News roundup, 6 March 2025

- The Trump regime is deferring some of its tariffs, specifically those on Big Three automakers, for another month. Whether this is a result of Trump seeing the impact of tariffs on share prices, or if it's just another move meant to confuse us isn't clear.

- The regime has stayed its decision to fire nearly 6,000 employees of the US Department of Agriculture, following an order from Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) to reinstate the employees pending an investigation of the legality of the layoffs. Of course, knowing who we're dealing with, this might just mean the regime has to dissolve the MSPB before they re-fire them.

- The US has stopped sharing intelligence on Russia with Ukraine. Whether they are sharing intelligence on Ukraine with Russia is another question, of course.

- A Canadian teenager who was backpacking through Europe was recruited by the FSB after volunteering with what he initially thought was a humanitarian organization in Donetsk; he then went to Poland so he could make contact with the Polish military. He was caught after getting drunk and spilling the beans to hotel staff in Warsaw, and has now received a 20 month sentence.

- Manitoba's interim opposition leader, Wayne Ewasko, has belatedly apologized on behalf of the entire Progressive Conservative party for their stance in opposition to searching the Prairie Green Landfill for the remains of murdered indigenous women. The fact that human remains now appear to have been found probably meant that the party's previous position was even less tenable than it was when they were defeated in the election in which they campaigned on that.

- Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham has rejected a recommendation from city administrators that the upgrade of the North End Sewage Treatment Plant be financed by hiking water and sewer rates. The upgrade definitely is needed; Gillingham favours a more modest increase to keep the work moving along while trying to find another source of revenue.

- The Canadian Food Inspection Agency reports an increase in the number of complaints about inaccurate or misleading country of origin labels in grocery stores.

- Two people have been arrested after driving their cars into a picket line at the Region of Waterloo International Airport. Nobody was seriously hurt.

News roundup, 5 March 2025

- The Trump regime, as expected, has imposed its threatened 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico; counter-tariffs are being imposed on some US exports. Justin Trudeau has stated something that many of us would consider at least plausible, namely the fact that Trump's tariffs are intended to soften Canada up for annexation. What's noteworthy is that in his standing up to the Americans now, Trudeau is showing more political courage than he has at any previous time in his career, much as Jean Chrétien declined to join the US and UK in their ill-conceived (not to mention criminal) adventure in Iraq only after he had announced that he would be retiring prior to the next election. That's the Liberal Party of Canada way, I think. But hey, we'll take it.

- Several provinces are already taking retaliatory action. Manitoba's Wab Kinew is focusing on "non-tariff countermeasures", including the removal of American alcohol from shelves as well as giving businesses the option to defer their payroll and sales tax. Ontario's Doug Ford has cancelled an agreement with Elon Musk's Starlink and banning US companies from procurement contracts; Ford is also exploring export levies on electricity and critical minerals. BC's David Eby is selectively pulling "red state" liquors, so you'll be able to buy California and Washington wine, but not Jack Daniels or Jim Beam. Nova Scotia's Tim Houston is not only pulling American booze but doubling tolls for US-registered commercial vehicles passing through the Cobequid Pass. Even Danielle Smith, one of only two premiers certifiably worse than Doug Ford, is now saying she "fully supports" the federal government's response and will be discussing her own government's response with her cabinet shortly.

- Tom Brodbeck is unimpressed with the level of resistance to Trump's policies in the US. Some say that this is actually a failure of the media to cover protests rather than an actual lack of protests; there are some photos of what look like big protests in this Reddit thread but I'm not sure how representative they are or even if they're being posted in accurate context.

- US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says that Trump is willing to meet Canada and Mexico "in the middle". Does that mean we'll have to settle for 12.5% tariffs? Or does it mean that Trump is getting spooked by crashing stock markets? Stay tuned I guess.

- Despite how Trump treated him the other day, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not abandoning hope that Trump will come to his senses. Then again, the sad truth of the matter is that Trump and Putin hold all the cards. I suspect Ukraine will be forced to make major territorial concessions, unless Europe can somehow make up for the fact that the US has suspended all military aid to the country.

- The UK government is considering several possible alternatives to prison, including banning offenders from pubs and sporting events. I guess for many of the typical offenders such a punishment might be so devastating that it might make them think twice about reoffending?

News roundup, 4 March 2025

- The 25% tariffs on nearly all imports from Canada and Mexico ware going ahead. Canada, along with China who are being hit with 20% tariffs, are imposing a number of retaliatory measures in response; stock markets on both sides of the border have taken a beating. Doug Ford is vowing to cut off electricity exports to the US if this goes ahead. Perhaps an even more effective measure would be a potash embargo - they can find other sources of electricity a lot more easily than potash. Some also think that American fast food franchises could be replaced by Canadian ones; whether patriotism is enough to overcome marketing in the case of things like McDonalds or KFC remains to be seen, though.

- Following remarks by Volodymyr Zelenskyy that an agreement to end the war is "very far away", Trump has announced that he is pausing all military aid to Ukraine until Zelenskyy is able to satisfy him that Kyiv is "committed to good faith negotiations for peace". This will apparently be assessed entirely on Trump's subjective perceptions, just like every other judgment he makes.

- Trump has issued an executive order expanding logging on federal lands, and wants to use emergency powers to get around the habitat protection provisions of the Endangered Species Act.

- There was apparently a conspicuous lack of political expression at the Oscars over the weekend. Given that in the past people like Michael Moore often weren't shy about what they said while accepting their awards, it's kind of strange, if this report is accurate. And unsettling - it's a sign of how scared they are.

- WWE co-founder Linda McMahon has been appointed Secretary of Education by the Trump administration. They don't leave a whole lot left for the satirists to do, do they?

News roundup, 3 March 2025

- Volodymyr Zelenskyy attempted to talk some sense into Donald Trump and JD Vance in a meeting at the White House on Friday. It did not go well; Trump and Vance spent the whole time berating Zelenskyy and trying to get him to grovel, and then kicked him out of the meeting without an agreement when he didn't. Europeans were appalled; Italy is calling for an immediate summit between the EU and the US, though it's doubtful that this will change anything. The Globe and Mail's Andrew Coyne has made no bones about the scale of the disaster we are seeing; he warns that we have always underestimated just how far Trump will go, and that we're going to have to learn fast. Now it's worth noting that Coyne is a liberal (his cousin Deborah Coyne ran for the Liberal Party leadership in 2013), and a centrist or centre-right liberal at that. So he naturally sees the potential collapse of the American hegemony as an unmitigated disaster. From a more leftwing perspective, it's a bit less clear. Some hope that this could lead to a more multipolar world, where instead of a single hegemon you have a number of major powers (perhaps the US, EU, China, Russia, and India) balanced against each other. That is indeed possible, and it could lead to a good outcome in the long run. On the other hand, another possibility (probably more likely) is the US and Russia both become sufficiently weak due to their own failings that China simply becomes the new hegemon - and while the Americans have been far from benevolent overlords in much of the world I don't share the confidence of some leftists that the Chinese would be better. A third possibility that no new stable equilibrium can form and the world degenerates into chaos and, eventually, nuclear war; a fourth is something not unlike the scenario created decades ago by science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle, in which the US and Russia (the USSR in the novels) form a political union called the "CoDominium" to maintain stability, which they do but at immense social cost. Given the friendly relations between Trump and Putin, and the fact that they seem to need each other, this last scenario actually starts to look sort of plausible.

- Jagmeet Singh is calling for Donald Trump to be "uninvited" from the G7 summit that Canada is hosting in Kananaskis, Alberta in June, and for the meeting to be refocused on building a "common front" against Trump's America. This seems to be a bridge too far for the federal government; energy minister Jonathan Wilkinson was particularly dismissive, calling on Singh to "find new advisers who could provide him with more thoughtful positions". See my comments above about liberals being unable to imagine an alternative to the existing world order; it seems that in Wilkinson's mind the only possible course of action is to continue doing CPR on the old order until rigor mortis sets in.

- A "guidance document" from the US Centers for Disease Control prohibits scientists employed by the agency from co-authoring papers with anyone employed by the World Health Organization. It further orders that employees who have co-authored papers with WHO employees that were submitted before the Trump regime took power must withdraw them, or remove their names from the papers prior to publication. Because "international" is a four-letter word to the MAGA crowd, after all.

- Tesla's sales in Europe have dropped by 45% since last year, even as EV sales overall increased by 37% over the same period. The company's stock has dropped by 23% since the start of the year.

- One of the many downsides of firing huge numbers of civil servants is that you end up with a lot of disgruntled people, who may become recruitment targets for foreign intelligence.

- Kash Patel, Trump's new FBI director, wants the agency to establish a formal relationship with the Ultimate Fighting Championship. I guess he figures submission holds could be a useful technique for interrogating prisoners.

New roundup, 28 Feb 2025

- Doug Ford's "Progressive" Conservative Party has won its third straight majority, projected to win 80 seats (from 79 at time of dissolution) in the 124 seat legislature. The NDP holds onto Official Opposition status with 27 seats (previously 28). The Liberals are projected to regain official party status with 14 seats (from 9), but their leader Bonnie Crombie was defeated in her own constituency of Mississauga East–Cooksville. The Greens reelected their 2 MPPs, while only one of the six independent members in the old legislature, Haldimand-Norfolk MPP Bobbi Ann Brady, was reelected. Full results, including an interactive map, can be found here. One statement in the CBC article stands out as a bit weird though:

When Ford triggered the $189-million election he asked Ontario voters give him "the largest mandate in Ontario's history" to combat continued economic threats from U.S. President Donald Trump.

On that front, it may prove a bittersweet night for Ford and his PCs, who are likely to return to Queen's Park with roughly the same number of seats after a campaign his rivals called a cynical and unnecessary power play.

I guess it's "bittersweet" in that he didn't win every seat in the legislature (which Frank McKenna actually did in New Brunswick in 1987) but for a government on its third time around, who have presided over the province becoming, by some measures, the worst province in the entire country to live in, the only way it could possibly be bittersweet for Doug and co. is because of the hangovers they'll have this morning for all the cheap American wine and bourbon they drank in celebration.

 - Donald Trump insists that the 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico will go ahead as planned, claiming that drugs are still "pouring" across the borders. Or maybe not. We'll know in a few days I guess. One note from the second article, though:

When asked if the Canadian government is doing enough to meet Trump's bar, Klobuchar, a Democrat, said she can't predict everything Trump is going to do, "but what I can say is that it's enough to meet my bar."

I can't say I find that particularly reassuring. Then again, Trump is so unpredictable that maybe he will let us off the hook - or defer it for another month. The thing about Trump and those influencing him is that, while they're nowhere near as smart as they think they are, they're smarter than they look - and far more cunning. I think Trump and Musk got where they are now largely by throwing their opponents off balance with chaos, and they'll keep doing so as long as it continues to work for them, probably longer.

- Manitoba has become the first province to sign onto the national pharmacare program. The province will receive $219 million over four years to cover diabetes medication, contraceptives, and certain other products. Contraceptives are already covered by the province but many more will benefit from this - assuming the Cons don't win the federal election and claw back the money.

- In Thailand, over 40 Uyghurs who had been detained for a decade after fleeing China have been deported back to Xi Jinping's welcoming arms. Of cousre it couldn't be Thailand caving to Chinese pressure, could it?

- Speaking of caving to a more powerful overlord, UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer seems to share Tony Blair's fear of doing anything, anything, to offend the United States, no matter who is in charge in that country. Starmer refused to answer questions about Trump's proposed annexation of Canada on a visit to Washington on Thursday, accusing the reporter of "trying to find a divide between us that doesn’t exist". And Romanian authorities have permitted Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan to leave Romania as they await their trials for rape and sex trafficking. There had been reports of pressure from the Trump regime to allow this, though of course the Romanians are denying that this had anything to do with their decision.

News roundup, 27 Feb 2025

- A new poll from Nanos puts the Liberals at 34% and the Conservatives at 38%, with the NDP at 16%, and the Bloc at 8%, with the Greens and People's Party bringing up the rear at 4% and 2% respectively. The gap between the Cons and Liberals is not much more than the poll's margin of error.

- A major measles outbreak is spreading across Canada, with 95 cases reported in several provinces since the start of the year. Last year there were 147 cases total across the country; the disease was considered eradicated in Canada in 1998, but that was the year that Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent paper alleging a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism was published, and the rest is grim history.

- A Southwest Airlines flight attempting to land at Chicago's Midway Airport was forced to make a last-minute go-around in order to avoid colliding with a business jet that had strayed onto the runway. Fortunately, the crew's reflexes were faster than they would have been if they'd carried on like another Southwest pilot last month. Video of the incident, as well as some analysis, can be found here. And now there are reports that American Airlines had a similar close call on the same day at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

- Searchers at the Prairie Green Landfill in Rosser, Manitoba have found possible human remains. Families of serial killer Jeremy Skibiki's victims have been notified but the identity of the remains has not yet been confirmed.

- A parkade in Ottawa partially collapsed on Wednesday morning; fortunately nobody was hurt, in contrast to a similar accident at the Algo Centre Mall in Elliot Lake in 2012 which killed two people and injured over 20.

- David Shipley, the Washington Post's opinion editor, has resigned rather than preside over Jeff Bezos' new vision for the newspaper's opinion section. Bezos wants the paper to have a consistent rightwing libertarian stance and has declared that opposing views will no longer be published.

- Toronto's Pride festival is facing a substantial shortfall and is scaling back events for 2025 after several corporate sponsors pulled out. Evidently the sponsors decided, after reading the public mood, that they had more to lose than to gain by associating themselves with anything that might be connected to diversity. Organizers have not named the sponsors who pulled out, apparently hoping to avoid antagonizing them so as to win them back. If I were to guess, though, I'd assume that they're American, or at least do a lot of business in the US, and are more afraid of the MAGA crowd than they are of LGBT* folks.

News roundup, 25 Feb 2025

- Healthcare workers are subject to protections under the Geneva convention in times of war, whereby they are supposed to be protected from attacks and permitted to continue their work. The IDF don't seem to think those rules apply to them; as of last month over a thousand healthcare professionals had been killed by them (comparable to the total number of Israelis killed in the October 7 attacks). 22 hospitals had been more or less destroyed as well. Over 500 doctors were taken prisoner; some of them now report that the Israelis subjected them to what their American friends like to call "enhanced interrogation techniques". Sadly, it's almost certain that the perpetrators will not be punished. And if they are, it will probably be a punishment based on vengeance rather than actual justice.

- A resolution before the UN General Assembly condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine passed by 93 to 18 with 65 abstentions; the US voted along with Russia against the resolution. Meanwhile Ukraine has expressed willingness to pay protection money to ol' Don in the form of critical minerals.

- Danielle Smith's Minister of Infrastructure, Peter Guthrie, has resigned in protest of his own government's procurement policy, including problematic and potentially criminal insider deals with private healthcare companies.

- On the other side of the border, 21 civil servants, including engineers, data scientists and product managers, who had been seconded to Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have also resigned, saying that the Muskrats' Silicon Valley-inspired "move fast and break things" approach threatens to "dismantle critical public services" and create a privacy nightmare.

- Doug Ford's cop son-in-law is facing charges under the Police Act for insubordination, discreditable conduct, and breach of trust for leaking inside police information. Apparently confidential information about a sexual assault case was leaked to the victim; while this is easy to sympathize with it could very well make it harder to get a conviction in the case.

- A man who stood outside near the courthouse where serial killer Jeremy Skibicki was being tried and hurled abuse and threats at friends and relatives of the victims has pleaded guilty to uttering threats in that and another incident.

- Green Party candidates in Ontario's upcoming provincial election in the constituency of Kitchener-Conestoga, as well as in Waterloo where NDP incumbent Catherine Fife is running again, have called on their supporters to cast a tactical vote for the NDP in order to try to keep the Tories from winning those seats.

- Last month police were called to remove a pilot from a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 that he was about to attempt to fly from Savannah to Chicago after a TSA agent noticed that he appeared to smell of alcohol. I daresay this was not a good career move.

News roundup, 25 Feb 2025

Donald Trump says that the 25% tariffs on all Canadian and Mexican imports (on top of tariffs that are already in place) will come into effect on schedule next week. This is despite the fact that even the US ambassador admits that there has been noticeable progress in limiting the smuggling of drugs and people into the US. Of course, if you assume that the drugs and migrants were a pretext and that the real goal is to break our economy to the point where we capitulate so that they don't have to suffer the inconvenience of invading us, the move makes perfect sense. Meanwhile, a substantial number of Canadian snowbirds have been cancelling their plans to winter in Florida, to the consternation of one Trump-supporting resort owner who has been coasting for decades off the money rich Quebecois spend there. He just can't understand why people don't want to visit a country whose strongman president has been repeatedly threatening to take over their homeland.

- The Trump regime has ordered the removal of 8,000 EV charging stations from federal properties, and is expected to sell off a large fleet of newly purchased vehicles. Kind of like how Reagan ordered the removal of solar panels from the White House, but on a much larger scale.

- It appears that CDU leader Friedrich Merz will be Germany's next chancellor, likely by cobbling together a very thin coalition with the SPD. To get an idea of just how divided a country he will be inheriting, scroll down to the interactive map in the article; it has an awfully familiar look to it.

- The platform variously known as X, Twitter, or (colloquially) Shitter has turned into such a wretched hive of scum and villainy under the stewardship of Elon Musk that even a conservative suburban city like Cambridge, Ontario has announced that they will no longer be using the platform due to the amount of hate-related content and general misinformation on it, and the abject failure to moderate such content. Hopefully many more will follow.

- A woman who attended a town hall meeting held by the Republicans in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho was forcibly removed from the event by private security, and then charged with battery after it was alleged that she bit a security guard. The fact that even the city's police chief doubts that the charge is warranted should say a lot about how credible the allegation is. Video of the event can be seen here. 

- A lawsuit against Greenpeace by Texas-based Energy Transfer, owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline, accuses the organization of "unlawful and violent scheme to cause financial harm" by their opposition to the project, and is demanding approximately $300 million in damages, enough to wipe the organization off the map. Both Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International are named as defendants, though since the latter is based in the Netherlands it is interesting to consider what would happen if a European court refused to recognize the ruling in this case.

- Former city councillor Shawn Nason is running for the Tories in the provincial byelection being held in Transcona next month as a result of the death of incumbent NDP MLA Nello Altomare.

- The potentially city-destroying asteroid that some feared could be a threat in 2032 has had its orbit calculated more accurately, and the risk of an impact has now been reduced to 0.005% (earlier data had the risk as high as 3%). Some might raise their eyebrows at the changing numbers, but that's just how it works - when you get more data, you can calculate where the asteroid is going to be with greater precision, and more often than not this narrows the range of places to be to the point where it can safely be considered to be no significant risk.

News roundup, 24 Feb 2025

- The centre-right Christian Democrats under Friedrich Merz have won a plurality of seats in Germany's parliamentary election, receiving just under 29% of the vote. The far-right AfD came second, with around 21%; all parties have vowed to maintain the "firewall" and not form a coalition with AfD.

- Robert Garcia, a Democratic member of the US House of Representatives from California, in a session of the House subcommittee on Doge, referred to a photo of Elon Musk as a "dick pick" and referred to Musk as "President". Shortly thereafter, the Department of Justice has sent Garcia a letter that makes reference to an interview with CNN in which he said "What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy"; the DOJ is demanding clarification regarding this comment, which it indicates could be interpreted as a threat.

- Former Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla has been disqualified from her party's leadership race after an investigation concluded that she committed 10 different violations of the rules for the race. This includes campaign financing issues as well as the apparent failure to disclose the involvement of a non-citizen in the campaign.

- Manitoba PC leadership candidate Wally Daudrich is claiming that there's porn in school libraries. He claims to have seen these books but refuses to say where. While a reasonable person would respond with "put up or shut up", the kind of people Daudrich is trying to attract to his campaign are not reasonable people. 

- Despite recent cold weather, the opening of the winter road network in northern Manitoba has been delayed until the end of February, causing significant problems for northern residents.

- Because bird flu has hit the US poultry and egg industry much harder than that in Canada and Mexico (so far), there has been a rash of egg smuggling at the borders, as well as large scale thefts of eggs.

- Rebecca Marodi, a CalFire fire captain who served on the front lines in the recent Los Angeles County wildfires, was stabbed to death in her home outside San Diego. She had been the subject of online abuse for supposedly being a "DEI hire" and blamed for the fires, which led some to speculate that this was the reason for her death. However, police now say that her wife is the prime suspect and may have fled the country. Yolanda Marodi had previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter following the stabbing death of her then-husband in 2000, and served more than 13 years in prison. I daresay there may be a pattern here.

- Around 200 people who stayed at a four-star resort in Playa del Carmen suffered from a nasty sickness, suspected of being food poisoning, that caused severe vomiting, diarrhea and dehydration. Just in case being in a resort full of middle-aged suburbanites wasn't bad enough on its own.

News roundup, 21 Feb 2025

- Given that many of Donald Trump's policies and appointments have been utterly ridiculous even by Republican standards, the question has to be asked about where the non-crazy Republican members of Congress are. Part of it is that they're afraid of being defeated in primaries, of course, but another possible reason has been mooted - they're afraid of being killed by Trump supporters. North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis was considering voting against confirming Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, but then turned around and provided the key vote to enable Hegseth's appointment to proceed. He has reportedly said in private conversations that the FBI has warned him of "credible death threats", though he publicly denies this, perhaps to avoid becoming a target anyway. He's apparently not the only one to privately express fear of harm at the hands of Trump's brownshirts either. Some are saying that Trump's betrayal of Ukraine might be a bridge too far, but I'll believe that when I see it.

- Hot on the heels of Trump's "border czar", Tom Homan, trying to get AOC arrested for allegedly "impeding" ICE's operations by informing people of their legal rights, we now have a Trump-appointed prosecutor investigating Chuck Schumer for comments he made about Supreme Court justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch in the leadup to the Roe v. Wade decision. Apparently he addressed them by name on the steps of the Supreme Court, saying "You have unleashed a whirlwind, and you will pay the price". I suppose one could conceive of that as being a threat, but it's a stretch. The most likely reason, of course, is that the Trump regime is doing their darnedest to find any way of getting rid of enough Democrats so that they have a supermajority that could allow them to, say, successfully impeach liberal and moderate Supreme Court justices.

- Jesse Rothstein, who served as chief economist of the US Department of Labor during the Obama administration, warns that the massive civil service layoffs and cancellation of government contracts that Elon Musk's DOGE is pushing through are likely to cause a serious recession. If this is correct, it's just one more incentive for the regime to ensure that the 2026 midterms (not to mention the 2028 presidential election) are not free or fair, something they seem to be working on already.

- Elon Musk is now saying it's time to deorbit the International Space Station. After all, SpaceX already has a $843 million contract to do it in 2030, and he doesn't want to leave all that money just sitting there until then.

- One thing about Trump acting like a dictator is that all kinds of people and corporations are coming out of the woodwork with things they'd like him to dictate. For instance, Facebook parent company Meta is warning the EU that they're going to sic big daddy Trump on them if they dare to do such things as enforcing their own laws regarding privacy, protecting children, and the like. And a bunch of California Republicans are trying to get Trump to look into stopping the construction of a high speed rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles, something he seems happy to oblige.

- Sweden's centre-right prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, is bleating that Europe risks becoming a "museum" unless they stop regulating artificial intelligence. I guess we know who most of the techies in that country vote for.

News roundup, 20 Feb 2025

- Winnipeg Transit has taken delivery of its first fuel cell powered bus. The city will be testing a number of fuel cell and battery electric buses, with some financing coming from the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program. A total of 16 such buses are expected to be deployed this year, and another 24 next year. The original plan was to buy 100 but supply chain issues as well as costs threw a wrench into those plans.

- Justin Trudeau has announced more details about the plans to build high speed rail between Toront and Quebec City. There will apparently be stops in Peterborough, Ottawa, Laval, Montreal, and Trois-Rivieres, with top speeds of up to 300 km/h. Unless the Cons win the election, of course, or unless the Liberals squeak a majority and don't need the support of the NDP anymore, or unless the Americans invade us before it can be built...

- Speaking of the Liberals, some recent polling suggests that if Mark Carney wins the party's leadership as expected, they might actually have a shot at a majority. New polling from Mainstreet Research as well as Leger project this very result; on the other hand, the latest poll from Angus Reid puts the Cons ahead. Worryingly, in all three polls the NDP as well as the Bloc do very poorly, meaning that whoever wins will probably do so with a majority. This also illustrates that much of the increased Liberal support likely comes from tactical voters. Just in case anyone was still wondering why they broke their promise about electoral reform, you know.

- The Trump administration has cancelled all funding for the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center. And the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to suspend "all election security activities" pending the results of an "internal investigation". It's often been said of the MAGA crowd that "every accusation is a confession". Given how many accusations they've made about electoral fraud, and given what they're doing to agencies that oversee elections, one does have to wonder.

- Tom Homan, the acting head of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is calling for the Department of Justice to investigate whether "know your rights" seminars run by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez constitute impeding the agency's operations. No doubt they'll be far more likely to arrest AOC than they are to arrest, say, Elon Musk, whose department appears to have just posted classified information on its website.

- New York City mayor Eric Adams, who was elected as a Democrat, suddenly seems all too keen to work with Donald Trump. Maybe because that's because Trump seems to have made corruption investigations against him go away.

- Trump and Putin, having already decided what to do with Ukraine without the inconvenience of actually having the Ukrainians' input on the matter, are now looking at joint oil and gas projects in the Arctic. Of course, a lot of sea ice will have to melt before they can proceed, but they're doing their darnedest to address that matter too.

- JD Vance gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference last week that terrified Europe's leaders. If nothing else, maybe it will ram home the idea that Europe and the US are no longer friends. The conventional wisdom up until now has been that Europe needs the US to protect them from Russia, but George Allison of the Telegraph argues that this is not the case. I'm inclined to agree with him; in fact I think it would have been a lot better if Europeans had realized this long before (say, around 2002) and gone their separate ways from the Americans back then rather than continuing to enable them until now.

News roundup, 19 Feb 2025

- Donald Trump is tipping his hand about one of the reasons he wants to conquer Canada - our water. This should come to no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention; the US has coveted Canada's water for decades, and there have been all kinds of grandiose schemes like NAWAPA and the GRAND Canal about how large amounts of Canadian water could be sent south. The long-term consequences of shifting such vast amounts of water across thousands of kilometres are, of course, hard to predict and might well not be limited to one continent - more water at temperate latitudes, for instance, might mean changes in rainfall patterns halfway around the world if there were enough of it. Plus if more evaporation occurred overall this could amplify global warming, since water vapour is a greenhouse gas.

- Steve Burgess of The Tyee made a relatively innocuous post on the former Twitter as well as on Bluesky, characterizing Donald Trump's treatment of Justin Trudeau as a "hostile act". On Bluesky the post faded into the obscurity that gentle complaints typically fade into, but on Musk's platform the post was brigaded by huge numbers of rabid Trump supporters, many of whom seemed to be reading from the same script.

- Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have been ordered to get senior staff approval for "all upcoming international engagements" until the end of March. This includes international travel paid for by their employer as well as virtual meetings about pretty much any topic of significance.

- John McConnell Jr., a judge with the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island, has had articles of impeachment issued against him by Georgia Republican congress member Andrew Clyne. This is ostensibly because he was acting as "partisan activist" by pointing out the fact that the Trump administration is ignoring his court orders. Of course, he would need to be convicted by two thirds of the Senate in order for the impeachment to be successful, which seems unlikely so long as not too many Democrats are stopped from voting on the matter somehow - like say if a dozen of them suddenly get arrested by the Trump loyalists with whom the FBI is being stacked.

- Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is warning that Trump's policies - both in their own right and in the erratic manner in which they are being imposed - puts the country at significant risk of stagflation. The fact that Elon Musk's DOGE has mooted the idea of a selective default on some American bonds does not help matters.

- The library board in the town of Valleyview, Alberta (population 1,673 as of 2021) has voted to close the town's free-standing library and move it into a new school that is being built. This will cut their available space in half, and will also potentially force the library to comply with school division rules about LGBT* content - the latter almost certainly being seen by the board as a feature rather than a bug. The library was subject to bitter debate as far back as a year ago, and the folks in this Reddit thread believed at the time that there is a broad plan to get far-right types elected to local positions so as to gain a foothold from which to build their movement. This is a tried and true tactic in the US, and folks in that thread think that it's starting in earnest in rural Canada. Notably, some say that rural Alberta is considerably more extreme than similar-sized communities on the other side of the Rockies in BC.

- Some American doctors, especially women, are looking at their options for setting up practices in Canada, fearing that the political climate in the US will make their jobs difficult or even legally dangerous. If nothing else, this could go some distance towards filling gaps in Canadian healthcare.

- The decline of organized religion in urban areas across North America and Europe means that there are a lot of badly underutilized churches sitting around. As with the conversion of office buildings into residential, converting a church is not as easy as it might seem. However, it's definitely possible; I live a block away from a perfect example of this. That said, that particular building is owned by Manitoba Housing, meaning that a fair amount of provincial money had to be spent in order to make it work. No reason why you couldn't do more of that, though.

- A proposal before the Steinbach, Manitoba city council would create a whole new zoning category - the emergency shelter - and could potentially throw the door open to NIMBYs who don't want poors living in their neighbourhood.

News roundup, 18 Feb 2025

- A Delta Air Lines jet crashed on landing at Pearson yesterday. There were no fatalities, but 18 people were injured, a few of them seriously.

- European leaders are holding an emergency summit on the Russia-Ukraine war in response to the US holding bilateral talks with Russia without the involvement of Ukraine or the EU.

- The mass layoffs at the US federal government have thrown the DC area's housing market into turmoil.

- The IRS is about to provide Musk's mob of teenagers with virtually unfettered access to the tax records of millions of Americans. 

- There are fears that the massive purge of the FBI could leave the US exposed to the risk of another 9/11.

- RightNow, a rightwing nonprofit, has endorsed Wally Daudrich for the leadership of Manitoba's Progressive Conservative Party. The organization calls him "pro-freedom, pro-life and [a] true conservative".

- A Canada-US hockey game at the 4 Nations Cup had three fights in the first 9 seconds of play.

News roundup, 17 Feb 2024

 - The Trump regime has a proposal for Ukraine. Essentially the proposal is, "you give us a 50% interest in all of your rare earth deposits, and we'll politely ask Putin not to take any more of your territory than he already has". Not surprisingly, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is less than impressed with the idea.

- JD Vance has met with AfD leader Alice Wiedel, and is condemning the "firewall", that unwritten rule that German mainstream parties will not form coalitions with extremist parties such as Wiedel's.

- WestJet is reporting a 25% drop in inquiries about tickets to US destinations since Trump's aggressive moves against Canada, and a duty-free store on the BC-Washington border has lost 80% of their business since the tariffs were imposed. And not only are individual Canadians thinking twice about US spending, municipalities are as well - for instance, the City of Surrey has cancelled a $740,000 contract for American-made bleachers.

- Elon Musk's close ties to the regime are seriously impacting Tesla sales in many places, as people increasingly don't want to be associated with Musk. There has also been a rash of vandalism at Tesla stores; unusually for cases of vandalism, the FBI is getting involved.

- Aisha Ahmad, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, has studied insurgencies for many years. She thinks (no doubt rightly) that an attempt by the US to militarily invade Canada would be catastrophic for both countries:

 Even if one per cent of all resisting Canadians engaged in armed insurrection, that would constitute a 400,000-person insurgency, nearly 10 times the size of Taliban at the start of the Afghan war. If a fraction of that number engaged in violent attacks, it would set fire to the entire continent.

While the prospect of a military invasion still seems far off, it's worth noting that many didn't think Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine was very likely either. Gwynne Dyer thought, in February 2022, that the idea that Russia would actually invade Ukraine was preposterous, because it would be harmful to Russia's interests. And if you consider the fact that the people pulling Trump's strings may not actually care about the well-being of the US anyway...

News roundup, 14 Feb 2025

- The Trump regime has banned an Associated Press reporter from White House events due to the news service's failure to immediately start calling the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America". AP's style guide now calls for the internationally recognized name to be used, while acknowledging the name the regime uses; evidently this isn't enough for Trump, though.

- The White House is saying that the 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum will be in addition to the 25% across the board tariffs that they plan to impose on all Canadian and Mexican imports. And that's not even considering the fact that the regime has plenty more tariffs planned. The Bank of Canada fears that a drawn out trade war could lead to a permanent decline in the country's GDP.

- Video evidence used to convict one of the Jan. 6 rioters has been removed from government websites, to the alarm of  news organizations. Several of these organizations have taken legal action, and a judge has responded by ordering the administration to stop removing such things and to provide an explanation for their removal.

- Donald Trump discussed Ukraine in a phone conversation with Russia and has agreed to help negotiate a ceasefire. To the surprise of few, and to the alarm of much of Europe, he seems to have agreed that Russia should be able to keep most of the territory it has seized from Ukraine, and that NATO membership for that unfortunate country is not in the cards.

- The City of Toronto has issued a cease and desist order to a man who was making tiny trailer homes, designed to be towable with a bicycle. The letter said that the trailers were unlawfully occupying city property; in one sense this is kind of odd because usually in this country municipalities only have the power to regulate how something is used, not whether you can sell it or not. Maybe Toronto is an exception to that rule, or maybe nonprofits that give things to people are held to different legal standards than businesses that sell things. Apparently the trailers include smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms as well as fire extinguishers in an effort to make them safer. On the other hand, according to a councillor who supports the idea in principle but wants the current operation stopped for now, they also have heaters that burn diesel fuel, which could be a safety concern as well as an environmental and health concern. Whether that outweighs the health and safety concerns about people living in tents in the dead of winter is another question.

- In a campaign speech at a gala held by the London, Ontario police chief, Doug Ford was recorded saying that judges should have the power to "send 'em right to sparky". Once this became public, though, he told reporters that he was joking and that he doesn't actually support the death penalty.

- The mayor of Swift Current, Saskatchewan has asked city council to make a recommendation on whether to remove the US flag from the city's flag court. The matter has provoked some lively (but surprisingly civil) debate but has not come to a resolution.

News roundup, 13 Feb 2025

- Donald Trump is now threatening to impose a tariff of up to 100% on cars manufactured in Canada. People with actual knowledge of the auto industry are warning that such a move could shut down the entire auto industry in the US as well as Canada. Tesla might be an exception to the rule, which would make such a move that much more explicable.

- China is creating a planetary defense agency in response to the discovery of an asteroid that is thought to pose a risk in 2032. The asteroid is about 100 metres in diameter, and if it were to hit Earth it would be the equivalent of a large nuclear weapon going off - not enough to destroy the biosphere, but definitely enough to destroy a city in a direct hit. The ESA has estimated that the probability of an impact is about 1.2%, which while not high is high enough to worry about. So it's good that China is taking it seriously, especially given that NASA is not likely to be in any condition to properly deal with it given the chaos of the Trump regime.

- Elon Musk is apparently in favour of having former Texas Republican congressman Ron Paul appointed as chair of the Federal Reserve. Given that Paul is the author of a book entitled End The Fed, this has spooked a lot of people; notably, the price of gold as well as bitcoin have spiked dramatically in recent days.

- Germany's federal intelligence service, the BND, fears that climate change could threaten the stability of the European Union due to its likely effects on food prices, migration, and conflict. All of this is, of course, stuff some have been warning about for years. Gwynne Dyer, for instance, predicted almost a decade ago that climate-induced migration could be a threat to the union if its leaders don't prepare for it.

- Cambridge, Massachusetts has eliminated exclusive single-family zoning across the entire city, allowing buildings up to six stories in any neighbourhood. This is expected to create over 4,800 units over the next quarter century. A bold step in the right direction (and a rare one for North America).

- Buyers of new Jeeps are incensed at the fact that the vehicles' infotainment systems are force-feeding ads to the occupants every time the vehicle comes to a stop. So much for your nice uninterrupted stream of music or podcasts. Besides being annoying, this is raising privacy concerns, as the vehicles are also gathering data about drivers' behaviour in order to curate the ads.

News roundup, 12 Feb 2025

- Recent polling suggests that Mark Carney winning the leadership of the Liberal Party could dramatically improve the party's fortunes in both Ontario and Quebec. If these results hold, then I really hope the news cameras focus on the faces of Scott Moe and Danielle Smith as they watch the results come in.

- Jim Farley, CEO of the Ford Motor Company, is expressing concerns about the possible impact of Trump's tariffs on his company, and indeed the entire American auto industry. In addition to manufactured auto parts, the 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum could greatly increase costs for the industry. GM CEO Mary Barra is optimistic about her company's ability to adapt, but that could be just an attempt to put on a brave face - especially since Japan and South Korea, home to the US automakers' main competitors, have so far not been hit with the same tariffs as Canada and Mexico.

- The Archivist of the United States, Colleen Shogan, was fired on Friday. The agency she headed is generally considered apolitical, but happens to have played a key role in the legal proceedings against Trump regarding those boxes of classified records that somehow ended up in a washroom at Mar-a-Lago. One hopes that pure spite is the only reason for the dismissal, but it also raises the possibility that her replacement will assist the president in throwing records he doesn't like down the memory hole. Even more alarming, the archivist has a role in verifying the vote count in the Electoral College.

- Two security chiefs at USAID have been put on leave after attempting to stop the Muskrats from accessing classified information. The agency used intelligence reports in planning how to distribute aid; while the use of intelligence for this purpose could be problematic in itself, it's most definitely problematic for a bunch of unvetted teenagers to be going through the data. Oh, and one of them, the 19 year old who has now been appointed as a "senior adviser" at the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Technology as well as FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, was fired a couple of years back from an internship with a cybersecurity firm for leaking company data to a competitor.

- Luigi Mangione has had over $300,000 crowdsourced for his legal defense for the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The company, meanwhile, has hired a law firm specializing in defamation to go through social media posts looking for anything someone might say that could be actionable. No mention of any plans to investigate why Mangione might be so popular in the first place, though; that level of self-reflection is uncommon in the corporate world.

- The German Club of Regina is taking heat for renting their facility for a fundraising event for the Buffalo Party of Saskatchewan. Given that the party is a far-right party that advocates secession from Canada, and that the fundraiser itself will see a discussion of whether to join Trump's America, you'd think somebody, somebody at the club would have thought about the optics of a German club renting space to fascist traitors.

News roundup, 11 Feb 2025

- The unleashing of the Muskrats on government IT systems has resulted in several secure networks being exposed to the public internet, meaning that top-secret information may be vulnerable to hackers. Besides the Treasury department, this also involves things like nuclear research, something that you might not want just any run of the mill terrorist or hostile power to gain access to.

- One of Trump's executive orders was to stop work on a project called the National Nature Assessment, which was almost ready for publication in draft form. Researchers working on the project are trying to find a way to get it published outside of government; how the administration will respond to resistance of this sort remains to be seen.

- The Environmental Protection Agency has notified about 1,100 "probationary" employees that they could be terminated at any time, and has placed 160 staffers working on environmental justice related matters on administrative leave. Because of course any viewing of environmental issues that takes race and class into account in terms of their effects is "woke".

- The US Travel Association is freaking out over the prospect of Canadians boycotting travel in the US. Thousands of Canadians have already cancelled travel plans in that country, and there's no sign of the goodwill returning any time soon.

- A study by First Street Foundation concluded that some $1.47 trillion in property values in the US could evaporate over the next 30 years due to climate change and the resulting disasters and insurance rate hikes. The biggest declines are expected in Sunbelt states, but significant declines are expected in much of the country. Not everywhere, mind you; in parts of the Midwest and some eastern states, properties in more resilient areas are expected to increase significantly in value.

- A poll in the UK, conducted by YouGov on behalf of the nonprofit Control AI, has found that 87% of respondents would like AI developers to be required to prove the safety of their products before release, and 60% want an outright ban on any AI that is more intelligent than humans (though the criteria for the latter might be difficult to write into law). 75% want a ban on the development of AI systems that can escape their environments, while 63% want a ban on systems that can improve their own intelligence. Despite their nominally social democratic stance, the incumbent Labour government seems to have little interest in proceeding with such regulation, despite their pre-election promises.

- Evidence presented at a class action against Facebook parent company Meta indicates that staff pirated nearly 82 terabytes of books in order to train AI. Because under the Silicon Valley "move fast, break things" philosophy, following the rules is for wimps.

- Israel's defense minister is trying to argue that countries such as Ireland that criticized their actions in Gaza are "legally obligated" to accept Palestinians who become refugees as a result of Trump's plans for the territory. I don't think that's correct, and in any case I'm pretty sure Israel and the US are legally obligated not to ethnically cleanse the territory, but that's just me.

- A resolution before the North Dakota legislature calls for "a recognition of Almighty God as the source of authority" and "of the Lord Jesus Christ as the rightful ruler of nations". Some of the same legislators are also behind a bill calling on the Supreme Court to reverse its 2015 ruling that legalized same-sex marriage; worth mentioning is the fact that one of the people behind these resolutions, Nico Rios, made a social media post last week calling on the CIA to "overthrow and kick this Jew [Claudia Sheinbaum] out of power in Mexico".

News roundup, 10 Feb 2025

- The fact that a bunch of Musk-rats straight out of high school have been given access to the crown jewels of the US Treasury's IT systems has many tech professionals shaking in their boots at what kind of damage they could do, either intentionally or otherwise. Administration officials tried to claim that there's nothing to worry about because they only have read access to the systems, but this appears not to be true. Moreover, many of the systems these lads have been given access to are running code that's decades old and which they probably didn't learn about in high school computing class, and which furthermore is highly integrated with other systems. All it could take is for one of these kids to break something and you could have a situation where the US government's ability to make a payment could be compromised. And that's not even considering the possibility of intentional harms that could be done, say by feeding big databases about millions of people into an AI that's been trained to spot signs that someone could be an enemy of Musk or Trump.

- Justin Trudeau thinks that Donald Trump is entirely serious in his desire to annex Canada. Apparently in a recent phone call between the two leaders Trump spewed a litany of grievances against Canada, including actual policies (e.g. supply management) as well as imagined ones (e.g. Trump's belief that American banks are prohibited from operating in Canada). Trudeau thinks the most likely motive is US access to critical minerals. Meanwhile the US has imposed 25% tariffs on all imports of steel and aluminum, and Trump continues to make declarations about how Canada is "not viable as a country".

- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced an agreement with El Salvador that would effectively allow the US to use the troubled Central American country as a penal colony, sending not only deportees of any nationality but also American criminals to be housed in prisons there. I guess that will suffice until Musk can set one up on Mars, as seen in D. G. Compton's novel Farewell, Earth's Bliss.

- BC Conservative leader John Rustad is coming under fire for a social media post in which he falsely accused former provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry of "promoting fentanyl use" due to her harm reduction advocacy. There are obvious fears that this could lead to threats to her safety; then again, she's lived with threats against her life for several years simply for being a voice of reason on COVID-19.

- Last year, Minneapolis City Council approved a pilot project where food deliveries to students living in residence on the University of Minnesota campus are done by robots. Now, halfway through the study, the city is considering whether it's necessary to regulate them in some way, in order to ensure safety as well as to protect jobs. On cue, the techbros on r/Futurology are in a tizzy at the mere thought of regulation.

- Someone has been putting copies of a far-right book into "Little Free Libraries" around Ottawa. The title of the book in question has not been made public.

News roundup, 7 Feb 2025

- Donald Trump has issued yet another executive order, this one imposing travel sanctions against officials of the International Criminal Court involved in cases being brought against American or Israeli personnel. So far the sanctions don't seem to be as harsh as some had feared, though.

- The new US Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, has issued a memo mandating the department to give preference to communities with high marriage and birth rates when allocating funding. It's not The Handmaid's Tale yet, but it seems to be getting closer to that by the day.

- The US Center for Disease Control has ordered the retraction of all papers submitted by their researchers for publication in outside journals so that they can be scrutinized for reference to things that the Trump administration thinks don't or shouldn't exist (like, say, LGBT* people).

- The CIA has reportedly offered buyouts to its entire workforce. If you thought the CIA was bad before, just wait until it's completely staffed by Trump's sycophants.

- Elon Musk's Departement of Government Efficiency has gained access to highly sensitive financial data with the Treasury Department, ostensibly to make sure that proper precautions are being taken when sending out money. Musk claims, without providing evidence, that payment approval officers were instructed to never deny payment no matter who the recipient. I have to assume that this is a lie, and that Musk's real reason for gaining access was to find potential dirt on his or the president's enemies, or to otherwise cause them grief.

- A recent poll found that 82% of Canadians would favour placing export taxes on oil shipments to the US if Trump's threatened tariffs materialize. This includes 72% of respondents in the Prairies, but Danielle Smith is most definitely not among that 72%.

- The National Football League has banned teams from posting on Bluesky, evidently to avoid the wrath of the Trump administration (or rather the administration's puppeteer Elon Musk).

- Two Russian colonels fell out of windows in two days, one of them fatally. Evidently Russian bigwigs are terribly careless around windows, failing to take basic precautions like making sure an FSB officer isn't in the room before going near the window.

- Manitoba Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Wally Daudrich has proposed a novel solution to the homelessness problem - feeding the homeless to polar bears. While the conservationist in me is all in favour of making sure polar bears have enough to eat, I'm not sure this is the best solution to the problem.

News roundup, 6 Feb 2025

- Donald Trump has declared, in a joint press conference with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that the US will take over the Gaza Strip, with American troops if necessary. He gently suggested that some other Middle Eastern country should just take the inhabitants off his hands. I believe that there's a term for that sort of thing...

- The Trump administration is effectively shutting down the US Agency for International Development. The agency is not without its critics (some say, for instance, its relationship with the CIA has at times been a bit too close for comfort) but a complete shutdown might not be such a good idea. I'm sure the fact that it was investigating the behaviour of Elon Musk's Starlink is purely coincidental.

- The huge wildfires that swept through parts of greater Los Angeles have now been fully contained after nearly a month. The costs, though, are just beginning - while the impact on the greater economy so far hasn't been too severe, a lot of people are probably already underwater on their mortgages as a result of these fires; another disaster or two like that could change things as losses pile up, potentially causing a financial crisis as severe as the subprime crisis of 2007-2008 if not worse. Already, some people think that housing prices have peaked in areas most vulnerable to such disasters, partly driven by skyrocketing insurance rates.

- During the COVID-19 lockdowns, most Canadian provinces treated their liquor stores as an essential service. At the time, this was justified on the grounds that for people with severe alcoholism, sudden withdrawal can be life-threatening and those who don't die would add to the burden on the healthcare system. Now, however, many are wondering whether that hypothetical would be enough to outweigh the impact of increased consumption on public well-being. An inconvenient truth is that South Africa banned alcohol sales during the lockdowns, so that people would have less incentive to gather in violation of the lockdowns, and immediately experienced a huge decrease in violence as a result.

- Apparently some activist investors in Tesla are starting to sour on Elon Musk. Whether a bunch of Redditors are going to be enough to fire the CEO is another question, of course - at least unless and until the stock starts to tank.

- Greenland's parliament passed a bill banning foreign political donations, for reasons that will no doubt be obvious. The bill also prohibits donations over 20,000 kroner (about $2,500) from any individual, and no party may receive over 200,000 kroner in total from all donors.

- Knox United Church in Brandon, Manitoba is being forced to increase security following harassment and vandalism over their support for the LGBT* community. To his credit, the church's minister refuses to tone down his messaging on the matter; then again he has the support of his congregation and the church hierarchy. Less fortunate is a Baptist minister in Charlotte, NC who has been ousted for being too progressive.

News roundup, 5 Feb 2025

- Five cases of measles have been confirmed in southern Manitoba; cases appear to be associated with a church in Winkler and are thought to be linked to an outbreak in Ontario.

- While Wab Kinew is deferring the ban on American alcohol until the threatened tariffs are imposed, he recognizes the need to diversify (or, as he put it, "Trump-proof") the Manitoba economy. This would ideally not only involve finding new markets but "getting better at making stuff". Of course this is a tall order, and probably should have started decades ago.

- In response to the 10% tariff imposed on China, that country has imposed tariffs of their own, as well as export controls on certain key metals and an anti-monopoly investigation of Google. The latter, in particular, is not uncalled for, though I don't think I'd trust the Chinese state to do a balanced investigation.

- State Farm Insurance is asking California's regulators to suspend their price controls so that the company, one of a diminishing number still offering fire insurance in the state, is able to cover payouts resulting from the recent catastrophic fires in Los Angeles. Specifically, they are asking to be allowed to raise insurance by 22% for single-family homes, 15% for condos, and 38% for renters' insurance. This is despite the fact that they requested even bigger increases last year. Of course this situation isn't likely to improve for decades, if at all, nor is it limited to California. How the American economy will weather millions of people walking away from their mortgages when they can't renew due to lack of insurance remains to be seen.

- Also on the subject of the California wildfires, Trump just ordered over eight billion litres of water that was being kept in reservoirs to be released, ostensibly to help fight the fires. Unfortunately, this water is going nowhere near Los Angeles, and moreover would likely have been more badly needed in the summer, which is often very dry. You'd almost think he was actually trying to damage California; while Trump himself probably isn't smart enough to know what he's doing, some of the people behind him are.

-  Robert Reich thinks that Trump's real motivation with his numerous erratic moves and statements is simply to show strength, and to create uncertainty that he could take advantage of. For his part, Gwynne Dyer thinks that while Trump's stated desire to annex Canada is not particularly realistic, Trump is dead serious about the matter, and that we need to start preparing for the worst.

- One positive from all this madness from south of the border is that Canadians are more united than they've been in decades. This is causing some consternation for the Conservatives, whose entire campaign plan could be summed up as "fuck Trudeau", "axe the [carbon] tax", and "Canada is broken". Since the first two slogans are now obsolete, it's nice to see the third one looking silly as well.

News roundup, 4 Feb 2025

- Donald Trump has agreed to defer the 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico for another month, following talks with Justin Trudeau and Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum in order to give time for more negotiations. The 10% tariffs on China are still going ahead on schedule; in addition he also has the EU in his sights. The chaos of the on-again, off-again tariff threats has spooked markets; presumably Trump, Musk, and their cronies are buying on the dips. In Manitoba, the Kinew government is reciprocating with a pause on the removal of American liquor from stores. Meanwhile in BC, David Eby is considering a more substantive move (assuming the tariffs come back) - he wants to ensure that sales of energy and critical minerals are directed towards other markets.

- If the current uneasy truce fails to hold, one possible target of export restrictions could be potash. The US imports around 80% of their supply, and Canada controls some 40% of global reserves of this crucial fertilizer. The prospect of this worries Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who had requested that potash be exempted from the Trump tariffs.

- The Inspector General of the US Department of Agriculture, Phyllis Fong, was escorted from her office by security after refusing to leave voluntarily after Trump fired her. I'm sure the fact that her office had investigated one of Elon Musk's companies is totally coincidental...

- After the World Federation of Advertisers suspended advertising on Twitter/X, Elon Musk launched a lawsuit last year claiming that the federation and its members were unlawfully conspiring to deprive Musk's platform of revenue. He is now expanding the lawsuit to target several companies whose ads were removed from the platform.

- The European Union is continuing with a piecewise rollout of legislation to minimize the risks from artificial intelligence. Apps with certain kinds of functions, including cognitive behavioural manipulation, classifying people based on personal characteristics, and biometric identification and categorization of people, is banned outright. Sounds eminently reasonable, but there's a lot of hand-wringing from techbros in this Reddit thread about allegedly stifling innovation (mixed in with slightly more valid concerns that more harmful uses of AI will just be developed elsewhere anyway).

- An AI chatbot created by the Israelis to disrupt online discussion of the country's policies towards Palestinians has gone rogue, at times attacking the Israeli and American governments.

News roundup, 3 Feb 2025

- Donald Trump has followed through on his threat to impose 25% tariffs on nearly all imports from Canada. This is already having an impact in some places. The Trudeau government is responding by imposing tariffs on a number of American imports, including alcohol, vegetables, and clothing; they say there may be more to come. Unfortunately, Trump may not bend easily, especially if he is serious about annexing Canada. Meanwhile Manitoba and several other provinces are pulling all American alcohol from their shelves, while BC is responding with targeted bans against liquor from red states. And fans at an Ottawa Senators game booed the American national anthem at a game against the Minnesota Wild.

- Some of the people behind Trump have mused about abolishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Given that without the FDIC people's deposits would not be guaranteed, the very act of abolishing it could very well trigger bank runs. This might serve the interests of billionaires who want to buy assets cheaply, but not anyone else's.

- A letter to the US Senate purporting to come from physicians in support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s confirmation for the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services was signed by a number of former doctors whose licenses were revoked, as well as a number of people who were never doctors in the first place.

- A Learjet 55 serving on a medivac flight from Philadelphia to Tijuana nosedived into the ground just after takeoff, killing all six people aboard the aircraft and at least one person on the ground. The aircraft had reached an altitude of just over 1,600 ft before the pilots lost control for reasons yet to be explained; radar data indicates that its rate of descent exceeded 11,000 ft/min when contact was lost.

- The last of the three soldiers on board the helicopter that collided with an airliner over the Potomac has been identified. Her family had initially asked that her name be withheld;  this naturally led to all sorts of speculation about her identity. Among these were false online statements identifying her as Jo Ellis, who is a transgender pilot with the Virginia National Guard. Ellis has gone public to make it clear that she's very much alive, though.

- One of the Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump has just received a 10 year sentence for impaired driving causing death. This comes just after it came out that another pardoned rioter is facing child sex abuse charges and that a third died in a gun battle with police. I daresay there seems to be some sort of pattern here.

- Montreal has brought in a partial ban on Airbnb and other short-term rental services in order to free up housing for people who actually need it. Such services will be prohibited entirely between September and June, with the exception of certain designated tourism streets.