News roundup, 27 March 2025

- Winnipeg police now believe that the woman hitherto known as Mashkode Bizihiki’ Ikwe ("Buffalo Woman") was Ashlee Shingoose of St. Theresa Point First Nation, who went missing in March 2022. Moreover, based on when she is believed to have been killed and the location of the bin where she was dumped, they now believe that her remains were taken to the Brady Landfill. This does offer at least some hope that something of her will be found. 

- Jagmeet Singh admits that the NDP faces "massive challenges" in the coming election, as the anti-Conservative vote is coalescing almost entirely around the Liberals. Former leader Tom Mulcair sums it up in terms of what is known as "the ballot question"; the threat from the US is the sole deciding factor for most voters, and it's increasingly turning into a two party race (Mulcair notes that the Bloc is struggling as well).

- Wildfires in South Korea have killed at least 24 people and destroyed a 1,300 year old temple in Uiseong City, though fortunately relics from the temple were removed in advance of the fire. Wildfires have historically not been common in the country, and this is the biggest death toll from such fires that the country has experienced.

- Eascan Automation Inc., a Winnipeg-based company that provides custom-built industrial robots to manufacturers, has laid off a third of its workforce owing to the fact that while most of their clients are Canadian, the products they manufacture are heavily dependent on the US market, meaning they're not in a hurry to upgrade their equipment right now.

- Immigration lawyers are advising Canadians living in the US to avoid international travel for the time being, given the increasingly unpredictable nature of ICE. One Toronto-based lawyer points out that even people who successfully got green cards after having previously gotten into trouble have had their old mistakes brought up at the border when they try to reenter; in addition, there is a danger that anything you might have ever posted online could be dug up and used against you. Myself, if I were giving advice, I wouldn't be advising against international travel. Quite the contrary - I'd advise any Canadian - or other foreign citizen - living in that benighted country to take a one-way international trip as soon as possible.

- It seems that the Atlantic journalist who was inadvertently sent sensitive military plans was not the biggest security risk in that chat group. Steve Witkoff, who serves as an envoy to the Middle East as well as Ukraine, was part of the chat group - and he was actually in Moscow at the time it was sent.

- The estranged wife of slain California fire captain Rebecca Marodi has been captured alive by Mexican authorities and sent back to the US to face trial for first degree murder. She has pleaded not guilty. Somehow I doubt she'll get it knocked down to manslaughter like she did last time she did something like that, though.

News roundup, 25 March 2025

- The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs is calling for the search of Prairie Green Landfill to continue, in the hope of finding the remains of the woman known as Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe ("Buffalo Woman"). This may be a tall order, since the information publicly available only gives the approximate time of her murder (mid-March 2022) and the approximate location where she was dumped (a bin behind a business on Henderson Highway, though it's possible that the police know which business and haven't made it public). But it's definitely worth looking further into. 

- Danielle Smith is coming under considerable criticism for the interview she gave to far-right news site Breitbart, in which she asked that Trump hold off on the tariffs until after the election so as to improve the Conservatives' chances. Whether the publicity over this interview will help the Cons is another question. It's not likely to help Smith, but she isn't up for reelection for a couple more years so maybe she hopes Albertans will have forgotten by then.

- Democratic Congresswoman Jamine Crockett made a statement in support of the "Tesla takedown" rallies, which happen to coincide with her birthday on the 29th of March. But when she said that "all I want to see happen on my birthday is for Elon to be taken down", this led to a statement by Attorney General Pam Bondi that Crockett should "tread very carefully" with such statements. 

- Jeffrey Goldberg, who writes for the Atlantic, got added to a Signal discussion group that included several prominent figures in the Trump regime, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He ended up becoming privy to secret plans for bombing in Yemen in advance of the raid after Hegseth casually spilled the beans in the discussion group. One wonders if Hegseth is keeping his promise to quit drinking if appointed.

- Prepac, a manufacturer of ready-to-assemble furniture founded in Delta, BC in 1979 has shut down its Canadian manufacturing, citing "an altered economic environment" for the move. Unifor, which represented the workers at the Delta plant, is calling for a nationwide boycott of the company. Prepac was family-owned until Torquest, a private equity company, snapped it up in 2019; two years later it opened a plant in North Carolina, which will become their main site.

- DNA testing firm 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy, having apparently been unable to recover from the bad publicity resulting from a data breach two years ago. This has led to fears that people's genetic data might fall into the hands of folks who might have other things in mind than people's wellbeing (like, say, health insurance companies). The company's privacy policy says that any company buying the company's data is bound by the same policy; the only problem is, when they adopt 23andMe's privacy policy, they adopt the line in said policy that says it can be changed at any time. That doesn't sound reassuring. California's attorney general has even released a consumer alert complete with instructions on how to delete your account.

- The concept of a "Dyson swarm", in which vast numbers of solar collectors are placed around the Sun to form a huge spherical shell, has been around for a long time. The question of what that would do to the Earth's climate hasn't really been looked at until recently. But it seems that if such a swarm were placed just outside Earth's orbit, it would heat the planet's surface by an average of 140 K (or 140°C), enough to boil the oceans. If it were placed further out, say just past Mars, it would still heat the Earth by about 3°C, and building all those solar collectors would require about 10²³ kg of silicon, meaning a heck of a lot of asteroid mining.

- A woman was run down in the parking lot of a kids' recreational facility in suburban Winnipeg over the weekend, after standing in an open parking spot to hold it for another person. Apparently a 40 year old woman became so incensed at this that she ran her over, then backed out and fled the scene.

News roundup, 18 March 2025

- The second set of remains found at the Prairie Green Landfill have been identified as having been Marcedes Myran, another victim of serial killer Jeremy Skibicki. In other news, a woman from Buffalo Point First Nation who was severely injured in a hit and run in Winnipeg last Friday believes that she was hit intentionally - she says a van followed her as she walked down Osborne Street, then as she crossed the street she made eye contact with the driver, only for the van to strike her, reverse over her, and drive over her again.

- A poll by Leger Marketing suggests that Canadians' sense of national pride is increasing overall - but has decreased by 10% in Alberta. There is also a slight (2%) decline in Atlantic Canada; whether this is statistical noise is hard to say, since the poll was conducted online and doesn't give a margin of error. The Alberta thing, though, is probably real (and would probably be much worse if you didn't include Calgary and Edmonton).

- The Canadian government is seriously reconsidering whether it's a good idea to buy any more F-35 fighters beyond the 16 we've already paid for, especially given that we'd be dependent on the (possibly hostile) US for maintenance and software upgrades. Defence Minister Bill Blair is suggesting that the remainder of the fleet could be made up of the Saab Gripen; as a bonus, Saab has promised that assembly and maintenance of the aircraft could be done in Canada under license, potentially bringing a lot of jobs.

- Canadians crossed the US border by car 23% less last month than they did the previous February. Air travel dropped as well, albeit by only 2.4%. I suspect if you don't count non-discretionary (e.g. job related) crossings, the drops would be considerably higher.

- In his most recent "state of the city" address, Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham mused about ending remote and hybrid work. CUPE Local 500 has filed a grievance on the matter; the local's president Gord Delbridge points out the fact that remote work has been beneficial for employee retention and has not significantly harmed productivity. Gillingham says that bringing workers back into the office will help downtown businesses; no doubt that is the real motivation here, especially since a decline in the value of commercial real estate will be bad for the city's revenue stream. Delbridge, however, questions the benefit to downtown businesses; he says some of his members are vowing to boycott downtown businesses if forced back into the office.

- The Canadian woman who was detained in an immigration facility in Arizona has been released and has returned home to BC. Most of her fellow inmates are not so fortunate; to her credit, she recognizes that.

- The metaphor of the "dumpster fire" has been used to describe a number of things, including Trump's first term. Now, in Brandon we finally have something worthy of comparison to Trump's second term - a whole landfill is burning.

News roundup, 11 March 2025

- Various fake images of Mark Carney with such despicable people as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are being circulated on social media. The images show signs of having been generated with AI.

- Donald Trump apparently has his eyes on the Columbia River Treaty, which regulates the flow of the eponymous river for hydroelectricity and flood prevention. Trump apparently listed the treaty among his grievances against Canada in discussions with Trudeau.

- While interim Manitoba PC leader Wayne Ewasko has belatedly apologized for his party's stance on the landfill search in the last provincial election, leadership candidate Obby Khan isn't so sure; while he eventually came around to supporting the apology (presumably after sniffing the wind) he is not prepared to say that the Stefanson government made a mistake in its decision not to conduct a search at the time. For his part, the other leadership candidate, Wally Daudrich, is now saying that he's in favour of a search but that he thinks it should be paid for by private sector donations (like that's ever going to happen).

- X (the former Twitter) was hit with a massive distributed denial of service attack that shut down the platform several times on Monday. Musk has hinted that it might be a country who's responsible due to the scale of the attack, however a hacker organization called Dark Storm Team is claiming responsibility for the outage.

- A&W Canada, which has long been independent of its American former parent company, may be reaping the benefits of Canadians' rage against the US. The fact that the food is considerably better than McDonalds fare is a bonus.

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.

News roundup, 13 July 2024

- Jeremy Skibicki has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of four women after the judge rejected his lawyers' arguments that he should be found not criminally responsible due to mental disorder. He faces an automatic sentence of life in prison with no eligibility for parole for at least 25 years.

- The US House of Representatives has passed a bill which prohibits non-citizens from registering to vote. If your first thought was, "wasn't that already illegal?" you would be entirely correct. In fact, it is a felony. And contrary to claims that huge numbers of migrants voted last time around, actual instances of this are extremely rare. So from a practical point of view, the bill is useless, though from a populist politician's point of view it is potentially very useful as a rallying point. Democrats fear that the measures contained in the bill would make it more difficult for actually eligible voters to register, something that suits Trump and the Republicans just fine.

- Many Democrats fear that previously safe states could be in play thanks to Joe Biden's refusal to leave the presidential race. Worryingly, his gaffes continue; earlier this week he confused Volodymyr Zelenskyy with Vladimir Putin at a press conference. Meanwhile, Trump seems unusually disciplined in the face he shows to the public. I don't know, it's not a good sign when a dottering old man is the only thing standing in the way of fascism.

- The Manitoba government is providing money for a safe consumption site in Winnipeg, to open in 2025. The site will be run by the Aboriginal Health and Wellness Centre and will provide numerous other services. Pierre Poilievre says that he intends to shut such sites down, at least in certain areas; he claims that they have "made everything worse". The available evidence suggests otherwise, but populist politics is not about that ay-leet stuff like evidence.

- A five-storey warehouse in inner-city Winnipeg is in such bad condition that a neighbouring residential building has been evacuated, as officials fear that the warehouse is in imminent danger of collapse. Looking at those photos, things sure don't look good; the city evidently concurs, as they have ordered the building demolished starting Monday.

- The UN projects the world population to peak within this century as a result of falling birthrates. From an environmentalist point of view this is definitely a good thing, while from a capitalist point of view it is definitely a bad thing - much for the same reason. From a public policy point of view it will definitely involve its challenges (those associated with ageing populations) but I have to say that's still a lot better than the alternative.

- Temperatures are so high in places like Death Valley that it's not always possible to fly helicopters due to the lower density of warm air and the resulting reduction in lift. This actually prevented a rescue helicopter from being sent to help a motorcyclist who succumbed to heatstroke in temperatures as high as 53°C.

- Following an assault on a paramedic in Victoria, first responders are saying that they will only attend calls on the block where this occurred if they have a police escort.

- Some landlords have taken to using AI chatbots to interact with their tenants. Does that sound like a good idea to you? If it does, you might be a landlord.

News roundup, 24 March 2024

- A total of 137 people have been confirmed dead in the mass shooting in a Moscow suburb the other day. The Islamic State/ISIS/Daesh/whatever has claimed responsibility, though Putin apparently did not mention this fact in his video address in response to the attack. He did apparently claim that the suspects in the attack tried to flee to Ukraine.

- The US Congress has kicked the can down the road once again, averting a government shutdown until September at least (which will be an interesting time for brinksmanship, incidentally). Even though the bill had been negotiated by Republicans, many of the more hardline folks in that party voted against it; it only passed with Democratic support.

- Sixteen American states are suing the federal government for its moratorium on export permits for liquefied natural gas.

- The federal and provincial governments have each promised $20 million for a search of the Prairie Green Landfill north of Winnipeg.

- Two adults have been charged for a shoplifting spree; what is notable is that they're accused of having brought a child with them for some of their activities. The child is apparently not theirs; in any case, I don't think they're setting a good example.

- Some travellers are cancelling or rebooking flights to avoid having to ride on a Boeing airplane. It's worth noting that after a disaster in 1979 there were a bunch of people wanting to avoid the DC-10; here, though, the unease is not about a specific aircraft type but an entire company. I still can't help but wonder if Boeing is fated to join Lockheed-Martin, Convair, etc. on the list of "military contractors that used to make airliners" and leave the commercial industry to Airbus and Embraer.

- The Tennessee state senate has passed a bill banning "chemtrails" (it has yet to pass in the lower house):

The bill claims it is "documented the federal government or other entities acting on the federal government's behalf or at the federal government's request may conduct geoengineering experiments by intentionally dispersing chemicals into the atmosphere, and those activities may occur within the State of Tennessee," according to the bill.

The legislation would ban the practice in Tennessee.

"The intentional injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of chemicals, chemical compounds, substances, or apparatus within the borders of this state into the atmosphere with the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight is prohibited," the bill reads.

The funny thing is, jet contrails do contain chemicals that affect temperature - specifically carbon dioxide and water vapour. And yet the people who believe in the "chemtrails" conspiracy theory tend not to believe that - go figure. They have, however, been careful enough to include the phrase "with the express purpose", to make sure their bill couldn't be weaponized against carbon emitters.

News roundup, 14 Feb 2024

- Manitoba Hydro is "parting ways" with CEO Jay Grewal, according to the chair of Hydro's board. This seems to be related to Grewal's plans to buy privately generated power for the utility; the Tories accuse the NDP of being "ideologically rigid" on the matter.

- Some housing advocates are cautiously optimistic about a report from federal housing advocate Marie-Josée Houle; others see this as "just one more report" making similar recommendations to previous reports. It's worth noting that Finland is well on the way to eliminating homelessness with a "housing first" model; on the other hand the devil is in the details with these things; Houston and San Diego both tried such an approach at the municipal level, with widely differing success (and not in the way you'd expect, either).

- Legal Aid Manitoba hired Mainstreet Research to conduct a poll asking members of the public questions about what they know and believe about Jeremy Skibiki, who is facing murder charges in the deaths of four First Nations women in Winnipeg. Skibiki's lawyers are working with Legal Aid, and it's widely suspected that they're trying to find support for his request for a judge-only trial in the case. MMIWG advocates are decidedly uncomfortable with this; a representative of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs says this "disregards the dignity of the victims and their families", though others argue that they're just trying to act in the interests of their client.

- The federal Liberals would be well advised to have a talk with their leader about whether he ought to stay on, if recent polls are any indication. I doubt that any replacement could prevent a Tory majority, but Trudeau's brand is so tarnished that the party could face virtual annihilation unless something changes.

- The Democrats have captured George Santos' old seat in the special election necessitated by Santos' ouster from Congress. This is a good sign for sure.

- The US House of Representatives has voted to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over his handling of the Mexican border. Of course it won't go anywhere in the Senate. Meanwhile many Republicans in the House are admitting that tossing Kevin McCarthy as speaker in favour of Mike Johnson may have been a mistake.

- The Liquor Control Board of Ontario is cancelling plans to have controlled entrances to liquor stores, similar to those ubiquitous in Manitoba. Notably, this was only supposed to apply to northwestern Ontario, not the whole province; there were some privacy concerns raised, as well as concern by the union that they weren't consulted adequately.

- Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital is stepping up security, and police are investigating, following several incidents alleged to have occurred at a pro-Palestinian protest that spilled onto hospital grounds. While I generally support their cause, and tend to be skeptical when such protesters are accused of antisemitism, I have to question whether a hospital is an appropriate target for this, any more than hospitals were appropriate targets for the trucker convoy a couple of years ago. And given this particular hospital's historic connection to the Jewish community, in this case the charge of antisemitism just might be valid if the motivation for targeting it was what it looks like from the outside.

- A shooting incident at the Kansas City Super Bowl victory celebration parade has left multiple people injured. Whether this was actually an attack on the parade or a coincidence is not clear. One attendee was quoted as saying "It sucks that someone had to ruin the celebration, but we are in a big city". I have to wonder, though - if it really was politically motivated, it's far more likely that the shooter came from a small town.

News roundup, 29 Jan 2024

- A report prepared by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs and ISN Maskwa has concluded that a search of the Prairie Green Landfill is feasible, and may actually be cheaper than initially feared, however searchers could face significant risks from the asbestos buried in the landfill. Also on the MMIWG* file, police have a suspect in custody in the death of Crystal Saunders, whose body was found in a ditch near St. Ambroise in 2007.

- A curious fact - neither of Canada's two largest political parties has a mechanism for tossing out their leader unless they first lose an election. If you want to throw out your leader to reduce the risk of losing, you're out of luck.

- A new president and CEO will be announced for MPI next week. The job of cleaning up the mess made by the previous management will no doubt take some time.

- Low water levels due to insufficient precipitation are interfering with hydroelectric generation, forcing Manitoba and BC to buy electricity from other jurisdictions. Hopefully they're looking at adding more solar and wind capacity to reduce the chance of this having to happen in the future.

- Joe Biden's economic policies have had some benefits for Americans, but getting the people to believe that things are improving is a problem. The Democrats are also having a hard time selling the public on the climate benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act, which has largely been sold to the public as a jobs program.

- Illinois is the latest state to consider keeping Trump off the ballot, however the state's elections board are looking for a court ruling to advise whether the 14th Amendment applies in this case. Presumably the board would rather judges get death threats than themselves.

- Israel is claiming that employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) participated in atrocities during the Hamas attack in October. Palestinian officials have accused Israel of falsifying information about the attack; the UN is investigating, but in the meantime several countries have suspended funding to the agency.

- A Labour MP in the UK has been suspended from the party's caucus for a tweet made the day before Holocaust Memorial Day. The tweet simply said "Tomorrow is Holocaust Memorial Day, an international day to remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, the millions of other people murdered under Nazi persecution of other groups and more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and now Gaza"; I guess that's too hot for Labour to handle right now.

- A teenager in Utah is facing charges of causing property damage after allegedly duct taping dead fish to bank machines. The motive is unclear.