News roundup, 6 Aug 2024

- Kamala Harris is expected to announce her running mate today. The most likely choices are two governors, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, as well as Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona. Polling suggests that Kelly is the most popular with the public.

- A Virginia man has been charged with posting large numbers of threats to social media. Targets include Kamala Harris as well as Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, and FBI director Christopher Wray.

- Across the UK, the rioting sparked by disinformation about the identity of the suspect in the mass stabbing in the town of Southport that killed three children continues. The suspect is Rwandan and has no apparent connection to Islam, but the rioters aren't letting the truth get in the way of a good time.

- A former sessional lecturer at Brandon University believes that at least half of his students have used AI to cheat. Among other things, he says some of their essays referenced sources that didn't exist (a common issue with using AI for this purpose). On a possibly more positive note, there seems to be a backlash building against the widespread use of AI, with some companies withdrawing their use of the technology (or at least not promoting their use of it anymore).

- Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre is looking at installing weapon scanners to reduce the risk of violence to front line staff.

- Fentanyl was involved in four out of five overdose deaths in Canada last year. Up until now, most of the fentanyl sold on Canadian streets has been imported, but since 2019, when China cracked down on the export of the drug, more of the production has been domestic. The pandemic, with its impact on supply chains, has accelerated the trend. Now I'm all in favour of "on-shoring" industry, but maybe not this one.

- The man convicted of manslaughter after throwing the trailer hitch that fatally injured Barbara Kentner in Thunder Bay in 2016 has had his day parole revoked following several breaches of his conditions. These include impaired driving, theft, and associating with people with whom he was ordered not to consort. The parole board also noted that he'd gotten a Confederate flag tattoo while on day parole, which doesn't speak favourably to the success of efforts to rehabilitate him.

- Power utilities are paying people to hand over control of their thermostats during high demand periods. The energy savings are significant; the utilities sometimes refer to such measures as "virtual power plants" because of the amount of additional energy they make available to the system.

News roundup, 31 July 2024

- The leader of the political wing of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an airstrike in Tehran. Launching an airstrike at a foreign country to take out someone who lives there might seem to be a reckless move, but I'm guessing Netanyahu wouldn't mind a war with Iran. After all, he needs some kind of foreign threat in order to maintain his grip on power. And given that he's at risk of going to jail as soon as he leaves office, he has a rather strong incentive to retain power at all costs, no matter how many people (including Israelis) have to die as a result. As for the Americans, they say they hope it doesn't escalate, but that they'll step in to defend Israel if it comes down to it. Because, well...

- In 2016, Facebook introduced a feature called CrowdTangle, a feature that journalists have found extremely useful to track what's going viral. Now, parent company Meta has decided to shut it down, perhaps fearing that it reveals too much about the effects of Facebook's algorithms on the broader society. This is alarming to many, especially given that it's happening in the lead-up to one of the most divisive elections in American history.

- The County Recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, Stephen Richter, has been defeated in the Republican primary by far-right challenger Justin Heap. Richter, a moderate Republican, had been a strong defender of the integrity of the 2020 election, which naturally made him a target. Stuff like this does not bode well for the integrity of future elections.

- Following a mass stabbing at a children's dance workshop in the English town of Southport that killed three young girls, disinformation circulating on social media attributed the attack to Islam (even though the actual suspect has no known links to the religion). As a result, rioters vandalized cars in the parking lot of a mosque, torched a police van, and injured several cops.

- Just weeks after a cyclist was killed in a hit and run on Wellington Crescent, a teenage cyclist was injured by another motorist. She'll apparently be OK, but the cycling community is calling for a 30 km/h speed limit for the entirety of Wellington. That might be a big ask; even though much of the street is already subject to such limits during the summer, the section from River to Academy is a major route for motorists and one could expect a lot of sound and fury from them if such measures were taken there.