Notes from the edge of civilization: February 23, 2025
A short but sweet potpourri of cancelled vacations, super pigs, and sneaker heists on the rails. Welcome to the weirdness of collapse.
Vacation in Florida? No way, eh!
The Associated Press reports a growing number of Canadians are choosing not to vacation in the US this year. One travel agent in Vancouver is quoted, anecdotally, saying he’s seen a complete drop off in interest in travel to America. “I’ve had no requests for travel to the United States for about two weeks.”
We say give it another two weeks and they’ll be back. Just like in 2020, when Canadians raged online about child separations and Muslim travel bans but then actually headed south in record numbers, lured by cheap flights, favorable exchange rates, and FOMO (fear of missing out).
Soon every frozen Canadian’s rationality will kick in. "I mean, I know Donald Trump’s terrible, but there’s a Blue Jays game on and I already booked my tickets and if I don’t go it’ll hurt the local economy." Classic, eh?
Sounds eerily similar to Hollywood stars moving to Canada in protest. Not gonna happen.
You know who doesn’t mind crossing the border these days? Canada’s “super pigs” – aggressive, smart, destructive, and able to withstand extreme cold temperatures. Yeah, these are real animals.
These genetically-engineered wild boar-crossbreeds have been tearing up farmland in Saskatchewan for a while and now they're gearing up for a take-over of US border states — not unlike what happened with Alan Alda and John Candy in the 1995 cult classic, Canadian Bacon. Experts warn it's a matter of "when," not "if," these porcine ecological disasters make their way south. Maybe this was the border security President Trump was REALLY talking about.
Saskatchewan farmers like Alain Guillet are working overtime to hunt the pigs, but they’re proving to be difficult to knock out as they reproduce faster than one can shoot them. Worse, they’ll eat anything to survive.
In Montana, ranchers are clinging to barbed-wire fences and praying the piggy apocalypse can be staved off. The state has launched a "Squeal on Pigs" campaign, urging anyone who has seen feral swine to alert officials. We would have opted for “Swinal Tap.”
Let’s give Canada a break, eh?
To do that, we bring you this rather serious story about a crew of audacious sneaker-snatchers turning US eastbound freight trains into their personal Nike clearance sales.
According to the LA Times, they hop on, slash an air brake hose to force the train into a panic stop, and then casually offload millions worth of unreleased kicks — because why wait for a store sale when you can commit felony in the middle of the Mojave Desert?
One heist in Arizona saw almost 2,000 pairs of top-tier Nikes vanish into thin air, all part of a well-orchestrated scheme by transnational crooks (mostly Sinaloa locals) who seem to think railroads are the perfect runway for their high-stakes hustle.
Meanwhile, rail companies prefer to keep quiet about these ongoing theft sprees — after all, no one wants to air their dirty laundry when it’s a $100 million problem.
There were at least 65,000 railroad cargo thefts last year, a 40% increase from 2023, according to industry estimates compiled by the Assn. of American Railroads. The thefts — which are typically classified as burglaries because they don't involve directly confronting victims, as with robberies — are believed to have cost the nation's largest rail companies more than $100 million, according to the trade group.
Those figures may be an undercount, because railroads don't publicize all thefts, said [Keith Lewis, vice president of operations at Verisk’s CargoNet and a deputy with the Mohave County, Ariz., Sheriff's Department]. Details typically emerge publicly only when arrests are made and criminal complaints are filed.
"Why would I want to put my own dirty laundry on the street?" Lewis said. “If I show a theft trend going along a rail line, everybody’s going to know the railroad has a problem.”
Genetically modified boars were created and released? What kind of warped plan is that and who is to blame for that?
It appears there's no accountability or liability for destroying the balance of nature, or some people's livelihood.