I visited an old friend over the weekend. We did a ropes course and went roller skating, among other things. Notes:

1. I miss doing focused or interesting exercise. At the ropes place, you could choose courses with different difficulties, and the one that really challenged me was so much fun. It's been a long time since I combined exercise with heavy concentration.

2. Roller skating to good music also tapped into something I miss. It felt like the most fun parts of dancing at a night club, but in an all-ages wholesome way.

3. There's a certain casual way of roller skating where you look super relaxed, and leisurely swing one leg out and place it in front of the other when you're shifting your weight, and it all looks super cool and mellow.

4. I ended up throwing my back out the next day, and I think the soreness from the ropes course was the proximal trigger, because it went out at the top, near my neck, and the ropes course targeted the top of my back, whereas I felt the roller skating in my lower back. Anyway the next few days have kind of sucked.

Mossy Character sends in Imperial Oil faces multiple environmental assessments without comment.

An Imperial project to replace pipelines at its Norman Wells facility - the Line 490 project, which the company said was vital work to unlock access to more oil and keep the facility going - was referred to environmental assessment by the Sahtu Secretariat last month.

The Sahtu Secretariat represents the regions Sahtu Dene and Métis. The decision to refer the pipeline work was not unanimous among the secretariat's members, but a letter from Sahtu Secretariat Chair Charles McNeely said the drilling technique proposed beneath the Mackenzie River "clearly calls for a full environmental assessment."

Now, the regulatory record shows a second environmental assessment has been opened covering Imperial's licence to operate the entire facility for the next five to 10 years.

I know Mossy has great confidence in me to say something smart, but I think I'm missing something here.

But my flight is boarding! Byeeeeee.

Dave W writes: Interesting substack article by a woman who grew up in a MAGA-adjacent family and got out, about her Trump-supporting relatives.

These days, my dad won't condemn Trump. He says, "We had to do something about immigration." He doesn't want to talk about climate change. He doesn't care about what's going on with DOGE.

Neither does my brother.

Even though neither of them vote, they're a classic example of voting against your interests. They don't vote out of conscience. They don't opt out of politics for any reason other than their own indifference. They honestly don't care who's running things. They believe it doesn't affect them.

And yet, my dad lost at least a hundred thousand dollars to a broken healthcare system over my mom's mental and physical illness. He paid astronomical bills to doctors who never returned his calls and complained when he nagged them for the results of tests he paid for. He spent years looking for the only longterm care facility in the state that would take a paranoid schizophrenic patient. He spent countless hours haggling with his insurance.

You know when they say if you don't do politics, politics does you? Well, politics did my dad. It did him over and over.

He never did politics back.

My dad doesn't understand, or won't admit, that Republican lawmakers in his state screwed us out of a fortune, by presiding over a broken healthcare system designed to exploit people like us. His solution to every problem like this one has been: work harder, save more, and ride it out.

My dad doesn't identify as MAGA, but he's MAGA adjacent. My in-laws don't identify as MAGA either, but they still support Trump.

Heebie's take: It's a quick read, and it rings true to me. I have so much anger aimed at these people.