Debris found after object shot down over Lake Huron in 2023 - "The unidentified object was shot down by a U.S. F-16 fighter jet on the afternoon of Feb. 12, 2023, over Lake Huron, which separates Michigan and Ontario. It was the third and final unidentified object(opens in a new tab) blasted out of North America's skies that month following the high-profile Feb. 4, 2023, downing of an apparent Chinese surveillance balloon(opens in a new tab). At the time, the Lake Huron object was described as "octagonal" in structure with strings hanging off of it, and it reportedly "slowly descended" into Canadian waters after being hit by one of two missiles that were fired at it. Officials characterized it as a suspected balloon that did not pose a military threat, but could have interfered with domestic air traffic... A "secret" Royal Canadian Air Force document obtained by CTVNews.ca suggests the Lake Huron object could have been a "weather balloon" launched from a U.S. National Weather Service radar station in Michigan. Iain Boyd is a professor of aerospace engineering and director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at the University of Colorado Boulder. Boyd speculates that the continued lack of information on these cases could be because the U.S. and Canadian governments were embarrassed after shooting down objects that weren't really national security threats."
"Blowing Smoke Up Your Ass" Used to Be Literal - "Back in the late 1700s, however, doctors literally blew smoke up people’s rectums. Believe it or not, it was a general mainstream medical procedure used to, among many other things, resuscitate people who were otherwise presumed dead. In fact, it was such a commonly used resuscitation method for drowning victims particularly, that the equipment used in this procedure was hung alongside certain major waterways, such as along the River Thames (equipment courtesy of the Royal Humane Society). People frequenting waterways were expected to know the location of this equipment similar to modern times concerning the location of defibrillators."
Human smuggler issued new Canadian passport after court ordered surrender of travel document - "The federal government issued a new passport to an admitted human smuggler after he was ordered to surrender the travel document as part of court-imposed release conditions, CBC News has learned. The new passport was discovered in June 2023 by RCMP investigators executing a search warrant at the Montreal home of Thesingarasan Rasiah during a probe targeting an international human smuggling network that Rasiah allegedly headed... At the time, Rasiah was living at home with an electronic ankle bracelet on strict conditions while awaiting sentencing on a February 2023 guilty plea to one count of breaching the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act for his role in the smuggling of a Sri Lankan national from the U.S. into Canada in 2021."
Why can’t we die at home? Expanding home care could reduce the financial and environmental cost of dying in hospital - "even though most patients would rather spend their final days at home, we have difficulty sending them there, because there aren’t enough community care resources to care for them at home."
Ridley Scott explains why emperors in his films are all ‘crazy’ – the answer is in their water - "Ridley Scott has revealed why the emperors in his films all tend to be a bit unstable – turns out it’s all the lead in their water pipes... There may be some truth to Scott’s words, as scientist Jerome Nriagu suggested back in 1983 that the lead in the pipes and tanks caused erratic behaviour and gout among emperors and aristocrats, which he believed triggered the fall of the Roman empire. In addition to physical problems, lead poisioning can also cause behavioural issues, like depression, irritability, and trouble with concentration and memory. He also said that in order to sweeten wine as well as their food, Romans boiled down grapes into syrups, which were also simmered slowly in lead pots or lead-lined copper kettles. While the theory that lead poisoning directly contributed to the fall of the empire has fallen out of favour recently, the presence of high quantities of lead in the food and drink that high-born Romans would have consumed has been confirmed. A team of archaeologists in 2014 also found after measuring lead isotopes in sediments from the Tiber River and Trajanic Harbour, that the piped water Romans drank contained “had 100 times more lead than local spring waters”."
No one knows who owns this Toronto laneway, but neighbours say it's become a dangerous dumping ground - "Frustrated shop owners in Toronto's Yonge and Wellesley area say the city is refusing to pick up mounds of garbage that regularly accumulates in an adjacent laneway because it's private property — even though the laneway's last known owner died more than a century ago. Sara Sadrolhefazi, owner of Nabulu Coffee on St. Joseph Street, says she's spent $5,000 in the year that she's owned the property, hiring contractors to clear garbage left in the laneway behind her shop.
Too many people want to be social-media influencers - "Ask a young person what they would like to do with their life and increasingly often the answer will be to find fame and fortune online. Fully 57% of Gen Zs in America would like to be a social-media influencer, according to Morning Consult, a pollster; 53% describe it as a “reputable career choice”... Yet as the industry has grown, it has also changed. Spoiled for choice, companies have shifted their attention towards influencers creating content for narrower audiences, such as fashion tips for the over 60s or gardening advice for inner-city dwellers, to better target those consumers. Cultivating a small fan base in a niche area may earn hobbyists some extra cash, but it will rarely be enough for them to quit their day job. Those who fantasise about making a living as a social-media star may thus be heading for disappointment. Companies have been increasing the share of their marketing budgets they hand over to influencers. Over the past five years, American firms have roughly tripled their spending on influencer marketing, to $7bn, according to eMarketer, a research firm. In a survey by the Influencer Marketing Hub, another research group, 86% of brands globally said they plan to spend on influencer marketing this year, up from 37% in 2017, when the survey was first conducted. Nearly a quarter intend to spend over 40% of their marketing budget on influencer campaigns. Companies realise that influencers—or “creators”, as many prefer to be called—have become integral to how consumers shop. According to research by Northwestern University and LTK, a platform that connects influencers with brands, nearly three-quarters of Gen Zs in America have relied on influencers to help them choose products to buy. More surprisingly, so have a third of consumers who are boomers or older. Influencers are part of every big campaign nowadays, says Mark Read, the boss of WPP, which owns advertising agencies such as Ogilvy and Mindshare... Goldman Sachs, a bank, estimates that as of last year there were more than 50m influencers globally, and reckons their ranks are swelling by between 10% and 20% annually. The surging supply of influencers has been a boon for companies that use them to sell their products. Celebrity influencers may be helpful for building awareness of a brand or altering how it is perceived by shoppers, but when it comes to persuading people to buy something, marketers look to the long tail of creators with small but engaged groups of followers. Since 2021 the share of spending on influencer marketing in America taken by creators with more than 1m followers has fallen from 15% to 8%; the share taken by those with fewer than 20,000 followers has surged from 20% to 45%... Only 4% of creators earn $100,000 a year or more from the work, according to Goldman Sachs. AI could worsen the situation, as “virtual influencers” begin to crowd social-media feeds: Aitana López, a gamer and fitness guru with pink hair and a face so symmetrical it could only have been generated by a computer, has 330,000 followers on Instagram. The glut of influencers is also making online fame yet more fickle. Even if a post goes viral, that doesn’t mean an influencer’s career is set, says Joe Gagliese, co-founder of Viral Nation, a marketing agency. “If they’re not careful to make the most of that, there is another creator right behind them,” he says. “This industry is extremely volatile,” points out Vanessa Chen, a fashion influencer better known by her Instagram name Vivacious Honey. To diversify her income, she recently launched her own clothing line. Many others have done something similar. There is another problem with the flood of influencers online: consumers are growing weary of all those ads dressed up as entertainment. In a survey last year McKinsey, a consultancy, found that 68% of fashion consumers globally were unhappy with the amount of sponsored content on social media. Influencers first took off because consumers thought of them as “people they could trust”, says Anita Balchandani of McKinsey. To remain influential they need to strike a balance between getting paid and convincing followers they are still “authentic”, one of the industry’s favourite buzzwords. Being popular, it seems, is harder than ever."
Musk shares wild conspiracy as to why Ellen DeGeneres has left the United States - "Musk shared a post with a screenshot of a 2016 X, then Twitter, post from DeGeneres referencing Combs. “’Happy birthday, P Diddy, Puff Daddy, Sean Combs, or as I call him, Cuddle McSnugglestuff,” DeGeneres’s post read. “You don’t need to know why. @iamdiddy.” The original poster shared the screenshot with the caption, “It makes sense why she fled the country after the election.” Musk then re-shared the post, captioning it with the eyebrow-raised emoji."
Left wingers have no sense of humour, which is why they don't recognize jokes
Jack Mintz: Corporate welfare shrinks the economy - "Corporate welfare is one reason for Canada’s poor productivity record. Subsidies kill productivity two ways. If they go to companies with poor profitability, economic growth suffers as workers and capital are tied to sub-par investments. On the other hand, if they go to highly profitable companies, money raised with growth-killing taxes is wasted supporting investments that probably would have taken place anyway. Either way, there is no free lunch. I recently looked at Statistics Canada data on grants and investment tax credits for over 45 industries. Grants and ITCs are only the visible part of the iceberg, unfortunately: data on “forgivable,” low-interest or guaranteed loans, corporate tax rate concessions or land grants aren’t available... Which industries got the most corporate welfare? The top prize goes to air shipping transport manufacturers, with a 53.9 per cent subsidy rate. That’s right: grants plus tax credits came to 53.9 per cent of after-tax profits. Despite that, this sector’s return on equity was a measly 3.4 per cent. Without subsidies it would have been just 1.7 per cent. Runner-up in the subsidy competition is “arts, entertainment, accommodation and food services,” subsidized at the rate of 53.2 per cent, in part reflecting the heavy impact of the pandemic. Again, even with subsidies, the industry’s profitability was generally poor, with an average return on equity of only 5.5 per cent. Third most-subsidized were “religious, grant-writing, civic and related services” — yes, Canada, we subsidize grant-writing — underwritten at a rate of 50 per cent and with a 5.5 per cent rate of return on equity. Agriculture, fishing and forestry had the fourth highest subsidy rate, at 41.7 per cent, and a return on equity of 8.6 per cent. Through history this politically favoured sector has been supported by a vast number of programs, often with the goal of stabilizing producers’ incomes. The best known and most controversial is supply management though it is not included since Canadian consumers, not the federal treasury, bear the cost of high product prices. Another industry with a relatively high subsidy rate is publishing, motion picture, broadcasting and information, at 25.4 per cent. It relies heavily on Canadian-content grants and film tax credits. Computer and electrical equipment manufacturing is subsidized at a subsidy rate of 21.1 per cent; repair, maintenance and personal services at 16.1 per cent; chemical, rubber and fibre manufactures at 12.7 per cent; and professional, scientific and technical services at 10.1 per cent of their profits. Sectors that aren’t subsidized very much are utilities (only 0.6 per cent of whose after-tax profits come from subsidy), real estate (0.8 per cent), and oil and gas (1.0 per cent). Does all this corporate welfare make recipient industries more profitable than others? No. On balance, subsidies went to less profitable firms. The industries that receive more than 10 per cent of their profits in grants and ITCs earned an average return on equity of 7.5 per cent, a third less than the average in nonfinancial industries. A few heavily subsidized industries did have above-average profitability — chemical and rubber manufacturers, professional, scientific and technical services, and repair, maintenance and personal services — but generally profitability was poor in the more subsidized sectors."
Weird. Left wingers keep claiming that oil and gas receive massive subsidies
How big things could get done, even in Canada - "Bent Flyvbjerg, a Danish professor of economic geography specializing in megaprojects, and the Canadian journalist Dan Gardner published How Big Things Get Done. In it they investigate what they coin the “iron law of megaprojects,” which is that such projects routinely come in well over budget, far past projected deadlines and without delivering projected benefits. Unfortunately for taxpayers, the book contains many examples of Canadian megaprojects that have obeyed this “law.” The federal government’s infamous firearms registry, which ended up 590 per cent over budget, is a textbook template for how IT projects can go terribly wrong. The Muskrat Falls hydro project in Newfoundland is a classic demonstration of what happens when a firm with little direct experience is hired to manage a large, complex project. Most famously, the 1976 Montreal Games wins the title for the largest cost overrun in Olympic history, finishing 720 per cent over budget. The authors suggest Montreal’s “Big Owe” stadium “should be considered the unofficial mascot of the modern Olympic Games.” One thing all these Canadian examples have in common is extensive government involvement. Not that governments have learned from their past mistakes. Ottawa’s Phoenix pay system fiasco demonstrates that IT remains a black hole, with the government recently announcing it would finally abandon Phoenix after spending $3.5 billion trying to implement it. Several light-rail projects across the country have also gone off the rails, the poster boy being, appropriately, Ottawa’s, which is years behind schedule and already $2.5 billion over budget. There are several reasons why government projects are chronically prone to failure. One is that politicians, especially late in their career, want a legacy in the form of a monumental tangible project — whether or not it effectively meets a significant public need. You can see this dynamic clearly at work today as the federal government pushes for a prohibitively expensive (probably over $100 billion) high-speed rail connection between Windsor and Quebec City. Meanwhile, Ontario Premier Doug Ford promotes a traffic tunnel underneath Highway 401 between Brampton and Scarborough, while Quebec Premier François Legault revives plans for a third link connecting Quebec City to the south shore of the St. Lawrence. Canada clearly does need more transportation infrastructure, but these grandiose projects are not a cost-effective way of meeting the needs of commuters and shippers. Governments repeatedly deploy a couple of well-worn tricks to help get uneconomic projects built. First, they produce unrealistically low cost estimates. Then they just start digging. As former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown once said, if you make the hole big enough, “there’s no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.” This approach preys on the all-too-common mistaken belief that large sunk costs mean scrapping a project “would be interpreted by the public as ‘throwing away’ the billions of dollars already spent.” In fact, ignoring sunk costs is almost the definition of how not to throw good money after bad. Unlike other studies of how major infrastructure projects typically go way over budget, Flyvbjerg and Gardner provide some concrete recommendations on how to manage large projects that respect deadlines and budgets. First, give careful consideration to goals. Airlines can meet the need for fast transport in the Windsor-Quebec corridor without the immense expense of laying hundreds of kilometres of roadbed for high-speed rail. Then follow up detailed planning and preparation with swift execution to minimize costly surprises. In a slogan: “think slow, act fast.” Also: do close accounting of the cost of similar projects in the past and break up large projects into smaller modules so they can be scaled back if they run into trouble. Several oilsands projects built in this country before 2015 showed these principles at work: when severe shortages of labour and materials emerged firms used modularity and phasing of work schedules to create slack."
Young people are embracing conservatism - "One of the most intriguing recent political trends in North America is growing support for conservative parties among young people. Once a reliable source of support for left-leaning politicians like Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau, a rising share of the youth vote is trending towards candidates like Donald Trump and Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre. Young people voting for conservative politicians might be dismissed as just a backlash against failed economic policies but there are indications of a more fundamental shift in which youth embrace at least some conservative values... Faced with a health-care system that is clearly broken, Canadian young people have fewer qualms about involving the private sector than do older generations raised to believe that publicly-provided health care was a fundamental Canadian value. A recent Leger poll published in Le Journal de Quebec found that 44 per cent of Quebeckers 18-34 support private delivery of health-care services, the mirror image of people 55 and over, who oppose it. Meanwhile, today’s young Americans are even more likely than millennials were 20 years ago to identify as having more conservative views than their parents, with the largest shift occurring among young men. Rising support for conservative politicians and ideas among young people reflects several trends. Most obvious is that many reject the radical woke agenda espoused by a small but vocal minority. When confronted with the reality of an economy that is not generating the jobs, incomes and housing they desire, they prioritize results over ideology. That’s especially true for young people who came to Canada for economic reasons. Unfortunately, the importance young people put on results is driving many to question the usefulness of democracy. In his 2023 book The Fourth Turning Is Here, historian Neil Howe cites polls showing one in four young Americans would prefer a dictatorial president unconstrained by Congress, while only one in 10 Americans over 65 agrees. Howe’s analysis is based on the proposition that historical movements occur in cyclical ebbs and flows rather than straight lines. After a career spent studying business cycles, I find this argument intuitively appealing... As economist Hyman Minsky wrote, “Success breeds a disregard of the possibility of failure … Stability leads to instability. The more stable things become and the longer they are stable, the more unstable they will be when the crisis hits.”"
Saudi Arabia carries out more executions of foreigners than ever before - "The high number of executions undercuts statements by Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who told The Atlantic in 2022 that the kingdom had eliminated the death penalty with the exception of murder cases or when an individual posed a threat to many lives. The same year it executed 81 people in one day for terror offences and other violent crimes in what was the largest mass execution in the kingdom’s modern history."
Tardigrades reveal secrets of extreme survival tactics
Aisha Estey: B.C. Conservatives proved to be a force in provincial politics — but there's much work to do - "We knew conservatives in B.C. were looking for a new home. They were looking for a party that prioritized a strong economy, because there can be no affordability without one; a party that believes in true universal access to health care, not access to three-year waiting lists; a party that champions drug-free recovery, rather than perpetuating the cycle of addiction and poverty; and a party that prioritizes the safety of law-abiding citizens... The price of food has jumped nearly 30 per cent , making many staples, such as chicken , more expensive than anywhere else in Canada. A litre of gasoline in B.C. carries not one but two provincial taxes, leading to the highest gas taxes and prices in North America. These burdens make it nearly impossible for working families to get ahead. Carbon taxes have made life unaffordable without producing any of the environmental benefits we were promised by the NDP. We also face a housing crisis. Under Premier David Eby and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Metro Vancouver completed the construction of fewer homes last year than in 2017, while rent and mortgage bills are at or near all-time highs. Young people are finding it difficult to justify staying in B.C. Half of those between the ages of 18 and 34 are seriously thinking of leaving the province . Our province’s addiction crisis is also shameful. After seven years of the NDP, B.C. has Canada’s worst drug problem . The NDP’s policies of handing out free drugs and running government drug dens have not helped our loved ones, they’ve only deepened the cycle of addiction and despair. Don’t be fooled: there is no compassion in perpetuating addiction. British Columbians are crying out for common-sense solutions — to stop handing out free drugs, get people into treatment and bring their loved ones home, drug free... All 44 Conservative MLAs will fight to deliver a common-sense conservative agenda: scrapping the carbon tax; making housing more affordable by fighting to implement policies like the “Rustad Rebate”; ending safe supply and so-called harm reduction, and investing in treatment and rehab instead; removing sexual orientation and gender identity from B.C.’s education system; standing up for our natural resource workers and businesses; and pushing to end the catch-and-release, soft-on-crime policies of Eby’s NDP."
Time to blame conservatives for the damage the left wing governments have caused
ZWAAGSTRA: Lowering teacher education standards will harm students - "Martha Koch, an education professor at the University of Manitoba, publicly claimed that requiring students to complete more undergraduate courses in math “sometimes results in worse teachers in early and middle years mathematics.” This comment is a prime example of the anti-knowledge bias pervading North American education faculties. The last thing faculties of education want is for teachers to be the primary source of knowledge in the classroom. That is why we cannot trust education faculties. Having taken many undergraduate and graduate education courses myself, I can safely say that most of them are worse than useless. In fact, you get stupider because of taking them. Don’t just take my word for it. Ask any teacher how they felt about their Bachelor of Education program. Chances are they will praise their teaching practicum where they worked in real classrooms with real students, but they will dismiss most of their required education courses as useless theories. I shudder to think about prospective teachers taking undergraduate degrees in narrow and esoteric fields such as gender studies and then completing a Bachelor of Education program with courses that promote all the wrong ideas about how students learn. While those teachers will be ready for social justice activism, they won’t have a foggy clue about how to teach real subjects such as math, science, or history."
When the aim is to push the left wing agenda, real knowledge doesn't matter
Frustrated with their small city’s government, residents voted to end it - "Shanaberger said the $30 she paid per year on city taxes — in addition to Hart County and federal taxes — wasn’t improving the area. The roads have potholes, she said, and there are no sidewalks off the city’s main road... Organizing the annual July Fourth event, which included a parade on Route 31W, a local band and fireworks, will be difficult without the city government’s funding, Whitlow said. But Bonnieville Elementary School won’t be impacted much by the change because the county school district owns it, and the city’s fire department will continue operating because it’s run and funded by volunteers. Bonnieville already had been relying on Hart County’s sheriff’s department and the county’s trash and recycling services, said Joe Choate, Hart County’s executive. The county will now be responsible for Bonnieville’s roads, but Choate said he doesn’t expect managing Bonnieville will be a financial burden for the county. However, Hart County isn’t providing lighting. Kentucky Utilities Company, which had worked with the city, sent letters to residents a few weeks ago encouraging them to lease the city’s roughly 74 streetlights for between $8 and $14 each per month, said Chris Whelan, a company spokeswoman. Streetlights will be removed if they’re not paid for, Whelan said. Bowman will pay for the streetlight outside his home, he said, but he worries that Bonnieville’s issues won’t be handled promptly because the county receives more maintenance requests than the city."
Minister calls for probe on why more private pupils get extra time - "27 per cent of pupils at non-selective state schools got extra time, compared with 42 per cent of their privately-educated counterparts."
Library worker who is 6ft2 and 360 pounds sues for $4.6m over ‘trauma’ of having a small desk - "A New York City library worker, who is 6ft 2 inches tall and weighs 360 pounds, is suing his employers for $4.6 million after he was allegedly forced to work at a desk that was too small for him and caused him to suffer serious mental health problems. William Martin claims that not only were his concerns ignored by management at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (SNFL) but that he was intentionally scheduled to work at the “crampy” desk in order to show him “who was boss.”"
Chris Selley: Ottawa all but invited Alberta to flip the bird to federal laws - "Fundamentally, the Sovereignty Act allows the Alberta government to direct “provincial entities to engage in an act that would be contrary to federal law,” as University of Calgary law professors Martin Olszynski and Nigel Bankes wrote in 2022 . Even if you’re past caring about laws you don’t like — and there’s a lot of that going around — it’s a precedent that some future premier will probably use in a way you really don’t appreciate. Alas, this particular ship set sail from Quebec City long ago. The National Assembly firmly set the “nuts to the Constitution” precedent in 2022 when it unilaterally — and unanimously — passed an amendment to the 1867 Constitution Act excusing MNAs from swearing allegiance to the Canadian monarch. Bill 4 simply read as follows: “Section 128 does not apply to Quebec.” In my view (and the view of every constitutional expert I know of who isn’t a Quebecer), the National Assembly had roughly as much authority to do that as the Alberta legislature has to ignore federal legislation it doesn’t like — which is to say none. The best evidence of this, I have argued in the past, was that Section 128 had not in fact been amended … because a province can’t amend the Constitution on its own. But now, I’m amazed to see, the federal Ministry of Justice has actually updated the online version of the 1867 Constitution Act to reflect the change . Tra-la-la, nothing matters. The monarchy is dumb anyway, right?... For years, it seemed like Ottawa just hoped the other provinces wouldn’t notice as it gave Quebec pretty much everything it wanted, with much (though certainly not universal) agreement from wise-owl Laurentian pundits. But the other provinces did notice. And Ottawa has no answer except that some members of the federation are more equal than others."
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