News roundup, 3 July 2026

- The Bank of England has announced that fossil fuel companies' debt will be downgraded from October onwards. Other central banks are taking similar measures; some 40 of them use a statistic called "weighted average climate intensity" (WACI); notably one of the easiest ways to improve that statistic is to sell US Treasuries. The fact that it's the Telegraph (aka the "Torygraph") reporting this is particularly interesting, given that paper's general hostility to things like renewable energy. Unfortunately, the changes that result probably won't happen in time to stop the collapse of the Thwaites glacier and the resulting sea level rise (possibly up to 2 metres by the end of this century), but it might buy some time to adapt to the rise.

- Spain has banned state-owned enterprises from entering into new contracts with Palantir on national security grounds. Other places are taking measures as well; London's mayor Sadiq Khan recently blocked a £50 million contract that the Metropolitan Police had negotiated with the company. Palantir intends to sue over the matter.

- Wally Daudrich, the former Manitoba Progressive Conservative leadership candidate who was disqualified from running in the Turtle Mountain constituency, has left the party in favour of the far right Keystone Party. He will be running for the latter party in the upcoming byelection in The Pas-Kameesak.

- Edmonton seems to be making excellent use of the land formerly occupied by the decommissioned City Centre Airport. The new neighbourhood, called Blatchford, is being developed with a lot of mixed use midrise buildings with retail on the main floor. This is something that many would see as simply good sense, but it's been difficult to build in much of North America for many decades due to archaic zoning laws. The buildings will be heated and cooled by a shared geothermal system and be well served by the city's LRT.

- A recent study in BC has found that life expectancies in the province are diverging. As of 2024, the provincial average has increased since 2004, and in most of Metro Vancouver (with the stark exception of the Downtown Eastside and vicinity) as well as the Victoria area, people can be expected to live substantially longer. A resident of Richmond born in 2024, for instance, should have an average life expectancy of 89.4 years. The Downtown Eastside itself, not surprisingly, has the lowest life expectancy in the province, but notably the province's interior is doing badly as well - and the farther inland you live, the worse your life expectancy is on average. It's not simply that the interior isn't gaining, it's actually retreating - the life expectancy there actually rose between 2000 and 2014 and has been declining since.

- Nine monks on a pilgrimage walk in Thailand were killed when they were hit by a pickup truck driven by an 11 year old boy. The child is in custody.

News roundup, 21 May 2026

- An Air France flight from Paris to Detroit was forced to divert to Montreal after American authorities found that a person from the Democratic Republic of Congo was aboard. The US has prohibited non-citizens who have been to the DRC as well as Uganda and South Sudan in the last 21 days from entering their country. The hapless passenger, who did not have any symptoms of the disease, was removed from the flight and sent back to Europe; the flight was then allowed to continue on its way.

- Mark Carney is pressuring BC on pipelines, warning that if they keep delaying new pipeline plans, "we're going to be spending more time elsewhere in the country because we need to move forward". That sounds suspiciously similar to "Nice federal funding you've got, it would be a shame if something happened to it".

- The Manitoba government is conducting a survey on the biannual time changes. It's a voluntary survey, so it will be skewed in favour of those with strong opinions, which likely means either that we'll be adopting permanent daylight savings time or, if sleep experts succeed in convincing the government that it's a bad idea, that we'll stick with time changes. Those who wish to fill it out can do so here.

- Toronto is looking at the possibility of deploying automated cameras equipped with microphones in order to catch violators of the city's bylaw on vehicle noise. Unfortunately they have yet to receive permission from the province to do so, and given the Ford government's track record on these matters I doubt it will happen any time soon.

- Shots were fired at the Surrey, BC home of Cricket Canada's newly elected president, Arvinder Khosa. Nobody was hurt; police believe the attack was extortion-related.

- Police had to be summoned to an elementary school in Brandon, Manitoba after an 11 year old boy threw a temper tantrum so severe that he not only punched the principal but put a hole in a classroom wall clear through to the next room. Being under 12 he cannot be held criminally responsible; his mother was briefly taken into custody after interfering with police but was released without charges. Police arranged for him to meet with mental health professionals before releasing him into the custody of his father.

- In other western Manitoba news, a 46 year old man from the community of Russell has been convicted of uttering threats after repeatedly threatening police; the prosecution is not only calling for a two year jail term but for him to be banned from the community following his release. His defense lawyer argues that this would be harmful to his rehabilitation, as he has spent most of his life there and has no connections elsewhere.

News roundup, 15 May 2026

- Some municipalities in BC, including the City of Powell River, the Village of Pemberton, and the Resort Municipality of Whistler, are imposing their own campfire bans in response to the BC Wildfire Service lifting the general ban for the south coast for the Victoria Day weekend. The fact that the province lifted the ban when local officials don't think it's wet enough to lift the ban adds to my suspicions that the Eby government has been so spooked by recent polls that they're trying to avoid anything that populists might try to rally around. This is a fool's errand, of course; populists can always find something else, legitimate or otherwise, to rouse the rabble against the government.

- The student health clinic at McGill University has said that they will not prescribe gender transition hormones to American exchange students under the age of 19 for fear of repercussions from the Trump regime. They say they are doing this based on legal advice from the Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA); the most credible fear they had was about difficulty crossing the border. That said, if you care more about being able to keep vacationing in Florida than about helping your patients, maybe you shouldn't be in the business.

- Energy ministers in every Australian state except one are calling for data centres to be forced to invest in enough wind and solar energy to completely cover their energy consumption. The exception, not surprisingly, is Queensland, which is kind of the Alberta of the southern hemisphere (in terms of political culture; the weather is nicer though).

- Hotels in the US are not seeing the expected rise in bookings for the World Cup that they were hoping for. This is not a big surprise; most Americans don't like soccer (they like to see bigger numbers on the scoreboard) and most foreigners don't want to visit the US right now.

- A recent survey of adults in the US found that 7.3% of respondents had thought about shooting somebody at some point in their lives, and 3.3% had experienced such thoughts in the last year. 

- A man has been arrested in Panama after more than three decades on the lam as the suspect in the murder of Rodney Barger, aka Rawn Beauty, lead singer of punk rock band Cold as Life. He is accused of shooting Barger in the head while he slept. The motive is unclear.

- Most strippers in Montreal depend entirely on tips for their income; strip clubs generally don't actually pay their dancers, and in fact some actually charge them for the "privilege" of working there. This may be about to change though; strippers and other sex workers in the city are planning to go on strike - and just in time for the Grand Prix. I imagine there will be a lot of disgruntled Formula 1 fans in the city that weekend.

News roundup, 30 March 2026

- Avi Lewis has won a convincing victory in the NDP leadership race, receiving 56% of the vote on the first ballot. Heather McPherson came a distant second, at 29%. This does not sit well with provincial leaders in Alberta and Saskatchewan. He will need to find an opportunity to run for a seat in the House of Commons; one is expected in Beaches-East York as Liberal incumbent Nathaniel Erskine-Smith is expected to jump to the provincial level, and the NDP has held this riding in the past. Of course if McPherson wanted to be really spiteful she could resign herself, and put Lewis in the position of having to defend the Green New Deal while running in an Alberta riding.

- Toronto plans to create city-owned nonprofit grocery stores, following the lead of New York's mayor Zohran Mamdani who has similar plans. The idea is to locate the stores in underserved areas and undercut the major chains. There is no timeline for this, however, and city staff warn that it will not be cheap.

- The Carney government has just passed legislation that makes people ineligible for refugee status if their application comes more than a year after their first entry to Canada. The law is retroactive to 2025, meaning that some claimants' applications will be cancelled.

- The International Congress of Mathematicians, the largest conference in the field, is scheduled to be held in Philadelphia this summer, the first time in over 40 years that it will be held in the US. Many prominent mathematicians are threatening to boycott the event if it isn't moved to a more civilized country.

- Michael Ma, the Conservative-turned-Liberal MP for Markham-Unionville, has been accused of casting doubt on the use of China's Uighur population as forced labour. Following a backlash, he has clarified his statement.

-Winnipeg city council is moving ahead with plans to build a bike lane on Wellington Crescent, where a cyclist was killed in 2024. Unfortunately they are also scrapping plans for a temporary lane in the interim; one Redditor on this thread speculates that the permanent lane is going to be put on the boulevard so as to avoid removing or narrowing any traffic lanes, which couldn't be done with temporary lanes. They think council may fear that if they temporarily remove a traffic lane, the narrower street will become normalized and there will be more opposition to, say, removing trees to build the lane on the boulevard. On a positive note they also plan to reduce the speed limit to 40 km/h on that stretch of Wellington, but compliance would be better if the street were made narrower.

- Scott Fielding, who served as finance minister under Brian Pallister and Heather Stefanson (and previously as city councillor for the suburban St. James-Brooklands ward) has been arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a coworker at KPMG, the consulting firm where he went to work after resigning from the legislature.

- Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram) and Alphabet (parent company of Google and YouTube) have been hit with a $6 million judgment by a court in California that found that the companies deliberately designed their products to be addictive. The plaintiff had become hooked on YouTube at the age of 6 and Instagram at 9. The companies are expected to appeal, of course. This comes just after Meta was hit with $375 million in damages by a New Mexico jury for misleading its users about the safety of its products and facilitating child exploitation. There are hopes that this is the start of a major reckoning for the tech industry, but you can be sure that the Trump regime will do its darnedest to protect them.

- The autonomous vehicle company Waymo has been aggressively lobbying the BC government to try to convince them to allow autonomous vehicles on the province's roads. The government is standing firm, so far at least.

News roundup, 3 March 2026

- Along with Mark Carney, several other leaders of countries with close ties to the US are being very circumspect about what they're saying about the attack on Iran. Leaders of the UK, France, and Germany, while quick to point out that they weren't involved in the strikes, seem very reluctant to condemn them either. French president Emmnauel Macron had initially, on Saturday, called for an end to military escalation in the region, calling it "dangerous to all" but he'd evidently changed his tune by the time the joint statement with Germany and the UK came out. In contrast, Spain's prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, has not held back, calling for "immediate de-escalation and full respect for international law", while Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he was "deeply troubled" by the attack (while also condemning Iran's counterstrikes on countries not directly involved in the attack). Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz has been closed by Iran; what that will do to gas prices remains to be seen, but from a more cynical (or, as Sir Humphrey Appleby would say, "realistic") point of view, I can see Mark Carney being privately happy, since an Alberta that's flush with oil money as a result might be less fractious than the province is currently. In the US, the Democrats are divided on the matter - while Bernie Sanders condemned what he called "an illegal, premeditated and unconstitutional war", and other such as Tim Kaine and Chris Van Hollen have also been critical, other such as Henry Cuellar and Tom Suozzi have been supportive (presumably because of Israel's involvement, though they aren't putting it in those terms of course). In other related news, Kuwait seem to have inadvertently shot down three American fighters in the confusion.

- A judge in North Dakota has upheld a $345 million judgment against Greenpeace following a lawsuit by pipeline company Energy Transfer over the organization's actions in fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline. On paper, the judgment affects not only Greenpeace USA but also Greenpeace International, which is based in Europe; one hopes the latter organization can get sheltered from the verdict by the EU, but it looks like Greenpeace USA is finished.

- Peter Thiel's company, Palantir, went to great efforts to try to sell their services to the Swiss government over several years, but Switzerland rejected their advances for multiple reasons, including legal matters concerning data sovereignty as well as straight up national security concerns, a reasonable concern when you're being courted by a company with close ties to the US government. When the Swiss online publication Republik investigated the matter and asked Palantir for comment, the company sent them what Republik’s managing director called "very lengthy" counterstatements for each of a series of articles, which she says "do not fairly address or rebut the reporting". Nonetheless, Palantir is taking the magazine to court under Switzerland's "right to reply" legislation, calling the reporting "misleading", but notably they are not suing for defamation, which you'd expect they would be if the reporting actually were misleading. Perhaps Thiel has never heard of the Streisand Effect.

- Far-right independent MLA Tara Armstrong introduced a bill in the BC legislature to repeal the province's Human Rights Code. The bill was defeated, but the entire BC Conservative caucus voted in favour. Armstrong, who represents the constituency of Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream, was originally elected as a Conservative but left that party along with a colleague to form the OneBC party. She then left that party a few months later to sit as an independent; evidently she doesn't play well with others, but the Cons are all too happy to have her drop bills that they can claim need to be debated, serving as a sort of Vladimir Zhirinovsky or Avigdor Lieberman to Rustad's Putin or Netanyahu. More info about her can be found here.

- Ivermectin, the antihelminthic drug that was touted (with zero evidence) as a treatment for COVID-19, is now being used as an alternative cancer therapy, again with no evidence that it works. It's almost as if the drug has become a sort of totem or sacrament for deplorables.

News roundup, 2 Jan 2025

- The US job market is, by some measures, the worst it's been since 2010. While the actual unemployment rate was only 4.6% in November, a mere 50,000 net new jobs have been added per month across the entire country since May, meaning that those not currently employed find a hard time getting work. This is based on official stats, but Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell thinks this is an overestimation - and that there may in fact be a net loss in jobs. Regardless, about half the country will say it's all Biden's fault anyway...

- A Norwegian startup, Flocean, claims to have developed a desalination technology that cuts the (very considerable) energy consumption by half. According to the company, the technique takes advantage of the pressure of the ocean itself at depths of 300 to 600 metres. They plan to have a proof of concept up and running within the year.

- The BC government has conducted its first comprehensive assessment since 1997 of potentially catastrophic risks facing the province. Among other things, the report has concluded that if a 9.0 magnitude quake were to strike off the coast of Vancouver Island the province would suffer $128 billion in economic losses in addition to the deaths and injuries - and the entire property and casualty insurance industry across Canada could be threatened.

- A travel website called "The Travel" published an article that tries to claim that Canada's boycott of US travel is "backfiring" - partly because it has become more unpleasant to cross the border now that agents have more time to interrogate each person. I dunno, sounds more like the boycott will just strengthen further if that's the case. The article also claims that it's driven up the price of domestic travel in Canada, leading boycotters of the US to travel elsewhere (such as Europe). Again, though, if the demand for domestic travel is up, there's no reasonable basis to say the boycott is "backfiring" - rather, travel to the US is being replaced both by domestic and overseas travel. It reads like the author is in denial of the possibility that there's any good substitute for the US as a travel destination. However, one group who are taking a hit are snowbirds who want to sell their vacation properties in Florida.

- A police vehicle fatally hit a pedestrian in Surrey, BC on Christmas, less than a month after the last time this sort of thing happened. I daresay Surrey's police force might benefit from some driving lessons.

- Around 40 people have died in a fire at a Swiss ski resort on New Year's Eve. Officials say it could be days before all of the bodies have been identified; the cause is under identification.

- A Florida-based YouTuber is under investigation for animal abuse after posting video of the operation of a trap he had developed called the "Opossum Launcher". He had apparently lured the animal onto a makeshift catapult; it appears to have survived the incident but that's probably not the sort of thing that should be encouraged.

- In a story that sounds like it should be from Florida, a man in Brandon, Manitoba was arrested after attempting to pay a business with drugs instead of any conventional method of payment.

News roundup, 28 Jan 2024

- The latest poll from EKOS has the Liberals recovering some lost support. The party now sits at 32%, only seven points shy of the Conservatives, and is statistically tied with them in Ontario. Perhaps Poilievre's courting of the MAGA crowd will turn out to be his downfall? Doubtful, but stay tuned.

- Following Mexico's refusal to accept a deportation flight, Colombia attempted to follow suit, only to cave after Trump threatened the country with massive tariffs. Nice coffee industry you've got, it would be a shame if something happened to it...

- The EU's top military official believes that EU countries should station their own troops in Greenland instead of leaving the military presence on the island to the Americans. I guess until now it never occurred to them that they might have to defend the territory from the Americans.

- A man arrested in the UK on hacking charges has claimed to have been hired by ExxonMobil to obtain information from environmental activists - including people assisting in lawsuits against energy companies.

- The introduction by China of the low-cost DeepSeek AI chatbot has caused panic selling of AI-related stocks in the US.

- An Indiana man who was among the Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump has been shot dead in a traffic stop after allegedly resisting arrest.

- The CIA, which had previously been skeptical of the "lab leak" theory of the origin of COVID-19, has suddenly reversed their stance. I'm sure their new Trump-appointed director has something to do with this.

- BC premier David Eby has proposed a ban on the sale of American alcohol in the province as a response to Donald Trump's tariff threats. The proposal is getting good reviews from domestic alcohol producers, but some industry groups are alarmed by the idea - the B.C. Alliance of Beverage Licensees has expressed concerns that it could reduce selection for consumers (but then, that's kind of the point here). They also fear that it could force some bars to import more expensive products from elsewhere and thus cut into their profits.

- Toronto Animal Services have seized a Spectacled Caiman that was being kept as a pet. Caimans are relatives of alligators, and can grow to more than 2 metres in length. Apparently the owner had kept it for 12 years without knowing it was prohibited in the city; the animal has been turned over to a reptile zoo outside of Peterborough.

News roundup, 2 Dec 2024

- The International Court of Justice is opening two weeks of hearings into the obligations of the international community towards countries vulnerable to climate change. The plaintiffs, including several island nations that face annihilation due to rising sea levels, are calling on the court to rule that they are being unlawfully subjected to harm and to specify what actions are required. Any ruling will be non-binding, however.

- The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that a section of BC's Opioid Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act (ORA), which allows the province to sue manufacturers and distributors of opioids, is legal. The companies had argued that the section was unconstitutional due to interprovincial jurisdiction issues.

- Vancouver's city council has voted to retain a rule that prohibits natural gas heating in new construction in the city, after three councillors from the dominant ABC party broke ranks and voted with the opposition.

- Siloam Mission, a Winnipeg homeless shelter, reports an increasing number of seniors accessing their services. Other organizations, such as the seniors' advocacy group CanAge, also say that there has been a sharp rise in homelessness in that demographic.

- The Public Works Committee of Winnipeg City Council has voted to move ahead with a reduction of the speed limit on Wellington Crescent between River Avenue and Academy Road following the fatality earlier this year. If passed by council as a whole, the speed limit will be reduced from 50 to 30 km/h until protected bike lanes can be installed.

- The town of Gravenhurst in Ontario's Muskoka Region has declared a state of emergency after receiving around 140 centimetres of snow over the weekend.

- Searchers at the Prairie Green Landfill north of Winnipeg have narrowed down the part of the landfill most likely to contain the remains of two of Jeremy Skibicki's victims, and this week the debris will be sifted for the remains.

- A mall in Montreal is playing the rather grating children's song "Baby Shark" in its emergency exit stairwells in order to discourage homeless people from loitering there.

News roundup, 22 Oct 2024

- Control over BC's legislature remains up in the air due to several recounts, but one thing that's clear - the knuckle-dragging loogans did way better than they ought to, and not just in the purely rural ares either. Several Conservatives singles out by the NDP for their extreme views won their seats, including Brent Chapman (the guy who made overtly racist social media posts about Palestinians and suggested that several mass shootings were hoaxes), Jordan Kealy (who promoted the "chemtrails" conspiracy theory), and Jody Toor (who claimed to be a "medical doctor" on the basis of a degree from a crackpot online institution in Hawaii). On a more positive note, Chris Sankey (who claimed that vaccines cause AIDS and claimed that the Jan 6 riot was a hoax) appears to have been defeated, and Bryan Breguet (who questioned the existence of anti-indigenous racism) is still awaiting the results of a recount. Nonetheless, it all brings to mind the quote sometimes attributed (questionably) to Winston Churchill, that "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter".

- Related to that Churchill "quote", Liberal MP Sean Casey, who has joined the growing ranks of those calling for Justin Trudeau's resignation as party leader, said something interesting on the subject:

Voting is an emotional exercise. It’s not based on logic. If it was based on logic and rational thinking, we’d be 20 points up, not down. But there’s been baggage accumulated. People have tuned him out.

There's definitely something to that; while "20 points up" is overstating the case given the rather mediocre performance of the government, decent people voting on the basis of reason and logic would not be going for the Poilievre Conservatives.

- In the US, the ever-gullible masses are in thrall to absurd claims about the recent hurricanes, from claims about Biden and Harris' supposed indifference to the plight of victims to the idea that some nebulous "they" (presumably including Democrats, Jews, etc) are controlling the hurricanes. Of course stuff like this is not without consequence - one man has been arrested for threats against FEMA workers (he is of course unrepentant, like most such people).

- Switzerland, despite their longstanding neutral stance, has signed onto the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI), which seeks to build a unified air and missile defence system across the European subcontinent. They reserve the right, however, to withdraw their participation in the event of an actual war.

- A baseless story being circulated that alleges that Tim Walz sexually assaulted one of his students seems to be getting a boost from Storm-1516, a network affiliated with the so-called Internet Research Agency and believed to operate out of St. Petersburg. They've previously circulated stuff about Kamala Harris as well; stuff like this makes claims that Russia's leaders are becoming more leery of Trump seem like wishful thinking.

- Winnipeg councillor Brian Mayes, who never met a NIMBY he didn't like, continues to cozy up to those people; he's now demanding a map of every location in the city that would be impacted by the proposed "as of right" zoning (which would enable buildings of up to 4 storeys to be constructed without a hearing as long as they're within 800 metres of a transit route).

News roundup, 27 Sept 2024

- A new Leger poll raises serious questions about the political judgment of BC voters, giving the extremist BC Conservatives a 45-42 lead over the NDP. Paradoxically, the premier, NDP leader David Eby, still has a higher personal approval rating than Conservative leader John Rustad, further adding to the impression that the people really don't understand what they're doing when they vote. Possibly the greater efficiency of the NDP vote will prevent the worst from happening, but that remains to be seen.

- A global declaration on antibiotic resistance was weakened at the insistence of the US. The reason? The initial draft called for a 30% reduction of the use of antibiotics in agriculture (one of the biggest offenders on this file) by 2030, and the American ag lobby was having none of it. Therefore, the offending section was replaced with the anodyne recommendation to "strive to meaningfully reduce" the use of antibiotics, without specifics.

- Some Silicon Valley techbros aren't prepared to wait for proper research into geoengineering to be done - they're starting to do it themselves. Naturally, the existence of such rogue operators adds urgency to the need for a sensible study of the matter.

- At least three people were killed when Hurricane Helene struck northern Florida, with winds of 225 km/h (120 kt). It has since been downgraded to a tropical storm.

- The assets of Alex Jones' Infowars are being auctioned off following the ruling of a Houston judge overseeing the bankruptcy of Jones and his media empire. Proceeds will be paid to the relatives of Sandy Hook shooting victims who were defamed by Jones when he repeatedly claimed the massacre to be a hoax.

- The woman killed by a runaway pickup truck in Winnipeg's Westwood neighbourhood two weeks ago was a newcomer to Canada, who was going to be married in October. At the time of her death she was a few weeks away from the end of her probation period at her new job and qualifying for benefits, which ironically would have included life insurance.

News roundup, 3 Sept 2024

 - The National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA) has cited the infamous Dred Scott case as an argument for keeping Kamala Harris off the presidential ballot. Of course the ruling hasn't had legal standing since the Thirteenth Amendment was passed in  1865, but evidently the Republican base isn't fully on board with that fact.

- Donald Trump gave a limited defense of abortion rights in a recent interview with NBC News, presumably in the hope of winning some urban and suburban votes. Predictably, though, his base is apoplectic; the whole thing paints a picture of a candidate who is desperately flailing in the hope of winning in the fall.

- The Alberta government has severely limited municipalities' abilty to use photo radar to enforce speed limits and other traffic laws. 88% of fatal traffic accidents in Alberta in the last year have occurred on roads impacted by the new rule, but the UCP has to please the truck folks I guess.

- A new Angus Reid poll has the BC NDP and Conservative parties in a statistical tie as the fall election looms, following the merger between the Conservatives and BC United.

- A woman was hit by a police car and killed in Winnipeg's Fort Rouge Park. The park is the site of a large homeless encampment, and the involved officers were apparently driving someone back to the encampment when the accident occurred. In tangentially related news, protesters blocked the Harry Lazarenko Bridge on Friday, following an incident earlier last month when a woman named Doris Porter was fatally run over while lying on the bridge; imagery associated with MMIWG2S was used in the protest. From an outsider's point of view it seems a bit odd to link this case with actual murders, but it's inevitable that a community that undeniably has legitimate grievances in the big picture will try to pigeonhole marginal or dubious cases. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

- A robotic window washer is being tested in New York City. This has the potential to eliminate one of the more dangerous jobs out there; while the current model still has to be operated remotely (which is presumably the best of both worlds from a safety and employment point of view) the manufacturer has plans to develop an autonomous version in the future.