News roundup, 8 April 2024

- Another veteran NDP MP, Charlie Angus, has announced that he will not be running again. Pierre Poilievre responded to the news in his typical mean-spirited fashion, though sadly I don't think he's necessarily factually wrong in saying Angus might have a hard time getting reelected. Because Poilievre has been very successful in convincing a lot of working class people that he's their guy. This is nonsense of course, but a few flashy ads and zippy slogans work on the common mind far better than many of us would like to admit.

- Also on the subject of MPs stepping down, Transcona councillor and all-round loose cannon Russ Wyatt is apparently considering a run for the seat vacated by Elmwood-Transcona MP Daniel Blaikie. He apparently hasn't decided which party he would run for; I guess he'll go for whoever will take him.

- In the US Congress, the House Freedom Caucus (comprised of the kind of people who give freedom a bad name) are threatening to withhold funding needed to rebuild the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge unless environmental and union wage regulations are waived for the project. One of their claimed reasons for this is to avoid delays, yet they are also demanding that the government seek compensation from the shipping companies responsible for the accident before funding is released, something that would itself cause delays. They further want the administration's pause on approvals of LNG export terminals to be lifted.

- Joe Biden wants companies that use American airspace to launch spacecraft to pay the same taxes that airlines do. The taxes in question help to cover the cost of the ATC system, and controllers do have to take space launches into account when directing aircraft, so it's an eminently reasonable proposal. No doubt Elon Musk and his followers (or as I call them, the Muskrats) will cry foul, though.

- A hydrogen plant has opened in Gladstone, Queensland. Unlike many such facilities, which produce hydrogen from natural gas and are thus not carbon-neutral, this uses electrolysis of water, and renewables can be used to produce the electricity for this. So a definite step in the right direction.

- The impact on the power grid from the disruption of solar power from the coming eclipse has yet to be determined as of this post.

- Tick season, as well as mosquito season, is expected to start early this year in Manitoba due to the warm weather.

News roundup, 26 March 2024

- The MV Dali, a gigantic Singapore-flagged container ship, collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last night, apparently after losing engine power and directional control and being carried by the current into one of the bridge pillars. Given the enormous size of this vessel, the physics of such a collision did not favour the bridge. Fortunately this happened in the middle of the night and only eight people, all construction workers repairing potholes, fell into the river below; unfortunately six of the eight are missing and feared dead. Predictably, the usual suspects (including Marjorie Taylor Greene) are spouting their usual nonsense about terrorism, diversity hires, how Baltimore is a "failed city", and the like; longtime Baltimore residents like The Wire creator David Simon are not amused.

- Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun has announced that he's leaving his position at the end of this year. Some would say this is not before time, given recent news as well as that of a few years before. It's often said by commentators, with lament, that Boeing was run by the engineers rather than the accountants until the merger with McDonnell-Douglas in 1997, after which the accountants with their short-term thinking ran the company into the state it's in now. That is certainly one of the claims of this guy writing for Forbes, though upon reading the article I was struck with something else - he certainly thinks that Boeing is something that's "too big to fail", but he doesn't mention the idea of nationalization, even to subsequently reject it. But I guess you don't talk about that sort of thing if you want to get published in Forbes.

- Russian President Vladimir Putin would have us believe that Ukraine somehow were able to order radical Islamists to attack the Crocus City concert hall. Seems a bit less likely than the possibility that specialized "interrogators" working for Putin's own security services were able to order the suspects to "confess" that they were working for Ukraine...

- In the latest shenanigans related to Donald Trump, the judge presiding over one of his criminal trials has imposed a gag order prohibiting him from commenting about jurors, witnesses, prosecutors, court staff, or their relatives. Because, you know, he's Donald Trump. In other Trump news some are predicting that the Truth Social IPO won't be the boost to his finances that he hopes for, though the jury is still out on how many shares he can unload before the market realizes that they're worth almost nothing.

- Austria is scheduled for an election soon, likely in September. There are fears that the far right could triumph; that country does have a certain history with that sort of thing.

- China has reportedly been working on nuclear fission space propulsion. They believe it would enable humans to reach Mars in as little as three months.