News roundup, 16 April 2026

- Donald Trump is once again threatening to fire Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell for refusing to lower interest rates, even though it's far from clear that he has the authority to do that unilaterally. The regime is also pursuing a criminal investigation regarding alleged cost overruns for renovations at the central bank's headquarters; a judge has already given the legal opinion that the overruns are a mere pretext and that the government wants to intimidate the bank. The strange thing is, Powell's term is set to expire in May, although he would stay on until a successor is found. 

- Hospitalization rates for vaccine-preventable respiratory infections, including flu and RSV as well as COVID-19 and other conditions, have doubled since the start of the pandemic. Evidently enough people went down the antivax rabbit hole that they stopped getting the vaccinations that they previously went along with.

- To the surprise of nobody with any sense, speeding has increased in Ottawa school zones since the Ford government banned municipalities from using speed cameras.

- More information has emerged about Jeremy Frimer, the psychology professor who is suing the University of Winnipeg for allegedly giving him complex PTSD and the faculty union for not backing him up. It seems that Frimer made some highly questionable claims about race, intelligence, and crime; despite his protestations, the general consensus among most scientists is that human races are so ill-defined that it's pretty safe to assume that such claims are nonsense. As to what could have motivated to make such claims, well...

- Travis Patron, a Saskatchewan man who once served as the leader of a now defunct far right fringe party, has been charged with wilful promotion of hatred for some online posts. He has previous convictions for the same offense, as well as for assault, harassment, and impersonating a police officer.

- Remember the story a few years back about the programmer whose best friend was killed by a hit-and-run driver, so she trained a chatbot on all the texts he'd sent to her so she could still feel like she was talking to him? Whatever you think about whether that's psychologically healthy or not, at least she knew what was going on. A more recent case, though, is a bit more problematic. After a man died in a car accident last year, his family decided to keep the news from his mother, fearing that the shock would harm her health. So they got together all the audio and video they could find of him and trained an AI on it. The AI has brief conversations with her on screen but then apologizes saying that he has to go back to work because he's very busy, and that he will be sure to move back to her city to be with her once he has earned enough money. As some folks in this Reddit thread have remarked, this might be justifiable if she had severe dementia (the only thing worse than having to tell her that he'd died would be having to tell her that over and over again), but there's no mention of this in the article, and I can't see things going too well if the AI has some sort of glitch that reveals its true nature or if she finds out the truth in some other way.

News roundup, 26 Sept 2025

- Former FBI director James Comey has been indicted on charges of making a false statement and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. The basis of the indictment is a claim by his former deputy Andrew McCabe that Comey authorized a leak of information about the FBI's investigations into Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, something Comey denied in hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The indictment comes just days after Trump publicly called for it. 

- Tech billionaire Peter Thiel allegedly gave a lecture in San Francisco in which he warned that regulating AI could hasten the arrival of the Antichrist. His reasoning is not entirely clear, except that he apparently said that people's fear of existential threats could give them an appetite for the kind of leadership the Antichrist would provide. A curious side note from the article - apparently the UK office of Thiel's company Palantir is headed by Louis Mosley, grandson of 1930s British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley.

- Hundreds of senior American military officers have been ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to attend a meeting in Quantico, Virginia next Tuesday. The subject of the meeting has not been disclosed, leading some to speculate that a mass firing is in the works, especially given Hegseth's disdain for much of the current leadership of the military.

- The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has gone on strike in response to the federal government's proposed reforms to Canada Post, which include the elimination of home delivery and the closure of a number of post offices.

- An RBC employee has been charged with gaining unauthorized access to the accounts of Mark Carney and someone named Justin Trudeau - though in the latter case it turned out not to be the former prime minister but someone else with the same name. He allegedly told police that he was lured into the scheme by someone on the social media platform Telegram. Police believe organized crime is behind this, though I have to wonder if it was "regular" organized crime, or some kind of "gotcha" attempt sort of like when lawyers with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms hired a private investigator to spy on a judge hearing their case in the hope of catching him being hypocritical about the laws he was enforcing.

- Marchers in Fredericton's Take Back The Night rally were harassed by several young men on motor scooters on Friday. Police are investigating but no charges have been laid so far.

- The Kinew government is considering changes to the Intoxicated Persons Act to allow people to be detained for more than 24 hours if intoxicated. While 24 hours might be enough to come down off most drugs, including alcohol, it sometimes isn't enough for meth, leading to situations in which people have to be released when they're in no condition to be out on the street. The Main Street Project is not opposed to this so long as adequate supports and medical supervision are provided, something the government is looking at.

- Doug Ford has announced the intention to ban municipalities in the province from using speed cameras, for which he uses the usual populist slogan "cash grab". Setting aside the fact that there's a very simple way to avoid getting your cash grabbed (namely, pay attention to your speed and the signs on the road, both things you should be doing anyway), one might think that if people in the cities that use such cameras were sufficiently bothered by them, they could decide at the municipal level not to use them. Of course, the people Ford is serving here are people in the suburbs and exurbs around big cities, who refuse to live in an actual urban centre but need to go there for work and are always running late.

- The owners of a house outside St. Thomas, Ontario with a swastika mowed into its front lawn have been charged with criminal harassment and other offenses.

News roundup, 1 Aug 2025

- Donald Trump has signed an executive order raising tariffs on Canadian goods to 35%, continuing to beat the fentanyl drum as an explanation. Mexico has been given a 30 day reprieve but could still face tariff hikes in another month. Both Doug Ford and Unifor president Lana Payne are calling for 50% tariffs on American steel and aluminum in retaliation.

- Trump suddenly finds himself on Joe Rogan's bad side over the failure to release the Epstein files, and Rogan isn't letting this one slide. This is a problem for Trump, given how big the overlap between Rogan fans and prospective Trump supporters. Of course, this is doubtless more of a cynical move than a principled one on Rogan's part, but if his buyer's remorse does Trump some damage, I'm not complaining. I'm not convinced it's enough to bring him down, though. His supporters seem willing to give him a pass on all manner of other awfulness; why should the sexual abuse of children be any different?

- A bill before the US Senate would, if passed, ban the ownership of individual stocks by members of either house of Congress. Interestingly, Republican senator Josh Hawley voted with the Democrats to get the bill through committee and potentially get it to the floor for a full vote. Naturally this drew the ire of Trump, who called Hawley a "pawn"; another Republican senator, Rick Scott, isn't too happy either. Of course, the bill has little chance of becoming law; for starters, Senate Majority Leader John Thune can stop it from going to a full vote (and probably will).

- A recent survey conducted by the Canadian Automobile Association has found that 65% of Manitobans polled are in favour of photo radar; evidently the loudmouths who bleat "Cash grab! Cash grab!" every time this is suggested are just a noisy minority. Of course polls can be biased, but if a CAA-sponsored poll was biased I'd expect the bias to be in the other direction. And despite what the freedumb crowd will tell you, there's evidence that it actually does reduce the number of serious and fatal accidents. All that said, designing the roads so that people adapt to lower speeds unconsciously is a far better way to slow traffic. Still, in places where traffic calming is difficult due to existing legislation, photo radar is the way to go.

- A fourth candidate has entered the race for the byelection to replace deceased Winnipeg city councillor Jason Schreyer. Abel Gutierrez seems to have his heart in the right place, but I can't help but think that a civic employee and labour leader like Carmen Prefontaine or an urbanist like Emma Durand-Wood probably have a better understanding of the big picture than a construction manager would.

- An extradition hearing in Edinburgh is deciding whether three men will face extradition to Canada to face charges related to the beating death of an Owen Sound restaurant owner in 2023. 

- Several business owners in Winnipeg have been subjected to extortion recently, with threats of arson or violence. Two restaurants owned by the same family were hit in July; one of them suffered relatively minor damage but the other was destroyed by fire. Convenience stores have also been hit; many of the victims believe the same people are behind the attacks. 

- A Winnipeg tattoo artist is offering a service where she'll mix the cremated remains of a loved one into tattoo ink so you can carry a bit of them around with you forever.