Tahir Merali

Happy Navroz to Calgary's Persian, Ismaili, Parsi, and all communities celebrating the arrival of a new year! Navroz is a beautiful reminder of renewal, hope, and the promise that comes with new beginnings. Calgary is enriched by the traditions, culture, and spirit you bring to our city every day. Wishing you and your loved ones a year filled with joy, prosperity, and good health. Navroz Mubarak!

Tonight, Muslims across Canada and around the world will celebrate Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan — a time of gathering with family and friends, feasting, and reflection. To all those celebrating: Eid Mubarak!

Steve Jobs literally gave a 10-minute masterclass on building a company (better than $100K MBA):

After seven years of the UCP, Albertans are getting closed emergency rooms and excuses instead of accountability. Just this past week, on her radio show, the premier claimed there are no staffing shortages in Alberta’s health-care system. cbc.ca/news/canada/ed…

Danielle Smith can jet off to Saudi Arabia in the middle of a teachers’ strike on a secret, foreign-funded private plane, but calls programs for disabled Albertans and seniors “overly generous.” That tells you everything.

A drone struck a fuel tank at Dubai International Airport. The world’s busiest international hub. Flights temporarily suspended. Smoke visible across the city per live footage. ADNOC, the UAE’s national oil company, has shut in more than 50 percent of crude output. Fujairah loading halted. This is no longer a crisis contained to a 21-mile strait. Proxy forces attributed to Iranian-backed groups are now striking civilian energy and aviation infrastructure in a Gulf state that is not a direct belligerent in this conflict. The UAE did not conduct strikes in Operation Epic Fury. Yet it hosts Fertiglobe, one of the largest nitrogen fertilizer operations in the region at 6.6 million tonnes of annual capacity, whose entire export volume is now trapped behind a strait that is mined, uninsured, and unescorted. The ADNOC shut-ins are not the result of direct hits on oil facilities. They are the result of a Hormuz transit collapse so total that production without export capacity becomes a liability. When you cannot ship it, you stop pumping it. This is the escalation path that markets have not priced. The consensus assumption is that the Hormuz crisis is a transit problem. Reopen the strait, restart the flow. But what happens when the conflict expands beyond the chokepoint itself and begins striking the energy infrastructure of the Gulf states that sit behind it? The transit problem becomes a confidence problem. Even if the strait reopened tomorrow, would commercial operators trust that the facilities loading their cargo are safe from the next drone? Would insurers underwrite a vessel loading at Fujairah when a fuel tank at Dubai airport was struck this morning? Tehran does not need to match American airpower. What Iranian-backed forces are demonstrating is that asymmetric pressure on Gulf civilian infrastructure accomplishes three objectives simultaneously. It raises the cost of Gulf states hosting American operations. It undermines commercial confidence in the production and loading infrastructure that would restart exports. And it stretches US defensive resources across yet another front, from Baghdad embassies to Gulf fuel depots, further delaying the Hormuz escorts that remain the only pathway to restoring fertilizer flows. The US military is now defending personnel and facilities across Iraq, partner infrastructure in the Gulf, and its own carrier groups in the Arabian Sea. All while trying to assemble a multinational escort coalition that Germany formally refused today, Japan previously declined, and Australia has not joined. Washington is shouldering this burden largely alone against an adversary executing a multi-front resource-denial strategy with disciplined patience. Meanwhile the fertilizer arithmetic grows worse by the hour. One-third of global seaborne fertilizer trade passes through Hormuz per UNCTAD. Transit down 97 percent. Nearly 49 percent of traded urea tied to conflict-exposed Gulf exporters. Bangladesh has shut four to five of its six major urea factories. India is running plants at 60 percent capacity and has formally asked China for emergency urea. China has banned phosphate exports through August. Egypt faces $28 billion in debt repayments while feeding 69 million people on bread subsidies hemorrhaging at prices nobody budgeted. 318 million were at crisis-level hunger before February 28. The Corn Belt needs nitrogen by mid-April. India needs Kharif prep by May. Australia needs urea by June. Every drone that hits Gulf infrastructure is not just an act of aggression against a sovereign state. It is an extension of the same siege that is strangling the food system sustaining four billion people. The planting calendar does not distinguish between a blocked strait and a burning fuel depot. Both produce the same outcome: molecules that do not arrive in time. The window is not just closing because the strait is blocked. It is closing because the crisis is expanding beyond it. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

THE 2028 WORLD CUP OF HOCKEY HOSTS ARE SET 🇨🇦🇨🇿 Round-robin games will be split between Calgary and Prague, while the semifinals and final will take place in Edmonton 🏒

This was the last view from the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility on top of Mount Kea, Hawaii before the power went out Friday. I've never seen this much snow on the cam and I've also never seen the cam go down. 54,000 ppl are without power in Hawaii this morning.

Haleakala on Maui recorded 812.8mm of rain yesterday. NAM weather model says they are expecting another 787.4mm of rain over the next 24 hours, and another 1,800mm of rain combined over the next 48 hours. This is quite likely the most powerful Category 5 Atmospheric Rivers we have ever seen on Planet Earth in recorded history. In 72 hours, portions of Hawaii may see double the amount of Rainfall that Vancouver, BC would see in an entire year. Think about how wet of a city we are. Double our annual rainfall in just a 72 hour time span. Beyond baffling to see this. I can't even begin to imagine what 8+ feet of rain would do to an area falling in just 3 days. Sure Hawaii has seen a thing or two. But this is beyond extreme for any location on earth.

American service members are dead and you think this is all some big fucking joke. Was it the hole in one, the slam dunk, or home run that killed those Iranian children? Disgusting.

NASA clears its Artemis moon rocket for an April launch with four astronauts following repairs ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/artic…

CANADA MAKES PARALYMPIC HISTORY 🤩 The Canadian wheelchair curling team finished 9-0 in round-robin play, becoming the first team in Paralympic history to go undefeated in the round robin 🇨🇦

All #ArtemisII Flight Readiness teams polled GO for launch!!! On track for roll out next week (the 19th), targeting the April launch window starting April 1st!!! A day time launch!!! (April 2nd is also an option) Let’s go!!!

"Alberta ICE" is here. This week on ‘Whatever This Is’, the UCP is spending $156 million to copy-paste an American nightmare: ICE. Expanded powers. Anonymous tips. Zero independent accountability. It’s a tactic ripped straight from the US playbook. #ableg #abpoli #canpoli

In-space view of the largest commercial communications array antenna in low-Earth orbit, fully unfolded. Congrats on the successful launch of BlueBird 6 @AST_SpaceMobile! Image taken from 106 km away at a 16 cm/px resolution.

The @FAANews has made a favorable payload determination for Haven-1 following interagency review with NASA, the State Department, the Commerce Department, and national security stakeholders. This marks another step forward in launching Haven-1, expected to be the world's first commercial station when it is ready to launch in Q1 2027.

Fun fact from Voyager's 10-K filing: the contract to launch the Starlab space station on a SpaceX Starship is worth $90 million.

Federal - NDP MP for Nunavut, Lori Idlout, has crossed the floor to the Liberals

Now if this was the offer and they refused, we should all be mad.

The first all women team to support robotic operations from our Canadian Control Centre! Meet Roxanne Côté-Bigras, Miranda Taylor, and Julie Winterburn. They used Canadarm2 to grapple Japanese cargo vehicle HTV-X1 before its release. A great milestone for us! 🦾