CitizenVectron

Hoisted by his own cruditard

Definitely easier to hijack government in Canada (in the short-term), but also harder in the long-term. Because Canadian provinces only have one House of government (legislature), and because the executive is derived from whoever controls the legislature, all it takes is a single election to do whatever you want in power, there are no checks. But by the same token, all it takes to undo anything is another election. And because redistricting in Canada is controlled by non-political groups (non-partisan committees made up of retired judges, political scientists, etc), you can't gerrymander your way into remaining in power if you do something unpopular. This is one of the reasons why Canada sees such large partisan vote swings compared to the US.

Danielle Smith’s Alberta ‘sovereignty’ act introduces sweeping new powers to resist Ottawa WWW.THESTAR.COM The bill introduced Tuesday would let the cabinet order entities connected to the provincial government to ignore federal rules, but the new Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act been a lightning rod for criticism. Massively, massively unconstitutional. Daniel Smith is an anti-vaxxer MLA who won leadership of the United Conservative Party of Alberta (and government) after the previous regular-shitstain-right-wing Premier resigned. She and her cabal of QAnon weirdos are now pushing their conspiracy theories on the province of 4.5 million. This new act would allow a few key (unconstitutional) things: Allow the province to ignore "harmful" federal policies Allows cabinet ministers to issue directives to provincial entities (including municipal law enforcement, schools, etc) to ignore federal laws It should be noted that all criminal law in Canada is under federal jurisdiction Allows cabinet ministers to unilaterally change provincial legislation without a vote in the legislature Allows Alberta to declare federal laws unconstitutional Makes Albertan government non-liable for anything done under the act, including non-liable under laws outside Albertan jurisdiction (i.e. federal laws) Changes dates for judicial review of new Alberta laws from 6 months to 30 days Key things to note about this Premier and Alberta at the moment: She has not been elected to a provincial mandate in a general election Her party is trailing in the polls for the 2023 election to the social democratic party (NDP)

Looks like the House may try and add sick leave to the bill:

So apparently, he wears an eyepatch because he accidentally shot himself in the face.

Federal government to extend EI sickness benefits from 15 to 26 weeks WWW.CTVNEWS.CA The federal government is extending employment insurance sickness benefits to 26 weeks, up from 15 weeks, Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough announced on Friday. Good news. Helps a lot of people that don't have short/long-term disability through their work.

My city briefly ran out of ambulances last week, and now the ER wait times are exceeding 12 hours on average. Standing room only at the hospital. It doesn't help that our provincial government is quite clearly trying to starve public healthcare so that they can offer private solutions.

Twitter is no longer enforcing its Covid misinformation policy | CNN Business WWW.CNN.COM Twitter said it will no longer enforce its longstanding Covid misinformation policy, yet another sign of how Elon Musk plans to transform the social media company he bought a month ago.

Zero Covid is a strategy to reduce cases in a self-contained area to zero...it's not a specific strategy. New Zealand implemented a pretty good Zero Covid strategy, for example. No one here is supporting China's implementation.

Whoops! Musk claims Apple threatens to remove Twitter from App Store - The Washington Post WWW.WASHINGTONPOST.COM Removal of Twitter from the App Store would make the social media platform unavailable to new users with Apple devices.

Layoffs Have Gutted Twitter’s Child Safety Team | WIRED WWW.WIRED.COM Just one person remains to enforce the company’s ban on child sexual abuse across Japan and the Asia Pacific region.

Lots of good stuff the last 24 hours:

Zero COVID was a decent policy before we had vaccines and before will instituted full mask mandates and saw their effectiveness, etc. Now, I'm obviously the first to state that western nations are doing a poor job at handling COVID right now (mostly because the public doesn't want to do anything, and the public sets the course), but the thing that has made China's response much worse is its unwillingness to use western mRNA vaccines combined with its own population's unwillingness to get vaccinated. Something like 50% of people over 80 in China aren't vaccinated. It's staggering.

lol

lol apparently Elon sent an email at 3am asking for the remaining coding staff to send another set of images detailing the code they've written in the last 10 days (since the last request). But due to holidays and weekends, it's really only three business days for most of them. Oh, and Twitter employees in the UK and Germany didn't get paid because their payroll system has stopped working in Europe.

Yeah, the game's ranking system is really harsh, in that it's completely net-zero (if you win you gain the same points that the loser loses). Makes testing new ideas really tough (and punishing).

Yeah, there are hidden bots at all levels, it sounds like. Basically, if it can't find you a match within 1-2 seconds then you get a bot. I've been playing this game the last few days (thanks to this thread!) and it's quite fun. The gameplay loop is quick and easy, and the game itself performs wonderfully. Main complaint is that it's clearly a massive grind (no surprise), so I'll probably drop it once progress slows down enough. I wish there was a way to play against a friend and set a collection level cap.

Boeing proposes production, delivery (spring 2023) of new GLSDB system for Ukraine (Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb). Exclusive: U.S. weighs sending 100-mile strike weapon to Ukraine WWW.REUTERS.COM The Pentagon is considering a Boeing proposal to supply Ukraine with cheap, small precision bombs fitted onto abundantly available rockets, allowing Kyiv to strike far behind Russian lines as the West struggles to meet demand for more arms. For comparison: HIMARS: Range: 80km Warhead: 200lb GLSDB Range: 150km Warhead: 285lb

Based on current daily averages (during times of non-major-offensives), it appears Russia can expect to reach 100,000 combat losses (deaths) on Christmas Day.

China supplying Russia?

Ironically, if Putin had chosen Belarus instead of Ukraine in terms of Russian annexations, this would likely all be over by now. While the people of Belarus wouldn't like it and would almost certainly resist (along with possibly their army), Russia would have had a much easier time of it. And also without a giant proxy war.

There's a sad video going around of a Ukrainian drone dropping a grenade on sleeping Russian mobiks...only the conscripts are "sleeping" at noon, in a trench, and once the grenade hits some, others simply crawl a distance away and start "sleeping" again. The reality is that they were in normal gear and it was -5C, so they were likely in the end stages of hypothermia and likely died shortly after anyway. At least one Ukrainian unit has reported receiving offers from Russian conscripts to exchange food (from Ukraine) for the coordinates of the conscripts' commanding officers.