive and dead, depending on whether it's being directly or indirectly observed."
this is the little known origin of schrodinger's celt, which through the error of a bad typist, became schrodinger's cat.
france's sprawling multi-party system does not seem to have produced a candidate with a platform i would support, which would look like:
1. reduced immigration from religious societies and a strengthening of laicite laws
2. support for secularist political movements in the middle east
3. increased social spending
4. reduced defense spending and a step back from the idea of france as a colonial power, which is absurd and delusional in the 21st century
5. a return to an arms-length approach to nato
6. french devolution into breton, norman and provencal regions
7. enhanced hyper-local sovereignty in the context of a strengthened european parliamentary system with regional jurisdiction, including parliamentary elections to a eu parliament that can write enforceable laws in that jurisdiction's context
8. support for an equalization formula in europe to negate the issue of bankrupt eu member states
9. increased environmental regulations, including phasing out the combustion engine
10. stronger food and energy sovereignty
given what i just said, it is clear that marine le pen's platform, which seeks to balance the budget through massive spending cuts, is not the correct path forward for france, but increasingly seems to be difficult to separate from the republicans or from the status quo under macron, which is also calling for spending cuts.
while i don't want to pretend that i'm sympathetic to concerns about the british right collapsing, the british tory party may want to look at canadian history in the 90s to understand what's going to happen if it splinters into a reform party with more modern conservative policies and a conservative party that is lost in traditional conservative ideology. the reform party will win.
...especially if the conservatives can't find a white person to run for pm. i mean, they're the conservative party. they can't find a white man? what are they thinking running a black female?
is it a reflection of who votes conservative in the uk in 2026? if so, they'd might as well just give up now. reform will wipe them out.
i live in canada, where multiple visible minority groups are reliable conservative voting blocks. we don't have the kind of race-baiting politics that you have in the united states, and it's nothing weird for brown or black people to vote for the right, especially when they come from religious communities. it actually makes a lot of sense.
however, canada is a colonial society that has accepted immigrants from everywhere in varying proportions for centuries. we don't really have a dominant ethnic group in that sense. i don't like the idea of multiculturalism - i prefer the idea of post-culturalism - but the dominant ethnic group is only english-speaking in the sense of white assimilation. you throw a german, a swede, an irishman and an italian in a room, and they're all white people that speak english, in canada. otherwise, there is no concept of canada as a nation, as a race, as an ethnicity; that doesn't make sense in a colonial context.
the uk is not a colonial society. maybe it was briefly an empire, but that's been over for decades. the uk is a nation state with a dominant historical culture, race, language and ethnicity. it is not at all unreasonable for citizens in the uk - especially conservative citizens in the uk - to expect their representatives to be members of the historical dominant cultural group and the fact that the uk tories have run two visible minorities (uk born or not) in a row is either political suicide or reflective of the fact that they're already dead, they just haven't been declared dead yet.
well, stuff them like jeremy bentham and put them in a room already, then.
is nigel farage more absurd than boris johnson? or of winston churchill? i'd get used to it.
the movement in europe is to realize that social services are being cut to fund a war against russia and to oppose the war on grounds that it's eating into social services. in fact, this is also happening in canada, but the phony war against the americans is distracting from it. if trump would fuck off with his unreasonable trade demands and just retreat to the status quo, it is predictable that canadians would quickly make a turn against defense spending. canadians don't usually support defense spending; we're only supporting it now out of a fear that the americans are going to attack us, not the russians or chinese or arabs or germans. if you take away that threat from the americans, canadians will also oppose funding the ukraine war and go back to demanding more funding on social services.
this rejection of war spending in favour of spending on social services is, in europe, being called "right-wing". well, if that's right-wing and supporting an endless war against russia is left-wing then call me right-wing but i think people have their spectrum mixed up.
the fact that the ndp is not vocally opposing war spending or organizing against the war in ukraine is a function of it's inefficacy and irrelevance. i will not be able to take the ndp seriously again until or unless it joins the global fight to defund the ukrainian war machine and redirect the funding to domestic social services.
today is likely to break a temperature record here, due to the remnants of the atlantic hurricane moving north, which is due to the effects of warm water in the atlantic, rather than warm water in the pacific. americans have been lucky that wind shear is so high because these temperatures in the atlantic should be generating substantive storms that should be caving in the coasts in the southeast. they should not get complacent, as the wind shear is a temporary effect that will lift in time, and the warming atlantic will just get more and more intense. it will just take one vicious year for the new normal to assert itself.
some people will try to tie it to el nino. it's not el nino; it's climate change in the atlantic. the cause of the wind shear is dust blowing into the atlantic from the sahara, which has various short-term and long term causes but is temporary.
i would expect the high sea surface temperatures in the atlantic and their effect on pushing the jet stream over the great lakes up a little bit to continue to be the single biggest reason for above average temperatures in the great lakes and st lawerence regions this winter and in upcoming winters. this is not about ocean currents and is not periodic, like enso is. this is about the ocean trapping increasing amounts of heat, leading to consistently higher sea surface temperatures, and is constant.
no, listen, the diesel deal with russia is difficult for me for reasons that are not related to ukraine. reducing global carbon emissions is more important than "ukrainian independence", whatever that even means. the definition of the word "ukraine" is the region between the countries. what does it mean for a region between countries to have independence? it's a region without a state, without a country.
ukrainian is a dialect of russian and the leader of ukraine is past due on calling elections. he should rightfully be declared a dictator. societies that support democracy should stop supporting ukraine until it holds elections.
but the need to reduce carbon emissions is - unlike ukrainian independence - very real.
yet, the need to normalize relations with russia is also extremely pressing right now and should be the primary priority in not just washington but london, paris and berlin. it may very well be the case that it is within a few years, if the current pro-ukrainian leadership in western europe is replaced in the ongoing or upcoming democratic cycles, and there is a high chance that it will be. canada might be standing on the outside of reality, wearing a "neville chamberlain was right" tshirt, while europe moves towards abandoning ukraine.
how will american voters react?
i have explained here several times that the attempt to tie energy prices to the iran conflict is overstated. i do not support the endless war against russia (the cold war is over), but i do support regime change to rid the world of the terrorist death cult in iran, and i would like to see regime change in saudi arabia as well. energy prices are not up that much, relative to inflation. the real issue is inflation, not the straight of hormuz, and the issue in ukraine is a primary cause of the inflation. energy exports out of hormuz have largely normalized but energy prices haven't adjusted because it isn't really the issue. trump is actually getting the economics right on this; the media is not, it is wrong.
it doesn't seem likely that russia is going to get diesel on to the global market that quickly. the russians are, after all, using a fair amount of diesel in their war operations. if i was putin, i would prioritize a moratorium on fossil fuel exports because it's a threat to national security. the argument is that russia needs the money it gets by selling the fuel, but that argument isn't rooted in fact. due to decades of isolation under communism, russia is a largely self-sufficient society; there is nowhere in the world that could be self-sufficient, if not the russians. they are behind the west on technology and have been since day one, but they import almost nothing. the russian economy doesn't need to sell things to survive. that's why the sanctions have made the russians stronger and not weaker. this is an approach based on bad data and a bad analysis and it's never going to succeed.
nor is it clear that the russians want the republicans to win the midterms. the kremlin actually endorsed kamala harris. that was not reported in the western press, which continues to repeat debunked claims about russian intelligence influencing trump, which came from the clinton campaign in 2016 and are not based on reputable reporting by reputable sources but are just democratic party political propaganda. trump's attack on iran has severely weakened a regional ally of russia, which creates a security threat on it's large caspian sea border area and may potentially destabilize the kazakh buffer state. he also threw them out of syria. the democrats are not likely to have supported that; they withdrew from afghanistan, which very much was in russia's interests. trump has been a much bigger pain in the ass for putin than clinton or harris would have been or than biden was.
so, i'll believe it when i see it.
but i don't expect diesel prices to go down before the midterms.
if they do, however, american voters will be left with a decision. the democrats are running against inflation, but they have not presented anything resembling a concrete solution and there is little reliable data that it is a ballot issue for american voters (who are more concerned about congressional policies on immigration than inflation, which is a private sector concern that congressional legislation has no impact on). it is in fact true that the most substantive thing that could possibly be done to lower inflation is to end the war in ukraine. if it is trump that is taking actionable steps to lower inflation that the democrats in fact are actually opposing, while running against it, how will voters respond to that confusing mess?
if you're really concerned about inflation, you should support the diesel deal (even if it takes time to happen), you should support normalizing ties with russia and you should support ending the war in ukraine and western russia. all the democrats have to offer in response is complaining. they have no policy proposals, no answers that will work.
but my position is that the best way to reduce the effects of diesel prices on inflation is to stop using diesel, not to enforce policies to lower the price of diesel.
i want to encourage consumers on both sides of the north american border to avoid buying foods manufactured using diesel. the prices will help you figure that out. if the item seems expensive, don't buy it - force the store to mark it down first. don't buy it unless it's on sale. force the stores to seek lower price suppliers by forcing them to take losses on items manufactured using diesel.
the grocery industry will never be competitive. basic economic theory makes it clear that the industry is a natural oligopoly and that state interference in the oligopoly to try to force competition will only result in higher prices. rather, it is up to consumers to force the stores to lower prices by refusing to pay them.
the basic fact is that if you pay the price then it's not too high. you can bitch about it, but that's not important. what's important is that you paid it. the store will respond to sales, it won't respond to complaints. if you think it's too expensive, don't buy it. it's only consumer behaviour that will adjust prices in the oligopoly, and that's what they teach you in school in the modern era, rather than what they used to teach you in school in the 60s and 70s.
holding to classical economic theory like conservatives do is like holding to newtonian physics. it's wrong. it's been proven wrong; you adjust and learn or you fail. the current economic theory states that it's up to consumers to adjust prices through demand and not up to governments to force them to compete, as competition does not lower prices, it increases them. only shifts in demand have the power to adjust prices, and if you keep paying them, you just tell the stores they can charge what they're charging and they'll keep doing it.
high diesel prices combined with an appropriate consumer response is the only way to eliminate diesel use.
so just stop buying things that are too expensive, until the store marks them down. it's up to us to force those changes. that's how the economy actually works. it's not up to governments to try to force competition. that's not how the economy actually works.
ensuring access to suicide on demand in canada is the most important moral and cultural issue of our time, in canada. this government's decision to block it is illegal, immoral, uncanadian and out of touch with the cultural values of canadians in 2026. it should be resisted to the point of being discarded and ignored - full stop.
governments that don't follow the rule of law must be ignored until they are overthrown and replaced. all canadians have a civil and ethical duty to fight to overthrow this government for breaking the social contract and ignoring the rule of law.
it would be helpful if advocates would organize marches and demonstrations to demonstrate the level of support that exists for expanding the right to death in the secular society and post-religious culture of contemporary canada.
i strongly agree with this mp's comments and unequivocally condemn the government's decision to ignore the court's ruling, which clearly indicated that mentally ill canadians have a constitutional right under s. 7 of the canadian constitution to seek life-ending medical care.
medically assisted suicide should be available as a right to all canadians, regardless of mental health status. the process should even include a psychological exam to indicate that the individual seeking suicide is mentally sound to make a decision about ending their life.
the right to suicide is a personal, individual choice and not something the state has any place interfering in. the courts are correct. this government is once again wrong and once again on the wrong side of history. this is the wrong legal, cultural and moral decision to make for canadians and the courts will overturn it shortly.
i would call on doctors in canada to emulate morgantaler and continue to provide access to suicide, in defiance of the government's extra-legal and unconstitutional decision to try to stop it.
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