News roundup, 5 Nov 2025

- Zohran Mamdani has won the New York City mayoral election, despite Trump's threats to cut funding to the city (evidently New Yorkers are less easily cowed than Argentinians). He will be the city's first south Asian and Muslim mayor as well as its youngest in over a century. The turnout was the highest in decades as well. He's got a big job ahead of him, in any case. This may also set up a confrontation between Trump and state governor Kathy Hochul, who has so far managed to deal more effectively with the orange monster than most blue state governors.

- California voters have voted "yes" in a referendum on gerrymandering House seats in order to fight similar gerrymandering by Republicans in other states. The referendum was necessary because the state has an independent electoral commission; the commission will resume its redistricting duties in 2030.

- The Carney government has presented its budget. It appears to be a pretty small-c conservative budget, with cuts to the size of the public service expected in the next few years and more spending shifted towards defense, as well as significant cuts to immigration. Most ominously, there are hints of doing away with the emissions cap for oil and gas (though it is being spun as something that "would create the circumstances whereby the oil and gas emissions cap would no longer be required"). And stupidly, it also includes the elimination of a tax on underused housing and luxury taxes on private aircraft and yachts. Evidently some moderate conservatives like it; a longtime Conservative MP, Chris d'Entremont, who represents the Nova Scotia riding of Acadie—Annapolis, has resigned from his party's caucus and is considering crossing the floor to join the Liberals.

- A McDonnell Douglas MD-11 freighter, operated by UPS, crashed into an industrial area moments after takeoff from Louisville, Kentucky. At least 7 deaths have been reported so far; this number is expected to rise, however, as the aircraft was carrying enough fuel to get it to Honolulu.

- The Ford government is taking away Toronto's power to require green roofs on new construction. The move was made by order in council; they seem to be justifying it in terms of the costs of building new housing.

- Some pro-Israel organizations are calling for the head of Toronto mayor Olivia Chow after she dared to use the G-word to describe what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. The B’nai Brith’s director of research and advocacy says Chow has "chosen to instigate those who engage against the Jewish community". 

- A Toronto woman whose "pitbull-like dog" attacked a child in a playground, causing life-altering injuries, may be facing prison time following her conviction for criminal negligence causing bodily harm. Prosecutors are calling for a three year sentence due to the egregiousness of the situation; the dog had been previously deemed dangerous after it attacked another dog and its owner in the elevator of her building, but nonetheless she let it off leash in a playground where dogs of any sort, much less dangerous ones, are prohibited. Oh, and the dog's name was Capo, which leads one to believe that its viciousness was not a bug but a feature. The fact that she has 15 previous criminal convictions doesn't help her case either.

- Former US vice-president Dick Cheney has died at the age of 84.

News roundup, 24 Oct 2024

- Justin Trudeau is refusing to step down as Liberal leader, despite the demands from a growing number of MPs that he do so. Some of the rebel MPs expressed concern with how quickly he dismissed the suggestion; none of this is going to help salvage the party's chances in the next election, or even with rebuilding afterwards.

- In southwestern England, recurring flooding is being addressed by buying out farmers at around £5,000 an acre and restoring the saltmarsh habitat that existed previously. Not surprisingly, this has its detractors, but more of this sort of thing is going to be necessary, since the problem isn't going away any time soon.

- The driver who hit cyclist Rob Jenner in June, then left the scene, has pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death and leaving the scene of the accident. He was going 159 km/h in a 50 zone. In tangentially related news, police have been cracking down on "stunt driving" to an extent, although it's an uphill battle with these people.

- Winnipeg police had to shoot a dog on Tuesday afternoon after it attacked four people, causing serious injuries to one of them.

- Many polls significantly underestimated Donald Trump's support in the 2020 election. The reasons for this are not entirely clear; one school of thought holds that low information voters are less likely to answer polls, and more likely to vote for the likes of Trump if they do vote. Notably, pollsters did better in the 2022 midterms (less engaged voters are more likely to sit the election out if the presidency isn't up for grabs). Others suggest that the 2020 election was heavily influenced by the pandemic and other factors. Pollsters are changing their methodologies in an attempt to correct for factors like these; the effectiveness of these measures remains to be seen.

- A Cambridge University study has found a significant positive correlation between the number of Airbnb locations in a neighbourhood and its crime rate.

- Post-secondary institutions in red states are having a harder time attracting students from out of state as non-crazy students balk at having to live in such a place.

Inflatable dog turd sculpture escapes Swiss museum, wreaks havoc

Like they say, you can't make this shit up:

A powerful gust of wind recently swept a house-sized sculpture of dog feces from its display outside a Swiss museum, an art official in Berne said Monday.

The incident took place on the night of July 31, but details of the artwork's escape — and the havoc it caused before its eventual landing — emerged just this week.

The massive inflatable sculpture, created by U.S. contemporary artist Paul McCarthy and titled Complex Shit, is part of the Paul Klee Centre's exhibit East of Eden: A Garden Show.

From the Ceeb, via bugsybrown.

Dog-et

As planned, I drove to Hamilton to pick up the photo equipment (haven't had a detailed look yet, though) and visited my grandma and my aunt in Burlington. On coming home I got a call from CL, who is house-sitting for a friend, and taking care of said friend's two insane dogs. This particular friend is a programmer or some similar sort of high tech guru, who has her own consulting company and is looking at being able to retire in five years or so (and she's only in her forties! I hate people like that). Needless to say, she has plenty of money to spend on things like a Nintendo Wii, which CL and I spent some time playing. I suck utterly at baseball and boxing, but am tolerably good at auto racing and bowling. What neither I nor CL noticed was that while we were playing the game, one of the dogs grabbed my shoes, dragged them out into the backyard, and hid them, doing significant damage in the process (they're still wearable, but barely). Fortunately we were able to find them. I don't know; in some cultures they seem to have a much better idea of what to do with these creatures than we do (we tend to get all squeamish because they're cute and furry and all that shit). Too bad, because otherwise I could have sold the offending creature to the local Pizza Pop factory and bought a new pair of shoes with the money. But such is life.