sbv

I try to collect conversation starters so I have things to talk about with people I like.

Some of them are general and work on anyone, like: "I'm moving soon!" or "how was your weekend?" or "did you see that ludicrous display last night?". Others deal with shared interests or common friends, so they're person specific.

What's a word to describe collecting conversation starters? Borrowing from other languages is legit.

Yellow Dot studios has been releasing YouTube videos trying to mobilize "populist anger" over the climate crisis.

What you should not do:

Experts have for years pointed out that’s a bad idea – and now Apple is officially warning users not to do it.

“Don’t put your iPhone in a bag of rice. Doing so could allow small particles of rice to damage your iPhone,” the company says in a recent support note spotted by Macworld. Along with the risk of damage, testing has suggested uncooked rice is not particularly effective at drying the device.

What you should do:

If your phone isn’t functioning at all, turn it off right away and don’t press any buttons. The next steps depend on your specific circumstances, but broadly speaking: dry it with a towel and put it in an airtight container packed with silica packets if you have them. Don’t charge it until you’re sure it’s dry.

Since the congregation took naloxone training in March, there’s been seven outside St. Albans. But that number is quite modest. At the drop-in centre beneath the church, where some of Ottawa’s most afflicted seek daytime refuge once the overnight shelters close, they’re doing at least one [naloxone application] a day.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller ... said there is a correlation between the influx of international students and temporary workers and the housing shortage in this country

It sounds like they're going to crack down on "colleges" fleecing international students:

He said he plans to demand that provinces, such as Ontario, stop licensing substandard colleges offering a poor experience to international students and said he may consider refusing study permits if they do not clamp down on colleges churning out international graduates like “puppy mills.”

The documents, obtained through an access to information request, consist of dozens of pages of communications between officials at Alberta Health, the government ministry, and Alberta Health Services, the provincial health authority. They show that, in addition to ordering AHS to remove references to specific vaccines, the government instructed the health authority to limit information on vaccine benefits and efficacy.

and

Public health experts have said these paltry [vaccination] numbers are partly to blame for the fact that Alberta’s hospital wards and emergency department waiting rooms are now overflowing with patients. The Globe and Mail reported last week that some doctors have said the situation is worse than it was during the height of the pandemic.

I don't know how these things usually work, but it seems like overreach for elected officials to tell public health officers how to do their jobs.

A litigious developer doesn't like it when people call him out.

And he's done it before:

In 2010, Banks's company Pan American Properties filed a million-dollar lawsuit against two Charlottetown residents who had appealed a permit to allow a hotel to be built in downtown Charlottetown.

...

The commission said Pan American "showed disrespect for the legislated role and mandate of the Commission as a quasi-judicial body...

A litigious developer doesn't like it when people call him out.

And he's done it before:

In 2010, Banks's company Pan American Properties filed a million-dollar lawsuit against two Charlottetown residents who had appealed a permit to allow a hotel to be built in downtown Charlottetown.

...

The commission said Pan American "showed disrespect for the legislated role and mandate of the Commission as a quasi-judicial body...

3,000 keyboard warriors of the Eurozone

The murderer of Ashley Noelle Arzaga has been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 10 years. He severely injured the woman who restrained him.

In June, Justice Sukhail Akhtar ruled that the stabbing amounted to an act of terrorism due to its links to so-called “incel” ideology, which stands for “involuntary celibate,” a fringe internet subculture dominated by men who blame women for their lack of sexual relations.

It’s believed to be the first time in Canada that a court has made a finding of incel-motivated terrorist activity.

Half of the people polled by Ipsos for the MNP survey say that to save money they are staying home more often and a third are socializing less. This is especially evident in younger Canadians and those with an income of less than $40,000, the survey said.

But wait, it gets worse:

Nearly half of respondents say they don’t believe they will be able to cover their living expenses over the next 12 months without going further into debt, up two percentage points from the previous quarter.

I'm guessing some of this debt includes student loans and car loans:

Credit card balances hit a record high of $107.4 billion in the second quarter, with average non-mortgage debt for consumers rising to $21,131, according to Equifax Canada

I'm always suspicious of this kind of poll. Every year or two we seem to get a poll saying our financial health is abysmal, but time passes and the rate of bankruptcies/insolvencies stays around the same. I guess this one is different because of the increasing cost of living.

The OAS bonus is being given to well-off seniors. As more and more affluent Boomers retire, that's going to put a strain on federal finances.

(Note that OAS is different from GIS, which is available to low income seniors)

Last year, the Liberals boosted OAS by 10 per cent for seniors 75 years and older, claiming it would help poorer senior citizens. That claim is nonsensical – if the government wished to help poor seniors, it already has a tailor-made program at hand: the Guaranteed Income Supplement. (The income cutoff point is much lower than for the OAS, just $21,456 for individuals.) Any OAS reform should start with scrapping that 10-per-cent increase and targeting those funds narrowly to low-income seniors who receive the GIS.

Last year, the federal government spent $69.4-billion on elderly benefits. That will jump to $101.3-billion in fiscal 2029.

Clawbacks of the benefit ($8,492 a year) start when an individual’s taxable income reaches $81,761 but even those making up to $134,626 receive reduced payments, or $137,331 for seniors over 75 whose OAS entitlement is increased by 10 per cent. For individuals who deferred receiving OAS in exchange for higher monthly payments, that ceiling is considerably higher, around $170,000. And those clawbacks are assessed on an individual, not a household. A household made up of two seniors eligible for the maximum OAS could have a combined income of about $340,000 and still receive a small monthly payment from Ottawa.