- While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is not scheduled to release a comprehensive report on the state of things for several more years, many scientists say that the issue of tipping points needs far, far more attention. One group of scientists isn't prepared to wait 5-7 years and is preparing their own report, which they intend to present at COP28 in Dubai later this month.
- Argentina has gone full MAGA, as the Trumplike Javier Milei has won the runoff election for the presidency.
- While many, including myself, welcome the move in Winnipeg to relax zoning rules, the usual NIMBY suspects are saying typical NIMBY stuff. Since you can't publicly say "we don't want people different from us in our neighbourhood", they resort to vague platitudes about "character" and claim that it will "pit neighbour against neighbour". How this will pit neighbour against neighbour is not made clear; I have heard, though, that people who have bought infill houses in some St Vital neighbourhoods are getting a cold reception from longstanding residents. So maybe "don't pit neighbour against neighbour" means "don't provoke us to show our true colours to our new neighbours".
- Nearly half of Winnipeg Transit's employees are eligible for retirement in the next five years. Hopefully this doesn't cause trouble for Transit's ambitious plans to improve the network. In related news, Transit is planning to test shatterproof glass for bus shelters, to keep them from getting smashed quite so often. Seems like a good idea to me. Interestingly, they don't plan to release the pilot locations lest members of the public conduct their own impromptu testing. If the pilot is successful, it would be interesting to monitor whether other forms of vandalism increase due to a sort of "displaced aggression", or whether they decrease (as the much abused "broken windows" theory would predict).
- An MLA from the Saskatchewan Party (you know, the people who are supposedly so concerned about sexual morals that they don't want children to see any books about sex- and gender-related subjects lest they learn something) has been charged with communicating for the purposes of prostitution.
- A man entered a veterinary clinic (a mere 150 metres from my front door, incidentally) and pulled a knife on staff, attempting to stab one of them before they fled to back rooms. The man then locked the front doors of the clinic and began to wound himself when police arrived. He was successfully captured alive and was the only person injured in the incident. The veterinarian is one who has been the subject of numerous complaints, however the suspect and the people threatened were apparently not known to one another, so the fact that it was this clinic may be incidental. Perhaps there was meth to his madness.
- Hamilton's transit workers are returning to work following a tentative deal.
- A bronze sculpture of a horse's head, weighing about 90 kilograms, was stolen from a gallery in Vancouver. The effort that would have been required is considerable; a hydraulic lift was used to install the sculpture in the first place, but it was pulled off extremely quickly. Hopefully they're checking all the scrap metal dealers in Metro Vancouver for the item.
- The director of the University of Alberta's Sexual Assault Centre has been fired after signing an open letter that called reports of rape by Hamas attackers last month an "unverified accusation". This seems to have been provoked by a complaint by the Jewish Federation of Edmonton, who in a social media post said "Shouldn’t a sexual assault centre believe all victims and not just the non-Jewish ones?" One could argue that there's a difference in believing reports by individual persons and believing reports by a state, but perhaps we're not supposed to talk about that right now.
- The federal government is removing the ability to claim short-term rental-related expenses on your taxes in areas that restrict such rentals. Up until now the CRA has not penalized people who flout local by-laws regarding this, leaving enforcement entirely up to the municipalities.
- In Nova Scotia, the Eastern Hemlock (a coniferous tree, not to be confused with the deadly poisonous herbaceous plants like the Poison Hemlock and Water Hemlock) is suffering severely from the effects of the invasive Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, an aphidlike insect native to east Asia. Some predict that it could wipe out 90% of the hemlocks in the province; to prevent this, a beetle that preys in the pest is being imported in the hope of controlling it.
No comments:
Post a Comment