News roundup, 17 Sept 2026

- European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen says she would like Canada to become an "associate member" of the European Union. This is not currently a formal status that a country can have, however. Mark Carney says that he doesn't want to formally join the bloc but is calling for a "deeper partnership" between Canada and the EU, saying "We are not fair-weather allies. We do not pursue zero-sum deals". No prize for guessing who he's contrasting himself with. This is alarming to Susan Collins, a Republican senator from Maine, saying that it "doesn't help rebuild the good relationship" that Canada and the US once had. Trump is, of course, more blunt, saying that such a move could be considered a "hostile act" and has threatened to stop trading with the EU if that happens.

- The threats against the Israeli directors of the film NAZA have escalated. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will introduce new legislation to facilitate stripping citizenship from people who "smear" Israeli soldiers. Meanwhile rightwing mobs are threatening the families of directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. A large crowd of these brownshirts gathered outside the home of Szor's parents, with one speaker calling for Szor and Abraham to be executed and for their families' homes to be demolished.

- Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, sometimes called the "Godfather of AI", is expressing some optimism that the uproar over the technology will lead to restraints. He notes that at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments that weren't normally inclined to take the kind of action that was needed did so when the need became obvious. Several leaders in the industry have also admitted that a "slowdown" might be needed; some observers are skeptical, however, suspecting that if the companies do allow regulation it will be done in such a way as to keep new startups from entering the industry, effectively pulling up the ladder behind them. Even if that's true, though, it might still be preferable to no regulation at all.

- A news helicopter crashed in Los Angeles on Tuesday, killing the pilot and camera operator as well as a pedestrian on the ground. The crew were covering a fatal crash involving a transit bus. The driver who had crashed her SUV into the bus has been charged with murder; this seems excessive but manslaughter would seem an appropriate charge given the degree of negligence that appears to have been involved in that crash.

- A 44 year old North Dakota man attempting to cross the border at the Emerson-Pembina crossing fled at high speed after being directed into secondary screening. He then attempted to evade the RCMP, damaging a police vehicle in the process, but was captured and found to be carrying a loaded handgun. He faces numerous charges.

News roundup, 4 Sept 2026

- The UN has concluded that climate change has progressed far enough that an overshoot of the 1.5°C limit is inevitable and that people and societies will need to adapt to a hungrier and more dangerous world. Perhaps it's time to retire Rosemary Brown's remark that "until all of us have made it, none of us have made it", since it's pretty much certain now that not everyone's going to make it. Meanwhile the UK's National Audit Office says that the country has not done enough to prepare for possible food insecurity.

- Severe storms hit southern Ontario on Wednesday, with parts of Toronto getting as much rain as they would get in a typical month.

- An admiral in the US navy was asked at a press conference whether he would obey orders to attack Canada. He was quick to dismiss the question as "needlessly emotional" but went on to say that he would follow direction from his commander-in-chief.

- AI will be banned in New York City public schools from kindergarten to grade 8 for at least the next year. The impact of the ban will be studied afterwards, and it may be extended indefinitely if warranted.

- Three Ontario constituencies held byelections yesterday. Ford's PCs won two of the three, while the NDP took Scarborough Southwest. 

- The far-right AfD has the potential to win a majority in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt when that state's voters go to the polls on Sunday.

- Australia is pulling researchers from its base in Macquarie Island so that they don't have to witness a mass dieoff of elephant seals. The dieoff is anticipated due to the arrival of bird flu on the island, and the government is concerned about the psychological impact on the researchers.

News roundup, 29 July 2026

- BC Conservative Party leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay has directed the party's MLAs to stop using the term "First Nations". The terms "indigenous" and "aboriginal" are still considered OK, along with the antiquated and widely deprecated term "Indian". I suspect that part of the motivation is to avoid giving any legitimacy to the idea of them as sovereign nations, but even so she could have avoided suggesting "Indian" as an alternative. I suspect the latter is motivated as much by desire to appeal to the more openly racist voters as anything. Some folks in this Reddit thread suggest another factor - Findlay herself ended up declaring bankruptcy following a legal fight with Musqueam First Nation in 2001 and may carry some residual animus (not that the bankruptcy stopped her from serving as Minister of National Revenue in the Harper government). What's especially worrisome is the fact that Premier David Eby is tanking in the polls, and when average voters get into a "throw the bums out" mood, they stop caring about who they're voting in (if indeed they ever did).

- The Ford government is considering withdrawing support for the Alto high speed rail project in revenge for the federal government's rejection of the expansion of Billy Bishop Airport. This is pure spite, of course; if you're actually concerned about making it easier to get around the country, trying to stop high speed rail isn't going to make things better.

- At least 13 people are dead and numerous others missing after an earthquake struck the Japanese city of Kumamoto.

- Atlanta activist Samuel Tunick, upon returning from overseas, was pulled aside by Customs and Border Protection last year and ordered to provide access to the data on his smartphone. The phone was running GrapheneOS, which allows you to set up a "duress code" that wipes the contents of the phone when entered; he allegedly gave this code to CBP officers when they demanded access. Following this they let him go, but he was subsequently charged with a felony for destruction of evidence. Tunick had been involved in protests against the construction of a police training facility called "Cop City" by critics, and suspects that this was a fishing operation.

- Around 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians who had been given "temporary protected status" in the US due to the conditions in their homelands have had their status cancelled. Their chances of admission to Canada are minimal due to changes to the Safe Third Country agreement. The changes are definitely unfortunate, but were probably inevitable in this political climate; it's unrealistic to expect the federal government to simply accept an influx of people comparable to a medium-sized city, no matter how deserving they are of refuge. This is something that's only going to become more common in the coming years as climate change displaces vast numbers of people.

- A volunteer with the animal rescue organization K9 Advocacy Manitoba was killed by dogs earlier this month in Sandy Bay First Nation. She had apparently visited a home to pick up some puppies, but the owner wasn't home and their own dogs, described as "protective and aggressive", attacked and killed her.

News roundup, 31 March 2026

 - Executives in Canada's federal civil service will be required to return to the office five days a week as of the 4th of May, and all other civil servants will be have only a single remote day per week. This comes despite the recommendation by the International Energy Agency that people "work from home whenever possible" to mitigate the risk of oil shortages as a result of the Iran war; the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, which represents some civil servants, is calling for the return to office order to be reversed. And Manitoba Hydro is also requiring its employees to be in the office four days a week as of this fall. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a similar fight is brewing as the Public and Commercial Services Union is calling for an end to the current policy which requires employees to be in the office 60% of the time. Plenty of other countries aren't waiting for it to become a real crisis; Thailand is not only allowing WFH but mandating it for those who can do so; Pakistan and Bangladesh are taking similar measures. It's worth noting that those countries are more dependent on oil imports than Canada and the UK are, and I suspect that commercial real estate, not to mention the kind of culture wars we see in the West, are not as big a factor there as in richer countries either.

- The Financial Times has reported that a broker at Morgan Stanley with ties to Pete Hegseth tried to make large investments in a defense fund in the weeks leading up to the attack on Iran. The deal apparently fell through because the fund had not yet been made available to Morgan Stanley brokers. The Pentagon is vehemently denying this, and is demanding a retraction from the newspaper.

- New legislation in Israel makes the death penalty the default sentence for certain kinds of terrorism - but the death penalty can only be used if the intent of said terrorism is intended to "negate the existence of the state of Israel". Presumably that provision is there to make sure no future government decides to use the law against West Bank settlers, some of whose actions against Palestinians could legitimately be called terrorism.

- The Ford government in Ontario has announced its intention to expropriate the City of Toronto's share in Billy Bishop Airport in the Toronto islands. They plan to extend the runway to allow jets to use the airport - something long resisted by Toronto - and to declare it a "special economic zone" so as to be able to exempt it from any municipal or provincial legislation that gets in the way of those plans. Prime Minister Mark Carney has diplomatically called the idea an "interesting vision" but has stopped short of endorsing it so far.

- Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania decided to test how much trust people put in AI chatbots. Subjects were asked to answer a number of questions, and had the option of using ChatGPT to do so. More than 50% of the subjects across all the experiments blindly parroted the answers given by the chatbot. In one study, with a sample size of 359, subjects followed the advice of the chatbot almost 93% of the time when its advice was correct - but nearly 80% of the time when it was wrong. This is alarming given that these things are wrong far more often than many people realize - a study last fall concluded that these things misrepresent news content nearly half the time, for instance. Even more alarming is that there seems to have been an increase in the incidence of AIs deceiving people and disregarding instructions in the last six months. In one example, an AI agent that was instructed not to make any changes in code instead created a new agent to do it instead.

- China has introduced legislation that will ban the use of apartments to store cremated remains as well as the burial of corpses or the construction of tombs anywhere except public cemeteries. Apparently rental apartments are often cheaper than cemetery plots, so people just rent an apartment to store Grandma's ashes.

News roundup, 12 March 2026

- Israel bombed a residential neighbourhood in Beiruit, claiming that an apartment building they hit was "used" by an organization called Jama’a Islamiye (Islamic Group). The organization says none of its members were impacted by the attack. Israeli ground troops are also pushing into border areas in Lebanon, and there are fears that a wider invasion is planned. Meanwhile Iran has announced a full closure of the Strait of Hormuz (except for China apparently), causing a dramatic increase in oil prices. Air New Zealand is cancelling around 1,100 flights as the price of jet fuel spikes due to the war. Oil barons in Canada are salivating of course, as are those in Russia.

- The Manitoba government has announced that their proposed supervised consumption site, planned for a former industrial site on Henry Avenue, may open sooner than expected. This has led nearby homeowners to argue for reduced assessed values for their properties. In other provincial government news, Mintu Sandhu, the minister responsible for consumer protection, has introduced a "right to repair" bill modeled after similar legislation recently passed in Quebec.

- A Swiss man in his 60s set him self on fire on a bus in the town of Kerzers, killing himself and five other people. Police have ruled out a terrorist motive, describing the perpetrator as a "marginalised and disturbed individual" who had recently been reported missing by his family.

- Matthew Chorney, a paramedic in West St. Paul, Manitoba, received a call about an emergency in his immediate vicinity ten minutes before the end of his shift. He declined the call and left it to another paramedic who was almost 20 minutes away. Fortunately the patient did not die, but Chorney has been convicted of multiple charges by a disciplinary panel of the College of Paramedics of Manitoba. The charges include professional misconduct; his registration has been suspended for three months and he is being ordered to pay the college for the $25,000 cost of the investigation.

- Kenyan authorities arrested a man who they say was attempting to smuggle over 2,000 queen ants back to his native China. The ants are sold for the pet trade in that country; there are fears that they are being harvested at a rate that could have significant impacts on ecosystems.

News roundup, 23 Feb 2026

- Iran's air defense systems have shot down three Israeli F-35s in Iranian airspace since last summer. Setting aside the question of what those fighters were even doing in Iranian airspace, it ought to be another nail in the coffin for Canadian plans to purchase more of the darned things. Whether it will be remains to be seen of course.

- New polling from Politico shows the severity of Canadians' alienation from the US. Among the findings, 48% of Canadians consider the US to be the biggest threat to peace, with Russia a distant second at 29%, and 57% consider China to be a more reliable partner than America under Donald Trump. Perhaps even more telling are the results by political inclination - a plurality, though not a majority, of Conservative supporters doubt their ability to depend on the US.

- An outbreak of violence in the Mexican state of Jalisco has led to the closure of schools and public transit. The violence follows the death of drug lord Oseguera Cervantes at the hands of Mexican authorities. The decapitation of his organization seems to have sparked a power vacuum in the world of organized crime; Global Affairs Canada has issued a travel advisory and airlines are cancelling flights to and from the state.

-  Manitoba's Southern Health Region, which includes the cities of Winkler and Morden, has seen over 50 measles cases so far this year, but a reporter sent there found that people aren't expressing much concern - when they are willing to talk to reporters about the matter at all. Winkler's deputy mayor Andrew Froese claims to have heard little about the matter from his citizens, and also claims that the townspeople "follow public health guidelines" (except the ones that recommend vaccination, presumably). Morden's mayor Nancy Penner declined to comment on the matter at all.

- The city of Powell River, BC is named after the province's first superintendent of Indian Affairs, Israel Powell. Given that Powell was a big supporter of the residential school system, the neighbouring Tla’amin First Nation has urged that the city's name be changed. The proposal was defeated in a vote last fall, and the council has deferred any discussion on the matter until after the next election. What's interesting, though, is that a lot of the pressure to keep the old name seems to come from outside the area; the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (a major player in the anti-public health movement, among other things) has been involved, and this organization appears to get a lot of money from the Atlas Network, an American organization of rightwing think tanks. It's almost as if these foreign influencers are trying to stir up rage against anything that can be called "woke". Most likely they want to tip the balance in favour of the Conservative Party.

- An armed intruder was shot to death after breaching the security perimeter around Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach, Florida.

News roundup, 28 Jan 2026

- Over 97% of all new cars registered in Norway last November have been electric. The government is now removing some of the initiatives it introduced to encourage people to buy them, as they seem not to be needed anymore.

- US ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra is warning that more American aircraft will need to enter Canada's airspace to address perceived threats if Canada goes ahead and buys planes from those dirty Swedes instead of from Lockheed-Martin. Denmark, on the other hand, is warning us not to listen to the Americans; they're in the position of having previously done what they were told and replaced their entire fleet with F-35s, and now fear that the US could cut off access to replacement parts if the Greenland crisis reescalates.

- Ilhan Omar was sprayed with an unknown substance at a town hall meeting in Minneapolis. The assailant was removed by security; Omar refused to end the meeting and continued, not wanting to give the enemy a success.

- The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight in response to increasing risks of war as well as climate change and artificial intelligence. Particularly concerning is the increasing breakdown of international cooperation which, as flawed as it is, has managed to prevent nuclear war since 1945. Meanwhile, in the UK a national security assessment released following a freedom of information request paints a pretty dismal picture, warning of possible threats to the country's food security unless there are major dietary shifts away from meat, and of growing risks of international conflict. The version initially released had some redactions, including fears that the loss of glaciers in the Himalayas could lead to conflict between the nuclear powers of India, Pakistan, and China. Evidently the government wanted the report suppressed because it was overly negative, and because it calls attention to the government's own failures.

- A lawyer says she was viciously assaulted by Durham Regional Police while finishing up some post-trial work in an interview room at the Oshawa court house. Apparently they thought a black woman in a hijab didn't look like she belonged there, and expressed their displeasure in the way that cops so often do.

News roundup, 15 Jan 2025

- Several NATO countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, are sending troops to Greenland as a message to Donald Trump. Subsequently, France announced that they'll be sending troops as well. This follows an unsuccessful attempt by Danish diplomats to talk sense into the orange monster. There is talk of Canada sending troops as well, though Defense Minister David McGuinty says that no decision has been made on the matter.

- Unions and community organizations in Minnesota are calling for a general strike on the 23rd of January. Meanwhile, ICE is being accused of using private information, of the sort that's not supposed to be readily accessible to them, to intimidate people keeping an eye on them. Under Minnesota law, license plate readers and car registration data is only supposed to be accessible to law enforcement during a criminal investigation, but ICE seems to be getting around the safeguards. ICE has also shot another person, this one non-fatally.

- The FBI searched the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson on Wednesday and seized several devices, apparently in an attempt to find the source of a leak about a defense contractor that Natanson had covered in one of her articles.

- Trump is backing away from threats to strike Iran, saying that the government has reassured him that the killing has stopped. This is good news for international stability, unless of course it's happening because he thinks he needs to focus on Greenland. The least bad possibility (still very bad though) is that he wants his troops close at hand to use at home.

- Quebec premier François Legault has announced his resignation, just under nine months prior to the scheduled election. Legault's Coalition Avenir Québec is being clobbered in the polls; only 18% of eligible voters plan to support them. If an election were held today, the CAQ would come third in the popular vote, and fifth in seat count. Also resigning is Ontario Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie, who fared poorly in a post-election leadership review.

- Winnipeg's infamous Manwin Hotel, which had been vacant since last year when it was declared unfit for habitation, was destroyed by fire yesterday morning. The fire forced the evacuation of the Main Street Project next door, and it may be several days before the facility is able to reopen. Nobody died, which is more than can be said for rather a lot of days when the hotel was actually open. Housing advocate Marion Willis of St. Boniface Street Links calls the fire a "predictable outcome" of the city's lax approach towards vacant buildings. To their credit, the city seems to be moving towards potential seizure of such buildings; we'll have to wait and see how well they follow through with that.

News roundup, 9 Dec 2025

- The US, Russia, and Saudi Arabia are refusing to agree on an official summary of the findings of the UN's latest Global Environment Outlook, due to the report coming down too strongly for their liking on fossil fuels and plastics.

- Canada's Department of National Defense is trying to distance itself from the US attacks on boats in the Caribbean. However, this is not as simple as it might seem because of Canada's involvement in Operation Caribbe, a longstanding joint mission with the US Coast Guard. While it is the US Air Force and not the Coast Guard that has been conducting the attacks, both are under the command of US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, which limits the amount of political cover that can be provided by this. France has already condemned the attacks, and the UK and Columbia are suspending intelligence-sharing with the US in the region; so far Canada has not followed suit.

- Former cabinet minister Steven Guilbeault doubts that it will be possible to meet Canada's emissions targets due to recent moves by the government.

- A Canadian court has ordered French cloud provider OVHcloud to turn over customer data that is stored in Europe. Problem is, under French law it is illegal for the company to hand over the data. Penalties can be up to €90,000 and six months imprisonment.

- Despite fears of gridlock, the reopening of Winnipeg's Portage and Main intersection to pedestrians has had minimal impact on traffic. 

- In recent years the majority of fraud cases in Ontario have been dropped or stayed due to a lack of resources for prosecutors. The problem has gotten considerably worse since 2020 due to backlogs in the courts related to the pandemic.

News roundup, 29 July 2025

- The Manitoba government says that 59 people have been housed through the "Your Way Home" program since it launched in January. According to housing minister Bernadette Smith, all 59 are still housed; nonetheless, some are concerned about the slow pace of getting people into housing. The City of Winnipeg's move to shut St. Boniface Street Links out of the process and give the Main Street Project an exclusive contract is also getting poor reviews from some; city councillor Ross Eadie says that he will be calling for the city to review this decision. For her part, Street Links' executive director, Marion Willis, says that her organization has housed 28 people this month; it would be interesting to know more about the difference in the organization's approach compared to MSP.

- Elections Canada says that they will be using write-in ballots in order to make balloting for the Battle River-Crowfoot byelection manageable. The best thing to be hoped for would be if one of the 209 candidates has a similar name to Pierre Poilievre; that could lead to some interesting results.

- Donald Trump is now saying that a trade deal with Canada to avoid the planned increase in tariffs may not be in the cards. Of course, given that Trump said months ago that he wants to use economic force to compel Canada to join the US, this is not surprising. Probably the negotiations were set up by Trump to fail from the beginning. Meanwhile, the EU has agreed to a deal with the US that will set baseline tariffs at 15%; this is lower than the 30% threatened but considerably higher than the 4.8% tariffs in place now. German chancellor Friedrich Merz says that this was the best deal that could be hoped for, while French prime minister François Bayrou called it a capitulation.

- Two prominent Israeli human rights organizations are now accusing their country of genocidal acts in Gaza. Of course this is old news to anyone who's been paying attention to organizations outside that country, but it makes it a bit harder for the Netanyahu regime to deny it when their own people are saying it.

- A British judge has ordered the last will and testament of Freddie Scappaticci, widely suspected of being a mole in the Provisional IRA for the government, to be sealed for 70 years. A representative of the estate had requested this to protect his heirs from possible retribution in case someone considers them guilty by association.

- The city of Vaughan is the latest to deny MAGA rocker Sean Feucht a permit to perform in one of its parks. Instead, he will performed in a church in Etobicoke. It's worth noting how nearly all of his performances seem to have been initially booked for venues that are owned by public entities. I'm pretty sure he's not doing that as a way of showing solidarity with the public sector; more likely he's hoping for this very result so he can play the victim.

News roundup, 19 June 2025

- The Trump regime plans to deploy another 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles in response to anti-ICE protests. Governor Gavin Newsom points out that these troops are being diverted from critical roles in managing wildfires and, ironically enough, patrolling the border; evidently Trump considers sticking it to California to please his base more important though.

- An Iranian missile hit the main hospital in the Israeli city of Beersheba this morning; no deaths are reported but a number of people were injured. The Israelis are outraged; evidently they can dish it out but can't take it themselves (not that anyone should be targeting hospitals, of course). Donald Trump is apparently still not sure whether he wants to join Israel in the war on Iran. I guess Netanyahu is pushing him one way, and Putin is pushing him the other way. Meanwhile Ted Cruz got a grilling from none other than Tucker Carlson over his hawkish stance towards Iran.

- The Trump regime wants Canada to increase its tariffs on China in return for the US lowering its tariffs on Canada. While Melanie Joly was open to this idea earlier this year, a recent poll finds that a plurality of Canadians are opposed.

- Conservative MP Damien Kurek, who represents the Alberta riding of Battle River-Crowfoot, has resigned his seat to allow Pierre Poilievre to run in the resulting byelection and thus reenter Parliament. This will not stop a leadership review from occurring at the next Conservative Party convention, scheduled to occur in Calgary next January, but he seems unlikely to be removed unless he somehow loses the byelection, which is highly improbable unless an even more extreme candidate (like, say, Maxime Bernier) is able to capture the attention of the voters in that riding.

- Norway has introduced new regulations for cruise ships, prohibiting them from coming closer than 500 metres away from polar bears in order to minimize interference with the bears. Predictably, the cruise industry is up in arms, with one expedition leader saying ships are sailing "empty" as a result and calling the policy "conservation fascism". Doesn't really look like fascism to me; I must have missed the part where tour operators get put into concentration camps. The remark seems especially tone-deaf given what looks very much like the rise of actual fascism in places like the US.

- Czech authorities have charged three people with running a fake dental office in which an unqualified, self-taught individual conducted root canals, extracted teeth, and even used anesthesia.

News roundup, 30 April 2025

- Mark Carney's Liberals won their highest share of the popular vote in decades on Monday, receiving 43.5% of the vote. Paradoxically, the Conservatives also won their highest vote share in decades, at 41%. This means a number of things - most notably, that the Liberals were bailed out by NDP and Bloc voters. How much longer that can continue to happen is an open question. And it means that despite the Liberals' high share of the popular vote, they fell just short of a majority with 169 seats. It also, however, shows that the inefficiency of the Conservative vote masks some pretty strong divisions. If you go to the interactive map of results and click on rural ridings won by the Cons, you'll see margins of victory of 60, 70, or even 80%. And like it or not, those people are not going away any time soon, meaning the Conservative Party will not become more moderate for the foreseeable future. And this in turn means that the NDP will likely go into the next election with their prospective voters pondering the same tactical voting question that they did this time.

- Despite failing to win his own seat in addition to failing to defeat the Liberals, Pierre Poilievre says he intends to stay on as Conservative leader. It's possible that the speech was written before it became apparent that he was going go lose his seat; nonetheless, some party strategists believe that he can and should stay on as leader (possibly asking someone in a rural Alberta riding to step aside so he can run in the byelection). Oh, and one interesting tidbit - by law, Stornoway is reserved for the "Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons" - without a seat, Poilievre may have to move out of there unless he can get back into the House pretty quickly.

- Donald Trump is apparently aware of his impact on the Canadian election. Currently he seems to be twisting this into some sort of perverse pride - "I'm so important Canadians couldn't ignore me". Given his volatility, we'll have to see how this evolves in the future.

- Manitoba's public health officials are trying to build trust with rural communities in the province's Bible belt in the hope of increasing the vaccination rate enough to prevent a full-scale measles outbreak. So far nine cases have been confirmed in the province, as well as four suspected cases with known connections with the outbreak in southern Ontario. Meanwhile modeling by Stanford University has concluded that there is a significant risk of the disease coming back in a big way - along with polio, rubella, and all kinds of other nasties.

- North Dakota's hospitality industry continues to take a severe beating as Canadians no longer want to spend money in a country that has threatened to take over Canada, and perhaps doubly so in a state that voted overwhelmingly for the guy who's making all the threats.

- One of the problems of using generative AI for your front line customer service is that AIs sometimes just make stuff up. People who contacted customer support for an AI-driven coding assistant regarding getting logged out of the app were told that this was "expected behaviour" under a "new login policy". The problem is, there was no such new policy. Stuff like this is not good publicity for any company, but especially when your primary product is itself dependent on AI. Companies are also finding that it weirds people out when an AI answers their call to a customer service line and starts calling them by their name unprompted, as if the AI had been reading How to Win Friends and Influence People or something.

- A woman says she was bitten by bedbugs when staying at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre to give birth to twins.

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, 14 Jan 2024

- Donald Trump is claiming that the US needs nothing from Canada, even as Canadian firefighters are playing key roles in the fight against wildfires in California. Part of Trump's bluster, of course, has nothing to do with the fires and everything to do with the exports that will become considerably more expensive if Trump goes ahead with his tariff plans. However, a case can be made for the idea that the assistance Canada is providing for California is part of what Trump is talking about - many Republicans actually want California to suffer, and Canada is, in a small way, getting in the way of that.

- There is a frenzied rush across the US to get solar panels installed before the incoming Trump administration has the chance to cancel the tax credits for their installation. Meanwhile, his vow to prevent the installation of any more wind turbines is meeting with the approval of Germany's far-right AfD. Presumably the idea of big strong Aryan men digging coal out of the ground appeals to that party's rank and file members, while the idea of keeping Germany dependent on Russian natural gas appeals to its leadership. Despite all this, though, it's hard to keep good ideas down indefinitely; renewables constitute the vast majority of new power installation in the US, and electric cars are unlikely to be stopped either. Both will, however, be slowed down sufficiently that climate change over the next century or so will be far worse than it otherwise would have to be, and millions if not billions of people will suffer as a result.

- Jenni Byrne, a senior advisor to Pierre Poilievre, is singling out former Conservative leader Erin O'Toole for criticism. Why? Because O'Toole, upon hearing of Liberal cabinet minister Anita Anand's decision to step down, made a gracious if anodyne "thank you for your service" tweet, and apparently being gracious towards political opponents is simply beyond the pale for modern conservatives.

- Mark Carney seems to be interested in the federal Liberal leadership; he made an appearance on Jon Stewart's Daily Show last night. While he did not definitively say he was going to run, there were some hints. Presumably he plans to play the long game, running in a safe seat in the coming election and dragging the party back from the brink to take power again after a couple of Tory terms.

- A pilot study to move towards a four day workweek is getting favourable reviews in Germany. Under the scheme, workers get the same pay as before, but get an extra day off during the week; nearly three quarters of companies participating in the scheme intend to continue with it. The reason, counterintuitive though it might seem, is that productivity has actually increased. The frequency and duration of meetings has been reduced by 60%, which might have something to do with the increase in productivity. It's worth noting that the article doesn't give much in the way of details regarding the kind of companies participating in the study; many folks on Reddit strongly suspect that this is skewed in favour of white-collar jobs and fear that this could worsen some social divides.

- Mark Zuckerberg, having already declared the intent to eliminate fact checking for posts on Facebook and Instagram, also wants Donald Trump to somehow stop the EU from making him follow their own rules. He has also gone on Joe Rogan's podcast to declare that corporations need more "masculine energy"; whether he sees the fascists on the ascendance and wants to stay in their good books by saying stuff like that, or whether this is something he's always believed and just feels more comfortable saying so now, I don't know, but neither interpretation looks good on him.

News roundup, 4 Dec 2024

- At Justin Trudeau's meeting with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago this past Friday, the incoming president quipped that Canada should join the US if we can't handle the 25% tariffs being slapped on imports. Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc insists that Trump was joking, but he has previously expressed interest in our water, and as anyone who's read Richard Rohmer's novel Ultimatum or seen the miniseries H₂O knows, these things should not be taken lightly.

- South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol is facing possible impeachment following the short-lived imposition of martial law overnight. Yoon says his move was necessitated by "North Korea-sympathizing anti-state forces" and accuses the opposition of "attempting to overthrow the liberal democratic system through legislative dictatorship", but the fact that he's facing serious corruption allegations that were being investigated by the opposition is probably the real reason.

- French prime minister Michel Barnier, appointed by President Emmanuel Macron only 90 days ago, is facing a motion of non-confidence, after using executive powers to push a budget through without parliamentary support.

- The Auto Trader website forecasts that the number of gasoline-powered cars in the UK will fall by over 40% over the next decade.

- Several businesses in Winnipeg are no longer accepting cash, apparently to deter robberies. This has become somewhat common elsewhere as well, and has raised concerns. Some are calling for legislation to limit this, since it discriminates against people who don't have a bank account or credit card, and from a certain point of view this could be seen as discrimination on the grounds of "social condition", which is prohibited in some jurisdictions. Some cities and states in the US have adopted or are considering such legislation.

- More than six weeks after a BC man, Jim Barnes, went missing on a hunting trip, a dog believed to be his has been found alive. The dog is not tattooed or microchipped, but appeared to recognize Barnes' partner and other people that it would have been familiar with.

News roundup, 17 April 2024

- A whistleblower is calling for the grounding of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, alleging that production issues could make the aircraft susceptible to in-flight breakup.

- Jury selection in Donald Trump's trial for the hush money allegedly paid to Stormy Daniels is progressing better than might be expected, with seven jurors already selected.

- Back in Canada, federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has delivered this year's budget to Parliament. Notably, this includes $8.5 billion for housing (better late than never certainly), as well as a national disability benefit (albeit less than what advocates were hoping for). There will be a deficit of $40 billion; predictably, the deficit hawks are getting antsy, and some worry that this could worsen inflation. Some others point out that this is a simplistic view of things and that austerity could do a lot more harm than a deficit (citing the basket case that the UK has become as an example). Then again, it may not matter what the fundamentals are if big economic interests lose confidence. It may be a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

- The Manitoba PCs are going to stick with interim leader Wayne Ewasko until next year. Interestingly Ewasko is being touted as a potential candidate for the full job; many parties prohibit an interim leader from running for the main prize, due to them enjoying an unfair advantage due to their higher profile. Other potential candidates include MLA Obby Khan, former MLA Kevin Klein, and East St. Paul Mayor Carla Devlin.

- Emergency departments in rural Manitoba experienced some 80,000 hours of closures due to being shortstaffed. Three ERs (in Shoal Lake, Teulon, and Winnipegosis) have been closed indefinitely for several years. The Tories did a lot of complaining about this kind of thing the last time they were in opposition, and no doubt the NDP will happily point out that the Tories were in power as the current situation developed. What neither party will likely want to say, though, is that the problem may be as much a cultural problem as a fiscal one. To put it bluntly, most people who spend years at university to become doctors and nurses don't want to move out to a small town, and the growing hostility in many of those communities towards those edumacated big city folks with their electric cars and rainbow flags isn't going to make the situation any easier.

- The US House of Representatives is holding separate votes on aid packages for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Originally this was planned as a single vote, but given the willingness (or even desire) of many Republicans to throw Ukraine under the bus, I guess AIPAC and their ilk decided that the possibility of the whole package being defeated meant that the votes had to be separated, or else. On a related note, some of the Republicans are trying to oust Speaker Mike Johnson for not being sufficiently extreme for their liking (even though he's pretty darned extreme).

- A fire has devastated the historic building that once housed Copenhagen's stock exchange. Happily there were no fatalities, and a lot of the artworks stored there were rescued, but the building itself is likely to be a total loss.

- The US Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal by Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson, who had been held liable by a lower court for injuries that a police officer sustained when a protester at a rally organized by Mckesson. A previous Supreme Court decision in 1982 had ruled that protest leaders cannot be held liable for the violent actions of a protest participant, unless there was evidence that the leaders had actually directed or incited the violence, but I guess the present court didn't want to do the legal gymnastics needed to say that the Mckesson case is somehow different.

- The University of Southern California has cancelled their valedictorian speech, citing "safety concerns". No doubt they're particularly concerned about their donor base, since the valedictorian has been highly critical of Israel on social media.

- A former US Marine has been sentenced to 9 years in prison for the firebombing of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Costa Mesa, California in 2022. He had also admitted to planning other attacks.

- Julian Assange's prospects of avoiding extradition to the US are diminishing after the Americans assured the High Court of England and Wales that he will not face the death penalty if convicted.

- A debate over a controversial bill requiring NGOs that accept money from abroad to register as "foreign agents" turned into a punch-up in the Georgian parliament.

News roundup, 20 Feb 2024

- Canadian senators have been issued panic buttons following an increase in security incidents involving aggressive protesters. The issues motivating the protesters in question are various, but whatever the cause, it seems more of them are crossing the line into intimidation.

- The fuss over Steven Guilbeaut's remarks about not wanting to invest in more roads continues, as well as a related fuss over his desire to phase out pure fossil fuel vehicles (not hybrids, despite what you might think from the unhinged rants from Danielle Smith). Columnist Deveryn Ross spins the infrastructure ideas as "coercive", which is ridiculous - they're not going to put you in jail for driving to work, at most they'll make it more convenient to get to work by some other means. Unfortunately, such rhetoric works very well on Joe and Jane Sixpack, and the Conservatives are salivating at the opportunity.

- The US has submitted a resolution to the UN calling for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza, even as they vow to veto an existing resolution set to be heard by the Security Council today. Meanwhile the UK Labour Party is now calling for an immediate end to fighting, and even the Prince of Wales is expressing concern that "too many" have been killed (though he hasn't made any actual calls for a ceasefire).

- Chinese diaspora organizations in Canada say they are boycotting the public inquiry into foreign interference, due to the standing granted by the inquiry's commissioner to three politicians that they consider excessively close to the Chinese state. The organizations appear to fear that the ability granted to the politicians to cross-examine witnesses could expose the identities of activists in China.

- The US Supreme Court is set to hear a case to determine whether municipalities can fine homeless people for camping on public property when there is no proper shelter available. In Canada, courts have ruled against cities more than once on this issue, but things may be different down there.

- Over 21,000 households used Harvest Manitoba's food bank in January, an increase of over 3,000 from the same month last year.

- Louis Riel was honoured with an update to the portrait of him at the legislature, naming him as the honourary first premier of Manitoba.

News roundup, 6 Feb 2024

- Conservative Party supporters in Canada are increasingly of the view that Canada gives "too much support" to Ukraine. When polling Canadians overall, 25% of those polled agreed with the statement, compared to 13% a couple of years ago - and among Conservative supporters this has jumped from 19% to 43% over the same time period. It seems like the Cons are betting on the Canadian public hating Justin Trudeau so much that they'll blindly vote for whoever has the best chance of beating him; sadly, it's a pretty good bet. Not that there isn't reason to dislike Trudeau, quite the contrary (just look at his latest gaffe for instance), but the public's willingness to jump from the frying pan into the fire is unfortunate.

- Former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi is said to be considering a run for the Alberta NDP leadership. This could make for a very interesting provincial election in 2027. Nenshi isn't that left by non-Alberta standards, but he'd certainly be an improvement on their current premier.

- Calgary's current mayor, Jyoti Gondek, could theoretically face a recall election - that is, if the petitioner is able to collect signatures from 40% of the city's nearly 1.3 million residents by the 4th of April. Reasons cited include a bylaw prohibiting stores from giving out free single use bags, as well as tax increases and a deal entered into by the city and the owners of the Flames, among others, to build an event centre. Don't know enough about the event centre issue to comment but the other two reasons reek of rightwing populism, and I suspect the petitioner will be able to get some support from the same kind of people who show up at city hearings talking about "neighbourhood integrity" out of fear that someone might build a duplex down the street from them. Meanwhile in the neighbouring city of Chestermere, the mayor and half the council have been ousted by the provincial government; I know essentially nothing about the place, but the folks on Reddit seem to think this move by the province is a case of a stopped clock being right twice a day.

- On Thursday the US Supreme Court will be hearing Donald Trump's appeal of Colorado's move to exclude him from the ballot. This will be the first time in history that the court hears a case related to the "disqualification clause" in the Fourteenth Amendment; it seems that it would take some pretty intense mental gymnastics for self-professed "originalists" like the conservatives on the court to keep Trump on the ballot, but they may well find a way.

- The International Code Council is a nonprofit dedicated to developing model building codes. Lately they seem to have been bending to every demand of the natural gas lobby, even hastily changing their own rules to give the lobbyists more favourable treatment.

- The European Union had a plan to cut pesticide use in half by the end of the decade, as well as setting carbon reduction targets for the agriculture sector, but is backing away in the face of an outburst of populist rage.

- Apparently those convoy protesters who went down to Texas to "defend" the border against the supposed "invasion" were disappointed to see that things weren't as they'd been led to believe. The convoy's leaders managed to crowdfund a lot of money though, so there's that.

- Pakistan International Airlines just had a flight attendant walk away in Toronto and not show up for their return flight. This would not be very newsworthy in itself, but the same thing has happened several times in the last few years, which is starting to look like a pattern.

News roundup, 26 Jan 2024

- Pierre Poilievre likes to say that "Canada is broken". Well, he's actually kind of right about that, but not for the reasons he and his followers think; it's nothing that can be laid at the feet of the present-day Liberals (or the Conservatives, or any other party). As the Globe and Mail's Andrew Coyne points out, there are serious problems with representation by population - and they're burned right into our constitution. Perhaps the worst of these is a 1915 amendment known as the "senatorial clause" (section 51A of the Constitution Act), which stipulates that no province may have fewer seats in the House of Commons than it has in the Senate - meaning that PEI, which was given four Senate seats as an enticement to join Confederation in 1873, is guaranteed four seats in the House in perpetuity, despite having a population smaller than Sudbury. Someone on the rabble.ca discussion board once referred to the province as "Canada's constitutionally protected rotten borough".

- The suspect in Tuesday's shooting incident at Edmonton's city hall has been identified as a security guard employed by the Corps of Commissionaires. He had apparently recorded a "manifesto video" (since deleted from YouTube) that one commentator described as "salad bar extremism", referencing grievances ranging from the war in Gaza to "wokeism" and taxes. He also cited both racism and immigration as other grievances, which suggests that he's not all there; this seems to be at least as much a psychiatric story as a political one. When a traumatic event strikes a provincial capital you might expect the premier to make some sort of statement, even if it's just a "thoughts and prayers" one, but she was too busy welcoming Tucker Carlson to address the matter.

- Kenneth Law, the man accused of selling toxic substances to suicidal people, has just had his charges upgraded to first degree murder. No detailed info about the reason for this upgrade, but it seems to suggest that the authorities think that he actually enjoyed causing deaths as opposed to say, just wanting to help people ease their suffering or even wanting to make money off of them. There have been people like that before, such as William Melchert-Dinkel, though notably even he was not actually convicted of murder.

- Coal is expected to account for a smaller share of global electricity production than renewables by next year; new projects are going online all the time. This does add to my conviction that the hardcore doomers are wrong; I believe civilization as a whole is going to make it in the long run. A reality check though - even in the best case, a lot of people won't make it; there's just too much warming locked in already. How we deal with that grim reality is going to be a big test of our ability to balance idealism with pragmatism in the coming decades.

- Alabama just executed a man by asphyxia with nitrogen, the first time that particular procedure has been used in the US.

- There's a risk to having parrots in a zoo - they might learn some naughty words and use them in front of zoo visitors. One facility in the UK has decided to run with it, though.

Meta/Facebook's war on news in Canada

 

Well, Meta is now well on their way towards scrubbing news content from Canadians' Facebook feeds. It's being done incrementally; currently I can still see news posts on other people's timelines, but others are reporting that they can't see the ones on mine. Some of my friends say that it isn't limited to Canadian news sites either; apparently it's blocking links to foreign news sites, and even Wikipedia, at least for some users.

Some have pointed out that the Trudeau government's handling of the situation has been suboptimal. According to the CBC, Australia's legislation had enough flexibility to enable their country's news sites to make arrangements with Meta, while Canada's did not.

I can't help but wonder, though, if Meta has another agenda in mind as well. Several years ago it came out that the company was concerned that people weren't sharing enough "personal" content, and instead posting more of things like news. Most likely they figure that the data they get from people's personal posts and their friends' responses is more valuable as a marketing commodity than data about what kinds of news people post and read. And it's well known that they are not above conducting psychological and sociological experiments on their users. So maybe they've been waiting for a while to conduct an experiment in a nice controlled setting (e.g. limited to a country with a smallish population) on whether they get more of the stuff they want if they eliminate the competition from news posts. Doing such an experiment worldwide would be risky, because it might very well lead to a substantial drop in the number of active users, but they know darned well that Canadians will be less likely to drop Facebook if their friends and relatives in the rest of the world are still using it.

If nothing else, it's given me an incentive to reactivate this blog.