In late June and early July there was some movement on police reform in the United States. It stalled in Congress. Why? It honestly depends on who you ask, but it is some combination of House and Senate leadership refusing to compromise.

This leads to the NBA protests. What can they do? Force their elected representatives back to work. In all democracies (I’m Canadian, for what it’s worth) those who are elected are done so to serve the will of the people. Andrew Breitbart said that politics is downstream from culture. The NBA players have a lot of cultural power. This could be an example where they can wield that to force political change, provided they actually present a goal.

Having been paying attention to the ketogenic community for the last year or so, the news about Scheer and the Canadian Food Guide is entertaining. Perhaps more accurately, the defensive reaction has been entertaining.

The idea that the process was apolitical is laughable. If a minister or their staff talked to anyone about it, there was political influence. Even if Canadian Federal politics weren’t involved, there are a whole different kind of academic politics that would be involved. Even a cursory reading of Gary Taubes’ book, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” would show that political cliques in nutrition research has shaped the academic consensus.

Also, that consensus has likely been wrong.

There is one thing I will give the Food Guide; they do frequently speak of cultural differences. It’s frequently speaking about new immigrants and First Nations’ diets. It really doesn’t go far enough.

There are few times where we can really call ourselves special snowflakes and unique, but with diets and reactions to food, we really can.

Listening to 2KetoDudes for over a year now, I have been inundated with the evidence that ketosis is a beneficial biological state. Being married to a first generation Canadian, I am also faced with the fact that carbohydrates are not the devil and will cause all kinds of problems.

We know that we don’t know a lot of how we work. Our bodies are not a closed system, and we are not in complete control.

We do have a growing understanding of how what we ingest impact our functions though. This is my greatest critique of the ketogenic community as well. Not everybody should be on any particular diet. We should all be aiming to be healthy, and given our particular snowflakey selves.

To that extent, we don’t need a guide, we need a protocol. How different foods typically impact people, along with information of how to get to a healthy balance given your current state. Some Chinese cultures do this through the idea of “hot” and “cool” foods. I think there are more axes than just the one, but the idea is the same.

So, Scheer is right, if incorrectly motivated.

My wife and I were at a restaurant a few days ago and the food was only ok. There are mediocre restaurants all over the place, that’s not uniquely Canadian at all.

But as we discussed my dish, we talked about the last time I had it. We were at a bistro in Paris, and we said, “Well we can’t expect this to be as good as Paris.”

It took me a few seconds after we said that to pause and think, “Well that’s a very Canadian thought.” That a random restaurant might not be as good as a random one in Paris is no big deal, but to expect that it wouldn’t be? That’s something that bugged me afterwards.

Though it feels like a Canadian thing doesn’t it? Outside of a few things I don’t think we ever necessarily expect to be the best, or as good as any given competitor.

The news cycle has moved on as it inevitably does, but it’s still concerning how the reaction to the FCC changes on internet regulation were taken.

My biggest problem is that it has been nakedly partisan without understanding the need to separate governance of the web and governance of competition.

Governance of the web should be simple, don’t do it. Packet sniffing , shaping, and then picking and choosing favourites just worsens everyone’s experience. Governments should ideally just mandate that internet providers don’t worsen anybody’s experience for their own gain.

It’s the ISP’s gain that needs to be addressed. So many of these companies in North America have content businesses that they have anti-competitive motivations. There should not be a huge difference made from choosing one video provider over another. Under proper web governance (see above), there wouldn’t be. You can bundle subscriptions to your service in with an internet service, but you can’t make others intentionally worse.

There is also competition governance of the internet giants, “FAANG” if you will. This is where this piece, from Matthew Walther in “The Week”, doesn’t completely suck. There has definitely been a creative/destructive phase as a result of the internet. We as a people are still struggling to cope with the changes that the internet has brought. However, giving ISPs the ability to pick and choose favourites is not going to benefit anyone but the ISPs.

The neutrality discussion should centre around the use of infrastructure. The effective marginal cost of a byte is 0, where you are access content does not impact the service provider at all. If the goal of ending neutrality is about rent seeking, it will not provide value to anyone.

McArdle on Neutrality

There is more to it than I want to type on my phone, but there is a good point that is made here. Sites have already broken many of the promises of a neutral web.

I don’t think that ISPs need to be regulated as tightly as the Type 2 regulations allowed for, ideally we create a new paradigm for them. The arguments of preventing ISPs from meddling with connections, or selling data to third parties need to be addressed. I may be Canadian, but Verizon’s super cookies are still concerning.