News roundup, 14 Aug 2026

- Count Binface came a distant second to Nigel Farage in the byelection held yesterday in the constituency of Clacton. The byelection was necessitated by Farage resigning as a political stunt; due to the boycott by serious parties there were some hopes that the satirical candidate could get enough protest votes to put him over the top, but in the end Farage secured just over 63% of the vote. Binface did get over 22,000 votes, or just under 27%, which is far more than he has received in any other campaign in which he's run. It seems, though, that the people of Clacton are too far gone to understand what they're voting for.

- Several Conservative MPs are apparently privately expressing concerns about holding onto their seats if Pierre Poilievre remains leader. And Larry Brock, the MP for Brantford-Brant South, is resigning, triggering a byelection that will be an interesting test for the party in a riding they've held since 2008.

- The Ford government in Ontario is resisting calls for a moratorium on large data centres. Ford does say that the centres will need to cover the full cost of their electricity usage, but Green Party leader Mike Schreiner is calling for a ban on all AI data centres until more is known about their impact. In contrast, New York State enacted a ban last month on data centres requiring over 50 megawatts of electricity, and will be reviewing tax incentives previously given for such facilities. Maine's legislature also passed such a ban earlier this year but it was vetoed by the governor.

- The Ontario Progressive Conservative Party spent nearly $3,000 to send someone to a resort in Jamaica to keep an eye on Bonnie Crombie, who was the leader of the Ontario Liberal Party at the time. Doug Ford claims to have had no knowledge of the spying when it was occurring.

- Three bouncers have been charged with assault after Winnipeg Sea Bears player Teddy Allen was severely beaten at a nightclub. The police statement doesn't identify the club, saying merely that it was "on Main Street between Portage and William Avenues" but it's generally known to be the Palamino Club. The folks on Reddit say that bouncers there have long had a reputation for excessive force, but it seems beating up a local sports star was going too far.

News roundup, 31 Aug 2026

- Wildfires continue to rage in southwestern Europe. 183 houses in the French town of Le Porge were destroyed on Wednesday; its residents felt abandoned as firefighters were focused on Lège-Cap-Ferret. The national government says the decision to focus on the latter community was based on it being on a peninsula that's harder to evacuate people from, however many residents of Le Porge suspect that the affluence of the latter community was the real reason, and are planning a class action.

- At least 19 people are dead after a surge of migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta and clashed with authorities. Spain's interior ministry at one point said that over 49,000 people crossed the border. Some link this to a recent court ruling saying that people intercepted at sea while crossing into Ceuta and the nearby territory of Melilla cannot be summarily deported but rather need to be assessed for refugee status. Many, however, are skeptical that this information would have been known to these people, implying that new "push factors" may be in play. Italy's rightwing prime minister Giorgia Meloni is threatening to suspend Italy's recognition of Spain as part of the Schengen Area, and other rightwing leaders across the EU are taking similar stances.

- AI companies are buying rare books to scan and then destroying them. Used booksellers report that these companies are sending them extensive lists of specific hard-to-find works. In some cases they seem to be using front companies - one German bookseller reports getting a surge in orders of obscure books every night at around the same time from a Canadian -based company calling itself "Zoom Books", with each list containing numerous rare, and moreover unrelated, titles. Anthropic AI (which, it should be noted, is considered to be one of the less unethical companies in the business), has admitted that it has spent millions of dollars in the last couple of years on so-called "destructive scanning". This emerged during a copyright lawsuit; while Anthropic ended up settling that case, the judge made a ruling before it got settled that this practice constitutes "fair use" based on copyright laws, possibly implying that nondestructive scanning would not be protected in the same way. In other unsettling AI-related news, some systems designed by Anthropic and OpenAI have reportedly escaped from what was supposed to be an isolated test environment and hacked into other companies' systems.

- The leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, Zack Polanski, is refusing to apologize for reposting a photo of a man wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a guillotine and the caption "We're only making plans for Nigel". Of course the slogan alludes to an old XTC song, but the reference to Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is pretty obvious, and the party reported this to police saying this could constitute "incitement to murder". Polanski say he has not been contacted by police about the matter so far. He says the photo, one of several in the post of images from a party made by another person, was included by mistake, but accuses Reform of editing the image to make it appear that it had been posted by Polanski himself rather than reposted from someone else's post. He says he'll be happy to apologize if Farage apologizes "for all the times that he's put other people in danger".

News roundup, 13 July 2026

- Reform UK is panicking about the possibility of Nigel Farage losing the byelection resulting from his resignation stunt. The party had been hoping to win the mayoralty of Greater Manchester, where polls showed them within striking distance after the position was vacated by Andy Burnham, but are now desperately shifting resources to Farage's riding of Clacton in the hope of avoiding the embarrassment of losing to Count Binface. Daniel Hannan at the Telegraph seems a bit worried too. Unfortunately it looks like the Official Monster Raving Looney Party is running a spoiler candidate. Kind of like one of the races in Monty Python's Election Night Special, except that this time it won't be the Sensible Party that benefits from the split.

- A recent poll of Canadian manufacturers found that 40% of them have either moved some of their operations to the US or are planning to do so in response to ongoing tariffs, while 11% plan to move their headquarters there. This isn't an exclusively Canadian problem, of course; Toyota is expanding its plant in Texas while reducing operations in Mexico, but voters tend not to care about such niceties - in fact they don't care if the people they vote in are worse than the people they vote out, because they're voting out of vengeance, not out of hope of improvement. So naturally this puts Carney in a tough spot. If he wanted to be really bold he could expropriate any plant closed in such a move at current market value, with the proviso that the compensation will not occur until relations are normalized with the US. I wouldn't count on him doing that, though; I don't think he's made of that kind of stuff (he is, ultimately, still a neoliberal at heart, even as he recognizes that neoliberalism doesn't seem to be working anymore). Maybe the NDP should start loudly pushing for that sort of thing; it's not like not being radical has done them much good at the federal level of late.

- South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham has died at the age of 71. On the other hand Mitch McConnell seems to be in better shape than many suspected, assuming of course that it was actually him that made the statement in question and not a staffer.

- A 37 year old man has been arrested after allegedly delivering a hateful and threat-filled tirade against two hijab-wearing women in a Costco in Halifax and assaulting someone who filmed his rant. He had to be Tasered after reportedly brandishing a weapon at police; he has been charged with assault, public incitement of hatred, and four counts of uttering threats to cause bodily harm or death.

- An economics professor at Brown University announced one year that one of his classes would use a take-home exam format. The class then had a surge of enrollments compared to previous years; when the midterms were marked, the average grade was 96% and 40 students got a 100% grade. Not surprisingly, the people who marked the exams found answers with a wording that was uncannily similar to the way ChatGPT answered the questions. At this point he decided to change the format for the final exam, making it an in-person test and warning the class that if the grade distribution was substantially different from the midterm, only the final would count towards the actual grade in the class. 27 students dropped out of the class by the time the final rolled around, of whom 22 had scored 100% in the midterm.

News roundup, 18 June 2026

- The White House says that the memorandum of understanding signed between the US and Iran is now in effect. Under the deal, Iran agrees never to develop a nuclear weapon, and a $300 billion fund is to be created for the "reconstruction and economic development" of Iran - though the US is not obligated to contribute to the fund. Iran also agrees to allow traffic through the Strait of Hormuz at no charge. It's also supposed to eventually end the sanctions against Iran, but no timeline is provided for this.

- The NAACP has filed a lawsuit to shut down natural gas-fired turbines that power Elon Musk's Grok AI, on the grounds that they not only lack the required permits under the Clean Air Act but will disproportionately harm residents of black communities. The Trump regime's Department of Justice is arguing that the move threatens national security and must be dismissed for that reason.

- The Bank of England is considering the introduction of a state-backed cryptocurrency called Britcoin. Nigel Farage, who until now has never seen a cryptocurrency that he didn't like, is vehemently opposed, and in fact has told a crowd of supporters that he's "prepared to go to prison" to stop it. Probably the fact that he's received donations from a huge crypto baron who stands to lose money if a state-backed cryptocurrency takes off has something to do with this.

- Liberal MP Ruby Sahota, who serves as the government's Secretary of State for Combatting Crime, claims that the people who fired shots at synagogues as well as the US consulate in Toronto were hired by a foreign entity. Toronto police have not confirmed the connection.

- A Conservative MP, Corey Tochor, has introduced a private member's bill to legalize psilocybin for the treatment of some psychiatric conditions. Tochor, who represents the riding of Saskatoon-University, says he was motivated to introduce the bill after one of his constituents was dropped from a pilot study allowing the drug to be prescribed on a limited basis. I have to say I can't fault Tochor on this, even if it is a case of a stopped clock being right twice a day.

- A new poll from Probe Research finds that nearly 50% of respondents do not want Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham to win another term. Confusingly, more than 90% also believe that electing someone else won't make a difference, and Dan Lett cites other polling that suggests that people actually understand that a lot of the problems the city is experiencing need to be solved by other levels of government - yet they want to reflexively vote out incumbents anyway. It all seems to suggest that people increasingly see voting as an act of spite rather than one of hope.

- Police in Senatobia, Mississippi killed a toddler when they opened fire on his mother's car, allegedly after someone in the vehicle was suspected of shoplifting. Notably, the boy's mother has not been charged with a crime, which you'd expect the cops to be quick to do if they had a leg to stand on.

 

News roundup, 4 June 2026

- Far-right extremists rioted in Southampton, England on Tuesday over the death of a young man last year. The family of the victim, Henry Nowak, had asked for his death not to be politicized, but given the circumstances (he'd been stabbed to death by a Sikh man, and police initially suspected that he had instigated the fight) Nigel Farage couldn't pass up the opportunity to do so. Farage claimed that there was "two tier policing" in the UK, and that the killing was a result of "mass immigration" (despite the fact that the killer was born and raised in the country). Foreign agitators, including Elon Musk, have been quick to add fuel to the fire, and Farage's brownshirts responded as you'd expect. Farage seems unapologetic about the matter, but then his kind don't believe in backing down.

- The continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz as a result of the US/Israel attack on Iran has so far not led to quite as dramatic a spike in oil prices as some had feared, as countries around the world have relied on oil reserves. This is set to change, though, as these reserves are rapidly depleting with no sign of an end of the war. Prices of over $150 per barrel are expected in the coming weeks. Airlines are downplaying the situation; Air Canada and Lufthansa have both made statements to the effect that there is absolutely no risk of a shortage that could strand passengers. Of course they have to say that or people might be reluctant to buy flights to faraway destinations.

- The US House of Representatives has passed a resolution to end the Iran war.  Four Republicans voted with the Democrats on the resolution. The vote had been scheduled to be held two weeks ago but was delayed by Republican leaders, presumably in the hope of bullying their party's dissidents into opposing the resolution. Of course it would also have to pass the Senate, and would inevitably be vetoed by the Mango Mussolini if it got that far; the Democrats presumably hope that it will give them ammunition to call the war illegal in this fall's election campaign.

- The Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party has blocked Wally Daudrich from running in the constituency of Turtle Mountain after incumbent Doyle Piwniuk announced that he will not be running in the next election. The party has not given a reason, but presumably they consider his hardcore positions to be a liability in suburban Winnipeg, where the party has to do well in order to have a chance of winning an election.

- Pride Winnipeg has caused a stir by prohibiting military personnel from marching in uniform in the upcoming Pride parade. The organization says that this was based on "community feedback", saying that the community was "hurting" due to conflicts around the world. Many LGBT* veterans are understandably less than pleased with the decision, however.

News roundup, 6 May 2026

- Longtime Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour has been appointed as Canada's next governor general. Hard not to approve of the choice, not only because of her competence but because it's something of a statement in this geopolitical context to choose someone who served as an international war crimes prosecutor.

- Governments of numerous countries including Brazil, Canada, Germany, and Nigeria are sending representatives to discuss how to go about actually phasing out fossil fuels rather than setting warming targets by consensus and letting everyone figure out on their own how to do it, which has been the standard approach by the UN. Now it's easy to be a bit cynical about a bunch of elite types flying down to Colombia, mostly in gas-guzzling business jets, to discuss climate solutions, but such are the realities of diplomacy for the time being. Notably absent from the conference are the US, China, and the Gulf states, which is a positive development on all counts.

- A new paper suggests that even in the best-case scenario, New Orleans is not going to be one of those places that survives climate change. One of the authors says that "Even if you stopped climate change today, New Orleans’s days are still numbered". The city may find itself surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico by 2100; the paper's authors recommend that efforts be made to start relocating its residents now. This concept, known as "managed retreat", has come up a lot in the last while. Naturally, a lot of people are not comfortable with the idea for a lot of reasons, but I don't see how it will be possible to avoid some kind of retreat, managed or otherwise, in a lot of places around the world.

- Reform UK has vowed to put migrant detention centres in ridings that elect Green MPs if they win the next general election. This is kind of ironic given that the kind of climate policy advocated by that lot (i.e. "let it burn" in every sense of the phrase) will inevitably lead to huge amounts of migration.

- The US National Transportation Safety Board has released the findings from their part of the investigation into the crash of a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737 in 2022 which killed 132 people. The NTSB was involved in the investigation as the home country of the manufacturer; they reported that the engines were suddenly shut down, and that this looked like a deliberate act of murder-suicide by one of the pilots. If so it would be far from the first time that something like this has happened - see for example this, this, and this, and probably also this. China's own Civil Aviation Administration has yet to make a ruling on the cause of the crash, which makes me wonder if they suspect a political motive, or if they just don't want their citizens thinking too much about why a highly skilled professional would just decide to kill himself and take a planeload of people with him.

- Health officials now suspect human-to-human transmission of hantavirus in the fatal outbreak on a cruise ship in the Atlantic, but are quick to say (perhaps at the urging of the cruise industry) that they don't think it's a big concern.

- A Toronto woman is seeking an exemption to the restrictions in MAID legislation in order to get herself put to sleep for mental health disorders; the legislation specifically disqualifies patients whose only major health issues are psychiatric. This is a highly contentious issue; on the one hand, organizations like Dying With Dignity Canada are calling for it to be allowed, while on the other side some argue that the very conditions often complicate the matter of informed consent.

- A new viral fad has groups of young people arranging a time to get out of their mums' basements and conduct what twenty years ago would probably have been called a flash mob but is now called a speedrun (named, of course, after a term from the video game community) in which they try to get into Scientology facilities and film themselves. Most recently this happened in Vancouver on the weekend; up to 300 people apparently showed up. A 16 year old was arrested at the scene but later released with no charges. Some people say they know more about the motives for this stunt/protest, but are reluctant to speak on the record due to Scientology's famously litigious nature.

News roundup, 29 April 2026

- Former FBI director James Comey has been charged with threatening the life of the president with a picture he briefly posted to Instagram last year. The image showed several seashells arranged to read "86 47"; apparently in some circles "eighty-six" is slang for "eject" or "remove". Comey says he took the picture after seeing the arrangement on a beach; he says removed it upon hearing that some interpreted it as a call for violence.

- Reform UK leader Nigel Farage received a gift of £5 million from a crypto billionaire in 2024; subsequently he reversed his decision not to run in the general election that year. The donor, Christopher Harborne, also donated £9 million to Farage's party last year, the largest single donation to a party by a living person in British history; this is despite the fact that he is based in Thailand. On the other side of the world, Australia's wealthiest person, mining magnate Gina Rinehart, has donated an aircraft as well as $2 million to Pauline Hanson's One Nation party.

- California is holding a referendum on a one time 5% levy on the net worth of billionaires. The measure was proposed as a way to make up for the loss of federal healthcare money; the billionaires are pulling out all the stops to defeat the initiative.

- Higher oil prices resulting from the war in Iran mean that Canada's recent fiscal update, which was prepared before the latest developments, likely underestimates Canada's revenue, meaning a substantial windfall for the government.

- Former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol has been sentenced to seven years in prison for resisting arrest and obstruction of justice; this is related to his attempt to impose martial law in 2024. This is largely academic as he has already received a life sentence for rebellion in connection to the matter.

- Five correctional officers were injured in a confrontation with a single inmate at a prison in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia. The president of the officers' union says that the use of drones to smuggle drugs and weapons into prisons has made their job more dangerous; among the measures they're calling for is the jamming of cellphone signals on the premises to make it harder to coordinate such smuggling.

- A 17 year old boy has been charged with animal cruelty after allegedly intentionally running over several sleeping geese in a parking lot. This happened at night, however his vehicle was identified from security video.

- An Indian man dug up his sister's remains and brought them to a bank in order to prove that she was dead in order to close her account. 

News roundup, 4 March 2026

- Mark Carney says that his approval in principle of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons is "not a blank cheque", and represents a "failure of the international order". He also acknowledges that "it appears that these actions ‌are ⁠inconsistent with international law" but says he'll leave the final determination to the experts. The most charitable interpretation of his rather confusing stance on the matter is that he's trying to keep Trump off his back, which while not especially admirable is understandable in light of such things as Trump's fury at Spain for not letting the US use bases on their territory for the attack. On the other hand, Keir Starmer is not getting rewarded for his reversal on the use of the Diego Garcia base for the attack, and I'm not sure that Carney will be either, so maybe he should have just taken a principled stance from the start.

- An Iranian ship sank off the coast of Sri Lanka, apparently following a submarine attack. One sailor has been confirmed dead and 78 injured; over a hundred are missing.

- Toronto police are investigating after shots were fired at a synagogue in North York on Monday night. Nobody was injured.

- The Green Party of England and Wales (Scotland has its own Green Party) has overtaken Labour and is only two points behind Reform UK in the latest poll. This is a big thing, because it might drive some tactical voters towards the Greens in the hope of stopping Reform. 

- Jake Lang, a participant in the Capitol riot who was pardoned by Donald Trump, turned up at a fifth anniversary event this year and screamed abuse at Metropolitan Police commander Jason Bagshaw, who he had confronted during the putsch. Among other things, Lang shouted that Bagshaw should be "put down like a dead dog". Besides mangling the metaphor, prosecutors say that this and other things he shouted at Bagshaw constituted threats, and he has been slapped with another charge as a result. It's worth noting that until he was pardoned he had been remanded in custody (he hadn't gotten to trial yet) upon the orders of a Trump-appointed judge who nonetheless couldn't ignore the "very strong" evidence against him.

- A security guard has been charged with assault with a weapon and possession of a prohibited weapon after allegedly using brass knuckles to subdue a shoplifter at a Dollarama in downtown Winnipeg. The victim has also been charged with robbery and uttering threats.

- BC has announced that once they switch to daylight saving time this weekend they will not be switching back in the fall. Actual sleep experts generally think that sticking with standard time rather than DST would be better, but their voices generally get drowned out by those who want more daylight in the evenings (such as retailers). The Manitoba government is deferring any decision on the matter for now.

- Owners of six "holistic spas" in Guelph, Ontario have been charged under a city bylaw with "failure to ensure no adult entertainment services were provided". The services were apparently advertised online.

News roundup, 12 Sept 2025

- The FBI has released photos of a "person of interest" in the murder of Charlie Kirk; the suspect remains at large. A retired banker in Toronto was falsely identified in numerous social media posts as a suspect in Kirk's death. One thing that's clear - the way things are going in that country, Kirk's assassination probably won't be the last; this sort of thing tends to drive revenge killings as well as copycats.

- Two days before Kirk's death, the feminist-oriented news and opinion site Jezebel published a satirical piece entitled "We Paid Some Etsy Witches to Curse Charlie Kirk". After the killing they removed it, fearing that keeping it up would not be helpful to the political climate. You can still find the original at archive.org if you're interested.

- The new owners of CBS' parent company Paramount have been actively working to shift the network's news coverage to the right. This follows a $16 million settlement made by the company's previous owner over the way an interview with Kamala Harris was edited. Skydance founder, film producer David Ellison, is a vocal Trump supporter. The company apparently also has its eyes on Warner Bros Discovery, which owns CNN.

- Across the Atlantic, the BBC is coming under fire for the amount of coverage that they're giving to Reform UK and its leader, Nigel Farage, and how little actual scrutiny they're giving the party for the amount of coverage. The broadcaster denies that they're trying to ingratiate themselves with Farage in anticipation of a possible Reform victory in the next election, but given that the party is doing frighteningly well in the polls, it's hard not to wonder.

- An Asiana Airlines flight from Seoul to New York City was diverted to Winnipeg on Wednesday morning after a passenger fell ill; the passengers and crew were quarantined in the aircraft on the tarmac for four hours owing to fears that the illness was highly contagious. Fortunately those fears appear to have been unfounded.

- A Calgary man has been charged with multiple offenses after tunnelling from his apartment into that of his upstairs neighbour, who had been staying elsewhere after he had harassed her numerous times.