Tuesday, August 27, 2024

News roundup, 27 Aug 2024

- Despite Justin Trudeau's unpopularity with the general public, his cabinet are standing solidly behind him - at least publicly. The fact that the party has no mechanism to force him out probably has something to do with that.

- A patchwork of treaties and compacts dictate how water in the Colorado River system is shared between Mexico and the various affected US states. The problem is, the rules were drawn up over a century ago, at a time when the watershed received a lot more rainfall than it does now, and serious conflicts are looming unless new agreements can be reached. The one silver lining is that those conflicts would probably be worked through in courts rather than on the battlefield, which is more than can be said for the situation on the Nile or, much worse, the Indus.

- An Irish climate scientist is calling on her country to be proactive in moving people and key infrastructure, such as railway lines, away from the coasts before sea level rise becomes too severe.

- The push to force workers back to the office continues. This article concedes that working from home generally does not harm productivity or collaboration - but still argues that the push for RTO is a good thing. It blames working from home for the so-called "loneliness epidemic", which is kind of dubious (how many of your strongest social connections come from work?) but also says the quiet part out loud by admitting that the decline in commercial real estate is one of the biggest reasons. Strangely, it also blames remote work for "the growing homelessness and crime in city 'ghost towns'", which seems to me to be getting it backwards - devaluing real estate is a potential solution to homelessness, not a cause. That said, it does mention one valid concern - a decline in commercial real estate means declining tax revenues for municipalities.

- The Manitoba government has appointed an adviser to the Hanover school division, which serves the city of Steinbach and surrounding areas and has thus been riven with culture wars. The Tory opposition, predictably, is making angry noises about the move.

- Further to the reports that 7-Eleven is considering closing up to 10 locations in Winnipeg, the one at Arlington and Notre Dame was robbed six times in a single day.

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