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Jul 29 2023

Port Problems. Fish talk. Internet cafes.

Jul 29, 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.
Canada
B.C. port workers vote to reject mediated agreement
Port workers in British Columbia have voted to reject a mediated contract offer, extending job action that prevented billions in goods from moving for almost two weeks earlier this month. [CP]
Arif Virani of Parkdale-High Park went on to serve as parliamentary secretary to both David Lametti and his predecessor, Jody Wilson-Raybould. [Global]
Diane Lebouthillier was sworn in as Canada's new federal fisheries minister on Wednesday, and Fish, Food & Allied Workers president Greg Pretty says plans for a meeting are already underway. Can't underestimate the political value of this portfolio in Atlantic Canada. CPC MP Rick Perkins defeated a sitting fisheries minister on Nova Scotia's south shore with a campaign focused almost exclusively on the fishery. And the fishery will be top issue in rural NL ridings. [CBC]
Brooke Malinoski (former advisor to Trudeau's chief of staff Katie Telford): Trudeau chose to focus on an energized government that can deliver on the economy and campaign on the solutions it provides. [TorStar]
From the provinces
Premier Smith says if a Calgary medical clinic begins charging a fee for faster access to a family doctor, it will be shut down, fined or have medicare payments withheld.  [Global]
Alberta's government reups its commitment to affordable daycare. The province expects to implement $10-a-day daycare by 2026. The current provincial average is $25-a-day. [Global]
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Elsewhere
Russians See Ukrainian Progress Where Others Don’t
Kyiv’s long-awaited counteroffensive is portrayed as more successful by enemy soldiers and their cheerleaders than by Western analysts [New Lines]

The Deputy of Youth Affairs of the Taliban’s Ministry of Information and Culture has stated that women and girls will not be granted the right to education until they conform to the group’s established framework. [KabulNow]

The North Atlantic has baked in record daily warmth every day since early March. The average sea surface temperature is as hot as it’s ever been. [WaPo]
A new era of AI-powered domestic politics may be coming. Watch for these milestones to know when it’s arrived. [MIT Technology Review]
Since the start of the year, the Florida governor has lost about half the support he had in polls. In early primary states, he's at risk of losing his status as Trump's main challenger. And Republican voters don't seem to be buying his pitch. [LA Times]
Media
Media organizations grapple with developing AI policies
Given that the generative AI space is changing underfoot, DCN checked in with six media organizations—Harvard Business Review, The Weather Company, Consumer Reports, The Washington Post, Skift, and The Boston Globe—to explore how they are developing AI policies and internal guidelines for AI usage and what these look like.  [Digital Content Next]
Like pretty much everyone else in the past few months, journalists have been trying out generative AI tools like ChatGPT to see whether they can help us do our jobs better. AI software can’t call sources and wheedle information out of them, but it can produce half-decent transcripts of those calls, and new generative AI tools can condense hundreds of pages of those transcripts into a summary. Writing stories is another matter, though. [Wired]
Tech
For a quarter century, internet cafes connected the world. Now they’re vanishing into history. [Rest of World]
After adding support for non-printing characters earlier this year, Google Docs is rolling out line numbers. [9to5 Google]
"We're seeing more people coming back daily than I'd expected," Zuckerberg said. IMO: Threads can easily get more 'sticky' by creating a desktop version or allowing posts from desktops/laptops and allow users to create and use "lists". [Ars Technica]
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Issued this day ...
Issued this day in 1964: Scott # 431: Charlottetown Conference. Design: Harvey Thomas Prosser. 
Issued to mark the centenary of the first of the key conferences that would lead to Confederation.

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