Good morning. Everything is being “maxxed” now, from looks and sleep to foreign policy – more on that below, along with Alberta’s beefed-up police force and new military aid for Ukraine. But first:

• In State of the Union address, Trump touts economic agenda amid declining support
• David Eby calls on Ottawa to regulate when AI providers must report their users to police
• First planes and now trains threaten landowners as Quebec’s Mirabel region braces for high-speed rail

This is the month that Clavicular – a 20-year-old influencer from Hoboken, N.J., born Braden Peters – slipped the confines of the manosphere and shot to wider fame. The New York Times treated him to a lengthy profile. GQ tagged along to his runway debut at New York Fashion Week. He’s the subject of podcasts and Polymarket betting and maybe a new Hulu documentary. The Globe and Mail just published a comprehensive (if somewhat apologetic) explainer on the guy.

For the uninitiated (with my apologies too): Clavicular is the reigning king of an online subculture consumed by physical perfection, and he’s willing to go to drastic lengths to make himself handsome. He claims to have smoked meth to hollow out his cheeks. He’s injected steroids and testosterone to increase his muscles. He’s a big fan of “bone-smashing,” which involves taking an actual hammer to your actual face to coax a chiselled jawline. Medical experts would really prefer you not do that.

Clavicular’s viral behaviour is part of a practice known as looksmaxxing, where young men – it’s almost always straight young men – try to maximize their appearance to improve their dating odds. And if that name has a familiar ring, it’s because there’s hardly a corner of Gen Z’s internet left untouched by some sort of “-maxxing.” It’s become the suffix that just won’t quit, a tidy tagline for a culture bent on optimizing everything.

To the maxx

Do you put on a few spritzes of perfume before leaving the house? Then I’m obliged to report that you’re engaged in smellmaxxing. Have you purchased a sunrise alarm clock or an Oura smart ring? Congrats on sleepmaxxing. Cooking with spices is flavourmaxxing. Getting a tan is sunmaxxing. Snuggling up with a soft blanket is – what else? – cozymaxxing.

And buying a Labubu doll or an Adidas Tang-style jacket is Chinamaxxing – a crucial plank of Beijing’s soft power campaign to win hearts and minds abroad. While the U.S. is busy dismantling the old world order, middle powers are now dabbling in a little Chinamaxxing themselves. Prime Minister Mark Carney, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz all met with President Xi Jinping recently, hoping to ink strategic partnerships and diversify their trade.

The attention agenda

It may not surprise you that the current U.S. administration – perhaps the most terminally online group of politicians ever assembled in the world – has tried to co-opt this Gen Z jargon. Two weeks ago, the Republican National Committee sent out a press release praising President Donald Trump for jobsmaxxing the economy. Just before that, the Department of Defense posted an image of a beaming soldier with the caption “Low cortisol. Locked in. Lethalitymaxxing.” It would’ve been cringeworthy were it not so terribly on the nose: Hours earlier, the U.S. military carried out another boat strike in the Eastern Pacific, killing two people.

For his part, Clavicular doesn’t appear to have much of a political affiliation. He’s palled around with white supremacist Nick Fuentes and alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate, both notorious fixtures of the far-right manosphere, but also said he’d vote for California Governor Gavin Newsom over Vice-President JD Vance in a 2028 presidential race. It’s a matter of aesthetics, not ideology: Newsom is handsome, while Clavicular thinks Vance is “subhuman” and “fat.”

Above all, Clavicular seems to care about the algorithm, boosting his clicks and his followers through a willingness to say or do absolutely anything. Call it attentionmaxxing, and chalk it up to Trump, the dominant figure in world politics since Clavicular was nine years old. No one’s been more successful at hijacking the attention economy with a post, a boast, a vague threat or a State of the Union address – which clocked in at nearly two hours last night, the longest in American history. Trump did seem to be flagging by the end of the speech, though. Maybe he was maxxed out.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest has prompted calls by British MPs to ditch a rare convention preventing lawmakers from criticizing the Royal Family. Read more about the long-standing rule here.