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May 4 2025

The Roundup: Catastrophic loss. Premier Hogan. Albo landslide.

SUN MAY 4 2024
David Akin's Roundup
Catastrophic loss. Premier Hogan. Albo landslide.
Canada
How Canada's Mark Carney plans to win over Donald Trump
In his exclusive BBC interview, the Canadian Prime Minister indicates how he plans to tackle Trump. [BBC]
‘Catastrophic loss’: Former MP says NDP lost touch with core supporters
Charlie Angus, who did not run in the last election after representing the northern Ontario riding of Timmins — James Bay for more than two decades, — called the election a “catastrophic loss” following a campaign that spent too much time selling leader Jagmeet Singh and not enough time pitching its policies. 
“I think it’d be really dangerous to tell ourselves that we were simply the victims of strategic voting, and it was the times and there was nothing we could do,” Angus said. “We stopped being the New Democratic Party of Canada some time ago and we became a leader-driven movement. [Global]

For children in two-parent families, living in subsidized housing is associated with lower odds of having unaffordable housing but higher odds of having inadequate and overcrowded housing. For all others, living in subsidized housing is associated with lower odds of having unaffordable, inadequate, and overcrowded housing. Our findings underscore the importance of increasing subsidized housing, building units that can better meet the housing needs of those with housing vulnerability, and targeting those with the most unmet needs in alleviating Canada's housing affordability crisis. [Cdn Review of Sociology]
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The Provinces
John Hogan named Newfoundland premier after winning Liberal leadership
He succeeds Andrew Furey, who resigned tis winter, and inherits some big financial challenges. [Global]
Following the leadership vote, the Alberta NDP also passed an amendment to party membership to allow an optional departure from the federal NDP party. Now, Alberta NDP members will have the choice of whether they are affiliated with both NDP groups or just the provincial party. [Edmonton Journal]
Aurora
Elsewhere
Anthony Albanese and Labor claim landslide election win as Peter Dutton loses seat
Fighting back tears as he addresses supporters, Anthony Albanese flashes his often displayed Medicare card and vows to get back to work tomorrow. [ABC (Australia)]
For the Coalition, Saturday night was like one of those gory horror movies where half the headline cast gets decapitated before the first act is over. [ABC (Australia)]
Latika Bourke: Now that he has won the majority he craved, Anthony Albanese must use the mandate the Australian people have given him to be the Prime Minister the public hoped he would be in his first term. [The Nightly]
People’s Action Party wins its 14th successive election, giving PM Lawrence Wong the clear mandate he sought. [Al Jazeera]
The U.S. president and his policies have loomed large in elections in Australia, Canada, Germany, Greenland and elsewhere. [WaPo] (🎁 link)
United States President Donald Trump posted an artificial intelligence-generated image of himself dressed as pope as the mourning of Pope Francis continues. [Global]
Media
RSF World Press Freedom Index 2025: economic fragility a leading threat to press freedom
Although physical attacks against journalists are the most visible violations of press freedom, economic pressure is also a major, more insidious problem. The economic indicator on the RSF World Press Freedom Index now stands at an unprecedented, critical low as its decline continued in 2025. As a result, the global state of press freedom is now classified as a “difficult situation” for the first time in the history of the Index. [Reporters Without Borders]
“In this time of crisis, we must protect what it means to be Canadian. A strong, independent, and free press both defines and defends our values. My new government will protect reliable Canadian public forums so we can tell our own stories in our own languages. Central to this work is strengthening our public broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada ..." [PMO]

More than three quarters of Canadians believe misinformation had an impact on the outcome of the federal election, a new poll suggests. [Global]
Earlier this month, Bluesky restricted access to 72 accounts in Turkey at the request of Turkish governmental authorities, according to a recent report by the Freedom of Expression Association. As a result, people in Turkey can no longer see these accounts, and their reach is limited. [TechCrunch]
Science and Tech
When ChatGPT Broke an Entire Field: An Oral History
The goal of natural language processing is right there on the tin: making the unruliness of human language (the “natural” part) tractable by computers (the “processing” part). A blend of engineering and science that dates back to the 1940s, NLP gave Stephen Hawking a voice, Siri a brain and social media companies another way to target us with ads. It was also ground zero for the emergence of large language models — a technology that NLP helped to invent but whose explosive growth and transformative power still managed to take many people in the field entirely by surprise. 
A promotional card for Quanta's AI series, which reads Science Promise and the Peril of AI, Explore the Series"

To put it another way: In 2019, Quanta reported on a then-groundbreaking NLP system called BERT without once using the phrase “large language model.” A mere five and a half years later, LLMs are everywhere, igniting discovery, disruption and debate in whatever scientific community they touch. But the one they touched first — for better, worse and everything in between — was natural language processing. What did that impact feel like to the people experiencing it firsthand? Quanta interviewed 19 current and former NLP researchers to tell that story. From experts to students, tenured academics to startup founders, they describe a series of moments — dawning realizations, elated encounters and at least one “existential crisis” — that changed their world. And ours. Your Sunday long read ... [Quanta]

Wi-Fi 6E isn't the latest or fastest Wi-Fi standard, but there are plenty of Wi-Fi 6E routers circulating the market. Should you buy them? [CNET]
Issued this day ...
… in 1935. Sc 211. King George V Silver Jubilee: Princess Elizabeth.
Elizabeth appears on dozens of Canadian stamps and this begins that long series.

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