- Manitoba was hit by severe storms on Tuesday evening and overnight. This included at least one tornado, which touched down near the town of Ste Anne but fortunately didn't injure anyone; there are unconfirmed reports of several more. Winnipeg got 122 millimetres of rain, while the town of Stonewall got 229. Power was out for some 32,000 Manitoba Hydro customers across the province, including almost 20,000 in Winnipeg (including me, hence the lack of a post yesterday). It was still out for some 15,000 as of last night. Many report sewage in basements, and given the gigantic hailstones that fell in several places it's a safe bet that MPI will take a significant hit for vehicle damage.
- Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time, in a test conducted by Ukraine's military against the Russians. While I can certainly sympathize with the Ukrainians' willingness to do anything to get rid of the invaders, I have to agree with UN Secretary-General António Guterres' view that this sort of thing needs to be banned.
- A new poll in BC has the Conservatives tied with the NDP in popular support. This comes despite the fact that Premier David Eby's approval rating, while below 50%, is still considerably higher (48%) than that of new Conservative leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay (32%). In case there was any doubt about what kind of conservative Findlay is, she was a supporter of the clownvoy, and was photographed with a white nationalist influencer (she denies knowing who he is, but then she would say that, wouldn't she).
- A Toronto man named Zack Giacomelli was having ongoing problems with a BMW that he'd purchased used from a dealership in 2023. He submitted an online inquiry, and got a message from someone from the dealership calling themselves Quinn. After some discussion, Quinn made what was supposed to be a firm buyback offer, sufficient to cover what he still owed on the car - but then a sales consultant called to revoke the offer, saying that "Quinn" was in fact an AI chatbot and had made the offer in error. The dealership quickly reversed this after they were contacted by the CBC, however, and there's already a legal precedent in this country that makes the owner of a chatbot potentially liable for its promises. Giacomelli certainly doesn't disagree with this; as he says, "If they're going to be replacing their employees' jobs with AI, then they need to be honouring what that AI says".
- Musician Elvis Costello has altered the lyrics of his 1979 song "Oliver's Army". The song, which is about the UK's rather troubled history with Ireland, originally contained the phrase "white n***er", which Costello says was a historically accurate description of what the Irish were often called by the Brits, but he stopped playing the song live in 2022 and asked radio stations not to play it, saying that outrage over the use of the N-word was detracting from the actual meaning with the song. Naturally, his rewrite has led some people to complain about "wokeness", to which Costello responds "Go fuck yourself".
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