News roundup, 17 July 2026

- The Smith government in Alberta has launched a web portal where people can complain about bike lanes, which some people call a "snitch line". Municipal leaders in Calgary and Edmonton are pushing back, and you'd kind of expect that this ought to be a municipal matter, but as we've already seen with the Ford government in Ontario, provincial governments are happy to interfere if they think it will win them support from people who live in bedroom communities outside those cities who can't abide the fact that they're sitting in traffic in their $80,000 pickup trucks while people on $80 bicycles whiz by them on bike lanes. Looking at the actual site, it doesn't ask for any contact info, meaning that the same person could enter multiple complaints about the same bike lane. I'm sure that the aforementioned exurban commuters will be passing the link around telling their friends which bike lanes to complain about. On the positive side, it also means you can make multiple submissions that are full of gibberish to waste the government's time.

- Namaygoosisagagun First Nation in northern Ontario was destroyed by a wildfire on Monday; the community was evacuated with no fatalities and residents are now living in hotels in Thunder Bay. The wildfires are also seriously impacting air quality in significant parts of the US, including New England, New York, and the Midwest. 

- Donald Trump is once again raising doubts about the integrity of the electoral system in the US, even ordering law enforcement to investigate officials that he believes are "covering up" problems. No doubt Trump's definition of "covering up" would include failure to find any evidence of problems that the Fuhrer believes to be there. The fact that the midterms are right around the corner and the Republicans are concerned about the outcome of said midterms probably has something to do with this.

- China is having a conniption about the UK's renationalization of British Steel, saying that it harms the interests of the privately owned Chinese corporation Jingye Group that previously owned the company. I can't help thinking there's an irony in there somewhere.

- The Western Canada Lottery Corporation is apparently concerned about the fact that younger people are less inclined to buy lottery tickets than their parents. They're trying to get around this by hiring influencers to promote lotteries. This seems like a pretty questionable move on the part of a Crown corporation; the point of having such a corporation surely ought to be to control gambling, rather than to promote it.

- Corus Entertainment, which owns the Global TV network along with numerous radio stations (including Winnipeg's CJOB) is laying off dozens of people across the country; they say this is driven by declines in radio and TV ad revenue. The Winnipeg Free Press is also shuttering its weekly community papers; of the four people employed by that division, two will be given positions at the Free Press itself.

News roundup, 26 Feb 2026

- Anthropic AI, which has generally tried to position itself as the AI company with a conscience, has announced that it has abandoned its promise to never train AI systems unless adequate safety measures could be guaranteed in advance. The company was founded by people who left other AI companies that they believed weren't taking safely seriously; the reversal comes immediately after Pete Hegseth threatened to cancel the company's contract with the Pentagon if they didn't lift the limits placed on the military's use of their technology. Meanwhile, it has come out that AIs used in wargame simulations by the US military are way too quick to recommend nuclear escalation for comfort.

- A data centre under construction in Olds, Alberta is expected to consume as much electricity as Edmonton, a city of over a million people. And of course, Alberta being Alberta, it's going to be powered by natural gas.

- A Florida-registered speedboat entered Cuban territorial waters and its occupants apparently exchanged gunfire with the country's military. Four people from the boat were killed and six injured; one Cuban soldier was also wounded.

- Following a pilot study conducted in four neighbourhoods in 2023, City of Winnipeg staff have recommended that the default speed limit on residential streets be reduced from 50 to 40 km/h. This would require changes to provincial legislation to allow it, however. More promising, perhaps, is the fact that Coun. Janice Lukes, of all people, now claims to believe that a permanent bike lane on Wellington Crescent is warranted. Many of the folks in this Reddit thread are skeptical whether she's really onside, though. Given her suburban ward and sensibilities, some skepticism is probably warranted.

- A Hamilton police officer has been charged with possessing and distributing child pornography. He's been suspended without pay, something pretty rare in the police world, so I have to assume the evidence against him is pretty damning. I daresay he's not going to enjoy his time in jail. 

- When the US men's Olympic hockey team was invited to the White House, five members of the team declined the invitation. Probably no coincidence that all five have strong ties to Minnesota.

- Three people face charges of uttering threats after a series of hoax calls targeting Winnipeg schools. Two of them are teenagers, who probably thought it would be a clever way to get a day off school; oddly enough the third is a 30 year old woman from Toronto.

News roundup, 19 Dec 2025

 - A resolution in the US House of Representatives ordering the Trump regime not to wage war with Venezuela without the consent of Congress (like, you know, the constitution already says) narrowly failed despite having two Republicans, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, as co-sponsors. 

- The suspect in the mass shooting at Brown University has been found dead after apparently shooting himself. Claudio Neves Valente is also suspected of killing MIT professor Nuno F Gomes Loureiro, with whom he had attended university in Portugal many years ago.

- Quebec Liberal Party leader Pablo Rodriguez has resigned, only six months after taking the position. This follows months of dysfunction in the party, and comes only 10 months before Quebec goes to the polls in an election that is thought to favour the separatist Parti Quebecois.

- Toronto has found a potential workaround for the Ford government's restrictions on bike lanes. Instead of removing traffic lanes entirely, which would be prohibited by provincial legislation, the city is narrowing the traffic lanes to make room for nearly 20 kilometres of bike lanes. As an added bonus, the narrower car lanes will tend to have a psychological effect on drivers, slowing them down.

- Conestoga College in Kitchener is laying off 181 full-time instructors. This follows 190 layoffs earlier this year. The college has also suspended 82 programs and has not renewed leases for two of its satellite campuses, one in downtown Kitchener and one in Brantford. The institution has depended heavily on international students; they had more of them than any other postsecondary institution in Canada, and with the heavy cuts to student visas the school is taking a big hit.

- A student at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo who was suspended for two years for pro-Palestinian activism (including hanging a banner on a building as well as a noisy protest that disrupted exams) has lost in court after attempting to challenge the suspension. 

- A Hanukkah ceremony at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre was disrupted by a man who called the participants "genocidal terrorists" and "fucking baby killers". In response, extra precautions were taken at a similar ceremony at the Asper Jewish Community Campus yesterday, with an enhanced police presence.

News roundup, 7 Nov 2025

- Zohran Mamdani's victory in New York City has spooked Steve Bannon, who is warning the Republican Party against complacency in the face of this. Bannon was impressed with Mamdani's success in bringing out "low propensity voters", including immigrants. As for his prescribed solutions, he said that "this guy’s citizenship should be checked immediately"; no doubt there are already folks doing their darnedest to find something that could be used against someone who became a citizen at 7. It might be hard to find a legitimate basis for revoking his citizenship, but fortunately for them the MAGA crowd don't care about legitimacy. They'll doubtless be pulling out all the stops to win the midterms as well.

- The federal Conservatives are losing another caucus member. Matt Jeneroux, the MP for Edmonton Riverbend, has announced that he intends to resign his seat. There had been rumours that he was planning to defect to the Liberals; he denies this, and also denies that he was coerced into quitting. He won his suburban riding by a relatively narrow margin last spring; we'll have to see what happens in the byelection.

- Hundreds of flights have been cancelled across the US due to a shortage of air traffic controllers, who haven't been paid since the start of the government shutdown, which is now the longest in US history. There are currently over 400 vacancies for controllers, and that's not counting the higher propensity of the remaining ones to call in sick.

- The City of Winnipeg is looking at installing a temporary bike lane on the section of Wellington Crescent where a cyclist was killed in 2024. The speed limit would also be reduced to 40 km/h; given the short length of this stretch and the fact that rush hour is kind of slow there anyway, it is only expected to add another 5 seconds to the average commute. More info here; the city seeks feedback through a survey here.

- Peel Regional Police attended the scene of a fatal crash in Brampton last weekend in which an Audi T-boned a Honda. The Honda's driver was declared dead at the scene; the Audi's driver was arrested and both vehicles were towed to an impound yard. Then a woman was reported missing, with her last known location being identified by a rideshare app; since the dead driver was a rideshare driver, police searched the wreckage and found the remains of the second victim, which had somehow been missed in the initial inspection of the vehicle.

- A woman who was experiencing suicidal thoughts asked ChatGPT for advice. The chatbot provided suggestions about which methods would be most reliable, and offered help drafting a suicide note, but didn't offer any of those "help is available" referrals that you're supposed to get when you type these things into a search engine or the like (heck, I got one not long ago when I searched for Ozzy Osbourne's song "Suicide Solution" on YouTube). Interestingly, at one point it also started to correct itself, saying that it "mustn't and will not describe methods of a suicide", but it seems that particular restraining bolt wasn't as reliable as the developers had hoped. Fortunately she was sufficiently shaken by this that she showed the messages to her mother, and got actual help.

News roundup, 25 Sept 2025

- A man opened fire on an ICE facility in Dallas, killing one person and wounding two others before turning the gun on himself. Authorities say that anti-ICE slogans were engraved on bullet casings found at the scene; ironically the deceased and at least one of the wounded were not ICE agents but detainees.

- Copenhagen's main airport was shut down on Monday after a mass incursion of drones; two other airports in the country were shut down on Wednesday for the same reason. The Danish government says that "professional actors" were behind the attacks; they say they have found no evidence of Russian involvement but the fact that they bothered to mention that suggests that they still have their suspicions.

- The Trump regime has retroactively cancelled grants made to municipalities as far back as a year ago for street safety and bike and pedestrian infrastructure, on the grounds that the projects are "hostile to cars".

- Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem says that the "safe haven" status of the US dollar is coming into question due to fears about the policies of the current regime, including fears about the continued independence of the Federal Reserve. Nonetheless, Macklem says that the greenback will likely continue to be the world's reserve currency due to a lack of alternatives. No explanation is given in the article about why the euro or the yuan couldn't replace the dollar in that role; perhaps it's as much a matter of nobody wanting to make the first move as anything.

- Wasagamack First Nation in northern Manitoba has ordered all of its employees to be tested for illegal drugs, including cocaine and meth. They say that this is intended to connect residents with addictions resources rather than to punish.

- A body was found just outside a schoolyard in St. Boniface. Police say that the death is not criminal in nature.

News roundup, 19 Aug 2025

- To the surprise of few, Pierre Poilievre appears to have won the byelection in Battle River-Crowfoot. The full count is not in yet, but Poilievre has over 80% of the votes counted so far.

- In other byelection news, the Conservative candidate in the provincial byelection in Spruce Woods is apologizing for past comments about residential schools. Colleen Robbins had expressed the opinion a few years back that the schools had been created with good intentions, but characterizing "killing the Indian inside the child" as well-meaning is not a good look.

- Hamas has accepted a proposal for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange following negotiations in Cairo.

- The CUPE local that represents Air Canada's flight attendants has reached a tentative deal with the airline, which could bring an end to the strike if ratified.

- An eight year old Toronto boy has died after being hit in his bed by a stray bullet from outside his building. Bullets also entered two other units, but nobody else was hit.

- The removal of Toronto's bike lanes, which Doug Ford is still trying to bring about as he appeals a lower court decision, could force organizations to suspend food deliveries to the needy. Bikes get through traffic faster and don't need to worry about parking, and volunteers are less willing to use cars (and spend their own money on fuel and parking) to make the deliveries.

- MAGA musician Sean Feucht has found a new venue for his Manitoba show after the City of Winnipeg denied him a permit to perform in Central Park. Feucht will instead perform at a farm in the Rural Municipality of La Broquerie. Of course that's really more where his kind of people will be found anyway.

News roundup, 27 June 2025

- A 49 year old Canadian citizen has died in ICE custody in Florida. He had been a permanent resident since 1991 and was in custody pending deportation, having been convicted of drug offenses; he suffered from epilepsy and needed a medication to control his seizures, though it is not yet known if this is the reason for his death.

- Even as the IDF continues to demolish Gaza, their irregulars (the nominally civilian West Bank settlers) held a vicious pogrom in the town of Kafr Malik. When the locals responded by throwing stones at the attackers, the official wing of the army opened fire, killing three people. It's stuff like this that has led many to question whether the settlers should be considered to be civilians (and thus whether killing them counts as terrorism).

- The so-called "revenge tax" provision of the "One Big Beautiful Bill", which would have taxed US investment income for residents of countries that had annoyed Trump, has been removed by Republican senators following a recommendation from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Evidently the prospect of foreign investors divesting from US securities en masse didn't seem like such a good thing after some consideration.

- New York City's establishment, including the likes of hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, are freaking out over Zohran Mamdani's victory in the Democratic primary for mayor, and are getting in line behind incumbent mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent. Better a crook than a lefty in their minds, I guess.

- Winnipeg's most famous intersection, Portage and Main, is reopening to pedestrian traffic after 46 years. 

- A report submitted to Winnipeg's Public Works Committee has recommended the installation of bike lanes and the lowering of the speed limit to 40 km/h on the part of Wellington Crescent where a cyclist was killed last year. The proposal is for the changes to be in place by next spring, to give time for consultations; activists think a better approach would have been to provisionally make the changes and then see what people think of the reality of it rather than the idea of it, but that would make too much sense I guess.

- Trump Mobile, the president's venture into cellphone services, has removed the phrase "made in the USA" from its website, though they still insist that the phones are "brought to life" in the US, and that there will be "American hands behind every device". A cynic might wonder if the hands in question are the users' hands; if that were the case it would probably be technically accurate (who but an American would be fool enough to buy one?)

- Chinese authorities have declined a request for information about the crash of a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737 in 2022 that killed 132 people, citing "national security". Based on information that has already leaked out about the crash, there are suspicions that it may have been a case of pilot suicide; perhaps the authorities don't want to have to answer any hard questions about that.

News roundup, 23 April 2025

- Marty Morantz, the Conservative candidate in Winnipeg West, says that the vandalism of several of his campaign signs is "antisemitic" in nature. Now I'm not going to endorse sign vandalism in general; it's petty and not very effective. Looking at the text of the article, though, all we see is this:

Some of the messages spray-painted over the signs include the words "traitor," "con men" and a slur for people with mental disabilities. The candidate's face in some of the signs was also defaced with a toothbrush mustache and haircut resembling Adolf Hitler's.

Now the only thing in there that could even conceivably be considered antisemitic is the alteration of his face to look like Hitler - but it's far from obvious that this was done because Morantz is Jewish as opposed to, you know, running for the Conservatives (who aren't Nazis per se but their followers are increasingly moving in that direction). Of course there's a school of thought that says the intent of an action doesn't matter as far as racism is concerned; as long as your actions cause a member of a minority group distress (or as the kiddies say, "trauma"), you've committed a racist act. I suspect a lot of people who subscribe to that view are going to be very quiet about this, given who the target was (and I don't blame them per se, but it seems inconsistent).

- Elections Canada has removed a worker from polling station duties following allegations that the worker was "attempting to influence voters to cast their ballot for the Conservatives" at an advance polling station in Vaughan, Ontario. The worker was allegedly speaking in Urdu to voters, and made comments about voting for "blue". The agency is also investigating allegations that another poll worker, in Milton East–Halton Hills South, took similar action to shift voters towards the Liberals.

- A court has temporarily blocked the Ontario government's order to remove existing bike lanes on three streets in Toronto until he is able to rule on the constitutionality of the order. An advocacy group, Cycle Toronto, had launched the challenge along with two cyclists; a lower court judge had decided not to stand in the way of demolition, but Ontario Superior Court Justice Paul Schabas says that he had additional information not available to the other judge. A ruling on the actual constitutionality of the matter could be months away.

- Elon Musk is cutting back his DOGE work following a 71% drop in Tesla's profits. Whether this is enough to save the brand is another question.

- Russia is using fibre optic drones in the Ukraine war. These weapons are controlled through a fibre optic line up to 20 kilometres in length, and can't be jammed due to not using radio. Ukraine is working on them too, but they don't have as much access to optical fibres as the Russians do. In related news, Russia used a drone of some sort (whether fibre optic or not isn't clear) to hit a bus full of workers, killing 9 people. There are suspicions that the bus was deliberately targeted.

News roundup, 17 March 2025

- Mark Carney was sworn in as Prime Minister of Canada on Friday. Sadly (but predictably) the first thing he did was to eliminate the consumer-level carbon tax. As I've said before, if it were up to me I'd have reduced the GST by an amount equivalent to the carbon tax, and if that still left some GST in place I'd have gotten rid of that too and increased the carbon tax to replace the revenue. Of course, that wouldn't help with rural alienation, but I'm not sure that anything is going to reach those people in the near future anyway.

- The Bureau of Reclamation, which among other things is responsible for managing dams on the Colorado River system, is facing staffing reductions of up to 40% as part of the regime's war on the public sector, and has been ordered to stop nearly all spending. Given that some of the bureau's spending is on things like maintenance for dams, and that the region is plagued by high demand for water as precipitation declines, this does not bode well.

- A court challenge to Ontario's anti-bike lane legislation has brought to light internal documents that suggest that the move will not make a meaningful impact on congestion, and will furthermore mean a 54% increase in the risk of collisions for all road users. Of course, if you're a populist like Doug Ford the truth isn't really what matters; what matters is what "the people" think. Hopefully the court will put the government in its place.

- Federal judges in the US that rule against the Trump regime are being threatened with violence; moreover, some Republican legislators are making moves to start impeachment proceedings against some of them. Combine that with the fact that Trump might simply ignore court orders, and the prospects of containing him through peaceful means do not look good.

- Europeans are torching Teslas to show their displeasure with Elon Musk. Some Americans are also taking various forms of direct action in this department, a matter that the regime wants investigated as "terrorism". Meanwhile the FBI is investigating a suspected arson attempt at the home of a Bayer executive.

News roundup, 12 Dec 2024

- As expected, the new draft budget for the City of Winnipeg includes a 5.95% property tax increase. The budget includes money for 36 more police officers and 15 community safety officers, but none for the Community Connections facility in the Millennium Library lobby; it also initiates a pilot study to defer residential snow clearing until a 15 cm snowfall instead of the current 10. Even with the tax increase the city will still have some of the lowest property taxes in the country, but that may be a hard sell with a lot of residents. There seems to be little alternative, though.

- Cycling activists in Toronto have launched a court challenge against the Ford government's anti-bike lane legislation, citing the rights to life and security of the person in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Not sure what the chances of success are, but one thing they have in their favour - the fact that the government saw the need to specifically exclude lawsuits for deaths or injuries resulting from the law does suggest that it is not a good thing for the aforementioned rights.

- Doug Ford has responded to Trump's proposed tariffs by threatening to stop supplying electricity to the US. Whether he has the nerve to actually follow through on this threat is another question, though.

- A poll has found that just over a third of Canadians think the response of governments to COVID-19 was excessive. This happens to be in the same ballpark as the baseline level of support for the Conservatives, which shouldn't be surprising.

- FBI director Christopher Wray will be stepping down at the end of Biden's term in January, despite having more than two years left in his own appointment. Trump has expressed the intention to appoint former national security aide Kash Patel; RFK Jr., though, thinks his daughter-in-law Amaryllis Fox Kennedy would be a better choice. Trump is apparently open to the idea.

- One of the more disconcerting things about the climate crisis is that as it proceeds, it causes inflation, not least because it impacts food production and thus increases prices. And because measures to contain and mitigate climate change are expensive, inflation dampens the political will to proceed with such measures, even as they're needed more than ever; instead the sheeple are driven to vote for rightwing populists who tell them what they want to hear. This has the potential to create what some call a "doom loop" where climate change and far-right politics feed on each other.

- Teachers at the London District Catholic School Board have apparently been ordered not to teach certain books by black authors because they contain the N-word. Among them is The Book of Negroes, by Canadian writer Lawrence Hill, who had this to say about the matter. A teacher who spoke to Hill about the matter was subsequently reprimanded.

- A Houston judge has rejected an attempt by The Onion to buy Alex Jones' media empire. Judge Christopher Lopez cited what he considered a "lack of transparency" in the process, as well as an alleged failure to maximize value towards Jones' creditors. It's worth noting that bankruptcy courts are federal courts, and that Lopez was appointed to the court in 2019, so it's just possible that he's not as impartial as judges are theoretically supposed to be.

- Researchers at MIT have found that people are more likely to eat vegan food if it isn't labeled as vegan. I guess some of them are worried that if they eat it they might become annoying or something.

- Tokyo University's website for graduate student applications apparently had a hidden keyword, not visible by looking at the page normally, that made reference to the Tiananmen Square massacre, thus preventing the page from being displayed in mainland China and preventing Chinese students from applying. The university says that they have since removed the offending word.

- The College of Registered Nurses of Manitoba has suspended the license of a man who was found not criminally responsible for killing his parents and attacking a former coworker. Seems like a reasonable decision to me...

News roundup, 25 Nov 2024

- The Ontario government has added a provision to their anti-bike lane legislation that would grant the province and municipalities immunity from any civil lawsuits if deaths or injuries result from the legislation. The fact that they're taking the time and effort to do this strongly suggests that they expect that harm will occur from the policy.

- The guy who pulled a U-turn in front of an LRT train in Kitchener has been charged with careless driving, making an unsafe turn, and driving while using a hand-held communication device. This last charge, if nothing else, makes his actions a bit more explicable. He'd better hope he has enough liability insurance to cover the damage to the train; I could see that being fairly expensive.

- A jury in Fergus Falls, Minnesota has found two men guilty of human smuggling charges arising from the deaths of a family who attempted to cross the border from Manitoba in early 2022.

- Philippines vice-president Sara Duterte stated publicly that she has contracted an assassin to kill President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the event that she herself is killed. I daresay that this sort of thing is not a sign of a healthy political culture.

- A Winnipeg Transit supervisor called to eject a man from a city bus was attacked with an improvised flamethrower (a lighter and a can of hairspray). The supervisor escaped injury and the attacker was arrested.

- A semi truck fell off an overpass onto a train on the tracks below, derailing the train and injuring the truck driver.

- A woman in Blandford, Nova Scotia was shocked to find that the dogsitter she'd hired to take care of her pets used her home to make dirty videos for the OnlyFans website.

News roundup, 18 Nov 2024

- The principal of an Ottawa high school has apologized after a song in Arabic, "Haza Salam", was played at a Remembrance Day ceremony. The song's title translates, roughly, as "This is Peace"; many were outraged, however, and claimed that it was "hurtful to the Jewish community", despite the fact that the song's lyrics apparently make no mention of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Of course Pierre Poilievre has jumped on that bandwagon in a big way. Poilievre is also outraged at the fact that Toronto's ceremony included a land acknowledgement and made mention of the discrimination against the No. 2 Construction Battalion, an all-black regiment, during WW1. He has vowed to dismantle what he calls a "woke" culture and replace it with a "warrior" one, so his response to these matters is not a big surprise.

- The topic of free public transit is a popular one among some urbanist types. Interestingly, though, the experience in many places has not been as favourable as you might expect. According to this DW report, the removal of transit fares in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, while increasing ridership, actually reduced the proportion of commuters who used it, and car use increased by 5%. Apparently free transit tends to replace walking and cycling rather than driving, while making transit more crowded and thus less attractive to commuters. There is also a perception among many that free transit makes transit less safe by attracting the "wrong" type of passengers. Whether that perception is fair is a fair question, but largely irrelevant - unfortunately it's perception, rather than reality, that determines people's decision to use transit. What needs to be done is to increase the frequency and reliability of transit, as well as perceived safety - and to make it more expensive and less convenient to drive. I would suggest additionally that reduced fares could be beneficial for lower income folks while not encouraging people to take the bus frivolously.

- A Trump-appointed judge has struck down a rule imposed by the US Department of Labor that would have increased overtime eligibility for some 4 million American workers (many of whom foolishly just voted to reelect the guy who appointed the judge). I guess they don't mind if Trump hurts them so long as he hurts black people more.

- With the federal Liberal government caving in to populism and capping international student enrollment earlier this fall, post-secondary institutions across the country are concerned about the impact on their revenue stream. The University of Winnipeg has implemented a hiring freeze as a result.

- In response to the Ford government forcing the removal of bike lanes, the City of Toronto plans to erect signs telling commuters to blame Doug Ford for any increase in congestion that results. Council was quite divided on the matter, though, with suburban councillors opposing the move.

News roundup, 7 Nov 2024

- Toronto's city manager is saying that if the province insists on pushing ahead with the forced removal of bike lanes, it should compensate the city for the cost of the initial investment in the lanes. Meanwhile a study indicates that the lanes are successful in increasing the number of people who ride. At this point my hope is that enough people who have gotten into the habit of riding will continue to do so, but in the traffic lanes instead, slowing down Doug Ford's commute further. I'd like to think there was something better than that to hope for (like a reversal in the policy), but one has to be realistic about what one hopes for.

- The Trudeau government is ordering the closure of TikTok's Canadian offices, citing unspecified national security concerns, but they aren't blocking access, nor stopping the distribution of the app. Given that the company's algorithms themselves are the source of some of the biggest concerns, this seems like the kind of half-hearted decision all too typical of the Liberals.

- Evidently stock traders see opportunities in the massive deregulation of business that is expected from Donald Trump; the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged by over 1,500 points following his election victory. Not all stocks benefited equally, though; there was a significant selloff of stock in solar manufacturers. This is largely due to Trump's vow to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, from which most of those incentives come. Of course this will partly hinge on whether the Republicans regain control of the House of Representatives, which has yet to be determined. Some also hope that the huge benefits that many red states have gotten from the legislation in terms of jobs will keep Trump from killing it entirely, but don't count on it. Overall, this is going to be very damaging to the climate, especially given the expected withdrawal from the Paris agreement, which will incentivize other countries to do the same. And the latest estimates suggest that without considerably more action than we're seeing already, the global average will increase by as much as 3.1°C by the end of the century.

- Although prior to the election the folks in the r/BoomersBeingFools subreddit assumed that baby boomers were Trump's base, the biggest shift away from the Democrats between 2020 and 2024 was among the 18-29 age group. To their credit, some folks in the aforementioned subreddit are recognizing this; some suggest that the likes of Andrew Tate were a big factor in this shift.

- Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is putting on a brave face and hoping that Trump will continue to help his country fight off their invaders. Of course he has to do that to try to retain the morale of his people, but I doubt he's actually happy with the situation.

News roundup, 6 Nov 2024

- And it's over. Donald Trump has defeated Kamala Harris and will be going back into the White House. I plan to say more about this later. It's worth noting, though, that while several false bomb threats were called into polling stations in swing states, that almost certainly was not the reason. It may not even be possible to blame the electoral college, as unfair as that institution is - as of this post, Trump is leading in the popular vote as well. No, unfortunately much of the blame for this debacle lies squarely on the American people.

- A team of outreach workers and volunteers is conducting a "street census" of homeless people in Winnipeg, while St. Boniface Street Links is trying to finalize a deal with the City of Winnipeg to lease a city-owned building as a service centre for the homeless community. Contrast the situation one province to the east, where as mentioned previously mayors of several cities in Ontario are calling for the provincial government to use the notwithstanding clause to enable them to clear out encampments, much to the chagrin of activists (and indeed anyone capable of recognizing that such measures are not going to cause homeless people to disappear).

- There's been yet another violent carjacking in Winnipeg; this one occurred in Elmwood and the victim was a delivery driver.

- The Regional Municipality of Waterloo is hoping to move ahead with plans for additional bike lanes, even as the provincial government prepares to make it more difficult. Perhaps they hope to get them under the wire before new provincial legislation comes into effect to make it more difficult, and that Doug Ford won't use a special regulation to force their removal simply because he doesn't have to drive down those streets.

- Three people have been charged after violent protests at places of worship in Brampton, Ontario. One happened at a Hindu temple while another was at a Sikh gurdwara. Of course, Pierre Poilievre can't help but say that it's all Trudeau's fault.

News roundup, 4 Nov 2024

- A new social media trend is calling on people to "cancel" the votes of more rightwing family members by voting for the Democrats. The Harris campaign, and others supporting them such as the Lincoln Project, are getting involved in the trend, with ads like this one that remind women that their husbands will never know who they actually voted for; not surprisingly rightwingers are having a conniption about this representing the "downfall of the American family".

- In response to last year's Supreme Court ruling which says that municipalities can't evict homeless encampments from public land if there's not enough shelter space for the people living there, the mayors of thirteen Ontario municipalities have called on Doug Ford to use the notwithstanding clause to override this decision.

- Even as a bill to limit cities' ability to build bike lanes works its way through the Ontario legislature, the Ford government is not waiting; they're moving forward with a regulation that specifically orders the removal of bike lanes from three major streets in Toronto; these YouTubers suggest that those streets might be the ones used by Doug Ford for his commute to Queen's Park from his home in Etobicoke. It won't actually solve congestion, of course, but at least Ford won't have to watch people on bikes whizz by as he steams in traffic.

- Winnipeg city councillor Vivian Santos, in her role as chair of the community services committee, questioned whether the city can afford the approximately $260,000 a year budgeted for picking up needles and other sharp objects in playgrounds. The fact that this is something they'd consider cutting is a sign of desperation. Talks are on with the province about possibly empowering the city to levy new taxes; certainly something has to be done. The city is studying the impact of some possible new taxes, including on such things as alcohol and online deliveries; curiously there is no mention of an income tax, gas tax, or sales tax among the proposals.

- A welcome sign in the lobby of Montreal's city hall will be removed following criticism of the inclusion of a picture of a woman in a hijab on the sign.

- Someone in Calgary's Bowness neighbourhood thought it would be cool to leave out a bowl of disposable razors for Halloween, with a sign saying that they couldn't afford apples "because of Trudeau".