- The Trump regime has ordered 700 US Marines to be deployed in California, without even bothering to invoke the Insurrection Act which could theoretically, maybe, provide some limited justification for deploying the military against residents of the homeland. It's almost as if they want to rub protesters' faces in the fact that what the Constitution and other laws say no longer matters.
- Ever since his highly visible public spat with Donald Trump a few days ago, Elon Musk has been doing his darnedest to try to get back into the president's good graces. Arwa Mahdawi was hinting at the possibility of this as soon as it happened. Presumably he's only belatedly realizing that he's not going to win such a fight, and that if anyone can deprive him of what remains of his wealth and influence, it's Trump. So he's going to see if behaving himself like a good little oligarch can save him.
- Canada has joined the UK, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand in imposing sanctions against two Israeli cabinet ministers, prohibiting them from traveling to Canada or doing business with Canadian companies. The ministers in question both have a clear track record of inflammatory statements, inciting violence by West Bank settlers. NDP foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson is calling for the sanctions to be applied to the entire cabinet, including Netanyahu. The US, of course, is crying foul.
- Chris Wiebe, a former vice-president of the Manitoba NDP (and the party's candidate in Dawson Trail in the last election) has quit the party in protest of what he sees as the lack of a climate change plan. The last straw seems to have been Premier Kinew's openness to shipping oil through Hudson Bay.
- Instances of assault and harassment at Winnipeg's Millennium Library have dramatically increased in the first three months of 2025. Probably not coincidentally, the Community Connections service hub in the lobby of the library closed at the end of last year when funding ran out, something omitted in the CTV article on the matter. Alarmingly, the Millennium saw a 7.5 decrease in attendance even as the library system across the city saw a slight increase.
- Alberta now has over 800 cases of measles, a figure that doctors expect to worsen once people start traveling more this summer. Meanwhile in the US, RFK Jr. has dismissed every member of a CDC committee on vaccines, planning to replace them with his flunkies.
- Alberta is abandoning their boycott of US alcohol and gambling machines. Because nobody does vice like the Americans, I guess. Other provinces (even Ontario!) are standing firm, though.
- Home ownership among young adults in Canada surged during the intense phase of the pandemic. The reason, of course, is Mummy and Daddy helping pay for houses for their kids during times of record low interest rates. Of course, not all kids have an equal crack at this sort of thing, leading to fears of a new "landed aristocracy" forming.
- People are going to AI chatbots such as ChatGPT for advice on mental health. This is going about as well as you'd expect. Meanwhile a study by Apple has thrown cold water on the idea that "large reasoning models" are actually good at reasoning when dealing with difficult problems. This last point could be good news, since it might reduce the risk that AIs will be able to replace us as effectively as some people fear. On the other hand, it also limits their ability to help us get out of the mess we've made of the world (not that I ever thought the scenario in "The Evitable Conflict" was realistic; the idea of super smart AIs that are still Three Laws compliant seems like more than one could reasonably hope for).
- A teenager sustained serious injuries when he was attacked with a sword by a fellow student at a high school in Brandon, Manitoba.
No comments:
Post a Comment