Cold weather blues and other news

So pending Twitter's possible demise, I have now signed up at Mastodon and at Tribel -- I'm not sure either of them can work as easily as Twitter did so we'll see how it goes. 

Here are my links to these sites, if you have to find me someday soon: 

Tribel: https://www.tribel.com/cathiecanada/wall 

Mastodon: https://mstdn.ca/@CathieCanada 

I haven't made many posts on these sites yet and I'm not sure how much I will be able to use them, because they don't seem to have easy ways to save posts or to embed them here on Blogger. 

I think the thing about Twitter that's hardest for other places to reproduce is that it's one of the few places people can learn from in-group conversation from groups they're not a member of.

— Danielle Evans (@daniellevalore) November 18, 2022

Moving on to today's news, here in Saskatchewan tonight, its COLD. Damned cold.

People have already died of exposure in Saskatchewan this winter:

That choked me up. I can see the STC shelter from my window. As I write there are four people sitting on the sidewalk under piles of quilts while several others stand around. I’ve become a UBI convert. The misery and sheer waste of human talent is too much.

— Janice Braden (@JL_Braden) November 19, 2022

To humanize and publicize the problem,Yann Martel writes of his 36-hour "homeless" experience: 

Over and over, I met people who showed me the respect and dignity that poverty and homelessness so quickly strip you of. 

That’s how we begin to deal with homelessness in our city, by re-humanizing people from whom so much has been taken. Homelessness is not a cancer. It’s the suffering of fellow citizens, and if we don’t help them, we’re all brought down, the homeless and everyone around them, residents, business owners, the city, everyone. 

700 low income units are sitting empty and the best the city has is a bus?

— Fritz🔥🇨🇦 (not a parody) (@FritzWyssen) November 19, 2022

This Saskatchewan homeless man patrols streets to save others from freezing to death | CBC News https://t.co/mOvbF5q2ya

— kathy mahar (@kathymahar) November 16, 2022

“Natanis Bundschuh, executive director of the Meadow Lake Outreach Ministries, says her organization has been receiving an influx of calls from people looking to help the homeless population in the northern Saskatchewan community.” https://t.co/JZTPkrqPQ5

— Jenn Summers (@jenn_summers01) November 20, 2022

In the latest news from Alberta, I think we're starting to see what Premier Loon wants for her fellow citizens -- American-style health care. 

Won't Canadians just love that! 

Reducing health care expenditures is, of course, every Canadian politician's secret dream -- to cut back on the insatiable bottomless pit of health care system requirements so the politicians can strut around spending more money on ribbon-cutting stuff for which they can take credit.

But for 50 years Canadians have told the politicians to cut that out -- we want our taxes to pay for our health care and that's the end of it. 

I don't know if Danielle Smith actually thinks she has some kind of mandate to dismantle medicare in Alberta, but I think she will find she is sadly mistaken:

Danielle Smith's healthcare plan:

1) Create a tiny health spending account (HSA)
2) Charge for heath care services, let people use HSA
3) Slowly increase charges for services

How do we know this? Smith wrote it in a paper last year.https://t.co/VZ927AehtA #ableg #abpoli #yyc

— CUPE Alberta (@CupeAB) November 19, 2022

Canadians and Albertans already pay for their #medicare. It's called taxation.

Smith has ZERO mandate for this. It's a contravention of the Canada Health Act.

— Beautiful Red 🇨🇦 (@BeautifulRed7) November 20, 2022

Smith says she also wants to keep the money that Canadians pay for admission to the National Parks in Alberta, though I don't think she intends to pay to maintain the parks and for park employees. 

This pretty well summarizes what is happening:

I'm getting tired of everyone criticizing @ABDanielleSmith.
People should stop attacking her unless they walk a mile in her shoes... pic.twitter.com/tQgx6FtkgL

— Les Landry ♿ is ready for #MAID (@LandryLes) November 19, 2022

Tony Dagnone speaks out:

Fired health leader, Tony Dagnone, calls out Alberta premier https://t.co/fIXOx6buAa @picardonhealth @theresaboyle @globeandmail @TorontoStar @ABDanielleSmith @AHS_media @HQCA @dryiu_verna @Alberta_UCP @PremierScottMoe

— Dennis Kendel (@DennisKendel) November 18, 2022

Moving to Ottawa, there was lots of testimony this week at the POEC - I think it is pretty clear now that the federal government had to bring in the Emergencies Act even though this was a blunt instrument. They couldn't deal with the increasingly brazen Ottawa Occupation and chaotic border blocades just by wishful thinking - the risks to Canadian security, peace, order, good government, and Canadian border trade had to be taken seriously. 

The Convoy had seized the upper hand in Ottawa and at the border crossings, and it was speculative at best to think there could be a negotiated end:

Convoy got ‘steady stream’ of leaked information from police, security officials: lawyer https://t.co/5PI7lyhPIC

— Carlos. 🇨🇦 (@carlosstelmac) November 19, 2022

This comment from Charlie Angus pretty well sums it up:

I was in Ottawa during the convoy occupation.
I saw up close how entrenched it was.
I find it super hard to believe that @rcmpgrcpolice chief Lucki had a plan to clear the streets.
And if she did, why didn't she tell anyone? #thepoorpeopleofottawahttps://t.co/jsfc5Rkxx2

— Charlie Angus (@CharlieAngusNDP) November 18, 2022

Moving on, the news tonight was that Trump will be allowed back on Twitter-

Elon Musk spent $44 billion to reinstate trump on twitter. What an asshole.

— 😱 Scary Larry 😱 🇺🇦✊🏻🇺🇸🗽 (@aintscarylarry) November 20, 2022

The Raphael Warnock campaign should declare Trump’s twitter reinstatement a donation in kind.

— Gerald Butts (@gmbutts) November 20, 2022

Trump’s back, but the advertisers aren’t.

— Christopher Byrne 🇨🇦 (@CBinVAN) November 20, 2022

Here is a useful and interesting analysis:

Musk seemed to think that a critical mass of users saw Twitter’s content moderation as an oppressive axe hanging over their heads. But for normal people, it was pretty easy not to tweet death threats or slurs or blatant misinformation.

— Jude Atwood (@JudeAtwood) November 19, 2022

And another great thread here -- some excerpts:

He clearly thinks that the value of twitter is entirely in the number of users. That is important, but the *quality* of users matters, too, which he doesn't get. He starts his ill-advised (stupid) change to the blue check system. 9/

— skullsinthestars @drskyskull@mastodon.social (@drskyskull) November 18, 2022

Overall? I think he is a victim of being a legend in his own mind. He felt he understood twitter well enough that they would never sell. They did. Then he thought he understood it well enough to slash it in half to improve efficiency. He didn't. 18/

— skullsinthestars @drskyskull@mastodon.social (@drskyskull) November 18, 2022

To summarize: he thought that Twitter was run by a bunch of left-wingers, who were therefore inferior to him. He was wrong on both counts, and now he's stuck with a company that may not function at all within days. END/

— skullsinthestars @drskyskull@mastodon.social (@drskyskull) November 18, 2022