This is an award winner from the New York City Drone Festival. Creating a video like this one would be illegal under Canada’s new drone laws.
Summer in the Cities
Excellent video by Tourism Saskatchewan on life in Saskatchewan’s two largest cities.
Would Jesus Wear a Sidearm?
30 Days of Genius: Caterina Fake
Caterina Fake joins Chase Jarvis on 30 Days of Genius.
Baristas Reveal How They Really Feel When You Don’t Tip for Coffee
Okay, I generally tip well but at coffee shops, my tip (if I am alone or am just buying a coffee for myself and someone else) is 100%. Now I don’t get fancy coffees. I want a dark roast that is black and that is it but I always tip the full cost of my coffee.
At a time when the very idea of tipping has been brought into question, the debate surrounding how much you should tip at coffee shops remains confusing. Should tipping for a two-dollar drip coffee be the norm, or is that extra dollar only called for when you’ve ordered something complicated, like an extra-foam soy chai latte with sugar-free hazelnut syrup? The questions don’t stop there. Is dropping your fifty-cent change into the tip bucket basically an insult? And: Are baristas mad when you don’t tip at all?
We spoke to a handful of current and former baristas about how they feel about tipping and whether they notice when you don’t tip. (They do.)
The general consensus seemed to be that while baristas almost always make a mental note of whether you tipped or didn’t, they’re only really bothered by a lack of tip when the order is complicated, and they had to go above and beyond.
“I always notice,” a barista in an East Williamsburg café told me. “I’m not usually irritated unless the order is really big, like five or six drinks, and the person doesn’t tip me anything. I just put all this effort into this with this huge line of people, and there was nothing extra that I got out of it.”
She added that tips are appreciated for small orders, too.
It gets complicated when I order a sandwich or something else because there is now math involved but I still do the 100% tip for the beverage and something extra for the sandwich. I get pretty good service when I go for coffee and I don’t think this makes it any better but I have had baristas come up to me and thank me for the tip which lets me says, “thanks for the awesome coffee”. That always makes both of us feel pretty great.
One other thing is that when I am in Starbucks and the barista goes out of their way to do something nice for me, I let their corporate head office know online. I did that a few times and word goes down the chain really, really fast to the barista. Twice they have realized it was me and have gone out of their way to thank me. For them it was a really big deal and that makes me happy as well.
How Loneliness Begets Loneliness
“I’m clearly a textbook case of the silent majority of middle-aged men who won’t admit they’re starved for friendship, even if all signs point to the contrary,” wrote Billy Baker in his recent exploration of male loneliness in The Boston Globe.
Perhaps one reason the piece made so many internet rounds is just how many people could relate: Last year Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned that Americans are “facing an epidemic of loneliness and social isolation.”
Though “I’m going to die alone” is the common grumble among single people, scientifically, it’s more like, “I’m going to die if I’m alone.” A lack of social connections can spark inflammation and changes in the immune system, so lonely people are far more likely to die prematurely. Loneliness is more dangerous than obesity, and it’s about as deadly as smoking. The threat is considered so serious that England has created an entire “Campaign to End Loneliness.”
But in a cruel twist, the loneliest among us are set up to get lonelier still. People with few social connections experience brain changes that cause them to be more likely to view human faces as threatening, making it harder for them to bond with others.
Carvin: Unpredictable Trump may make Syrian situation worse
Excellent column in the Ottawa Citizen
First and foremost, governments around the world will be taking notice of the speed at which the Trump administration appears to have engaged in a major about-face with regards to its policy on Syria. Just last week, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley stated that the U.S. was no longer interested in removing Assad from power. This echoed Trump’s comments throughout his election campaign that he was focused more on defeating the Islamic State than on forcing Assad to step down, as well as his actions to prevent Syrian refugees from entering U.S. territory.
Yet, within three days of the Assad regime’s alleged sarin gas attack which killed more than 70, Trump appears to have radically changed course, describing the U.S. airstrike as a response to an attack against innocent Syrian civilians. While his motivations may have been to demonstrate that he is willing to act where his predecessor did not, this is a major about-face in terms of both rhetoric and actions in an extremely short period of time.
Moreover, the U.S. appears to be communicating the significance of this action in an incoherent way, making an assessment of whether or not this is a longer-term change in U.S. strategy difficult. While Trump noted in his Thursday address that years of inaction and the deteriorating situation in Syria represented a threat to U.S. security, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson almost simultaneously released a statement indicating that U.S. policy in Syria was largely unchanged.
In the international system, it is true that countries sometimes benefit from being unpredictable. In particular, it may make rivals less likely to engage in actions that will test or that could potentially provoke. However, it is not clear that this level of uncertainty will benefit the U.S. – or any country – in the long term.
Major countries such as China seek a stable, predictable U.S. as they try to chart their own foreign policy. President Xi Jinping, who is visiting Trump at Mar-A-Lago this week, was given a front-row seat to Thursday night’s events. He may very well take this as a troubling sign that China cannot take the Trump administration’s word as to what its foreign policy priorities are or that it is willing to keep its promises.
Already, U.S. officials gave warning this week that “all options are on the table” when it comes to dealing with North Korea’s advancing nuclear program – something the U.S. is looking to China to cooperate on. Xi may see the actions in Syria as a sign that the U.S. will be willing to go it alone in North Korea as well.
U.S. allies, including Canada, have shown some support for the attacks, but there can be little doubt that they too see the airstrikes as yet another indicator that the U.S. will behave unpredictably under Trump. Without a sense of American priorities, or the sense that these priorities may change quickly, it will be difficult to make foreign policy decisions where the U.S. is involved.
As such, while the Trump administration’s airstrikes (its first directly targeting the Assad regime) may be seen by some as a sign that the world’s superpower is finally willing to act in Syria, these actions may have made solving the problem there worse. While U.S. intentions and policies for the region are unclear, and while it is an unpredictable actor, it will be difficult to bring together the international coalition necessary to solve the civil war. A strong ceasefire, diplomatic solution and aid for the humanitarian crisis in Syria will only come about with strong, stable U.S. leadership, not unilateral symbolic attacks.
The Forger
As a teenager, Adolfo Kaminsky saved thousands of lives by forging passports to help children flee the Nazis. He spent his life helping others escape atrocities around the world.
It’s back (finally)
A few weeks ago I was just about ready to hit delete on Bridge City. After crashing the site and the database in May of 2016, it has been a long crawl back to getting the archives rebuilt and restored. Several hours some nights and not a lot of progress being made.
Also just being sick for the last two years has meant that I haven’t been shooting very much. Over the last 90 days I doubled down and spent a lot of late nights editing, uploading and researching a lot of Saskatoon history and architecture. This week I finally hit 600 Saskatoon posts on the site and about 800 posts overall. Of course if you dig deeper you will notice some bios about architects, neighborhood histories and all sorts of tidbits hidden in the site.
By far the biggest encouragement has been local business owners. I get so much feedback from them in terms of encouragement but also trivia and gossip along with tours and lunches of business places. When I say, gossip I mean salacious gossip about buildings. If those walls could hear, they would feel great shame.
As for this summer, I have a shot list that I want to shoot and reshoot. I have better cameras and lenses since I started this project. Neighorhoods and streets that I want to finish off this summer are Silverspring, Lawson Heights Suburban Area, River Heights, Silverwood Heights, Factoria, Lakeview, North Park, Hampton Village, Sutherland, Montgomery and more of downtown. Especially 4th Avenue.
How To Be A World-Class Creative Pro w/ Joe McNally & Chase Jarvis
I really liked this video interview with two of my favorite photographers, Chase Jarvis and Joe McNally. It’s an hour long interview but I loved every second of it.
7 Photojournalism Tips by Reuters Photographer Damir Sagolj
What are the key tips to shooting great news photography? This video by award-winning Reuters photographer Damir Sagolj, compiled by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, share his seven ideas on how to shoot news photos that engage audiences and tell a great story.
On the mess that is Saskatchewan today
I was pointedly asked the other day if I was going to seek a NDP nomination in the next election. I laughed out loud. Despite my philosophical differences with the Saskatchewan Party over the direction they are taking the province, that doesn’t make me a New Democrat or really anything. My soul has not been replaced by a pollster so that makes me ineligible to hold a Liberal Party membership.1 I also don’t play well with others.
I am not tremendously popular right now with many friends in the Saskatchewan Party. They are frustrated with me which is fair, most of Saskatchewan is frustrated with them. That being said, I have nothing really against the Saskatchewan Party, I think they are just doing a crappy job of running the province lately. That happens in three term governments.2
If the NDP was in power and did dumb stuff, I would be as frustrated with them as I am with the Saskatchewan Party.
My issues with the budget are not that things that had to be cut, I have been saying for years that the Saskatchewan Party is spending like… well the Saskatchewan Party and it wasn’t sustainable in a resource based economy. There had to be cuts.
I knew cuts would have to be made (even better, not spend the money in the first place like they have and save it in a sovereign wealth fund like smarter jurisdictions have) but the Saskatchewan Party took the easy political way out every time and now look at us.
Now they are cutting in the same way they are spending without much of a plan or goal. Highways are sacrosanct but libraries, subsidies for the deaf, intox shelters3 that take the pressure of police and the health region that don’t even add up to very much are all cut. It’s like the friend that we all have who bought too big of a house and can’t afford the mortgage now that their salary is less and instead of making hard choices goes, “I won’t water the lawn as much this summer”. Devastating to the lawn but doesn’t save any money for them.
in the end to save the infrastructure (and the developers who donate to the party), the rest of the province is stripped away. The message that was sent to all of us is, “don’t depend on the province for anything other then medicine, highways, and tax cuts for business”.
I think you are seeing something interesting in that for years SUMA and the municipal politicians deferred to the province and saw them as partners. No longer. Everyone is rejecting the provinces ideas to spend their reserves because no one believes that in two more years that funding is coming back. Even right wing municipal politicians did not like being blindsided and offloaded to. They see the provinces actions for what it is, offloading their mess onto school boards, urban municipalities, and libraries and no one likes it.
Wall suffers with what a lot of rural Saskatchewan politicians struggle with. It is saying goodbye to the rural Saskatchewan of his youth and thinking that if they built the highways or new hospitals, people would return. They didn’t. They sold to bigger neighbors and moved to Alberta to work in the oilfield. They moved to to the cities. The NDP didn’t kill the family farm and small towns, quarter million dollar tractors did. The scale stopped working for many farmers. You have no idea that amount of farmers who tell me the same thing. I hear again and again that the beloved family farm is corporate in scale in many parts of the province.
I see it every single time I am in southern Saskatchewan. Pristine highways and for 75 kilometers no signs of civilization other than the occasional old fence or random rotting granaries. The family farm has been replaced by the corporate farm. Abandoned town all over the place and replaced by towns that are literally rural retirement communities where people move into after they sell the farm. It’s not a bad thing but Saskatchewan is becoming increasingly urbanized because not only can you not afford to farm on a section and a half but when they do come available, they are bought up by the corporate farms.
Instead of moving Saskatchewan into the future, I fear the Saskatchewan Party has dragged us further and further back into the past with highways and infrastructure we couldn’t even afford in the good years. For those of you who are old enough to remember, this is what Alan Blakeney did. We had a massive economic boom in the 1970s and spending went up. Grant Devine was elected in 1982 and promised even more spending and less taxes. Then the drought hit and resource prices tanked. If it sounds familiar….
The good news is that Wall is no Grant Devine and is trying to right the ship but it using the same playbook Devine used and that is to pit the cities against the rural areas. The other good news is that revenue is still much higher than it was during the Romanow years where the government had about a third of the revenue coming in that is coming in now and was spending far more per capita to service a very high debt.
Of course like back then, we have the Premier grasping for straws trying to attract Calgary energy companies.
Anyone who knows anything about business centers is that businesses aren’t there because of taxes, they are there because of proximately of the market and also other companies. The consultants, engineers and competitors that those companies rely on are in Alberta. Their business interests are in Alberta. The companies that hire them and that they hire are in Calgary. Moving to Regina, Moose Jaw or Saskatoon may save them taxes but will hurt them in the long term. I have had so many people who drive through Lloydminister and say, look at Husky Energy but no, their headquarters are in Calgary as well. 
Companies flock together for many reasons but the biggest one is attraction of talent and they deal with each other. Proximately matters. Brad Wall should know this. If he doesn’t, I suggest he read some Richard Florida.
My father has a large regional oil company4 (or maybe not, we don’t talk) and despite being located hours outside of Calgary, he keeps an office there. You need to be where the action is. It isn’t in Saskatoon, Regina, Moose Jaw or Yorkton if you are an oil company. It is in Calgary.
It feels like from here Wall has no confidence in the provincial budget either. The non-stop tax breaks Saskatchewan was offering to business, the constant trips to Calgary to tell Albertans how cool we were, even a few weeks ago Wall was telling anyone who would listen that our economy was strong… wasn’t that supposed to lure companies here? It’s as if the Premier has little faith in their decisions either.
Of course, even the most basic of reading of the New West Trade Partnership shows that this is a violation of that trade agreement. It strictly prohibits luring businesses from one jurisdiction to another. Not only is he doing this, he is doing it with our money. This was after the government said they wouldn’t do that kind of thing again after the Skip the Dishes incident.
The alternative? When you make short term cuts to programs, they disappear. Part of me thinks this is what the government wants out of transformational change. Less libraries, less special needs programing for students (especially since that isn’t available in the rural parts of the province), less government at the municipal level. You know, traditional conservative fair.
Infrastructure on the other hand can be delayed and pushed back. It sucks and is costly but highways will still be there. Stadiums will still need to be built. Maintenance can be deferred with a new schedule. Even corporate tax cuts. They can be done when times are better. There are other options, especially when you add a billion dollars in revenue that should never have been cut (most economists say that sales tax cuts aren’t every effective in stimulating the economy, we essentially buy at the same level if the taxes are 6% or 5%. Any stimulus lasts about three months). You can also make targeted investments in high growth economies that don’t involve picking winners and losers. Finally you do everything you can to help people start new companies. Everyone thinks that starting companies in the boom is the time, no you want ones that can thrive in bad times.
Wall’s government just seems to be grasping at straws, making random budget line cuts they don’t understand the consequences of, and baffled that other levels of government aren’t listening to them and appreciating their feedback. I remind me a lot like the last term of Grant Devine. Other than that, it seems to be going great.
_____________________________________
1 Clearly a joke
2 Unless you are Peter Lougheed
3 I helped start the intox at The Lighthouse. I quit before it opened.
4 Contour Construction. Looks like it is still around. Also looks like he needs to me take some better photos of his equipment.
20 Years Covering Combat
As in the ruins of Beirut, Sarajevo or Stalingrad, the conflict in Syria is a sniper’s war. Men stalk their fellow man down telescopic sights on suburban streets, hunting a glimpse of flesh, an eyeball peering from a crack, using decoys to draw their prey into giving themselves away. During weeks spent tracking the fluid frontline of the battle, veteran war photographer Goran Tomasevic provided daily evidence of an escalating conflict that the UN estimates has killed over 100,000 people. Tomasevic photographed with exceptional proximity as combatants mounted complex attacks, managed logistics, treated their wounded, buried their dead – and died before his eyes.
This film was commissioned to accompany an exhibition of Goran’s images from Syria that appear the Visa Pour L’image international photojournalism festival that launches next week.
Saskatoon Public Library, facing $800K deficit, prepares to make ‘substantial’ cuts
The Saskatoon Public Library says it will announce “substantial cuts” to its operations, including possible job losses, as it faces an $800,000 budget shortfall following the provincial government’s budget elimination of its operating grant.
In a statement issued Thursday, it says the shortfall, the equivalent of the annual operating costs of the J.S. Wood Branch, has led the library to reduce its discretionary spending and join other provincial libraries in cancelling the One Province, One Library Card Service. On Tuesday, the SPL announced the cancellation of the service, effective Monday.
“These reductions are not enough to balance the operating budget, and SPL will be making substantial cuts to our existing operations, which will be announced in the coming weeks,” the library said in the statement.
Carol Cooley, director of libraries and CEO of Saskatoon Public Library, said Thursday she is taking her recommendations to the library board meeting next Thursday.
“The issue, I think we’re trying to convey is that (Education) Minister (Don) Morgan wants libraries to continue with holds without any further funding and we just can’t do that. We’re already going to have to make cuts to our organization, and then to ask Saskatoon taxpayers then to subsidize the cost of the provincial holds system, we can’t do that.
“We’d have to cut even more than $800,000 to do that,” she said.
In terms of what could be cut, Cooley said everything is on the line. The SPL is a service organization with a sizable staff, she said.
“If we have to cut operations, then it very well may impact jobs. It’s hard to see how it couldn’t. We’re looking at all kinds of ways.”
Unless you are an energy company looking for handouts, the provincial government isn’t going to be there for you or care about the consequences. You are just a line item that Kevin Doherty can cut.
The latest from the Brad Trost Campaign
In case any of you are wondering what Maurice Vellacott is up to, he is attacking Andrew Scheer on behalf of Brad Trost. I guess they are trying to lock up Saskatchewan Conservative voters who only care about abortion.
I know it looks like a fake but it came from the Trost camp today.
An important message from Maurice Vellacott
Former Chair of the Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus
Dear [Redacted but it’s not me]
My name is Maurice Vellacott, the former (retired 2015) Member of Parliament for the Saskatchewan riding of Saskatoon-Wanuskewin and long-time leader of Canada’s non-partisan Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus.
Words have consequences, which is why I will NOT be voting for Andrew Scheer in our party’s upcoming leadership election.
Last May, at the Conservative Party Policy Convention in Vancouver, Andrew defended the decision to remove support of marriage as a union between one man and one woman from our party’s policy declaration, calling the policy “anachronistic” (old fashioned). According to Campaign Life, Andrew “caved under pressure from homosexual activists and their media allies, to abandon his principles on marriage and the natural family.”
In September, at a press conference to announce his candidacy for the CPC Leadership, Andrew made other disturbing comments. He told reporters that his government would follow the Harper policy of not reopening the abortion debate, stating that his objective as leader would be to “unify the party.” When pressed to explain, Andrew repeated that as party leader or Prime Minister he would not reopen questions of abortion or same-sex marriage, stating “the caucus and party have already agreed those are settled.”
But this is simply untrue. Delegates at the Vancouver Convention may have voted to remove support for traditional marriage from our party’s policy declaration, but those very samedelegates voted in favour of a ban on gender-selection abortions which target baby girls just because they’re girls, as well as legislation to punish those who injure or kill an unborn child during a violent attack on his or her mother.
Contrary to Andrew’s assertion, rank and file members of our party clearly do not consider all issues that touch on abortion are “settled.”
What about allowing backbench Conservative MPs to bring forward private member motions and bills that touch on abortion or marriage? After reminding reporters of his own ruling as Speaker that MPs have a right to speak in the House regardless of whether their leader gives them permission, Andrew went on to say that “it’s not good for the team to do things like that. It doesn’t advance the cause of the things that we believe in. It doesn’t advance the cause of the party to be focusing on those things that even conservatives can’t agree on.”
Andrew’s statements that pro-life legislation may be unconstitutional are also wrong. The Supreme Court itself found that there was no Constitutional right to abortion in its landmark 1988 ruling in R. v. Morgentaler. On the contrary, the Court upheld the right of Parliament to legislate limits on abortion and explicitly invited it to do so.
I fear that too many activists are being “too clever by a half” in this campaign. In political life, we call it “drinking the Kool-Aid.” These activists are close enough to the political scene to convince themselves and others of their political savvy, but in reality, they are not close enough to know of, let alone understand, many of the more intricate workings of caucus and Parliament, and the subtle ways by which they are manipulated and MPs controlled.
It’s all very nice to talk – as activists like Alissa Golob and her friends do – of getting a majority of Conservative pro-life and social conservative MPs elected to Parliament. Initiatives like hers are commendable. But even if pro-life and social conservative Members represent a majority within the Conservative Caucus, pro-life bills and motions would still not pass given that most Liberal and NDP MPs will vote against them.
To be successful, bills need to be initiated by Government or, in the case of private Member’s bills, supported by the Government. That takes leadership from the top, something Andrew has repeatedly said he will not provide. Anything less will be a green light for advisors, staff and even some self-described pro-life MPs to pressure other caucus members into opposing pro-life initiatives. I know. As leader of the Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus I saw this happen again and again.
As to those “social conservative” MPs endorsing Andrew, my candid assessment based on personal experience is that many of them are “fair weather” social conservatives, worried more about their own promotion than they are about defending traditional marriage and the rights of the unborn. They rarely, if ever, fly their so-con” flag very high having discovered that the way to advance in the Party is by staying under the radar on crucial social conservative issues.
I believe Andrew Scheer has already drunk the “Kool-Aid.” His repeated characterization of the pro-life cause as “divisive” undermines social conservatives while strengthening our opponents, particularly because people believe that he himself is a committed social conservative.
Social Conservatives who believe Andrew Scheer will “deliver the goods” once elected should think again. We’ve all heard that line before, including from Stephen Harper and, most recently, Patrick Brown in Ontario. In reality, there is no secret plan. Andrew’s public pronouncements today will govern his conduct later.
That is why I am urging all social conservatives who support life to mark Brad Trost and Pierre Lemieux, in whatever order they prefer, as their first and second choices, on the mail-in ballot for our Conservative Party leadership selection.
Sincerely,
Maurice Vellacott
Does the letter flip five votes? Trost is polling at almost nothing and has no hope of victory. Vellacott’s letter offends Sheer’s supporters, and plus Vellacott quit politics and Saskatoon to live in Ottawa. Does anyone care what he says?
I assume the Jim Pankiw endorsement comes tomorrow.