News roundup, 14 May 2024

- The wildfire situation is not improving. The entire population of Cranberry Portage, a community of about 600 people, have been evacuated; the fire in the area could take weeks to put out. In BC the fire threatening Fort Nelson is getting closer to the town and adjacent reserve, forcing more evacuations, while in Alberta the entire municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Fort McMurray, remains on evacuation alert.

- BC's measures restricting short term rentals like Airbnb are upsetting people who hoped to make money renting out their properties. A new organization, calling itself the "West Coast Association for Property Rights", has formed to fight this; of course their executive director declares that restricting short term rentals won't solve the problem, but then he would say that, wouldn't he. The organization is seeking an injunction to stop the enforcement of the law.

- Teresa Ribera, Spain's deputy prime minister, is hoping to be appointed the EU's commissioner for the Green Deal. She is not pulling her punches in criticizing EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen for her deference to the far right and the rural dinosaurs in particular.

- In recent years many corporations have at least gone through the motions of being concerned about environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) matters. However, corporations aren't generally a reliable ally on such matters, especially when there's a very aggressive push in the other direction from the far right. Even companies that remain (somewhat) forward thinking on these matters are a lot quieter about it than they were a few years ago.

- David DePape, the man who showed up at Nancy Pelosi's home with a hammer in 2022 and then beat her husband with it upon finding that she wasn't there, is set to be sentenced on Friday. Prosecutors are asking for a 40 year sentence.

- Deomcratic Senator Bob Menendez goes on trial on Monday for accepting large amounts of money in bribes. Of course, he represents New Jersey, a place whose corruption makes Quebec seem like Norway in comparison; he's just one of the unlucky ones to get caught.

- An 8 month old child in the UK, who was born deaf, is now able to hear without any assistance, thanks to gene therapy. It will be interesting to see the reaction of the folks who call themselves Deaf with a capital D and who have at times characterized cochlear implants as genocide.

News roundup, 21 Feb 2024

- The question as to whether Donald Trump has enough liquid assets to cover his rapidly accumulating costs for fines and lawsuits continues to swirl. Of course the MAGA sheeple are opening their wallets, but that's not likely to be enough, and in the case of the $354 million dollar fine from the civil fraud trial, New York Attorney General Letitia James says she's prepared to start seizing his assets if he doesn't pay up soon.

- Not too long ago, many Wall Street investors were starting to talk seriously about divestment from climate-harming companies. An international coalition of money managers known as Climate Action 100+ has pushed for change, but in recent days several large American companies, including JP Morgan and Pimco, pulled out of the coalition. The reason, apparently, is fear that US antitrust legislation could be weaponized against them. This is a big victory for the likes of Jim Jordan, a Republican member of Congress from Ohio who has been fiercely fighting the use of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) factors to guide investments.

- The Manitoba government is putting the Amphibex icebreaking machines into action on the Red River north of Selkirk, in preparation for the spring melt. Not that there's much risk of a major flood this year given how little snow we have.

- A broken pipe in Winnipeg's sewage system has been discharging untreated sewage into the Red River for the last couple of weeks, and has resisted attempts to fix it. The city is politely asking the residents of the suburban area that feeds into that part of the system to limit their water consumption until the problem can be properly addressed.

- An Italian physicist, Cesare Marchetti, decided to apply his knowledge of such things as particle behaviour and fluid dynamics to that ubiquitous "fluid" known as traffic and its constituent "particles" known as people. He studied urban development patterns over the centuries and concluded that people will tolerate a commute of up to 30 minutes in each direction, a value now called Marchetti's Constant. This explains the phenomenon of "induced demand" very well; when you add additional lanes, people think they can move further out from urban centres and still make it to work in half an hour. In fact they only can for a short time, because this leads to more traffic which slows everything down again.

- Winnipeg Transit's safety officers have now been deployed, complete with the power to detain and arrest people. Like it or not, this is probably necessary if you're going to get anyone to take transit by choice, and the people who have the choice to take the bus rather than drive are the people you need to reach if you're going to truly deal with congestion (not to mention climate change).

- Two years have passed since the "Freedom Convoy" (aka "Flu Trux Klan") debacle, and TVO's Matt Gurney has some thoughts on the matter. The article rambles somewhat; the real takeaway message, though, is that Canada is not a country that's well suited to handle a major crisis at the best of times, and that COVID-19 and the convoy have made that worse. If we should face another pandemic or similar crisis (and it may come sooner than you would expect from past history) the populace would likely be a lot less compliant with restrictions than they were with COVID.

- Speaking of freedom, it's kind of funny how many of the kinds of people who opposed vaccine mandates, even if it's to protect the public, are in a huge rush to ban or restrict books from school libraries, supposedly to protect children (we all know that what they're really trying to protect is parental control over children, of course). Just a couple of months ago the Catholic school board in Waterloo placed restrictions on a book because there's a gay character in it; the book has to be kept behind a desk, and any teacher or librarian giving a kid access to it is required to provide "a Catholic understanding of the book" before letting the kid read it. Of course, this isn't as bad as what just happened in West Virginia, where a bill just passed that will potentially enable teachers, librarians, and museum staff to face criminal charges if they allow a minor to see something that the wrong person considers to be pornographic.

- Vladimir Putin's efforts to lure good Christian Americans and Canadians to his country so they can escape their evil decadent lefty homelands looked pretty attractive to one rightwing couple from Saskatchewan who wanted to live somewhere where they wouldn't have to explain to their kids what a rainbow flag is. Things didn't turn out as well as they'd hoped.

News roundup, 2 Feb 2024

- The Manitoba PCs are accusing the NDP government of "interfering" in the operations of Manitoba Hydro, because they intend for new power generation to be built by the utility itself rather than contracted out. No surprise here, the Cons are an enemy of the public sector. A bit rich, though, considering how much they interfered with MPI as well as Hydro when they were in power.

- Half of all American adults now say that Israel has gone too far in their campaign against Hamas. 

- China installed more solar capacity last year than the US has in total.

- The US Environmental Protection Agency is proposing that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often referred to as "forever chemicals", be categorized as "hazardous to human health".

- Legislators in several American states are introducing bills aimed at stopping the use of environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria for public investments such as pension funds. One of the most extreme was introduced in New Hampshire of all places, and if passed would have made it a felony, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, for any official with the state treasury, pension fund or executive branch to "knowingly" make investment decisions using ESG criteria. Fortunately that bill was killed off in committee.

- A community organization called SABE Peacewalkers, which calls itself a "relationship-based de-escalation team", has come under fire after a couple of its members were caught on video being less than peaceful with vulnerable people.

- Glenn and Jennifer Ferris, a couple who installed security cameras in their home, are getting pushback from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, following objections from the home care staff looking after his elderly mother. This despite the fact that the cameras are on the outside of the house, and in rooms where the home care workers shouldn't have to go, which calls into question the workers' motives for wanting them turned off. The WRHA has threatened to withhold service if the cameras are not turned off.

- A trucker was arrested at the border crossing at Boissevain, south of Brandon, after allegedly trying to smuggle more than 400 kilograms of meth. That's equivalent to about three doses for every resident of the province.

- The erratic Lauren Boebert has called for measures such as "alligator moats" to secure the border with Mexico. Sounds like something out of Jacob Two-Two Meets The Hooded Fang rather than a serious proposal.