Tag: news

TRUMP GETS STUFF DONE BY DOING NOTHING

I don’t know how to say this.

I have a new-found appreciation for Donald Trump.  No, wait, I didn’t say that.

I have a new-found respect for Donald Trump.  Hell no, I didn’t say that either.

So what am I trying to say?

How about this?  The man has had more effect as president than just about most other presidents, and he’s not even the president.  It’s absolutely bizarre how many things are in a fire-drill frenzy just because this guy mouths off on his Truth Social platform.

Entire nations tremble.  The leaders of those nations fall all over themselves to get inside the arc of his punches, including our own prime minister.  Look at those pictures from Mar-A-Lago.

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MFIPPA: WHERE TOWN INFORMATION GOES TO DIE

This morning I read the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

Then I took two extra-strength Tylenol.

Listen, if you’ve got absolutely nothing to do this Friday night, and I mean absolutely nothing to do, then you might want to nestle into your favourite chair, choose a libation that fits the mood — none that would come to mind, unless you had several of said libation —give the dog at your feet a couple of encouraging head-pats, and dig into this document.  If you felt there was nothing on television before all of this, I assure you you’ll change your mind once you start getting into it.

If you have a family member you absolutely detest but that familial protocol dictates you get them something as a stocking stuffer, print this thing out, wrap a pretty bow around it, and stick it in there.  Same for office parties where there’s a Secret Santa kind of thing going on.  If you got Bill from accounting, here’s your chance to really throw a f**k into his Christmas.

I now feel I’ve got a deeper appreciation for the intransigence that town staff, well some of them anyway, have for not being open with information.  For showing the public the hand when the public makes a request for information.  For going into closed meetings to conduct their backroom machinations away from any prying eyes that might upset their apple cart.

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RENFREW TOWN COUNCIL MEETING 10/12/24: SCOUTING REPORT

A lot of times you get what you pay for, and then sometimes you just don’t.

Some scouting report this is going to be, what with no high human drama to report on, no scandalous utterances, no gotcha moments, no fisticuffs like we see in some legislative gatherings.

Just business.  Present/discuss/vote/table/next.  Like I said, just business.

Coulda just stayed at home and watched some hoops on the tube.

Still, though, I’m glad I didn’t.

It’s not like I know everything about everything, and showing up to a Renfrew Town Council is an education of sorts, something I mean earnestly.  Democracy is a complex beast, and one of those things that seems to be viewed from a lot of different perspectives.  Braving freezing rain, like everyone else present did, is something one has to consider doing if one wants to truly understand, not just the issues and policies, but the mechanics and procedures of local democracy at work.

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WHEN A MAN’S MURDER BECOMES COMEDY

You’d think they arrested Robin Hood.

Luigi Mangione is simply this:  A guy in a hood with a 3D-printed weapon with silencer intent on ending the life of an unsuspecting father and husband as the latter walked to work in the early morning hours of New York City last week.

Is it only in America where a guy like this gets to be a folk hero?  Probably not, but as in all things, America does it bigger and louder, so here we are, some of us, finding humour at the assassination of a fifty year-old insurance executive, Brian Thompson.  And making little Luigi the poster boy for the righteous fight against corporate greed.

I’m not a big fan of corporate greed myself.  I’ll be right there at the start of the line when it comes to criticizing the actions of places like banks and insurance companies.  If they even knew about me and my commentary, they would consider me to be a hostile.  But that doesn’t mean they’re going to kill me.  And it doesn’t mean I’m going to kill them.

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RENFREW TOWN COUNCIL: MEETING PREVIEW 10/12/24

It’s Tuesday, December 10th and everyone’s phone calendar is beeping and pinging, flashing lights and spitting out confetti.  Because tonight is the next episode of a Renfrew Town Council meeting, a must-have on any self-respecting phone calendar app.

What makes tonight so special?  Well, nothing, really.  I mean there’ll be some stuff, because there’s stuff enclosed in the 200 page agenda output, so sure, there’ll be some stuff.

Will there be the push and pull, the thrust and counter-thrust of argument and ideas?  Will there be a clash of philosophical and ideological narratives?  How about giant personalities, standing out and apart from the pack, voices ringing in oratorical hyperbole, inducing tears of inspiration?

In order of appearance, the answers would be no, no, and, well,  no.

If you want that kind of thing, maybe you should just stay at home and wait for something to happen there.  Then maybe go to bed.

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RENFREW’S MASTER TRANSPORTATION PLAN: PATHWAYS TO THE FUTURE

One agenda item for Tuesday evening’s Renfrew Town Council Meeting is the formal introduction of the town’s Master Transportation Plan, a roadmap into the future development of Renfrew’s transportation network as the town grows over the next twenty to thirty years.

Organized around short, medium, and long-term time frames, the plan includes a series of maps/diagrams that display some of the transportation options being looked at. Those maps and diagrams are provided below in the gallery, while the presentation documents are located in full at the bottom of the page.

It’s not my intention here to re-write an already well-written document. BT Engineering, the engineering consultancy group preparing the document, has done a really good job of explaining the underpinning rationale behind their ideas, their scientific methodology, and taking into account the wide array of factors that need to be considered before moving forward with projects that are inextricably linked, as the short term transitions to the medium term, then the medium to the long.

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ELON MUSK AND HIS FALCON 9 ROCKET. MILITARY RESUPPLY IN THE EXPRESS LANE.

Back in late August I had to endure the experience of giving praise to Elon Musk, something I’m loathe to do given the fact that the man is a snot-bag adolescent begging for a go with a fully automatic bitch-slap machine.  I’d even volunteer to stand there and keep plugging loonies into the damned thing to keep it going, like I do at the car wash, only with way more fun attached to the experience.

At that time I was giving Elon props for achieving something that absolutely blew me away:  the vertical recovery of the Falcon 9 booster rocket used to propel a demo cargo into near-Earth orbit.  Booster rockets previously would splash down in oceans to be recovered, but they weren’t reusable, and the Falcon 9 is.  That fact alone cut the expense of firing things into space dramatically, making all manner of applications possible.

Including military applications.

I’m not talking about Star Wars here, although I’m sure that something along those lines is only a matter of time.  Weaponization of technology has been around for as long as humans figured out that It was possible to kill one another with things other than their bare hands, so none of that should come as a surprise.  In fact, much of the everyday technology we use in the most benign of daily applications likely had its start as a military application.

But today I’m not going to discuss war-craft or space-conducive fighting platforms.  Today’s topic has to do with something a little less glamorous yet probably more effective and important to any military effort anywhere.  

The idea of logistics and supply.

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AUSTRALIA TO BAN SOCIAL MEDIA FOR KIDS UNDER SIXTEEN

Australia has passed legislation that forbids children under the age of sixteen from having social media accounts.  To be clear, this is not a cellphone ban so far as I currently understand it, but rather something targeted at kids’ ability to sign up for social media accounts in the first place.  I guess the feeling is that, once you take the social media out of the phone, the device just becomes this inert piece of irrelevant technology.

Yeah, right.

In the Australian situation, being monitored breathlessly by provincial governments here in Canada who like to make big noises that have little impact, the gatekeepers, the people responsible for ensuring compliance with the age requirements, are the creators and operators of the social media companies that are being shut out of one of their most lucrative markets.  There’s those damned foxes again, in charge of the gate to the hen house, so to speak.

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COUNCIL BRAKE-CHECKS STAFF INFO-TECH RECOMMENDATION

In a way, it seemed that Wednesday morning’s Town Council meeting, at least the open part of it, was the relative political equivalent of a McDonald’s drive-thru window, in that you got what you were looking for much quicker than had you gone for the regular in-store experience.  At least for me, anyways, since Council then went into closed session, please don’t get me started.

But in that brief period of sunshine, important work was done, and that’s not being sarcastic.

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TOWN COUNCIL AND CLOSED SESSIONS. THE RULE RATHER THAN THE EXCEPTION.

I don’t think I’ve seen Renfrew Town Council at its best.  I don’t know if it has one.

So far as I’ve been able to determine from a first-hand point of view, there is no best to be had, unless they really crank it up behind closed doors, where they kick everyone out of the room so that they can talk about the real stuff, the stuff that people want answers to.  I can only assume they’re talking about important things in there, but how would I know?  As I said, I, and anyone else present, have been shown the door.  Only the so-called primary actors remain, the inner circle, the sanctum, the privileged few.  The ones who matter.

The foxes slamming the door of the henhouse once inside.

After close to three hours of the eyeball-bleeding, public-facing facade of “openness and transparency,” this council will often go into closed session.  Top secret, hush-hush and all that.

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