News roundup, 24 Jan 2025

- Solar power generated 11% of all electricity in the European Union in 2024, having overtaken coal's 10%. Wind power (17%), exceeded natural gas (16%) for the second year in a row, and gas experienced its fifth year of decline. The combined output of solar, wind, and hydroelectricity now accounts for 47% of the federation's power grid. Besides the obvious climate benefits, this saved the bloc €59 billion in fossil fuel imports last year (and no doubt is making the Russians very angry indeed).

- A judge has temporarily blocked Donald Trump's executive order in which he tried to do away with birthright citizenship. Judge John C. Coughenour (who ironically received his first judicial appointment from Ronald Reagan) characterized the order as "blatantly unconstitutional", saying "I've been on the bench for four decades, I can't remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is". Of course, Trump will no doubt direct the Justice Department to appeal until they get a judge that he appointed during his last presidential term...

- The National Institutes of Health cancelled numerous scientific meetings that had been scheduled, with little explanation. The meetings, called "study sections", are supposed to be held on a regular basis to help plan where to focus scientific research for the greatest benefit. Of course, stuff like that is seen as un-American by the MAGA crowd, so it's no great surprise that the Trump administration is doing away with them. Neither is the fact that Trump has withdrawn from the World Health Organization; MAGA also believe that "international" is a four letter word.

- The Conservative opposition in BC seems to be siding with Danielle Smith against Premier David Eby (and every other premier in the country, even Saskatchewan's Scott Moe) on the matter of how to handle the threat of massive tariffs being placed on Canadian exports to the US. Party leader John Rustad attacked Eby for his support of retaliatory tariffs, saying that he was being "too combative" and would "expand" the trade war just by talking about it. One thing that is worthy of note - because of the way pipelines are routed through the US, the Americans could potentially retaliate against any escalation by cutting off the supply of Alberta oil to eastern Canada. Stuff like this is probably why Doug Ford wants to get an election out of the way before major economic disruption occurs.

- Trump is vowing to "demand" that the Federal Reserve drop interest rates immediately. Of course, the independence of the central bank is ensured by actual legislation; that said, Trump's puppets have control of both houses of Congress as well as the Supreme Court, so he will be able to get it done eventually if his attention can focus on the matter long enough. Or maybe it's just another of his hollow threats to distract the public's attention from what he and his cronies actually doing.

- CNN has announced that they will be laying off around 200 people, representing about 6% of their staff. NBC are also expected to announce some layoffs soon, albeit a smaller number. This is not expected to affect too many recognizable figures, who are mostly under contract, but a lot of the most important work in a big news organization is by researchers and fact checkers, and I wouldn't be surprised if people like that account for a lot of the layoffs. Pity, because they're needed more than ever.

- A sociology professor from the University of New Brunswick was scheduled to speak at the Washington, DC launch of his new book The End of College Football, but learned that he was barred from the US as he attempted to board his flight. He believes the ban was motivated by his pro-Palestinian comments.

- Some Facebook and Instagram users, both in the US and abroad, are finding that their accounts are spontaneously following Trump's and Vance's accounts. Some are even finding themselves unable to unfollow the accounts. This is not universal; it hasn't happened to me, for instance (perhaps they're worried that I'm going to blog about it).

News roundup, 22 July 2024

- Joe Biden has abandoned his bid for reelection and endorsed Kamala Harris. European leaders are praising him for his decision (even if it comes a bit late in the game) as well as for his actions as President. One thing is clear - you likely won't see much talk about the candidates' ages coming from the Republicans anymore.

- Many Republican strategists fear that their legislative agenda will alienate women. Many Democrats hope for that very thing; certainly if Harris becomes the candidate as expected she is expected to put this front and centre. And there are promising signs that the Republicans may have peaked too early; hopefully a relatively fresh and young candidate will be able to take advantage of this.

- While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has publicly made statements about the need for caution with AI, whistleblowers from his company say that in actual practice he is using the traditional Silicon Valley "move fast and break things" approach.

- Over half of Turkey's power grid is now supplied by renewables, though they have a long way to go to catch up with places like the EU. The shift has been recent, and seems to be primarily motivated by a desire to reduce dependence on Russia, who supplies most of their fossil fuels.

- The zebra mussel situation at Clear Lake in Riding Mountain National Park is not looking good. Parks Canada is still looking at what measures they can take, but this ship may well have sailed. In other invasive species-related news, some lakes in Manitoba seem to have been illegally stocked with largemouth bass (a popular species with sport anglers). This is a potential problem for native trout and pickerel species.

- Manitoba's Residential Tenancies Branch has ordered the owners of that North End apartment block to reverse the eviction of all their tenants. Still not a good look, especially given that the landlord threw out some tenants' possessions without warning. The province warns that additional orders, and charges, may be pending. In other somewhat promising Winnipeg housing news, a long-vacant block in the Riverview neighbourhood has been purchased by Fisher River Cree Nation and may well be up and running by next year.

- CO₂ levels are now comparable to what they are thought to have been in the middle of the Pliocene epoch, around 3 million years ago. At that time the mean global temperature is estimated to have been about 3°C above present levels; this can be expected to happen over the next few decades unless dramatic changes are made right quick (and possibly even then). Much of Greenland was ice-free at the time; sea level may have been close to 10 metres above current levels. For an idea of what that might look like, check out this site.

- It's so hot in parts of the US that pop cans are under significantly more pressure than usual. When carried in airplanes, they're sometimes bursting as a result. In 20 cases, injuries have resulted.

- A former Ukrainian MP was fatally shot on Friday. She had been a member of an ultranationalist party and had drawn criticism for not considering Russian-speaking Ukrainians to be properly Ukrainian; nonetheless, this is not the optimal way of dealing with people with problematic views.

- Thefts of catalytic converters have dropped significantly in the past year. Some of this may be attributable to legislation that makes it harder for thieves to sell them, but a big part of it is simply that the precious metals in them aren't worth as much as they were before.

- At least 12 Russian soldiers died after eating poisoned watermelons in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

News roundup, 10 May 2024

- Solar and wind power are the fastest growing electricity sources in history. Renewables now represent 30% of global electricity production. Meanwhile Danielle Smith continues to make a fool of herself on this issue (and numerous others).

- Drought conditions have resulted in Lake Winnipeg's water level being the lowest it's been in 35 years, and the second lowest since Manitoba Hydro's Jenpeg control structure began regulating the lake level.

- Police moved in to forcibly clear a protest camp from the University of Calgary yesterday, using flashbangs (they claim that this was a response to aggressive behaviour by the protesters). The encampment at the University of Manitoba remains and has stayed peaceful, though the university has cited the existence of the encampment as a reason to cancel a public event on campus.

- Parks Canada has banned watercraft from Clear Lake in Riding Mountain National Park in the hope of containing a potential zebra mussel outbreak. Interestingly, there has been some speculation among cottagers that the appearance of zebra mussels may have been a deliberate attempt at sabotage; on this Reddit thread a poster attempts to draw a link to an activist who was accused of planning an armed blockade in the park in 2022, though no actual evidence is presented and it's hard to say if this is something real, or just an attempt to poison the proverbial well.

- Legislation introduced in Ontario in 2022 which changed the fees paid to municipalities by developers led to a backlash from several municipalities. In response, the provincial government launched audits to determine the impact - only to cancel them (presumably because they had the potential to make the government look bad).

- Tim Hortons is testing new fibre coffee cup lids at some locations. Conservative MP Lianne Rood is up in arms about the new lids, which she considers to be "woke" because they aren't made of plastic.

- The town of Oakville, Ontario has voted to turn down money from the federal government because they don't want to densify their neighbourhoods. Some important context - despite officially continuing to call itself a "town", Oakville is larger than many cities in the province, at over 213,000 people. Apparently the residents want to continue to delude themselves into thinking that they're simple, small-town folk who don't want none of that big city stuff, and certainly nothing like apartments or fourplexes that might bring those darned poors to town. They also famously banned clotheslines until a previous government prohibited municipalities from banning them.

- The former CAO of the Rural Municipality of North Cypress-Langford has pleaded guilty to diverting about $30,000 to the Carberry Curling Club to replace money she'd stolen from the club while serving as their treasurer. I'm guessing that a gambling problem was involved; that seems to be how this sort of thing usually happens.

- Rex Murphy (or "Nervous Rex", as the good folks at CODCO called him) has died, though not before spouting a lot of rightwing propaganda in recent years.

News roundup, 28 Feb 2024

- The Kinew government continues to work on undoing the damage done by the previous government. They're looking to make it easier for nurses who have left the profession to return if they did so in the last 5 years. They also providing a new mandate for Efficiency Manitoba, which has failed to meet its most recent targets in reducing energy consumption.

- NDP MP Daniel Blaikie is resigning his seat to serve as Premier Kinew's senior adviser on intergovernmental affairs. Can't blame him, but I do hope that the party can come up with a good candidate for the byelection; false consciousness is a powerful force, and Poilievre is disturbingly good at exploiting it. And some misguided tactical voters will doubtless vote for the Liberals in order to stop the Cons, not understanding that in Elmwood-Transcona this would actually help the Tories rather than hurting them. It's possible, though, that Blaikie is just reading the writing on the wall; in addition to the aforementioned factors, under the new riding boundaries (which will be used for the general election, though not the byelection) most of the RM of Springfield will be included, which also favours the Tories.

- The Manitoba Nurses' Union is calling for the emergency ward at Health Sciences Centre to be equipped with metal detectors following numerous incidents involving weapons, most recently a stabbing last week. No doubt this will make some social justice types uncomfortable, as with the scanners at the Millennium Library, but it's probably a necessary evil, and apparently a similar move at Windsor General Hospital has been well-received.

- Alberta is making it harder to build solar and wind farms, even as they continue in their gung-ho push for more oil drilling. This is similar to what is happening in many places in the US. Perhaps not coincidentally, Danielle Smith recently gave a private audience to Wind Concerns, an organization noted for disinformation about climate change and clean energy.

- A disturbing number of Michigan residents don't see enough difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump to care. This is ungood, because Michigan is a key swing state. Among other things, the state's large Muslim community is (understandably) quite dissatisfied with Biden's response the Gaza war. It's not that they think Trump is better, mind you, but it seems awfully short-sighted to say "well, my people are going to be screwed either way, so I won't bother comparing them on any other issues" and thus potentially allow Trump to win, ensuring that a lot more people are going to be screwed.

- Speaking of Michigan, many think that the major US automakers are woefully unprepared for an impending influx of Chinese-built electric cars.

- Lauren Boebert's teenage son has been arrested on numerous charges, following a string of thefts and related crimes.

- A bill before the Arizona legislature would allow the use of lethal force on someone trespassing on your property. Since migrants crossing the border usually end up on someone's private property, it's not hard to see who most of the victims of this bill would be. Fortunately Governor Katie Hobbs is expected to veto the bill in the event that it lands on her desk.

- Not quite in the Mexico City class, but the city of Morden, Manitoba is significantly short of water.

- Nearly 75 kilograms of cocaine, with an estimated street value of over $9 million, was found in some suitcases which entered the country earlier this month and were left unclaimed at Winnipeg International Airport.

- The Province of Manitoba is cutting ties with Spirit Rising House, a for-profit company that owns numerous foster homes, following revelations that the company was providing its wards with marijuana. Supposedly this was for the sake of harm reduction; there's a kind of logic to it but on the face of it this doesn't seem to be a good idea.

News roundup, 26 Feb 2024

- A man burned himself to death in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, apparently in protest of the war in Gaza.

- Russia managed to do in two years what the US couldn't do in 74 - get Sweden to join NATO.

- Donald Trump's base can't get enough of him, but while they love the craziness he spouts, it creates a problem for him if he wants to win the votes of the non-crazy. Meanwhile his legal troubles are creating financial problems for his campaign, and now the prosecutor in the Stormy Daniels case is asking the judge for a gag order to keep Trump from siccing his sheeple on jurors.

- Even in West Virginia, people in the know understand that the coal industry isn't going to recover to its earlier strength. It's been declining for decades, long before renewables entered the picture. Unfortunately while there are new jobs in the renewable energy sector, there are a lot fewer of them, and they aren't always in the same place (the best place to mine coal often isn't the best place to build a solar or wind farm).

- The federal NDP has managed to get the Liberals to move ahead with a national pharmacare program. The NDP had threatened to withdraw their support from the minority Liberal government unless an agreement was reached by the end of the month. Among things to be covered will be diabetes medications and contraceptives; for their part, the Alberta government has announced that they intend to opt out of the whole thing. Because freedumb, or something.

- Manitoba finance minister Adrien Sala accuses the previous government of presenting an "incomplete picture" of the province's finances following an external review ordered by the new government shortly after taking office. Among the things the Tories are accused of ignoring are the impact of last year's drought on Hydro revenues, as well as the impact of their own tax cuts on revenue.

- The former CAO of the Rural Municipality of North Cypress-Langford, Manitoba has been charged with theft after allegedly stealing around $30,000 from a curling club and then using municipal funds to repay it. No information about the motive, but if I were to guess I'd say gambling has something to do with it.

- Syphilis in the US is now at a 70 year high, and some doctors are rationing penicillin in order to keep it available to treat the disease.

- A number of "smart vending machines" at the University of Waterloo were discovered to be using facial recognition, for reasons that are not clear. This was discovered by accident when a software glitch led to a reference to facial recognition appearing on a screen on one of the machines. The university has announced that the machines will be removed.

- A branch of the Royal Canadian Legion in Vaughan, Ontario has had its charter revoked by the national body after allegedly being taken over by outlaw bikers.

News roundup, 7 Feb 2024

- The City of Winnipeg's budget is expected to be tabled before council's Executive Policy Committee this afternoon. Mayor Scott Gillingham has already vowed that taxes will not increase by more than 3.5%, but given the city's known and expected costs many fear that this will necessitate service cuts.

- Several remote First Nations in northeastern Manitoba have declared a state of emergency because the mild winter has prevented winter roads from being put into operation, leading to shortages of essential supplies.

- Solar and wind produced 27% of all electricity in the European Union last year. Good news for everyone except the fossil fuel fans, though much more is needed to meet emissions targets.

- NDP MP Charlie Angus has introduced a private member's bill that would restrict advertising by the fossil fuel industry in a similar way to what was done with tobacco ads in the 1990s. Given that the two industries have very similar relationships with the truth, this seems like fair game, but no doubt the oil barons will do some extra rabble rousing among the "freedumb" sheeple if this bill looks like it might pass.

- Say what you will about Joe Biden, he's taken a very promising stand against the fossil fuel industry by announcing a halt to new permits for liquefied natural gas export terminals. He's also vowing to veto any Israel aid bill that doesn't also include aid for Ukraine and for the border. These might be signs that he's kinda, sorta developing a backbone, which is sorely needed if he's to move past his mediocre position in the polls.

- Water pollution with nitrogen compounds that cause potentially toxic algal blooms threatens the drinking water of 3 billion people worldwide.

- A California legislator has introduced a bill that would require all new vehicles sold in the state to be equipped with a governor that would use GPS information to determine the speed limit and prevent the car from exceeding the limit by more than 10 mph. Expect a lot of Rams and F-150s to suffer dents to the firewall under the accelerator pedal if this passes.

- Far-right American "journalist" Tucker Carlson conducted an interview with Vladimir Putin; Carlson may face sanctions from the European Union as a result.

- A man has been charged with handing out free samples of cocaine, with a business card attached, to casino patrons in Calgary. The name on the card was fake, and presumably the phone number was a burner, but he was caught anyway.

News roundup, 26 Jan 2024

- Pierre Poilievre likes to say that "Canada is broken". Well, he's actually kind of right about that, but not for the reasons he and his followers think; it's nothing that can be laid at the feet of the present-day Liberals (or the Conservatives, or any other party). As the Globe and Mail's Andrew Coyne points out, there are serious problems with representation by population - and they're burned right into our constitution. Perhaps the worst of these is a 1915 amendment known as the "senatorial clause" (section 51A of the Constitution Act), which stipulates that no province may have fewer seats in the House of Commons than it has in the Senate - meaning that PEI, which was given four Senate seats as an enticement to join Confederation in 1873, is guaranteed four seats in the House in perpetuity, despite having a population smaller than Sudbury. Someone on the rabble.ca discussion board once referred to the province as "Canada's constitutionally protected rotten borough".

- The suspect in Tuesday's shooting incident at Edmonton's city hall has been identified as a security guard employed by the Corps of Commissionaires. He had apparently recorded a "manifesto video" (since deleted from YouTube) that one commentator described as "salad bar extremism", referencing grievances ranging from the war in Gaza to "wokeism" and taxes. He also cited both racism and immigration as other grievances, which suggests that he's not all there; this seems to be at least as much a psychiatric story as a political one. When a traumatic event strikes a provincial capital you might expect the premier to make some sort of statement, even if it's just a "thoughts and prayers" one, but she was too busy welcoming Tucker Carlson to address the matter.

- Kenneth Law, the man accused of selling toxic substances to suicidal people, has just had his charges upgraded to first degree murder. No detailed info about the reason for this upgrade, but it seems to suggest that the authorities think that he actually enjoyed causing deaths as opposed to say, just wanting to help people ease their suffering or even wanting to make money off of them. There have been people like that before, such as William Melchert-Dinkel, though notably even he was not actually convicted of murder.

- Coal is expected to account for a smaller share of global electricity production than renewables by next year; new projects are going online all the time. This does add to my conviction that the hardcore doomers are wrong; I believe civilization as a whole is going to make it in the long run. A reality check though - even in the best case, a lot of people won't make it; there's just too much warming locked in already. How we deal with that grim reality is going to be a big test of our ability to balance idealism with pragmatism in the coming decades.

- Alabama just executed a man by asphyxia with nitrogen, the first time that particular procedure has been used in the US.

- There's a risk to having parrots in a zoo - they might learn some naughty words and use them in front of zoo visitors. One facility in the UK has decided to run with it, though.