Saturday, May 13, 2023

Weekend funnies: From Amazon delivery drivers to Met Gala chickens

First up, Amazon delivery drivers!
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Thursday, May 11, 2023

The Stupid! It Burns!


First, the most serious story today in Canada was the Alberta wildfires -- and I'm not sure whether this newest development is stupid, or criminal, or maybe both, but tonight there were reports that even though the Alberta wildfires continue to burn, some municipalities will be allowing evacuated people to return to their homes in spite of the risk:
And in spite of the irrational anger from this rancher at this meeting in Grande Prairie, I did think he had a point about how he needs better communications from the municipality to show whether livestock is at risk, etc:
Because if Covid has taught us anything, it is the importance of improving communications between government and people.
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Monday, May 08, 2023

Coronation Highlights: Canada Indigenous Leadership in London

Just one additional note about the Coronation -- here are some of the highlights I gathered about significant moments for Indigenous delegation members in their visit to London.
In the Globe and Mail, Royal expert John Fraser posts an interesting comment about King Charles' coronation: 
Over at Canada House, there was a considerable gathering of Canadians to watch the coronation on large television monitors, a gathering which included many Indigenous visitors. A witness to the proceedings, verified by another person present, reported that the most striking thing to happen during the live broadcast of the service was when the King was crowned and later during the playing and singing of God Save the King, Indigenous members in the gathering all stood in respect. Most of the non-Indigenous viewers stayed glued to their seats.
This suggests interesting days to come in the story of Canada, especially when the King and Queen make their next visit.
Ambassador Goodale also told a reporter they are working on setting up a Royal Visit to Canada now.
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Another day for thoughts and prayers

Another day of Republican thoughts and prayers.
Its also distressing to note that cartoonist Michael de Adder at the Washington Post posted this cartoon a week ago (following the Cleveland Texas massacre) not yesterday (following the Allen Texas massacre). Unfortunately, there are just too many mass shootings to count.
Here's a comment from Brittlestar: And from Chris Rock:
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Sunday, May 07, 2023

"...the moment is struck, a pact is sworn"


Here is the Coronation photo where Charles and Camilla really looked happy -- they're on the balcony, it's over, they made it, and nobody stumbled, collapsed, or dropped the Crown Jewels. 
Phew!
My post title tonight is from the poem written by British Poet Laureate Simon Armitage "An Unexpected Guest" in honour of King Charles' coronation. 
The poem follows the story of a woman invited to attend a coronation and uses lines from Samuel Pepys diary, which described his encounter with the coronation of King Charles II, pointing to the historical significance of the occasion.
Here is the last stanza: 
She’ll watch it again on the ten o’clock news 
from the armchair throne in her living room: 
did the cameras notice her coral pink hat 
or her best coat pinned with the hero’s medal she got 
for being herself? The invitation is propped 
on the mantelpiece by the carriage clock. 
She adorned the day with ordinariness; 
she is blessed to have brought the extraordinary home. 
And now she’ll remember the house sparrow 
she thought she’d seen in the abbey roof 
arcing from eave to eave, beyond and above. 
Some tweets:
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Thursday, May 04, 2023

Today's News: The Story Behind The Story?

Trudeau's brother Sacha testified today to the Ethics Committee and for a non-politician he did very well -- he didn't "spin a story", he didn't punch up a headline or two, he didn't trade insults with the insulting Con MPs who were trying to goad him. 
He just talked about the history about the Chinese donation - noting in passing his own expertise about China society, and his respect for the Chinese people = and also told the committee that the PET Foundation management had been disfunctional. Evan Scrimshaw (Scrimshaw Unscripted) notes the real issue isn't the Trudeau family at all, its Canada's intelligence agencies: CSIS' Leaking Ship A National, not Political Crisis:
...why is nobody else able to see what has been obvious for the last two months, which is that the real story here is a RCMP-CSIS war?
...I don’t have national security sources who can clue me in on this shit, but what I do have is a bullshit detector and a functioning brain, and this is the only theory of this story that adds up. CSIS, or elements within it, are mad at the lack of action that’s been taken on foreign interference and they’d like it to change. The RCMP has not listened to them, for reasons unclear. And now there’s a turf war.
...the matter at hand when it comes to CSIS is not why is the Prime Minister sitting on all of this incredibly important intelligence but why isn’t CSIS acting on this information if it’s as valuable and credible as the way it’s reported out suggests? Why can’t CSIS persuade the RCMP to do something about any of this if it is credible, and if it’s not credible enough for the RCMP to do anything why is it being given to Bob Fife?
...Trudeau said today that the reason Chong wasn’t told, and implicitly why he wasn’t told, was that CSIS made the determination that it did not rise to a sufficient level for it to be disseminated broadly. Maybe that call was right, maybe it wasn’t, argue with a rock for all I care. But what matters in that is that CSIS doesn’t get to have their cake and eat it too. Either these leaks are justified by the truly important nature of the information disclosed, or the information disclosed wasn’t important enough to disclose to the PMO or to Chong.
...We have an unserious spy agency at war with either our political government, our national police force, or both. We have a spy agency willing to leak things to the press they deemed insufficiently important to brief the PMO about. We have a pundit class eager to make the Prime Minister to blame for things he did not know about. And we have an opposition accusing the Prime Minister of knowingly holding back information when the PM never had it.
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Tuesday, May 02, 2023

"So I'd best be on my way In the early morning rain"

 
Sad news today -- Gordon Lightfoot has passed. 
I included some tweets and songs of his in a post from September, when he was at the CNE. 
Here are some of tonight's best tweets:
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Sunday, April 30, 2023

Weekend funnies: Nostalgia and Dark Brandon and Orcas


A little nostalgia: As I contemplate our problems in 2023, I have to keep remembering: 
  • when I was 8, we were practicing hiding from a nuclear war by scurrying under our school desks when our civil defense air raid siren sounded.
  • when I was 13, JFK was assassinated. 
  • by the time I was 15, tens of thousands of American boys were fighting in Vietnam. 
  • when I was 17, RFK and MLK were assassinated, and there were riots in Chicago and Detroit and Los Angeles, and Nixon was elected. 
  • when I was 19, the Ohio National Guard killed four students at Kent State; the FLQ kidnapped James Cross and Pierre LaPorte, and Trudeau pere declared the War Measures Act 
So yes, sometimes things were bad when I was younger. 
I didn't have any solutions then, either, except to #AlwaysVoteLeft.
 

Moving on - Andrew Coyne isn't impressed with Pierre Poilievre anymore (if he ever was):
I absolutely loved this:
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Thursday, April 27, 2023

COVID Update: Life Expectancy, Long Covid, and World Immunization Week

We got our semi-annual booster today so Covid is on my mind tonight. 
It's still hard to grasp the impact of the Covid pandemic worldwide until you realize how many millions have died, with millions more left to mourn. 
In Forbes magazine, healthcare analysis Joshua Cohen writes about Covid 19's enormous death toll:
Thus far, recorded Covid-19 deaths worldwide are at 6.86 million. This is likely an underestimate, given the underreporting of fatalities in countries, such as China. More importantly, based on excess mortality calculations there’s mounting evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic has taken a massive toll on global life expectancy. Not since the famine in China in 1959, have we seen such a sharp decline in life expectancy worldwide.
...In sum, the Covid-19 pandemic has led to global increases in mortality and declines in period life expectancy that are without precedent in modern times. Historically, countries have generally recovered within two years from mortality shocks, such as the 1918-20 influenza pandemic and the two world wars. And so, we can expect many countries to soon return to pre-Covid-19-pandemic life expectancy. However, each country’s ability to bounce back differs, and some, like the U.S., will likely have more trouble than others because of underlying health trends that had been in place before the pandemic. 
Though Canada's life expectancy also declined in 2020, it didn't plummet like the US did.
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Sunday, April 23, 2023

Weekend funnies: From steam-punk to Ted Lasso to a golfer dog

An historian Craig Baird is using AI to generate "steam-punk" versions of Canadian legends. Here's a couple: And Peggy Atwood loved hers: I loved this one, too:
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Friday, April 21, 2023

Today's edition of "Christ, what an asshole"


So today our hero Elon Musk struck a blow for the working man by taking away those elitist blue verification checks!
Sort of.
There used to be actual value to the blue marks, like showing people who to listen to when they needed help. 
Like, for instance, the City of New York. 
But Musk has once again demonstrated he doesn't understand what he is doing:
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Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Around the Substacks: from Van Gogh Sneakers, to Delaware courts, to Pierre Poilievre and the CBC


First up, here is an example of the type of creative thing that AI can now do: Van Gogh Sneakers! 
For anyone interested in creating fascinating stuff via AI (Artificial Intelligence),  Ethan Mollick has written a One Useful Thing article: How to How to use AI to do practical stuff: A new guide. Here is his introduction
The first thing people try to do with AI is what it is worst at; using it like Google...
Second, they may try something speculative, using it like Alexa, and asking a question, often about the AI itself. Will AI take my job? What do you like to eat? These answers are also terrible.
If people still stick around, they start to ask more interesting questions, either for fun or based on half-remembered college essay prompts: Write an article on why ducks are the best bird. Why is Catcher in the Rye a good novel? These are better. As a result, people see blocks of text on a topic they don’t care about very much...They usually quit around now, convinced that everyone is going to use this to cheat at school, but not much else.
All of these uses are not what AI is actually good at, and how it can be helpful. They can blind you to the real power of these tools.
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Sunday, April 16, 2023

Weekend funny stuff: Some stories, some writing, and some animal crackers, of course


Here are some interesting stories for your weekend.
First, this is an absolutely wonderful story: Next, this is absolutely terrifying: Don't we all identify with this guy?
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Friday, April 14, 2023

Just another "friendly sausage maker"?


The US media reaction to the news about 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, a National Guard technology support staffer who leaked dozens of secret US documents - such a nice boy! patriotic! a devout Catholic! - reminds me of how Canadian media developed a "friendly sausage maker" meme back in 2020. 
Remember that in July 2020, a heavily-armed military reservist named Corey Hurren from Winnipeg drove 2,000 km to Ottawa with the idea of “arresting” our prime minister and he actually rammed through the gates to the grounds of the prime minister’s residence and wandered around looking for Trudeau before the RCMP finally noticed him and negotiated a surrender. 
Luckily, neither Trudeau nor Governor-General Payette were there at the time. 
The Canadian media turned this guy into “just a friendly sausage-maker” who didn’t really want to hurt anyone, not really, he just wanted to talk to someone about how hard it was to make a living during the pandemic and really, couldn’t we all just give this guy a break? 
It was a really bizarre reaction it has now become a meme among the Canadian left. 
And I still believe the media adopted this view as a way to minimize the errors made by the RCMP.
And the meme goes on: And now in America we are seeing the same thing today, a determined effort to minimize the danger: Tonight I am wondering if the motivation is the same, downplaying the problem to protect the reputations of military who apparently let this guy gather up, take home, and copy so much classified material.
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Thursday, April 13, 2023

Today's Comments: Just wondering who will be next on the hit list?


Canada continues to watch Poilievre and the CPC shoot themselves in the foot every time they open their mouths. 
And funny, isn't it, how hostile they are toward journalists?
At this point, I just have to ask, who is going to be next? Twitter has some suggestions:
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