- A problem with a piece of cybersecurity software, Falcon Sensor, has knocked a lot of Windows computers offline, affecting numerous industries. The product's manufacturer, CrowdStrike, attributes this to a software update. It didn't affect any of the systems at my workplace, but caused major disruption elsewhere; Porter Airlines had to ground all their flights this morning because of the outage. Air Canada and Westjet were not affected, though some American carriers were. Much more serious, it had a significant impact on healthcare in some places; kinda gives a whole new meaning to "Blue Screen of Death".
- Bookmakers are saying that Donald Trump's chances of winning this fall have declined since his speech at the RNC yesterday. David Axelrod, who served as Barack Obama's chief strategist for both of his campaigns, called the speech "the first good thing that's happened to Democrats in the last three weeks". It's worth noting, though, that the day before bookies were saying that Joe Biden's chances had fallen since his COVID-19 diagnosis.
- People close to Biden are apparently saying that he might be recognizing the need to drop out of the race. Publicly, though, he still says he'll be staying on. One thing is clear, though - the longer this uncertainty goes on, the worse things start looking for the election.
- A federal court has blocked the remaining parts of Biden's student debt relief package that had not already been blocked in a previous decision. Whether this will motivate young voters to vote for the Democrats, or give them the impression that it's pointless, remains to be seen.
- The wife of Corey Comperatore, the man killed at the Trump rally last weekend, says she has yet to get any message of condolences from the former president. Meanwhile, one doctor is questioning the nature of Trump's injuries, pointing out the fact that no medical report has been made public, suggesting that what actually wounded him was glass from a teleprompter that was hit in the shooting (which doesn't sound as cool as actually taking a bullet, of course).
- A blogger with far more patience than I have has gone through the recently released transportation master plan for Winnipeg and found some curious paradoxes. While a lot of ink is spilled (rightly) on the need to shift to more sustainable modes of transportation and get more cars off the road, and to give priority to maintaining existing roadways rather than building new ones, 42% of the spending recommended in the plan is actually for building new roads. The blogger suggests that "the whole 'new roads' angle really reads like someone wrote a good plan, then someone else came up behind them with a red marker to insert road expansions as a key priority, in order to justify what they already want to do".
- Apparently the risk of developing "long COVID" has declined since the early days of the pandemic. Vaccination is thought to be a possible reason, though changes in the virus itself may also be a factor. In any case, the risk of developing long COVID after getting infected is still about 3.5%, which is not insignificant.
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