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, 22 Nov 2024

- While it's too late to do anything about it now, it's an interesting academic exercise to consider whether US Attorney General Merrick Garland could have prevented the reelection of Donald Trump. Dean Obeidallah argues that Garland has utterly failed his country by failing to push aggressively enough in prosecuting Trump after the Jan 6 putsch. Many in this Reddit thread agree with Obeidallah; others think that Garland had no choice but to do his utmost to build an airtight case against the former President, due to the inevitable perception among half the country that this was a partisan hit job against their hero. But I can't help but think that maybe he should have just recognized that this would happen no matter how airtight the case and pushed ahead aggressively; on the other hand, if he did that and it ended in an acquittal, that could have won a lot of support for Trump.

- If RFK Jr. is appointed health secretary as everyone expects, we'd better hope that we don't get another pandemic during the coming years - like, say, a mutant version of H5N1 (avian influenza) that can easily spread human to human like many other flu strains. Some fear that the recent case in BC could be a sign that this is happening; on the other hand, you'd expect to have heard of more cases by now if that were true.

- Matt Gaetz has abandoned his quest to become the US Attorney General; Trump has selected prosecutor Pam Bondi for the position instead.

- The Trudeau government is suspending the GST on a number of items for a two month period; the list of affected items includes things like children's clothing and diapers but also less essential things like restaurant meals, Christmas trees, and beer. They're also sending out $250 cheques in the spring to anyone who earned less than $150,000 last year. One could be forgiven for being a bit cynical about the government's motives here.

- The truck driver involved in that fatal crash last week near Altona, Manitoba was charged with two counts of dangerous driving causing death and one of obstructing a police officer. He has now disappeared and is the subject of a Canada-wide warrant for his arrest.

- While Waterloo Region's LRT system, the Ion, has been very successful, there is one recurring problem - morons keep trying to pull U-turns in front of the trains. In the most recent case the train was actually derailed, though fortunately nobody was injured, not even the idiot driving the car. You can see video of the accident here.

- There are indications that the highly popular weight-loss drug Ozempic not only helps people to lose weight, it seems to actually change people's tastes towards more healthful foods. The fast food industry is sufficiently worried about this to be intensely studying the incidence of this; it's bad news for them if this is true, albeit good news for everybody else. On the downside, there is some evidence that more food might be wasted by users of Ozempic and similar drugs.

- A bill before Australia's parliament would ban most social media for persons under 16. An exception is made for YouTube due to the large amount of educational and other child-friendly content on the platform; some who called for the legislation approve of enabling youth to watch YouTube, but would prefer to have a limitation on young users' ability to upload material to avoid the potential for exploitation and bullying.

- Six people have died of apparent methanol poisoning after visiting Vang Vieng, Laos, a popular destination for young tourists. This is a shockingly common occurrence in much of the world, including the EU.

The myth of scarcity is about to become a reality

Quite often, at least in progressive circles, you hear of "the myth of scarcity". Basically, the point being made is that most famines don't result from not enough food, but from unequal distribution of food. And it's true - there is enough food to go around, for the time being. Unfortunately, as Gwynne Dyer points out, climate change and other factors are likely to complicate matters:

Is this food emergency a result of global warming? Maybe, but all these droughts, heat waves and floods could also just be a run of really bad luck.

What is nearly certain is that the warming will continue, and that in the future there will be many more weather disasters due to climate change. Food production is going to take a big hit.

Global food prices are already spiking whenever there are a few local crop failures, because the supply barely meets demand even now. As the big emerging economies grow, Chinese and Indian and Indonesian citizens eat more meat, which places a great strain on grain supplies.

Moreover, world population is now passing through seven billion, on its way to nine billion by 2050. We will need a lot more food than we used to.

From the Georgia Straight. When this happens, a very ugly word will have to become a big part of foreign aid - triage. It's already happening because many NGOs don't have the money to help everyone who needs it; climate change will ensure that we don't have the food. How will such decisions be made? How should they be made? I sure wouldn't like to be the one making those decisions...

A way of dealing with the food crisis...

Not a very appetizing one, though:

Rat meat has become such a popular alternative to other dearer meats in Cambodia that its price has increased fourfold.

As inflation pushes the price of beef beyond the reach of the poor, increased demand for rat meat has pushed up rodent prices. A kilogram of rat meat now costs 5,000 riel (69p) compared with 1,200 riel last year. Spicy field rat dishes with garlic are increasingly on the menu as beef costs 20,000 riel a kilo.

Officials said rats were fleeing to higher ground from flooded areas of the lower Mekong Delta, making it easier for villagers to catch them.

"Many children are happy making some money from selling the animals to the markets, but they keep some for their family," said Ly Marong, an agriculture official. "Not only are our poor eating it, but there is also demand from Vietnamese living on the border with us."

He estimated that Cambodia supplied more than a tonne of live rats a day to Vietnam.

From here.