News roundup, 13 Nov 2025

- The US House of Representatives has passed the budget bill, bringing an end to the government shutdown after a record 43 days. Unfortunately the Democrats have precious little to show for the shutdown; the eight Democratic senators who broke ranks got nothing but a promise of a vote in the Senate on Obamacare subsidies at some unspecified point in the future. The party's more left-leaning members are furious; even a relative moderate like Gavin Newsom called the deal "pathetic" and a "surrender". One of the less obvious consequences of the shutdown is that economic data was not gathered, complicating policy decisions.

- In other House news, Democratic representative Adelita Grijalva has finally been sworn in, nearly two months after her byelection win, becoming the critical 218th signature on a petition that will eventually force a vote by the House on the release of the Epstein files. 

- Despite concerns about a mismatch between available vaccines and the flu strains in the wild, public health experts are still advising people to get the shot, saying that it still has some protective value even if it's not as effective as hoped.

- Keir Starmer has announced that Rolls-Royce will be building small modular reactors in Wales. The US ambassador, Warren Stephens, says that his country is "disappointed" by the decision, apparently because it won't be an American company doing the work. The labour union Unite is also disappointed, but for different reasons - they would prefer one large reactor to be built, which would be more labour intenstive than several small ones.

- Some attacks on Palestinian villages by West Bank settlers have been so egregious that even Israel's figurehead president thinks that it's going too far.

- A Hamilton man boarded an articulated bus while the driver left for a short break and took it on a joyride with passengers still on board. Nobody was injured, nor was the bus or anything else damaged; in fact the police as well as the passengers were quite impressed with his driving skills. Passengers didn't even realize that he wasn't supposed to be driving until he made a wrong turn somewhere. He was eventually arrested without incident.

- Passengers on a ferry between Dieppe, France and Newhaven, England were treated to an unusual show when the TV in the lounge, which was tuned to a Formula 1 race, went on to show a porno movie after the race ended. The crew quickly changed the channel when they realized what had happened; the ferry company has apologized and says that the channel has been removed from the list of available stations.

News roundup, 30 May 2025

- More than 750 residents of Pimicikamak Cree Nation in northern Manitoba are still trying to find a way to evacuate. Regular flights out of the community were cancelled on Wednesday, and people have been waiting up to nine hours for a ferry to Norway House. The military has sent an aircraft to the latter community to fly as many people to Winnipeg as possible, in case the fire shifts in that direction. In Pukatawagan, the power is out and the airport has been closed. And in far northwestern Ontario, Deer Lake First Nation is also being evacuated as a fire is now within a kilometre of the community's airport, which is the only way out of the community outside of winter road season.

- Chinese researchers have made a big advance in nuclear power, having successfully made a thorium reactor that can be refueled on the fly. The advance takes advantage of abandoned American research. The current reactor is experimental, producing only 2 megawatts of power, but is an important proof of concept. And thorium is considerably more common than uranium; moreover, such reactors are much less of a proliferation risk than many conventional designs.

- The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has cancelled its strategic hurricane plan, apparently on the orders of the Trump regime. This is not as surprising as it should be, since the libertarian right that forms a significant part of Trump's base has long had a dislike for the agency.

- The US Justice Department has ordered the dissolution of an interagency task force called KleptoCapture, which was tasked with locating and seizing assets owned by drug lords, Russian oligarchs, and the like.

- The regime has cancelled more than $700 million in funding for the development of a vaccine for avian influenza.

- The boycott of the US is hitting border towns very hard indeed. It's hitting ones in the West especially hard, because much more of the crossings at those borders are discretionary, whereas crossings between Ontario and New York, say, are more likely to be for business. Some in the related Reddit thread are pointing out that a lot of these towns voted pretty hard for Trump; that isn't the case with Blaine and Point Roberts (the communities profiled in the article) but if you look at this map of presidential results by county, it tells a different story for many others.

News roundup, 22 Jan 2024

- Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the Republican primary race and endorsed Donald Trump for the nomination. David Shribman has some analysis here; he quotes political scientist Andrew Smith as saying "DeSantis tried to be Trump without the Trumpiness, but the Trumpiness is the fun thing that the Trump people love". In other words, the fact that he's inarticulate, boorish, rude, hateful, and generally outrageous is not a bug, it's a feature - it makes him seem like "one of them". This should be no surprise to anyone who's read what Susan McWilliams said about Trump's followers back in 2016.

- Whatever the merits of nuclear energy, one thing that's undeniable is that it's expensive and slow to build, especially compared to solar and wind. While it's more consistent than renewables, on the face of it you'd think that you could build renewables and energy storage for less cost than a nuclear plant. Despite this, the UK is planning their biggest expansion of nuclear energy in 70 years. One might ask why; the most plausible explanation seems to be that the military wants it. Simply put, "civil nuclear energy maintains the skills and supply chains needed for military nuclear programmes". And they certainly don't want to forgo the latter.

- Speaking of nuclear, if we were to get nuclear fusion to work in something smaller than a star, it would be an almost unlimited source of energy, but the jury is still out on whether that will be possible. One alternative that's being touted is space based solar power that's beamed down via microwaves; a recent NASA report seems to indicate that this is feasible, though there are differing interpretations of the report. In any case, though, it probably won't be ready to go for at least couple of decades, so the climate problem will need to be addressed by other means.

- While the Biden administration, in theory, favours a Palestinian state, Netanyahu's response to this is, essentially, "what are ya gonna do about it?" Given the extra-special relationship between Israel and the US, the answer, almost certainly, is "nothing".

- There's no doubt that Canada (as well as numerous other countries) is experiencing a housing crisis. There's a lot of blame being cast around; one popular scapegoat for the right, even the more moderate centre-right like the Globe and Mail, is immigration. Others insist that it's real estate investors who are to blame. In truth, it's not an either-or thing; both of these, not to mention other factors like single-family zoning, play a part. Given the complexity of the situation, the focus on immigration is disconcerting, because it will tend to fuel xenophobia.

- Wab Kinew seems to have joined the ranks of those pushing for return to the office. I largely disagree, though he does have a point about the bad optics of people such as nurses whose jobs, by their very nature, have to be done onsite being managed by people working from home. It's not impossible to manage people remotely (I do it in my own job, after all) but I could see it being bad for morale when the managers are remote and the front line workers aren't.

- A passenger attempted to open a door of an airliner on a transatlantic flight. The matter appears to be mental health related and the man was not charged; perhaps Air Canada's lousy service finally made him snap.