As the former provincial chief psychiatrist of Manitoba, and having specialized in the assessment and treatment of both psychosis and addiction to alcohol, opioids and methamphetamine for over 25 years, it was with great interest that I learned about the Manitoba government’s recent proposal to advance Bill 48, the Protective Detention and Care of Intoxicated Persons Act.

I have concerns that this proposed law shows a lack of understanding of the options presently available for the detainment and assessment of citizens intoxicated on substances other than alcohol, and the important differences between alcohol intoxication and methamphetamine or opioid intoxication.

Firstly, Housing, Homeless and Addictions Minister Bernadette Smith states legislation now allows for a 24-hour involuntary holds for people intoxicated by alcohol, but for those intoxicated by other substances, the choice is to either criminalize them or take them to a hospital where they are often waiting “… 10 hours plus with police.”

Both of these statements are either false or represent worst-case scenarios.

Charles introduced himself to me via an email. He said he was assisting his 80-year-old cousin, John, who has a DNA match with one of my relatives and therefore believes he is “closely connected” to my family.

Charles further explained that he and John were trying to determine whether the connection was at my grandfather or my great-grandfather’s generational line. Essentially, he wanted to know if I, as the oldest surviving member of the Horsburgh family, was willing to help by “doing” a DNA kit.

To say that I was shocked to discover that I might have a hitherto unknown 80-year-old relative would be an understatement. I was also shocked to receive a request to consider participating in a DNA process that I knew little or nothing about.

But as always, information is power. The business of personal genetic-testing kits is booming, and as such, it is incumbent upon consumers to learn about the risks associated with this business.

Javier Milei, the Elon Musk wannabe who became president of Argentina two years ago, chainsaw in hand, is in deep trouble with the voters and the midterm elections are due this month. He has the same political agenda as U.S. President Donald Trump, give or take a folly or two, so he asked his populist big brother for help and Trump delivered.

Milei faces US$20 billion of foreign debt repayments next year and there was no money in the kitty, so Trump bailed Argentina out with a US$20-billion currency swap, followed by reports about an administration attempt to have private sector banks and wealth funds offer up another US$20 billion. But Argentines still seemed quite cross at Milei’s huge cuts in jobs and public services and they needed a bigger incentive to vote for him.

Sitting in the White House with Milei last Tuesday, Trump told the Argentine people “You know, our approvals are somewhat subject to who wins the election. If (Milei) loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina.” Or as the real mafia used to put it: “Nice little country you’ve got here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”

Shamefully, Milei did not reject that blatant intervention in his country’s elections. When Trump treated Brazil in a similar way, demanding that convicted ex-president Jair Bolsonaro not go to jail for his attempted coup and threatening to impose a 50 per cent tariff on all the country’s exports to the U.S., the Brazilians told him to go ahead and be damned.

“The thing that comforts me,” said Jeff Boudier at Hugging Face, the leading open platform for AI builders, “is that the internet was built on the ashes of the over-investment into the telecom infrastructure of yesterday,” during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. The coming AI crash “is going to enable lots of great new products and experiences including ones we’re not thinking about today.”

Boudier’s optimism is charming, but note that he assumes this will all happen some years after the current AI-driven boom in global and especially American markets has crashed and burned, taking some of the “magnificent seven” tech companies (Meta, Tesla, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia) down with it.

Meanwhile ordinary folk will have to live through the post-crash years one day at a time, and they may find it quite difficult.

Boudier’s promise, credible or not, is that the half-trillion dollars now being hurled at AI infrastructure — data centres, graphics processing units, land purchases, construction — will at least leave behind hardware that will serve the next AI boom in the 2030s.