[Thanos]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

You are assuming Libertarianism comes only in one flavour. Just like it's opposite, Authoritarianism, it is available in many shades of grey.

In Alberta specifically though, we know exactly what sort of Reform Party/"fiscal" conservative build-flavour of libertarianism we'd get stuck with. It already happened to us during the Klein years and in certain respects the province never recovered from it. Having a boom economy generating that much royalty income during those years was really the only thing that shielded Alberta from the very worst repercussions of such an economic ideology.

[Scape]

UCP MLA criticizes Alberta Health Services salaries in light of ICU shortages

[DrCaleb]

Irony. Same group that is cutting nurses salaries is bitching because they had to 'pay well to get the best people'.

[DrCaleb]

Alberta energy 'war room' launches Times Square ad, expert questions campaign

[DrCaleb]

Experts, parents demand province 'go back to the drawing board' following ATA curriculum report

[DrCaleb]

[bootlegga]

'It's really scary': Alberta physicians face more aggressive, misinformed patients

[DrCaleb]

Kevin J. Johnston gets 18 months in jail for violating hate speech order against Paramount Fine Foods owner

[Thanos]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Kevin J. Johnston gets 18 months in jail for violating hate speech order against Paramount Fine Foods owner

Can we deport the evil fucker later to back where he came from, i.e. Ontario?

[DrCaleb]

$1:

158 Albertans with COVID-19 reported their illness to province's multimillion-dollar app


The Alberta government will spend $4.3 million by year's end on a contact tracing phone application that has notified about 1,500 people of potential exposure to COVID-19.

Months after Alberta scaled back contact tracing efforts, the government still has contracts with Deloitte and IBM to maintain and upgrade the beleaguered ABTraceTogether app, which launched in May 2020.

Although 317,000 people have downloaded the app onto their phones, only 158 had entered a positive COVID-19 test result into the app between its May 2020 launch and last week, according to Alberta Health.

"That's an infinitesimal fraction of the number of people who have been exposed to COVID in the province," said Dr. James Talbot, a professor of public health at the University of Alberta and Alberta's former chief medical officer of health.

Nearly 306,000 people tested positive for COVID-19 in Alberta since the pandemic began.

. . .

Talbot said that integration of manual contact tracing with automated tracking is what distinguished ABTraceTogether from the federal government's COVID Alert app.

Last year, the Alberta government was adamant about using its own app — and not COVID Alert — because it provided data to contact tracers.

Abandoning widespread contact tracing made the app less useful, Talbot said.

. . .
The government is set to pay Deloitte a total of $1.7 million for its work on the app. IBM also has a $2.6-million contract to provide maintenance and support.

"Four million dollars for 158 usages of the app seems quite expensive and a very inefficient use of tax dollars," Fenniak said.

Health Minister Jason Copping's office did not respond to a request for an interview.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton ... -1.6202636




And because of Google and Apples' policies, only one app per category is allowed to use certain Operating System features, so the Provincial app wasn't allowed to collect BlueTooth data in the background, so Apple users on the Provincial app had to leave the app running on the screen, and the screen unlocked, for it to work. But the Federal app could.

The Provincial and Federal app did the same job, with the same privacy level. But $4M because TDS.

[bootlegga]

Did you know the Canadian Energy Centre has a YouTube channel?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC71zRy ... g/featured

166 subscribers and maybe 8000 views...that's only $180,000 per subscriber and about $3500 per view!

Talk about a great return on investment!

[DrCaleb]

bootlegga bootlegga:

Did you know the Canadian Energy Centre has a YouTube channel?

I must subscribe to their newsletter!

[DrCaleb]

What [Albertans] need to know about ballot-box questions in the Oct. 18 election

So there will be two ballots, one with municipal candidates, and one with UCP partisanship.

Remember, you can take any ballot, and give it back to the elections official and tell them you do not wish to vote that ballot. It will be recorded differently than a spoiled ballot.

[Thanos]

Trying to figure out which classic Simpsons gags apply best to today's Alberta and sadly realizing that far too many of them are absolutely perfect for our current situation. The UCP certainly has an identical resemblance to the perpetual Springfield tire fire, that's for sure. And the War Room could easily pass for the 1000-foot tall escalator to nowhere.

[DrCaleb]

"Monorail" would be the war room.