News roundup, 6 Jan 2025

- A new poll from Angus Reid puts the Liberals at 16% support nationally, considerably behind the NDP at 21%. Some are predicting that this will finally lead to Trudeau's resignation and perhaps a prorogation of Parliament to give the Liberals time to choose a new leader before a non-confidence vote forces an election. Tom Brodbeck thinks such a measure would be pointless and that Trudeau should go down with the ship.

- Although the Winnipeg Police Service gets more money in the city's budget than any other department, in the newest proposed budget they are only getting six new officers; this is reasonable however given the huge needs in other areas. Winnipeg Transit will be hiring 27 new staff, and 24 new firefighters will be stationed in Waverley West to deal with surging populations there. Also welcome will be eight new full time equivalents in the Urban Forestry Branch to deal with huge backlogs for tree pruning.

- Under new legislation, any business in Manitoba selling most long-bladed tools (such as machetes) is required to ask for photo ID and to keep sales records for two years. Saws, hedge trimmers, and pruning shears are exempt.

- Amazon is completely ending remote work, having previously ordered employees back three days a week in 2023. As usual, they rationalize this move with vague statements about "collaboration", while refusing to provide any data to support this claim. Of course, the real reason probably has more to do with the fact that Amazon owns 10 million ft² of commercial real estate in Seattle and would likely lose a lot of money on said real estate if they just sold it off; to be fair the impact of this would be significant and would not be limited to Amazon. It's worth noting that there is already a 10-20% default rate on mortgages in the sector regardless of the efforts of the likes of Amazon, and many fear that this will start to impact the broader economy.

- While many cetaceans are doing badly these days, orcas seem to be thriving - and are in fact expanding their range into the Arctic. Unfortunately, their success may come at the expense of belugas and narwhals.

- Ryan Wedding, who competed for Canada in the snowboarding event in the 2002 Olympics, is wanted in California for numerous crimes including murder. Authorities say the murders were commissioned by him in support of a billion dollar criminal enterprise he was running.

News roundup, 27 Aug 2024

- Despite Justin Trudeau's unpopularity with the general public, his cabinet are standing solidly behind him - at least publicly. The fact that the party has no mechanism to force him out probably has something to do with that.

- A patchwork of treaties and compacts dictate how water in the Colorado River system is shared between Mexico and the various affected US states. The problem is, the rules were drawn up over a century ago, at a time when the watershed received a lot more rainfall than it does now, and serious conflicts are looming unless new agreements can be reached. The one silver lining is that those conflicts would probably be worked through in courts rather than on the battlefield, which is more than can be said for the situation on the Nile or, much worse, the Indus.

- An Irish climate scientist is calling on her country to be proactive in moving people and key infrastructure, such as railway lines, away from the coasts before sea level rise becomes too severe.

- The push to force workers back to the office continues. This article concedes that working from home generally does not harm productivity or collaboration - but still argues that the push for RTO is a good thing. It blames working from home for the so-called "loneliness epidemic", which is kind of dubious (how many of your strongest social connections come from work?) but also says the quiet part out loud by admitting that the decline in commercial real estate is one of the biggest reasons. Strangely, it also blames remote work for "the growing homelessness and crime in city 'ghost towns'", which seems to me to be getting it backwards - devaluing real estate is a potential solution to homelessness, not a cause. That said, it does mention one valid concern - a decline in commercial real estate means declining tax revenues for municipalities.

- The Manitoba government has appointed an adviser to the Hanover school division, which serves the city of Steinbach and surrounding areas and has thus been riven with culture wars. The Tory opposition, predictably, is making angry noises about the move.

- Further to the reports that 7-Eleven is considering closing up to 10 locations in Winnipeg, the one at Arlington and Notre Dame was robbed six times in a single day.

News roundup, 12 Aug 2024

- An ATR-72 turboprop operated by the Brazilian carrier Voepass crashed in a residential neighbourhood outside São Paulo, killing all 62 passengers and crew aboard the aircraft. Dramatic videos shot by onlookers show the aircraft descending in what appears to be a flat spin; preliminary analysis by Juan Browne (of the blancoliro YouTube channel) suggests that icing is a likely factor, though an official report is probably months away.

- Alberta premier Danielle Smith has been holding what she calls "town hall" sessions across the province, but unlike most events called by that term, these are not open to the general public but are for party members only, and the media is barred from such events. Independent journalist Katie Teeling did manage to slip into one of these events, though; the general picture that one gets is that UCP members are batshit insane, so that's probably the reason for the restricted access.

- Pickering, Ontario city councillor Lisa Robinson is being condemned by her colleagues for appearing on a far-right podcast by Kevin J. Johnston. Johnson reportedly declared that it's not her that's the fascist, it's all the rest of them. More seriously, in the course of the podcast several of Robinson's colleagues were labelled as "pedophiles" by Johnson (for no obvious reason except that it's become a standard far-right buzzword for everything they don't approve of) and their private phone numbers were posted along with their photos and a statement that they deserve "a baseball bat to the face". Johnson, a onetime candidate for Mayor of Calgary, has a long history of harassing people, including an Alberta Health Services worker who he was recently ordered to pay $650,000 for defaming her. For her part, Robinson also has a history of siccing her sheeple on her colleagues and has faced sanctions from council for her actions.

- Vancouver's integrity commissioner, Lisa Southern, has released a report that raises concerns about the work environment in Mayor Ken Sim's office, including the actions of two staffers who tried to discredit the commissioner of the city's park board. Southern's report comes as the city council, dominated by Sim's party, prepares to suspend the work of the integrity commissioner's office. Coincidence?

- Manitoba's francophone school division, which has already banned cellphones in its schools, is taking further measures to reduce students' screen time by limiting computer use by students to one hour per day.

- The City of Philadelphia has ordered its remote workers back into the office five days a week, despite the clear benefits to the workers of not having to go in. Interestingly, the city's leadership has admitted that it's not about productivity, but rather about a "leadership philosophy". Strangely, the folks at NPR, who are usually pretty good at asking the right questions, have not asked any about things like commercial real estate.

- China, perhaps inspired by the bizarre "birds aren't real" satire of conspiracy theories, has developed an actual drone that looks like a bird.

News roundup, 1 May 2024

- Pierre Poilievre was ejected from the House of Commons by the Speaker for unparliamentary behaviour; the Conservative caucus then walked out in protest. This is unlikely to hurt the Tories, of course; the kind of people who go for them are essentially the adult version of children who get diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder, so they'll see their conduct as heroic.

- Donald Trump has been fined $9,000 for violating a gag order intended to protect jurors and witnesses from being outed to his jackals. Now I realize that many suspect that Trump isn't as rich as he says he is, but I'm pretty sure that $9,000 is still pretty insignificant to him. That said, the judge did warn that the next time a jail sentence is possible, so there's that.

- The protest encampment at McGill University in Montreal by pro-Palestinian activists continues. Police called to the scene by the university say that "no crime is being committed" and that it is a civil matter; however, two students are asking a judge for an injunction to prohibit the organizations involved from protesting within 100 metres of university property. They allege that the organizations are creating an "environment of hate" which makes it "uncomfortable" to attend class. The activists are calling for the university's endowment fund to divest from companies that are involved in Israel, but some say that may be difficult because many of the investments are not direct but are instead in index funds, the composition of which is constantly changing. Meanwhile in New York City, the protesters at Columbia University, making similar demands, have gone a lot further and are potentially being treated a lot more harshly, with mass arrests and possible expulsions.

- An American diplomat has resigned from the State Department in protest over the government's handling of the Israel-Palestine situation.

- Zhang Yongzhen, the Chinese scientist who sequenced the genome of the COVID-19 virus, has been barred from his own lab by the government. Officials say that the lab is being renovated and was closed for "safety reasons", however Zhang says that no alternative location for the ongoing research was provided until the eviction, and that the location that was offered afterwards is unsuitable. This appears to be just the latest in a long series of roadblocks being placed in the way of his research.

- The federal government plans to force staff to return to the office 3 days a week; this is tentatively scheduled for September. The unions say they were not consulted on the matter, and that even with the existing flexible work arrangements staff often say they're going into the office just to participate in virtual meetings anyway. Doug Ford thinks it's a great idea though.

- The Canadian Medical Association is claiming that the proposed changes to capital gains taxes in the budget may drive people out of the profession; others say that this is nonsense.

- Municipal leaders in Alberta are very concerned about proposed legislation that would give the provincial cabinet the authority to dismiss councillors and repeal bylaws. There is particular concern since cabinet discussions are subject to secrecy laws, meaning elected councillors could potentially be removed from office without the public knowing why.

- Manitoba's Minister of Education, Nello Altomare, is investigating the move by Hanover School Division to give trustees the final say in the hiring of gym and music teachers. Activists are calling for the removal of the trustees who put forward the proposal.

- A passenger on a NCN Thompson Bus Lines coach on the way from Winnipeg to Thompson had to take control of the bus after the driver apparently fell asleep at the wheel. The driver wanted to resume the journey as if nothing had happened, but the passengers weren't having any of it.

- Some stores are backing away from the push towards self-checkout. Seems that between the folks who find it annoying and alienating to use, the folks who object to it on the grounds that it will kill jobs, and the folks who see it as an opportunity to steal, it's maybe not as good a business move as all the consultants told them it would be.