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Mar 14 2023

General Freeland. Alberta calls. COVID Hub shuts.

Mar 14, 2023
David Akin's Roundup
Clippings of #cdnpoli, #media, and #tech content aimed at those with an interest in Canadian politics and policy. And sometimes Canadian postage stamps.
CURATOR'S NOTE: Who writes the headlines? Who writes the little blurbs underneath? Generally speaking, the headlines and the blurb underneath each item are generated by the publisher of the item to which I'm linking. The publisher is identified in the [square brackets] at the end of the blurb. But from time-to-time, your curator -- that'd be me, David Akin -- might chip in with a comment which you will find in italics in the blurb. Sometimes I may have a longer bit in the blurb part, as I do in today's "Tech" section. When that happens, I'll end my blurb with " - DA" to let you know I'm the author.

Any blurbs below the 'stamp-of-the-day' is all me.

Thanks, as always, for reading and responding. And please tell a friend if you like this thing. Have a great day - DA
Canada
Rumeurs d’une candidature à l’OTAN | Chrystia Freeland : un avenir à Ottawa ou à Bruxelles ?
 La rumeur refuse de mourir : Chrystia Freeland, future secrétaire générale de l’OTAN ? Ancien ministre des Affaires étrangères et des Finances, John Manley, qui a été de la course en 2003, estime que les chances de la Canadienne sont minces, mais il considère qu’il est « injuste » que ce soit invariablement un Européen qui hérite du poste. [La Presse]

Canada’s omission from a military pact involving three of its closest allies is symptomatic of a larger problem in how this country is perceived by its friends, experts are warning, as the U.S., Britain and Australia move ahead on their deal. [TorStar]

Gloria Fung said she has seen a 'co-ordinated effort' to stoke fears that investigating foreign agents will contribute to anti-Asian racism. [National Post]

In multiple ridings, Conservatives saw significantly fewer supporters coming to the polls, but the Liberals did not see large gains. [National Post]
From the Provinces
Québec solidaire victorious in byelection, capturing Montreal Liberal stronghold
With its victory, Québec solidaire now has 12 seats in the provincial legislature, the Liberals hold 19, the PQ have three and there are two independents. The riding in play Monday had been a Montréal Liberal stronghold last held by former Quebec Liberal leader Dominique Anglade.  [Global]

Prince Edward Island's Green Party is promising $37 million to hike health workers' salaries and benefits, in its second round of health-care pledges in the election campaign. [CP]
It was expected to be a smooth cruise to victory in the Ontario NDP stronghold of Hamilton Centre but the campaign has been buffeted by allegations of antisemitism. [TorStar]

The next phase of "Alberta is Calling" will focus on northern and southwestern Ontario and the Maritimes, where skilled workers need jobs, Brian Jean said. [Global]
Don Braid: The NDP is a more established campaign fighting force on every level — the strongest it has ever been. [Calgary Herald]
It's unclear at this time whether the new firearms legislation, which was tabled in the Alberta legislature Tuesday, is going to really be beneficial for Albertans, experts say. [Global]
Elsewhere
Shockwaves from SVB collapse hit global bank stocks gripped by contagion fears
A furious race to reprice interest rate expectations also buffeted markets as investors bet the U.S. Federal Reserve will be reluctant to hike next week. [Global]

Sweden's prime minister acknowledged Tuesday that it is likely that neighbor Finland will join NATO before his country does, due to Turkey's opposition to the Swedish bid. Ulf Kristersson said during a news conference in Stockholm on Tuesday that it has been clear since NATO’s Madrid summit in June that Finland’s road into membership has been smoother than Sweden’s, and that it is now increasingly likely that Finland will enter NATO first. [AP]
COVID and Vaccines
Johns Hopkins shuts down COVID-19 data tracking hub after 3 years
The site pulled in a staggering 2.5 billion views over its lifetime, becoming a global go-to for monitoring the public health catastrophe. [FOX News]
Understanding how cities bounce back from lockdown is critical for promoting the global economy and preparing for future pandemics. Here, we propose a novel computational method based on electricity data to study the recovery process, and conduct a case study on the city of Hangzhou.  [Nature]
Media
Ottawa's fight with tech giants over news could have global impact
Other countries are developing similar legislation to Bill C-18, so tech giants are 'concerned' about what precedents will be set in Canada. [National Post]
Tech
I finally moved from Mac OS Mojave to Big Sur on the 2014 iMac which is my main production machine. [Big Sur is as far as my iMac will go I'm afraid. Apple dropped support for the 2014 iMac from Monterey onwards. Monterey though will install on my 2015 MacBook Air so that's my next upgrade.]

Believe it or not, one of the reasons keeping me on Mojave was the ability to easily create playlists that contained a mix of podcasts and music within iTunes. On Big Sur and beyond, iTunes is split into three apps: Music, Podcasts, and TV and  creating a playlist of podcasts within Podcasts is impossible and it is not easy move them into a playlist in the Music app but it is possible.

The Podcasts app dumps downloaded podcasts as .mp3 files into the following folder on your local machine:  /Users/[username]/Library/Group Containers/243LU875E5.groups.com.apple.podcasts/Library/Cache .

So now I'm building some workflows using the Automator app to pull podcast .mp3s into Music where I can keep building playlists with them. But I digrees...

The post I'm linking to here is one that explains the difference between the bash shell in Terminal -- the default terminal for all Mac OS X versions until Big Sur -- and Apple's new default shell Zsh (pronounced zee shell or zed shell). While I'm not heavily reliant on doing things in Terminal, I do need to know my way around for a few tasks so this was my reading last night. If you've got any thoughts, I'd love to hear them ...  - DA
Issued this day ...
Issued this day in 1969: Sc 492: Suzor-Côté.
This stamp was issued on the 100th birthday of Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Côté (1869-1937) and features his 1903 painting , Return from the Harvest Field, a piece now in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada

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