The World is Quiet Here - The Lagrange Point Vol. II, Iss. 2

Welcome to issue #2 of Volume 2 of The Lagrange Point!

I'm delighted to say I managed to get into a walk-in clinic and have a tentative diagnosis of a viral sinus infection of some manner. The good news is it should, eventually, resolve itself. The bad news is that until then there's not much I can do.

With that in mind, I'm going to take a brief hiatus following this edition. I'll be back in the new year, January 5, 2025.

Thank you for signing on, and please, continue to spread the word to others!

In This Issue

News You Can Use

• Damning evidence of IDF atrocities, a collapse of Canadian foreign policy, and more.

Rantables

• Why beat 'em when you can own 'em — why a US-invasion of Canada is really, really unlikely

And Lastly, A Word

• The World is Quiet Here — how to switch to an AI-free search engine

It has certainly been A Week. While I'm tempted to link to all the Liberal Party drama, I think, for the time being, I'd rather focus my attention elsewhere.

First and foremost, Haaretz published a damning investigation into IDF actions in Gaza, based primarily on firsthand sources from within the military itself. The result is a horrifying portrait of institutionalized murder of civilians, to the point it is treated as a competition. This story comes the same week that Human Rights Watch released a report condemning "acts of genocide" by Israel restricting access to water, and mere weeks after Amnesty International published a report concluding a genocide is occurring as well. With testimony now coming from inside the IDF itself, will western minds finally be swayed?

Signs point to no, at least in Canada, where Justin Ling at The Walrus has a terrific piece on how our foreign policy has steadily eroded to meaningless hand-waving. The headline is a bit misleading; as Ling points out, this has been a long time in the making, through at least the 90s and our limp-wristed response in Rwanda, so Trudeau is not solely to blame. I've been saying for a while that Pearson was our last PM who had a clear foreign policy vision, and it's nice to see someone with intelligence and expertise articulate that.

And right now, we're on the verge of a much, much worse turn in federal government, as the Breach reports. A chilling report from Paris Marx looks at how Pierre Poilievre seems to be cozying up to our own billionaire oligarchs, particularly the leaders of tech startup Shopify. If I'm being honest, this report is mostly speculative and relies pretty heavily on social media posts, but then again, it's not as though Poilievre or these oligarchs are going to agree to even talk to any media that isn't demonstrably right-wing, let alone answer questions on their intentions for our regulatory bodies and institutions.

Lastly, I want to highlight Sarah Krichel's heartbreaking and vulnerable personal essay at The Tyee on losing her dog and constructing photo memories. I've been painfully aware lately that Bailey is getting old (she'll turn 10 in April) and the thought of her inevitable passing is gnawing at my soul. A story like this helps me feel like there will be life after. Painful as it is.

It's brutal how familiar the sensation of Donald Trump putting out something breathtakingly idiotic and needlessly incendiary into the world is. Apparently American voters felt four years of this wasn't enough, so here we are again, enduring the earth-shattering, stock market-plunging douchefuckery of the most malicious sentient Cheeto on the face of the planet.

And what, pray tell, did he have for us up in Canada? Well, he decided to openly muse about how we should be annexed, calling us the "great State of Canada" with "Governor Trudeau."

Look, I could talk endlessly about the childishness, the global instability or the complete ignorance of these types of statements. But I really want to talk about how we Canadians responded.

Among my friends, and in the wider social media sphere, I saw plenty of bravado. Lots of posts referring to the War of 1812, a conflict which, one must emphasize, was fought between the BRITISH and the Americans. Lots of threats to burn the White House down.

And while I don't sincerely think most people are convinced that Trump would actually invade Canada, I do think there's a not-insignificant segment that are worried about that possibility.

Allow me to set your minds at...well, not ease, exactly. At logic? Cold, simple logic?

For that, let's start by examining the other responses I saw up in Canada. The enthusiastic ones, from people primarily on our right-wing, who were eager to proclaim that they, too, would love to see Canada annexed by the United States.

To those people, and to the ones worried about the most well-armed military in the world living next door, I ask you this: why bother?

Whatever Trump may think a trade deficit means (it doesn't mean a literal deficit, but that's neither here nor there), Canada is hardly worth conquering or annexing, inasmuch as it would improve the stature of American corporate interests (which are, first and foremost, the chief concern of American government until further notice).

Multinational corporations, including American ones, already run roughshod over our country in all manner of ways. Whether simply branching into our industries through subsidiaries or investment firms, or buying their way into our natural resources and bottling our water, American corporate interests already infiltrate us quite handily. This is to say nothing of how we serve as a useful consumer population, happily snapping up goods and exports.

In other words, the status quo serves corporate America quite nicely. There's little appetite there for a massive change like trying to seize a foreign country, even non-violently. Adopting Canada, so to speak, would be a costly venture for both parties, from currency to web URLs to signage to much more. And even though the fevered dreams of a few redneck Albertans sees them separating and joining their right-wing brethren to the south, it's a dream that's not shared by most Canadians, as polling data proves.

But let's say that corporate America felt threatened by Canada. Let's assume a wild dream, and pretend that Canada elected a protectionist, anti-American, and above all, SOCIALIST government. One that directly threatened the bottom line of billionaires.

Surely then, in that scenario, America would be quick to steamroll us in an armed conflict?

Well, again, I don't think this is very likely. Firstly, as much as mad King Trump thinks he can just issue an order and the army hops to it, I do think that the US isn't prepared to go THAT far in amending their constitution to allow war-declaring powers under any one individual. Going to war still requires approval of congress, and even though it is stacked with sycophants right now, I don't think they have QUITE enough crazy people to go that far.

But frankly, again, why bother?

Wouldn't it be easier to just do what they've always done?

The precedent is already well-established for how America behaves when a government they don't like takes power and threatens their money-making hegemony. The CIA is on record admitting to assassinations, coups, and regime change.

Chile. Bolivia. Iran. The list goes on.

Why do we think we would be any different? If anything, the fact that those right-wing elements exist here would make it easier.

Which brings me back to the chest-thumping bravado I saw after Trump's posts.

Look, I get that we really, really want to be better than America. I get that our identity is wrapped up in that. But we have to, at a certain point, recognize that the far-right call is coming from inside the house. Jordan Peterson? Gavin McInnes? Lauren Southern? Ezra Levant? We grow our alt-right just fine domestically, and these folks wouldn't just support a coup against a potential socialist Canadian government — they'd probably actively join in.

Indeed, I suspect if it ever came to that, the Americans would simply send arms to our domestic crazies and sit back and wait for nature to take its course. Hell, they might not even need to send arms. They just have to own our media, our politicians, our online platforms, and our means of communications. Like they already do.

Believe me, I wish that the answer to our problems would simply be to burn the White House down. I really wish it were that easy. But if we want to survive Trump 2.0, it's not about repelling foreign invasion. It's about addressing our domestic disturbance.

You can't stop at the border what's already here.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm already sick of Google putting AI crap in my search results. It came to a head for me when I saw a viral post on BlueSky about how a joke tweet literally became the AI text for a search result.

There are ways to get around Google doing this, like browser extensions that block the AI search result. But they're not really getting at the underlying problem. Namely, that AI is a garbage technology that is incredibly destructive to the environment due to its massive energy usage and need for ever-larger server facilities.

So, what can we do?

Well, the first step is finding a search engine that DOESN'T use AI. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. Bing and Google have both gone all in, and even indies like DuckDuckGo or Brave are signing on.

I've turned to Mojeek.

I'm still learning about it, but basically, it's an indie company in the UK that operates its own crawler-based search engine. The important thing is that the search results it brings back are not personalized, meaning your data and information is never given out, and the results are totally unbiased. Unfortunately, it's a small company, so the index is pretty small and needs time to grow.

That said, I'm using Mojeek because I care that much about not being fed AI garbage, advertisements, and corporate algorithms.

I don't expect everyone else to feel the same way. The fact is, so many technologies have been forcibly shoved down our throats to the point that they are ubiquitous to our daily lives. Avoiding them is almost impossible. I've said for a while now that if people thought Musk buying Twitter was a horrible upending of a major piece of communications infrastructure, just wait until corporate America really fucks with something like Google.

That's a company that's so ingrained in our lives, from it being one of the most popular email providers in the world to the western world's basic news media filter, that it literally is a verb in the English dictionary. "I Googled that" has now replaced "I did a search for that," and I don't see us going back.

Nevertheless. I'm all in on Mojeek. And the good news is that it's not hard to switch.

Firstly, you should be running Firefox. Full stop. Chrome and Edge are both horrid browsers that track your data and feed it into the corporate machine, and unfortunately, most privacy-based browsers are too arcane for your average consumer. Firefox strikes the perfect balance by being accessible while still maintaining standards of privacy and protection. So switch to it!

Once in Firefox, all you have to do is head to the top-right menu bar and access "Settings."

You can then search in settings for "search engine." You should get a bunch of results, and at the very bottom, an option for "find more search engines." Click on that and you'll get taken to the Firefox Add-on Page.

Do a search for Mojeek and you'll find a user-created extension that allows you to change your default search engine to Mojeek.

Is all this hassle worth it? Personally, I think it is. Mojeek uses a data centre that is 100% renewable energy powered, and it gives me no AI garbage when I search. I will freely admit that because it is small, sometimes it can be hard to find precisely what I'm looking for.

But here's the thing: this just shows how addicted I am to Googling things. Is it absolutely necessary that I Google every little piece of info that springs into my head? Not even a bit.

With the Mojeek extension in place, I'm finding that I'm much more deliberate if and when I have to go looking for something. I'm also finding that I'm much more inclined to visit a handful of dedicated news sources, instead of mindlessly going to Google, typing in a few buzzwords from social media, and gorging myself on corporate outlets that are pushed to the top results. And really, if I NEED Google, it's not like it's gone. I just open a tab, head to google.ca, and I'm off and running again.

Like I said, I don't expect everyone to do this. I know that it can be hard to pull away from something that is deeply ingrained in our daily lives. But I want to let you all know the option exists, should you want it.

I think it's doing me a world of good. The world feels quieter. Easier to process. It requires my deliberate attention, instead of doomscrolling and scattershot searches. And if nothing else, I know I'm not triggering a data centre powered by fossil fuels to spit out some AI-generated tripe when I Google "who's that woman in Brooklyn 99 S4E18" or "dog farts normal."

That wraps up Issue #2 of Volume II of The Lagrange Point! If you enjoyed this little e-newsletter, please consider subscribing, or, if you're already subscribed, sharing it with a friend or family member!

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Until next Monday, thank you for reading!

-Tim