News roundup, 30 June 2026

- Federal heritage minister Marc Miller is bothered by the fact that the Canadian Museum for Human Rights' exhibit on the Nakba does not describe Hamas as a terrorist group. Perhaps he needs to do some brushing up on his history; the Nakba took place in 1948 and Hamas was not founded until 1987. I guess Miller is more concerned about virtue signalling to those who might donate to his campaign (or to his opponents) than actual history.

- Politicians in the US are starting to lose elections over their support of AI data centres. The president of Utah's state senate and a county commissioner were defeated in primaries; both believe that this resulted from their support of Stratos, a large data centre planned for near Great Salt Lake that was backed by Dragon's Den and Shark Tank investor (and former Conservative leadership candidate) Kevin O'Leary.

- The attorneys general of 17 Republican-dominated states are suing California over that state's Plastic Act. The legislation requires an immediate 25% reduction in single use plastics for packaging and requires all packaging to be recyclable or compostable by 2032. The Republican AGs claim that California's law will significantly increase product prices in their own states, and that this constitutes a violation of the US Constitution's "Commerce Clause".

- A data breach at Crime Stoppers has aroused fears that the lives of informants could be at risk. The breach occurred several months ago; the Canadian branch of the organization says that it's unsure if tipsters' info was part of the breach, but there are allegations that this information has been offered for sale on the dark web. Canadian Crime Stoppers Association president David Forster declined an interview and told board members across the country to do the same. Reports from the US say that decades worth of information was stolen, and Portland's police service is warning people not to submit tips using the organization's platform while the matter is being investigated.

- Manitoba's Hanover School Division, which covers Steinbach and surrounding area, has introduced a new policy on student activism that it claims is meant to support "age-appropriate activism". Given that the division keeps getting hauled into the minister's office over possible censorship, this bears close watching.

- Courts are seeing an increase in the use of phony, AI-generated case law. This happens most often with people representing themselves, but actual lawyers have been taken in by this as well.

News roundup, 20 Aug 2024

- The 1972 report The Limits to Growth, commissioned by the Club of Rome, predicted that unfettered economic growth without sufficient regard for the environment would eventually lead to "the total stagnation of industrial growth and a significant decline in human welfare". Unfortunately, the report's predictions have been holding up pretty well so far.

- Justin Trudeau has appointed two new Senators to fill vacancies in the upper house, including journalist Charles Adler. The latter pick is not going over well with the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, who are requesting that the appointment be rescinded owing to on-air comments he made about First Nations leaders in 1999 while a broadcaster for CJOB, for which the AMC filed a formal complaint with the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. Even Dan Vandal, a member of Trudeau's cabinet, expressed concerns about the appointment. Admittedly, Adler says that his political views have moderated in recent years and that he no longer considers himself a conservative, though I don't know if he has ever apologized for the specific comments he made in 1999.

- The controversy over Plan 20-50, the regional growth plan for the Winnipeg metro area, is not limited to the lunatic fringe. The City of Selkirk, the Town of Niverville and the RMs of St. Andrews, East St. Paul, and Headingley are expressing concerns about the plan, fearing a loss of control over local land-use decisions. Those concerns are certainly easier to sympathize with than the absurd idea that this is some sinister plot to lock people into their neighbourhoods, but it has to be noted that some land use decisions made by suburban and exurban municipalities have a significant effect on their neighbours. In particular, when they build huge suburban developments to house people who want to benefit from the jobs in Winnipeg and subject the city to the increased traffic and the resulting wear and tear on the streets, but don't want to pay taxes to support the city's people and infrastructure, their land use decisions should not be solely their decision.

- Ontario premier Doug Ford, who a few years ago cancelled over $230 million worth of wind power contracts in order to satisfy his rural base, has changed his tune somewhat; his government has presented plans to more than double the province's current wind power installations by 2034. Ford may be a scumbag, but he's no fool, and he knows he has to win some of the non-crazy vote in order to secure reelection.

- Efforts to control pollution from plastics have lead to negotiations for a global treaty on the issue. The negotiations began earlier this year; while some countries (among them Canada, the EU, South Korea, Rwanda, and Peru) want a global cap on production, other countries (such as Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, and until recently the US) have opposed this, saying that the issue should be managed solely by recycling more. However, the Americans, perhaps not wanting to be in such company, seem to be changing their tune and have expressed willingness to impose a cap.

- When Dr. Kanokporn Tangsuan, went to a restaurant at Walt Disney World with her husband and her mother-in-law last year, they warned staff of her serious food allergies and asked repeatedly for them to be accommodated. Unfortunately, whatever accommodations were made weren't enough - she suffered a severe allergic reaction and died shortly afterwards. Her husband launched a lawsuit, and Disney attempted to have the suit dismissed on the grounds that when he clicked on the terms and conditions of his Disney+ account years previously, he had agreed to binding arbitration for "any dispute between you and us, except for small claims". Of course, once it hit the news clearer heads prevailed in Duckburg and they withdrew the request.

- San Francisco's city attorney's office has filed a motion in a state court to shut down 16 websites that "nudify" pictures of people. The sites use AI that is trained using porn, reportly including child porn. In a reasonable world that alone should be grounds for taking action, though I don't know the fine-grained legalities of that, especially in a country whose courts often label such activities as "speech" that is protected by free speech laws.

News roundup, 14 March 2024

- A large number of staff at the Republican National Committee are being pushed out as Donald Trump seemingly tries to remake the committee in his image. How that will turn out remains to be seen; some speculate that this will turn out badly for a lot of down-ballot candidates, as increasingly limited RNC money is diverted to Trump's own campaign at the expense of the party at large. Then again, you can't count on billionaires not to pony up for them.

- Transport for London, and indeed pretty much every public facility in the UK, has long had huge numbers of CCTV cameras installed; the biggest limitation is not how many cameras you can install but how frequently you can monitor them. Never fear; they're now experimenting with AI to monitor the cameras. Some of the things they've done have actually been useful (e.g. preventing suicides and helping people in difficulties) but it's hard not to wonder what else this could be used for. That said, the biggest problem with AI may not be this, but rather the stupendous amounts of energy that are required to run it and the water needed to keep the hardware cool. And all the minerals needed to make that hardware could be put to better use in greening up the grid.

- A bill working its way through the New York State legislature would force companies to reduce single-use plastic packaging by 50%, as well as prohibiting certain toxic materials entirely from use in packaging. Lobbyists from the petrochemical industry are, of course, pulling out all the stops to try to prevent its passage.

- The organization providing services to troubled folks in the lobby of Winnipeg's Millennium Library is not having its funding renewed. Councillor Evan Duncan, who chairs council's Community Services Committee, says this is because he thinks it should be funded by the province, and that the lobby of the library is "not the best place" for these services. I'm guessing his suburban constituents have been telling him they don't want to have to look at those poors as they go to check out their books.

- In response to the Main Street Project's lawsuit against the neighbouring Manwin Hotel, which alleges that runoff from the hotel roof is causing damage to their building, the hotel's owners, in their statement of defense, not only denied wrongdoing but claim that the MSP's services harm the hotel's bottom line. They are seeking $10 million in punitive damages, and an injunction stopping MSP from operating their shelter at that location. I guess if your business model depends on a steady stream of broken people, having an agency that helps to fix said people is bad for business, but it takes a fair amount of chutzpah to actually admit that.