- Morden mayor Brandon Burley has abruptly resigned and is joining Wab Kinew's transition team. No doubt the unpleasantness he was subjected to owing to the eminently reasonable stance he took on COVID-19 (including having his home address provided to the "freedom" loogans, not to mention losing at least a dozen friends) was a factor.
- Canada is the third worst country in the developed world (after the US and Japan) in terms of the amount of paid vacation we have (only 10 days guaranteed in most provinces, plus statutory holidays). In contrast, most of the EU has 25-30 days.
- As expected, the Hunka affair is paying rich propaganda dividends to Russia.
- Donald Trump's civil fraud trial continues despite a bid to halt the proceedings.
- Ukraine is claiming significant gains in the war with Russia; the Black Sea fleet has been forced to relocate from Sevastopol to Novorossiisk and other places in Russia proper. Less reassuring is the fact that they are now at the mercy of whoever gets elected Speaker of the House of Representatives as far as American aid goes. The effects of the conflict are now visible from space. And meanwhile Russia seems to be considering pulling out of the Comprehensive Test Band Treaty.
- Dutch PM Mark Rutte is questioning Hungary's place in the EU over their socially conservative policies. One wonders, though, if the rest of the bloc would be willing to drive them out (and thus further into the arms of Russia).
- There's been a significant breakthrough in the UAW negotiations, with battery plant workers being brought under the union's wing. This is important, since until now many of the batteries, unlike parts in gas and diesel cars, have been made in non-union shops.
- Two environmental groups, Friends of the Earth and Mothers for Peace, have been unsuccessful in getting California's last nuclear plant shut down. This may not be such a bad thing, though. If they were opposing the construction of a new one, I might be more inclined to agree with them (not least because you could construct a lot of solar and wind capacity in the time it takes to build a nuclear plant) but removing an existing plant would almost inevitably mean a delay in decarbonization.
- A study commissioned by an organization called Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation has concluded that large solar projects do not harm property values. Meanwhile, researchers at MIT have developed a promising new solar powered desalination system; it would be especially good if this could somehow be combined with new methods of extracting lithium from the salts left behind.
- Shell is buying ad space in the highly popular Fortnite video game, in the hope of infecting younger minds with pro-oil sentiment.
- The Biden administration is waiving several environmental laws to enable the construction of Trump's border wall. This sounds absurd, but Biden has been under pressure from several blue states to limit migration. There's going to be a lot more of this sort of thing in the future, both in the US and elsewhere; governments with domestic policies that are liberal or even social democratic will likely bow to pressure to chop the extra hands from the gunwales in order to avoid losing ground to the far right.
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