News roundup, 26 Feb 2026

- Anthropic AI, which has generally tried to position itself as the AI company with a conscience, has announced that it has abandoned its promise to never train AI systems unless adequate safety measures could be guaranteed in advance. The company was founded by people who left other AI companies that they believed weren't taking safely seriously; the reversal comes immediately after Pete Hegseth threatened to cancel the company's contract with the Pentagon if they didn't lift the limits placed on the military's use of their technology. Meanwhile, it has come out that AIs used in wargame simulations by the US military are way too quick to recommend nuclear escalation for comfort.

- A data centre under construction in Olds, Alberta is expected to consume as much electricity as Edmonton, a city of over a million people. And of course, Alberta being Alberta, it's going to be powered by natural gas.

- A Florida-registered speedboat entered Cuban territorial waters and its occupants apparently exchanged gunfire with the country's military. Four people from the boat were killed and six injured; one Cuban soldier was also wounded.

- Following a pilot study conducted in four neighbourhoods in 2023, City of Winnipeg staff have recommended that the default speed limit on residential streets be reduced from 50 to 40 km/h. This would require changes to provincial legislation to allow it, however. More promising, perhaps, is the fact that Coun. Janice Lukes, of all people, now claims to believe that a permanent bike lane on Wellington Crescent is warranted. Many of the folks in this Reddit thread are skeptical whether she's really onside, though. Given her suburban ward and sensibilities, some skepticism is probably warranted.

- A Hamilton police officer has been charged with possessing and distributing child pornography. He's been suspended without pay, something pretty rare in the police world, so I have to assume the evidence against him is pretty damning. I daresay he's not going to enjoy his time in jail. 

- When the US men's Olympic hockey team was invited to the White House, five members of the team declined the invitation. Probably no coincidence that all five have strong ties to Minnesota.

- Three people face charges of uttering threats after a series of hoax calls targeting Winnipeg schools. Two of them are teenagers, who probably thought it would be a clever way to get a day off school; oddly enough the third is a 30 year old woman from Toronto.

News roundup, 12 Aug 2025

- Anthropic AI is trying to appeal the class certification of up to 7 million potential claimants in a class action against the company for massive copyright infringement. AI industry people are weighing in heavily on the side of the company, calling for the appeals court to reject the certification lest it destroy not just Anthropic but the entire AI industry. They accuse the district court judge, William Alsup, of failing to apply "rigourous analysis"; unanswered is the question of whether the "rigourous analysis" they're referring to is with regards to whether the actions of Anthropic are illegal, or with regards to the consequences for Anthropic and the rest of the industry. If the latter, I'd assume the reason he didn't apply rigourous analysis is that it would be irrelevant to the case - presumably he operates on the principle that if an industry can't exist without massive theft then perhaps it shouldn't exist. The techbros, on the other hand, operate on the principle that only little people pay royalties.

- The Trump regime is deploying about 800 National Guard troops to the District of Columbia, ostensibly to deal with rampant crime. In actual fact the crime rate in DC is already on the decline, but don't expect the truth to get in the way of Trump's narrative.

- Two more candidates have entered the race to replace the late Jason Schreyer as city councillor for Elmwood-East Kildonan. One is Kyle Roche, who currently works as a city planner for the city's Planning, Property, and Development department, while the other is Braydon Mazurkiewich, who most recently worked on Colin Reynolds' successful campaign to become the Conservative MP for Elmwood-Transcona. Mazurkiewich also has a bit of a history, having once served as the head of the youth wing of the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party until he was forced to resign in 2012 over racist comments made on social media.

- Two Chinese warships collided while pursuing a Philippine patrol boat near the contested Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. 

- CUPE Local 500, which represents most City of Winnipeg workers, is considering legal action on behalf of library staff in the hope of bringing security improvements in the wake of an incident last week in which a man jumped to his death from the fourth floor of the downtown Millennium Library. The union wants a redesign of the building's lobby to minimize the risk of another such incident, as well as the return of restoring funding for Community Connections. The recent death was not the first suicide to occur there, and library staff have been asking for years for the railings to be improved to make such an act more difficult.

- A longtime Hamilton police constable has been suspended (with pay of course; he's a cop after all) while the force investigates extremist online activity. He had apparently reposted a large amount of far-right content, including one post calling for a coup against the Canadian government. A coup would of course be a criminal act, and last time I checked cops generally weren't supposed to be promoting illegal activity, but what do I know?

- The remains of a British man who fell into a crevasse in a glacier in Antarctica in 1959 were recovered as the glacier continues to melt. 

More signs of knee jerk anti-tax sentiment in Canada

Councillors in Hamilton attempted to introduce a tax on large paved areas. There's a good reason to penalize such expanses, as they send more stormwater into the sewer system, which costs the city money. Of course, it's easy to whip up public sentiment against something like this, especially if you give it a scary sounding name like "rain tax" (perhaps they borrowed the notion from the Manitoba PCs, who have gotten ridiculous amounts of traction by applying the term "vote tax" to something that, strictly speaking, is not a tax at all). So what was the actual proposal anyway?

The fee, originally presented to council in 2009, was created to penalize the owners of large swaths of asphalt and concrete – surfaces that send storm water rushing into the city’s overloaded sewer system.

The initial version of the plan would have required households to pay an annual fee of around $72, about the equivalent of a 3 per cent increase on your property tax bill.

However, Merulla and Whitehead were proposing a new version of the plan that would only target the commercial and industrial sectors and protect residential taxpayers from the new fee.

Sounds pretty reasonable, and no doubt if you presented it this way to the public, most of them would agree with it. Of course, many councillors didn't want to take the chance on this, and the measure was defeated. Too bad, because as a commenter on the story pointed out, taxpayers are on the hook for the rain anyway, thanks to the costs of overloading the sewage system.