News roundup, 20 Oct 2025

- Mark Carney is remaining tight-lipped about whether he is willing to lower or eliminate the prohibitive tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in return for China dropping the equally prohibitive tariffs on canola and other Canadian exports. Doug Ford, not surprisingly, is vehemently opposed, and I suspect that he'll get what he wants. As I've remarked before, the beneficiaries from such a move are mostly farmers who aren't going to vote Liberal no matter what, while the places dependent on the auto industry are more in play in an election. In addition to that, Carney seems to be clinging to the hope that it will be possible to make a deal with Trump, and going against Trump's wishes on the China file would be another nail in the coffin of that hope.

- Canadians continue to boycott the US in significant numbers. CNN has come out with a hand-wringing headline about how the boycott is harming "innocent bystanders", but as folks in this Reddit thread point out, the sort of small businesspeople that are affected by this voted for Trump in large numbers, so it's a bit of a stretch to call them "innocent".

- The Chinese government has expelled nine top generals from its military. The government says that they were expelled for corruption; others suspect the motivation to be political. Either or both of these things could be true, of course.

- A man who planned to visit his native South Sudan had brought along supplies for people in his hometown. Among the supplies were a few sets of walkie-talkies that he'd bought off of Amazon. Unfortunately, he was hoping to access the country via Ethiopia, and walkie-talkies are considered "military equipment" in that country and illegal for civilians to import. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

- An actor who was fired by a Disney subsidiary for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19 has had his lawsuit for unfair dismissal thrown out by a court. Rockmond Dunbar had claimed that he needed an accommodation for religions reasons due to his membership in a church called the "Congregation of Universal Wisdom"; among his arguments he said that "Man created the COVID-19 vaccine to separate you from God" (though for some strange reason he felt the compulsion to also say that he is "not an anti-vaxxer" notwithstanding all the anti-vax things he said). In any case, he came out looking rather foolish when it was shown that he'd been taking synthetic testosterone and other drugs of which the church disapproves; he was forced to acknowledge on the witness stand that he is "not perfect".

News roundup, 17 June 2025

- Israel and Iran continue to launch strikes against each other. An Iranian newscaster was forced to run for cover from an incoming missile; casualties have been reported in that strike. Israel's defense minister has not denied targeting the TV station; indeed, before the attack he hinted that it would be a target. Iran also accuses the Israelis of targeting a hospital in the western part of the country. Meanwhile in Israel, a strike on an oil refinery killed three people and all of the city's oil facilities shut down as a precaution. At least 224 Iranians and 20 Israelis have died in the conflict so far.

- In the course of the unrest in Los Angeles over the last few days, several Waymo robotaxis were set on fire. Analysts say that such vehicles are "sitting ducks" for this sort of thing; because they're programmed to try not to run people over, if surrounded they have no defense. While the numerous cameras on the vehicles may be a deterrent to attackers, they are also a provocation as many fear that they may be gathering surveillance footage. Some are suggesting that including human drivers may be a deterrent, however this also defeats the purpose of autonomous vehicles, at least from the point of view of the owners.

- People in the US continue to show some resistance to ICE overreach. In the village of Westbury, on Long Island, residents saw a number of vehicles with masked agents in them, apparently waiting for parents to pickup their children so that they could apprehend any who looked like they could be undocumented immigrants. The agents quickly fled when confronted by a mob of residents. One of the fleeing agents ran a stop sign and got into an accident, injuring the driver of the other vehicle. The occupants of that vehicle quickly got into another ICE vehicle and left the scene.

- Disney and Universal are suing the AI company Midjourney for plagiarism due to the latter company's use of their intellectual property to train its products. I hate having to root for Disney, but somebody's got to bring these cowboys under control, and they're among the few companies with deep enough pockets to have a chance.

- The AI assistants provided by Google and Meta took an article from the Beaverton as fact, telling users that Cape Breton Island will be adopting a new time zone, 12 minutes ahead of Atlantic time and 18 minutes behind Newfoundland time. Given how fallible such systems are, it's kind of disconcerting that people are using them to make hiring decisions, not to mention the dating and mental health advice that we've already discussed here.