News roundup, 7 March 2025

- The Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the main agency responsible for cyberintelligence in Canada, is warning that some foreign powers (China, Russia, and Iran are specifically named) will "very likely" use artificial intelligence to try to influence the outcome of the impending federal election. No doubt this is a real risk, but it's kind of odd that they omit the United States from that list; if anything Trump has a much more direct interest in the outcome of the election than Putin, Xi, or Khamenei do. I guess they still find it too weird to say that, but they'd better get over it and start planning for it.

- Trump is once again pausing some of the tariffs imposed on Canada for another month. In response, the feds are deferring their second round of retaliatory tariffs, though the previous ones will remain in place for the time being. Manitoba premier Wab Kinew is not falling for it; the ban on US liquor in provincial liquor stores will remain in place, and Manitoba Hydro will be reviewing export contracts. Ontario's Doug Ford isn't falling for it either; he's slapping a 25% export duty on electricity from the province. BC's David Eby is slapping a toll on American commercial vehicles using the Alaska Highway. And Ottawa and the provinces have agreed to the free flow of alcohol between provinces.

- The CEO of Brown-Forman, maker of Jack Daniels, is quite indignant at Canadian provinces pulling his product from the shelves. He calls the move "worse than a tariff".

- Cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are worrying to Canadian weather and flood forecasters, who say this will impact their ability to predict dangerous situations.

- Denmark's division of PostNord (the postal service that country shares with Sweden) is completely eliminating traditional letter mail as of the end of this year, and will focus solely on parcel delivery. Pelle Dragsted, an MP with the leftwing Red-Green Alliance party, blames the introduction of competition from private companies for the decline in letter mail. This is at least partly correct, since private companies aren't bound by existing collective agreements and can thus pay their workers less. Of course, some of it is just cultural - Denmark is one of the most digitized countries in the world according to the article. Hardly anybody uses cash, and people have smartphone apps that serve as health cards and drivers' licenses. Even if the postal service didn't have to compete with the private sector, they'd still be having to compete with the digital world.

- Beckham Severight, the teen convicted of dangerous driving in the death of cyclist Rob Jenner, has been sentenced to three years in prison; this includes time served.

- Butterfly populations across the US have declined by 22% overall between 2000 and 2020. Some species had declined by as much as 50%; most worrisome though is the fact that there is no obvious pattern to the declines, though habitat loss, climate change, and pesticides are all suspected of being factors.

- The US Department of Defense is purging its websites of thousands of images that could be associated with anything that might offend the regime. Among the photos considered for removal is an image of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Whether the image is being removed for reminding the public that the US was the first and only country to use nuclear weapons in warfare, or for containing the word "gay", is not known.

News roundup, 19 Feb 2025

- Donald Trump is tipping his hand about one of the reasons he wants to conquer Canada - our water. This should come to no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention; the US has coveted Canada's water for decades, and there have been all kinds of grandiose schemes like NAWAPA and the GRAND Canal about how large amounts of Canadian water could be sent south. The long-term consequences of shifting such vast amounts of water across thousands of kilometres are, of course, hard to predict and might well not be limited to one continent - more water at temperate latitudes, for instance, might mean changes in rainfall patterns halfway around the world if there were enough of it. Plus if more evaporation occurred overall this could amplify global warming, since water vapour is a greenhouse gas.

- Steve Burgess of The Tyee made a relatively innocuous post on the former Twitter as well as on Bluesky, characterizing Donald Trump's treatment of Justin Trudeau as a "hostile act". On Bluesky the post faded into the obscurity that gentle complaints typically fade into, but on Musk's platform the post was brigaded by huge numbers of rabid Trump supporters, many of whom seemed to be reading from the same script.

- Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have been ordered to get senior staff approval for "all upcoming international engagements" until the end of March. This includes international travel paid for by their employer as well as virtual meetings about pretty much any topic of significance.

- John McConnell Jr., a judge with the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island, has had articles of impeachment issued against him by Georgia Republican congress member Andrew Clyne. This is ostensibly because he was acting as "partisan activist" by pointing out the fact that the Trump administration is ignoring his court orders. Of course, he would need to be convicted by two thirds of the Senate in order for the impeachment to be successful, which seems unlikely so long as not too many Democrats are stopped from voting on the matter somehow - like say if a dozen of them suddenly get arrested by the Trump loyalists with whom the FBI is being stacked.

- Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is warning that Trump's policies - both in their own right and in the erratic manner in which they are being imposed - puts the country at significant risk of stagflation. The fact that Elon Musk's DOGE has mooted the idea of a selective default on some American bonds does not help matters.

- The library board in the town of Valleyview, Alberta (population 1,673 as of 2021) has voted to close the town's free-standing library and move it into a new school that is being built. This will cut their available space in half, and will also potentially force the library to comply with school division rules about LGBT* content - the latter almost certainly being seen by the board as a feature rather than a bug. The library was subject to bitter debate as far back as a year ago, and the folks in this Reddit thread believed at the time that there is a broad plan to get far-right types elected to local positions so as to gain a foothold from which to build their movement. This is a tried and true tactic in the US, and folks in that thread think that it's starting in earnest in rural Canada. Notably, some say that rural Alberta is considerably more extreme than similar-sized communities on the other side of the Rockies in BC.

- Some American doctors, especially women, are looking at their options for setting up practices in Canada, fearing that the political climate in the US will make their jobs difficult or even legally dangerous. If nothing else, this could go some distance towards filling gaps in Canadian healthcare.

- The decline of organized religion in urban areas across North America and Europe means that there are a lot of badly underutilized churches sitting around. As with the conversion of office buildings into residential, converting a church is not as easy as it might seem. However, it's definitely possible; I live a block away from a perfect example of this. That said, that particular building is owned by Manitoba Housing, meaning that a fair amount of provincial money had to be spent in order to make it work. No reason why you couldn't do more of that, though.

- A proposal before the Steinbach, Manitoba city council would create a whole new zoning category - the emergency shelter - and could potentially throw the door open to NIMBYs who don't want poors living in their neighbourhood.