On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

Referring to this commentary, perfectly timed for this Orange Monday in particular:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2025/04/living-in-interesting-times.html

Charlie, I fully expect to remain unsafe from US law - despite living on Canadian soil as a Canadian citizen by birth and by choice and despite having no plans to visit the States - for the foreseeable future. You know about the annexation threats the Vulgarian's made in recent months. This is another of the reasons why (a) Hegseth was hired as US SecDef and (b) why Hegseth in turn fired those senior JAG officers.

If Carney remains PMoCanada after April 28th, we might stand a better chance of riding at least some of this bad craziness out. Ditto if either Singh or May gets the job. If Poilievre and his Conservatives win, we all get handed over without a fight from "Ottawa" AKA the federal government. I do not expect a lot of fellow Canadians to permit themselves to be handed over quietly in any case.

Just saying this much will draw unwanted attention to me, I'm sure.

1. David Chase fears that the end of long-form TV has arrived. I'd like him to be able to celebrate being wrong.

2. Peter Capaldi wants to make sure that entertainment talent from the lower classes remains discoverable and supported. He's absolutely right about that.

3. I got through the latest storm okay. Just so you know.

4. A lot of people miss Ed Broadbent.

5. Looks like a propagandist for Reichsters had a hand in Claudine Gay's problems at Harvard.

I got alerted to this via the Hellbirdsite.

https://medium.com/@cdl.tuebingen/covid-19-is-killing-performers-a81d1cf209a2

From the same author of the above-linked article, "What COVID is doing to performers":

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-PVLP_aQpcp-I2eXvcMOsALLRBD-sFxqdWJOhmnBBPA/edit?pli=1

Yes, there still is such an event. The Pandemic hasn't killed it. I hope everyone who goes, is careful and has fun. In that order, please?

https://apt613.ca/tips-on-what-to-see-at-oiaf-2023/

Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out an alternative to epsilon Eridani for Axanar's host star. This leaves me with a history question: how much of the local galactic region was already charted out by the Vulcans before first contact with Earth?

I don't think they knew about Axanar - the planet or the species - going by "ENT: Fight or Flight". So, while the first contact between Earth and Axanar may well have happened at epsilon Eridani, I don't think that species' homeworld should be there as well.

No matter who designed a printed prop for any given TV show or movie made in California over the past century, it seems that one company managed to corner the market for printing them out:



If there are similar operations in Vancouver, Toronto, Montréal...? I don't know who they are yet. I expect to find out.

This comes as a genuine shock:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/instant-brands-bankruptcy-1.6874487

Inspired by work-related reading, yes.

I started wondering this morning if such was now underway. Did a web search and I've found that the debate about that has been underway for at least the last two or three years. Wondering now about your informed opinions on the matter.

Guess which company lost and why.

Never mind, here's some evidence.

https://pressprogress.ca/saskatchewan-party-corporate-donor-received-60-million-medical-contract-after-crown-corporation-shut-down/

I'm listening to The House on CBC Radio One this morning as I type this paragraph. Upstairs in the laundry room, I've started cleaning my bedding. I expect that laundry chore to take up most of the waking hours of this morning.

The job search also continues, yes, even on weekends. No, I don't record in my job search diary every single e-mailed job alert I'm subscribed to via the federal job bank, Indeed, Workopolis, Jobillico, assorted private firms and federal agencies. After nine months, I'm already at 250 pages in Apple Numbers-formatted entries in said job search diary, and that would probably triple the number of entries to keep track of. At minimum.

Noting that today is International Human Rights Day. I wish I could donate to organizations I consider worthy of support right now. One more reason why I continue the job search.

Also, it leads to thinking of Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem. Macklem recently made comments to the effect that bringing the inflation rate under control again requires some of us to be unemployed. Or so many of us seem to be reading between his messages' lines at the moment.

Well, now it seems that the Pandemic changed the national conversations about society. Right?

In the first months of the Pandemic, a lot of us found ourselves (staying) out of work whether we liked it or not. Not because of our ability to work, or willingness to work, or lack of either. It happened because working in ways that were "normal" pre-Pandemic had become hazardous to the health of most of us. At least until we figured out masking, vaccines and so on. Unemployment had become a duty to our neighbours and our country/countries instead of a survival problem to be solved.

So, if unemployment can become a duty for reasons of public health and safety - which it had - we had things like the CERB programme and the modified (un)employment insurance programme to help many of us cope with carrying it out. Not everyone who needed that help got it, not everyone who got it needed it. That's being looked into, with varying degrees of good faith depending on which level of government in which part(s) of the country are looking into it.

And now, to deal with the renewed "scourge" of inflation...Macklem argued about a week ago - as I write this - to the effect that some of us were going to have to either become or stay unemployed due to the interest rate hikes he had the Bank of Canada put into place in order to deal with that.

Wonderful.

So here we are. Macklem has, in my opinion, reopened the door about Universal Basic Income as an idea that it's finally time to put into action.

More on this as I get through today, I think.

Prof. Michael Geist: "The longstanding debate over whether Bill C-18, the Online News Act, requires payment for linking came to an end yesterday. Government officials admitted that even basic quotes from news articles that include a hyperlink to the original source would scope user posts into the law and require platforms such as Google and Facebook to negotiate payment for the links. As noted below, even that position may understate the impact of the bill, which appears to also cover a user post of a news quote without a link. In other words, merely quoting a few sentences from a news article on an Internet platform is treated as making news content available, which triggers a requirement for the platforms to negotiate payment. This position runs counter to Canada’s copyright obligations under the Berne Convention and has no place in a country committed to freedom of expression."

How will this be made to affect us as individual internet users/publishers?