News roundup, 26 Feb 2024

- A man burned himself to death in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, apparently in protest of the war in Gaza.

- Russia managed to do in two years what the US couldn't do in 74 - get Sweden to join NATO.

- Donald Trump's base can't get enough of him, but while they love the craziness he spouts, it creates a problem for him if he wants to win the votes of the non-crazy. Meanwhile his legal troubles are creating financial problems for his campaign, and now the prosecutor in the Stormy Daniels case is asking the judge for a gag order to keep Trump from siccing his sheeple on jurors.

- Even in West Virginia, people in the know understand that the coal industry isn't going to recover to its earlier strength. It's been declining for decades, long before renewables entered the picture. Unfortunately while there are new jobs in the renewable energy sector, there are a lot fewer of them, and they aren't always in the same place (the best place to mine coal often isn't the best place to build a solar or wind farm).

- The federal NDP has managed to get the Liberals to move ahead with a national pharmacare program. The NDP had threatened to withdraw their support from the minority Liberal government unless an agreement was reached by the end of the month. Among things to be covered will be diabetes medications and contraceptives; for their part, the Alberta government has announced that they intend to opt out of the whole thing. Because freedumb, or something.

- Manitoba finance minister Adrien Sala accuses the previous government of presenting an "incomplete picture" of the province's finances following an external review ordered by the new government shortly after taking office. Among the things the Tories are accused of ignoring are the impact of last year's drought on Hydro revenues, as well as the impact of their own tax cuts on revenue.

- The former CAO of the Rural Municipality of North Cypress-Langford, Manitoba has been charged with theft after allegedly stealing around $30,000 from a curling club and then using municipal funds to repay it. No information about the motive, but if I were to guess I'd say gambling has something to do with it.

- Syphilis in the US is now at a 70 year high, and some doctors are rationing penicillin in order to keep it available to treat the disease.

- A number of "smart vending machines" at the University of Waterloo were discovered to be using facial recognition, for reasons that are not clear. This was discovered by accident when a software glitch led to a reference to facial recognition appearing on a screen on one of the machines. The university has announced that the machines will be removed.

- A branch of the Royal Canadian Legion in Vaughan, Ontario has had its charter revoked by the national body after allegedly being taken over by outlaw bikers.

News roundup, 21 Feb 2024

- The question as to whether Donald Trump has enough liquid assets to cover his rapidly accumulating costs for fines and lawsuits continues to swirl. Of course the MAGA sheeple are opening their wallets, but that's not likely to be enough, and in the case of the $354 million dollar fine from the civil fraud trial, New York Attorney General Letitia James says she's prepared to start seizing his assets if he doesn't pay up soon.

- Not too long ago, many Wall Street investors were starting to talk seriously about divestment from climate-harming companies. An international coalition of money managers known as Climate Action 100+ has pushed for change, but in recent days several large American companies, including JP Morgan and Pimco, pulled out of the coalition. The reason, apparently, is fear that US antitrust legislation could be weaponized against them. This is a big victory for the likes of Jim Jordan, a Republican member of Congress from Ohio who has been fiercely fighting the use of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) factors to guide investments.

- The Manitoba government is putting the Amphibex icebreaking machines into action on the Red River north of Selkirk, in preparation for the spring melt. Not that there's much risk of a major flood this year given how little snow we have.

- A broken pipe in Winnipeg's sewage system has been discharging untreated sewage into the Red River for the last couple of weeks, and has resisted attempts to fix it. The city is politely asking the residents of the suburban area that feeds into that part of the system to limit their water consumption until the problem can be properly addressed.

- An Italian physicist, Cesare Marchetti, decided to apply his knowledge of such things as particle behaviour and fluid dynamics to that ubiquitous "fluid" known as traffic and its constituent "particles" known as people. He studied urban development patterns over the centuries and concluded that people will tolerate a commute of up to 30 minutes in each direction, a value now called Marchetti's Constant. This explains the phenomenon of "induced demand" very well; when you add additional lanes, people think they can move further out from urban centres and still make it to work in half an hour. In fact they only can for a short time, because this leads to more traffic which slows everything down again.

- Winnipeg Transit's safety officers have now been deployed, complete with the power to detain and arrest people. Like it or not, this is probably necessary if you're going to get anyone to take transit by choice, and the people who have the choice to take the bus rather than drive are the people you need to reach if you're going to truly deal with congestion (not to mention climate change).

- Two years have passed since the "Freedom Convoy" (aka "Flu Trux Klan") debacle, and TVO's Matt Gurney has some thoughts on the matter. The article rambles somewhat; the real takeaway message, though, is that Canada is not a country that's well suited to handle a major crisis at the best of times, and that COVID-19 and the convoy have made that worse. If we should face another pandemic or similar crisis (and it may come sooner than you would expect from past history) the populace would likely be a lot less compliant with restrictions than they were with COVID.

- Speaking of freedom, it's kind of funny how many of the kinds of people who opposed vaccine mandates, even if it's to protect the public, are in a huge rush to ban or restrict books from school libraries, supposedly to protect children (we all know that what they're really trying to protect is parental control over children, of course). Just a couple of months ago the Catholic school board in Waterloo placed restrictions on a book because there's a gay character in it; the book has to be kept behind a desk, and any teacher or librarian giving a kid access to it is required to provide "a Catholic understanding of the book" before letting the kid read it. Of course, this isn't as bad as what just happened in West Virginia, where a bill just passed that will potentially enable teachers, librarians, and museum staff to face criminal charges if they allow a minor to see something that the wrong person considers to be pornographic.

- Vladimir Putin's efforts to lure good Christian Americans and Canadians to his country so they can escape their evil decadent lefty homelands looked pretty attractive to one rightwing couple from Saskatchewan who wanted to live somewhere where they wouldn't have to explain to their kids what a rainbow flag is. Things didn't turn out as well as they'd hoped.

Rush Limbaugh on the West Virgina mine disaster

His comments are predictable:

Limbaugh often attacks unions. On Friday he attacked the union for not making sure safety concerns were addressed in the mining disaster in West Virginia. Unfortunately for Rush and the miners there is no union. The present boss advanced by busting the union some time ago. Maybe Rush should be blaming the boss for the lack of action on safety concerns. From this site. You would think that Rush would have the funds to hire a few researchers to get facts straight. Maybe he figures this will just get him more publicity. Maybe he is like his comrade Glenn Beck who came out an said that he did not give a crap about the political process. Entertainment and making money is what is important.

From here, via captainsblog (in a comment to a Blaque post).