It wasn’t all dark. Just mostly.

Fox News: J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, Ursula Le Guin — these fantasy masters are revered for their ability to create entire new worlds. None of them hold a candle to Fox News. Dressing up like a Klingon at Comic-Con? Piss-ant stuff. The Rupert Murdoch-owned broadcast channel has managed to create an alternate universe superimposed upon our own, a world with its own facts and reality in which its viewers actually dwell. Fox News is Disneyland for chumps.

Gas prices: The single economic factor that lays bare the futility of all political action. To wit: a carbon tax combined with a rebate should leave most Canadian families no worse off, yet discourage fossil fuel use. Too complicated! “Axe the tax” is three simple words. Carbon tax aside, gas prices are for the most part outside government control. Never mind — they make motorists angry, and angry people vote. The opposition candidate is openly authoritarian and has no realistic plan to reduce gas prices anyway? Too bad. We’re pissed, so we’re voting for the apple-munching martinet, or the Project 2025 guy. Fossil fuels hold not only our climate hostage but our politics too.

Genocide: This month, Amnesty International declared that sufficient evidence has been gathered to confirm Israeli actions in Gaza amount to genocide, saying “Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity.” The Israeli foreign ministry replied that Amnesty International was “deplorable and fanatical.” The same day, the Israeli military announced that air strikes on a Palestinian tent camp that killed 21 people had been aimed at Hamas.