It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, November 20, 2022
Neil Young says he will no longer tour 'unless the venues are clean'
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The Canadian icon explains why his environmental views
Musician Neil Young performs onstage at the 4th Annual Light Up The Blues at the Pantages Theatre on May 21, 2016 in Hollywood, Calif. (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
Neil Young has not performed live since September 2019, and it now seems that might have been his fans' last chance to catch the Canadian icon in concert.
Last year, Young told Rolling Stone that he was holding off on touring behind his latest Crazy Horse album at the time, Barn, because of ongoing COVID-19 concerns, telling the magazine, "I don't want to put people in danger. I don't want people to see me out there and think I think everything is okay. I don't think everything is okay."
And while the pandemic is still causing concern and complications among touring musicians, Young has added a more definitive reason why he may never hit the road again.
In a new interview with Q's Tom Power, promoting another new Crazy Horse album, World Record, Young explains that his environmental views, especially when it comes to eating sustainably, are something he refuses to compromise on, and which can be difficult to uphold when touring from city to city.
"When I look at the compromise that I would have to make to do that, the things that I don't believe in, that I'd have to endorse, it doesn't turn me on," Young tells Power. "I can deal with the power for the venue, I can make it clean. I can make the P.A. clean, the lights clean, the electricity in the building clean. I can clean up all my vehicles. I've got the right fuel. I can do all of that. But the food — all those places are fed by factory farms."
Young is referring to the industrial method of raising farmed animals, which has been criticized by environmental advocates as an intensive form of agriculture that prioritizes maximizing profits over the treatment of its livestock in addition to generating as much greenhouse gas emissions as "all cars, trucks and automobiles combined," as Greenpeace states.
Young has been speaking out against factory farming for years, and in 1985 he helped establish the annual Farm Aid concerts, which raise money for family farmers in the U.S. One of Young's last performances was at the 2019 edition of Farm Aid.
"I can't support it," Young continues, noting that most venues' foods are sourced from caterers who use factory-farmed foods. He notes that it can be difficult coming into venues, demanding "good food that has to be clean food, sustainably grown, and presented in a sustainable way."
Ultimately, Young states: "Fuel is half of it, and food is the other half."
When Power asks Young if that means he's no longer touring, Young replies, "Unless the venues are clean, and that they work that way, I won't be there."
"I've seen too much," he continues, "I can't do it. I believe in what I believe, and it's grounded in science. I know what's going on in the planet, what caused it, what we're continuing to do, and I cannot support buildings, organizations and companies that will not change that. If they change it, then I can consider going."
Listen to the full interview below.
34:40Neil Young on his new album and 50 years of Harvest.
Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young returns to Q to talk about his latest album with Crazy Horse "World Record." He delves into his love and grief over the world around him, plus the 50th anniversary of his legendary album Harvest.
Sudbury·Updated
Ontario auditor general gives eye-opening details of Laurentian University's insolvency and the fallout
EYE WATERING IS MORE LIKE IT
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Laurentian 'embraces' report, province pledges new
process for assessing universities' financial health
Bonnie Lysyk, the auditor general of Ontario, on Thursday released her full report on Laurentian University's insolvency. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press)
The Ontario auditor general's full report into Laurentian University's insolvency pulls back the curtain on the poor management and lack of transparency that propelled the school into new territory for publicly funded institutions.
The administration's unprecedented move to seek protection from creditors under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) on Feb. 1, 2021, allowed the university to continue operating while sorting out its financial situation. It ultimately cost 195 people their jobs — 116 of them faculty and 79 staff and senior administrators.
In the report released Thursday, Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk said the elimination of 76 programs affected the academic and career plans of an estimated 932 students.
She said the termination of long-held agreements with three federated universities in Sudbury meant a further 146 people lost their jobs.
Financial difficulties started prior to 2010
Lysyk said while there were other contributing factors, she put the primary blame for the university's financial collapse on a failed "build it and they will come" philosophy that started with a poorly planned and costly capital expansion at a time in 2010 when the university was already facing financial difficulties.
Lysyk said between 2010 and 2020, financial indicators showed Laurentian's situation was deteriorating, yet it decided to expand and upgrade its facilities and programs to increase enrolment, donations and research grants with no documentation showing it had a viable financial plan.
She said that in 2010, with debt levels rising, the university amended its capital debt policy to make it less restrictive.
From 2009/2010 to 2019/2020, Laurentian pursued six major capital projects that cost $168 million, including building the East Residence, a cardiovascular and metabolic research lab, the school of architecture, and campus modernization without adequate evidence or analysis to justify the investments.
The poor management of the university's financial affairs and operations was allowed to continue because of weak board governance and ministry oversight.- Bonnie Lysyk, Ontario's auditor general
"As the university began to amass more than $87 million in debt to pay for this capital expansion, the senior administration exacerbated the situation by making a series of questionable financial and operational decisions, including amending its internal policies to allow it to incur even more debt and increasing its senior administration's costs," Lysyk wrote.
"The poor management of the university's financial affairs and operations was allowed to continue because of weak board governance and ministry oversight."
Lysyk found that even as the university embarked on ill-advised major capital projects, it was paying bonuses to the person who proposed them.
"Laurentian's president and vice-chancellor (president) from 2009 to 2017 was given merit pay awards tied to pursuing the very capital projects that became significant contributing factors to the university's financial difficulties," the report said.
She noted the board approved maximum bonuses for the president of $14,000 each for completion of major capital projects like the architecture school and campus modernization, even though they weren't completed on time.
Laurentian pursued six major capital projects that cost $168 million, including the McEwen School of Architecture in downtown Sudbury, Ont., Lysyk said in her report. (Jonathan Migneault/CBC)
Breach of legislation
Lysyk made special mention of the costs associated with Laurentian's senior administration. She said they climbed by about 75 per cent between 2010 and 2020, worsening the university's financial difficulties. They were also in contravention of the province's rules on the issue.
"We also found that Laurentian breached provincial compensation-restraint legislation for broader public sector employees, compensating senior administration $389,000 more than legislation permitted, and that its recruitment of senior administrators lacked demonstrable fairness or rationale," she wrote.
Other points included in the report:
Laurentian incurred costs of $2.4 million on special advisers to the president and other senior administrators without documented justification, and $1.4 million in discretionary expense funds for senior administrators.
For the 11-year period up to April 30, 2021, Laurentian also spent $8.5 million in legal costs. Of this, $3 million was for CCAA preparations and $5.5 million was for non-CCAA related legal expenses (including $3.4 million for human resource and labour relations issues).
Unsegregated funds
Lysyk said as Laurentian's financial situation grew more dire, it turned to what it called "internal financing," which included an account into which funds, including employees' retirement health benefits and research money, were commingled with other funds.
She said although Laurentian spent some of the research money on capital projects, it still had a financial obligation to cover the research costs for which the funding was provided. As of April 30, 2021, that obligation amounted to $36.5 million.
Lysyk said $73 million in donations were also not segregated and may have been spent for unintended purposes. The university began segregating donor funds on Dec. 21, 2020.
The auditor general targeted poor board and senate oversight and lack of monitoring by the province as additional factors that allowed Laurentian to sink ever deeper into financial instability, and described how external advisers steered the sinking ship toward the CCAA.
The report said Laurentian's senate, which is responsible for academic matters, "did not routinely assess the financial sustainability of its individual program offerings."
"In March 2020, Laurentian began to consult with external counsel specializing in insolvency litigation who had raised the concept of CCAA with the University a year earlier, while providing other services," Lysyk wrote.
"Senior administration began planning for and initiating steps toward a CCAA filing, with its external legal counsel selecting the accounting firm of Ernst & Young (EY) to support that process."
Further, Lysyk said, the university hired three in-house government relations advisers who worked to lobby for provincial and federal government support, but has not filed any lobbying registrations since 2010, which may be a breach of legal requirements related to lobbying.
External advisers suggested insolvency
As the clock ticked toward insolvency, as late as the end of November 2020, Lysyk wrote that "board members were voicing concern that Laurentian's leadership had not made reasonable efforts to pursue options outside of CCAA, such as negotiations with the faculty union or seeking financial support from the government. They described Laurentian's insolvency lawyers as 'giddy with excitement to try something new.'"
Lysyk is making a number of recommendations to Laurentian's board of governors and senate to improve accountability and transparency, as well as to the Ministry of Colleges and Universities and the Office of the Integrity Commissioner of Ontario to ensure no other university finds itself in Laurentian's position.
The ministry said it is taking action.
"As an immediate step, the ministry is putting in place a new, robust process for assessing the financial health of universities and, in addition, will take appropriate measures to work with any institution that is facing financial concerns," it wrote in response to the report.
Lysyk said Laurentian's actions will have long-term effects, not only on itself and in Sudbury, but at other universities across the province.
"The longer-term implications of the CCAA filing are still playing out," Lysyk wrote in her summary.
"The loss of jobs and students will undoubtedly affect the economy of Sudbury, where Laurentian is one of the largest employers. The use of CCAA proceedings could make it more difficult for Ontario universities to acquire debt, or to hire and retain faculty. Quantifying the reputational damage to Laurentian has been more difficult, but one development was telling: as of mid-January 2022, high school student applications to Laurentian had dropped by nearly 44 per cent."
Jeff Bangs, chair of Laurentian University's board of governors, says it's incumbent the university learn from the auditor general's report. (Submitted by the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce)
Laurentian welcomes recommendations
In a statement to the media, Laurentian said it "embraces" Lysyk's recommendations.
"It is now incumbent on us to learn from her advice and, most importantly, accept and implement each of her recommendations," said Jeff Bangs, chair of Laurentian's board of governors.
"When combined with the external operational and governance reports the university has already obtained — and the commitments made to its stakeholders through the plan of arrangement — the university has a strong foundation to make much-needed changes and ensure the mistakes of the past are never repeated."
Nova Scotia
GHOST GEAR
Sperm whale found dead off Cape Breton after swallowing 150 kg of fishing gear
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Marine Animal Response Society says marine mammal died
of starvation due to plastic mass in stomach
CBC News ·
Members of the Marine Animal Response Society and the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative at the Atlantic Veterinary College perform a necropsy on a sperm whale in Cape Breton. (Submitted by the Marine Animal Response Society)
Marine mammal experts were shocked to find a sperm whale off Cape Breton, N.S., recently died with 150 kilograms of fishing gear in its stomach.
A necropsy last week found the whale had swallowed rope, nets, bait packaging and even a glove.
The Marine Animal Response Society says the finding highlights the serious issue of garbage and so-called ghost fishing gear in the oceans.
"I've never personally seen that much of any sort of debris or whatnot in an animal that we've opened up before," Tonya Wimmer, the society's executive director, told Information Morning Cape Breton.
The 14-metre-long male was found alive on Nov. 4, but looking thin, near the shore in Craigmore, which is near Judique on the west side of Cape Breton.
It later died and washed ashore down the coast.
Society executive director Tonya Wimmer says it's not uncommon to find plastics inside a marine mammal's stomach, but in this case the amount, shown above, was upsetting. (Submitted by the Marine Animal Response Society)
Wimmer said sperm whales are particularly vulnerable to garbage in the ocean.
"They feed by sort of vacuuming in squid and whatnot, usually at depth and so with these animals, they basically can sort of vacuum in and ingest other things that are down on the sea floor," she said.
It's not uncommon to find plastics inside animals' stomachs, but in this case the amount was upsetting, Wimmer said.
"It eventually leads to the animal not being able to feed and sadly, it's essentially starving to death, which is completely horrific."
Wimmer said the next task is to try and figure out exactly what was in the whale's stomach and where it came from, which may prove difficult because the tangled mass had been inside the whale for some time.
The federal government has already spent nearly $27 million on ghost gear cleanups and recently announced another $28.4 million will be available for individuals or organizations that want to help.
'Bad for the environment'
Cape Breton-Canso Liberal MP Mike Kelloway, parliamentary secretary to the minister of Fisheries and Oceans, said an additional $1.5 million has already been allocated to collecting gear tossed along the coast in September by post-tropical storm Fiona.
"The ghost gear is obviously a hardship for those that lose it, that can't reuse it, and also it's bad for the environment," he said.
Saturday, November 19, 2022
Twitter's crypto head and staff resign in mass Musk exodus
Emily Nicolle, Bloomberg News
Nov. 18,2022
The head of Twitter Inc.’s crypto development team has left the company, part of a mass exodus of employees since new owner Elon Musk issued a blanket ultimatum to staff.
Tess Rinearson, who was tapped to spearhead Twitter’s crypto team last year, posted a tweet late on Thursday with the salute emoji, followed by a blue heart -- the former being a symbol for departing Twitter employees to signal their goodbyes.
Rinearson also changed the Twitter bio on her now private account to “did not click the button”, referring to Musk’s requirement for all remaining staff to opt in to remain employed at the firm by clicking “yes” on a form before Thursday’s 5 p.m. Eastern Time deadline. If they did not respond, employees were offered three months’ severance.
She wasn’t the only exit from Twitter’s crypto unit that day, with Hamdi Allam, a senior software engineer on the project, also posting a tweet to say he’d left the business. Both didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Earlier on Thursday, so many employees had either decided to leave the firm or been dismissed that Twitter abruptly shuttered its offices. Musk had told staff to either accept his proposed “hardcore” work environment or leave, though in the final hours before the deadline, he tried to convince some key executives to stay.
Under Rinearson’s leadership, Twitter had implemented a tool allowing crypto art collectors to link a nonfungible token to their profile pictures, distinguishable by their hexagonal shape on users’ accounts. Rinearson was previously vice president of engineering at blockchain development firm Interchain, working on projects like Cosmos.
The future of Twitter’s crypto ambitions remained unclear on Friday, along with the social network’s ability to continue operating normally due to the amount of staff that had left the firm.
MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M
U.S. opened Live Nation probe before Taylor Swift ticket fiasco
Leah Nylen, Bloomberg News
Nov 18, 2022
The Justice Department is probing Live Nation Entertainment Inc. and its Ticketmaster unit over whether the entertainment giant is abusing its power over the live music industry, three people familiar with the investigation said.
The probe comes amid a debacle for the ticketing giant, which was forced to cancel public sales for Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour after its site crashed earlier in the week during massive presale demand.
Shares of Live Nation Entertainment fell as much as 9.5 per cent after the New York Times reported on the probe earlier Friday, and was down 7.3 per cent to US$66.49 as of 3:44 p.m. in New York.
The antitrust investigation began earlier this year, before the Swift ticketing fiasco. It was based on complaints by live event venues and ticketing companies, the people said, asking not to be named discussing a confidential probe.
The new probe is separate from court-ordered monitoring of Ticketmaster that the government imposed in 2019 in response to previous antitrust complaints.
The Justice Department declined to comment. Ticketmaster and LiveNation didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Scrutiny of Ticketmaster is building based on a rising chorus of complaints in recent months. The attorneys general of North Carolina and Tennessee said they were investigating consumer complaints over Ticketmaster and the Senate plans to have a hearing about it next month chaired by Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.
Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter, acquired Ticketmaster, the largest ticketing site in 2010, in a deal that received close scrutiny from regulators. The Justice Department approved the merger in a 2010 settlement that required Ticketmaster to license its ticketing software and divest some ticketing assets. In 2019, the DOJ’s antitrust division found that Live Nation and Ticketmaster violated the terms of that settlement and imposed new conditions, including an ongoing monitor.
Ticketmaster has perennially fielded complaints from fans and politicians about the price and availability of concert tickets. This summer the company came under fire when some seats for Bruce Springsteen shows were sold for thousands of dollars, using the company’s dynamic pricing mechanism. Ticketmaster said the highest-priced tickets accounted for a relatively small number of seats.
Swift’s concert sales fiasco has rekindled the ire. Many would-be concertgoers were approved by Ticketmaster’s verified fan process, which is designed to weed out ticket scalpers, only to find they were put on a waitlist. Others saw the site crash when they tried to buy tickets. The company ended up canceling sales to the general public, which were originally scheduled for Friday, citing unprecedented demand and limited supply.
Swift said the bungled presale for her upcoming “Eras Tour” concerts, was “excruciating” and that it was difficult to “watch mistakes happen with no recourse.”
Live Nation isn’t the promoter of the Swift shows, that’s done by AEG and Messina Touring Group. Nor is Ticketmaster the only seller. Swift added concerts in recent weeks to meet the demand. The artist hasn’t toured in years, and the album she released last month, Midnights, has been another strong seller.
US Justice Department investigating Ticketmaster, Live Nation over monopoly concerns
The US Justice Department is investigating Ticketmaster and Live Nation Entertainment to determine whether an abuse of power has occurred in the live music industry.
The New York Times reports that this investigation was already underway before Ticketmaster began making headlines for botching Taylor Swift’s concert ticket sales.
According to the news outlet, antitrust investigators have anonymously spoken to sources in the concert management field — such as venue operators — to see if Live Nation maintained a monopoly in the industry.
Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010, garnering much more power than they did individually in the last decade. The merger was approved by the Justice Department despite suspicion and opposition from others involved in the music industry.
In 2019, just before the pandemic disrupted business for everyone, Live Nation organized 40,000 events and sold nearly 500 million tickets via Ticketmaster. That same year, an investigation found that Live Nation had violated terms of its decree. The Justice Department demanded clarification on ticket sale practices with venues, reports the NYT.
On Friday, Taylor Swift spoke up against the corporation on her Instagram story as well.
@taylorswift/Instagram
“It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.”
She went on to add that there was a “multitude of reasons” why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and that she’s trying to figure out how the situation can be improved in the future.
“I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could,” she said. “It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.” Legal trouble brews for Ticketmaster Canada and Live Nation
This story comes just under a month after a class-action lawsuit was filed against Ticketmaster Canada over delays in refunding customers for tickets they bought to shows affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In April, Shayne Beaucage filed a lawsuit against Ticketmaster Canada and Live Nation, and it was certified as a class-action suit in Ontario in September. He now represents everyone in the class.
According to court documents, the plaintiff alleged that customers who purchased tickets to events that were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic were entitled to prompt refunds, in the original form of payment, under the terms of their contracts with Ticketmaster or under consumer protection laws.
Ticketmaster denied the allegations and said that by November 30, 2020, all ticket holders had been provided refunds, or the option to receive refunds, for all but 12 events in Canada that had been postponed, rescheduled, or cancelled after March 11, 2020, due to pandemic.
This excludes Quebec. The province has its own lawsuit against Ticketmaster Canada in progress.
In late September, a settlement agreement was proposed and Ticketmaster agreed to compensate certain members of the class by giving them $5 gift cards per eligible ticket purchased. The company would also have to pay $100,000 additionally to settle the class action, bringing the total costs to $137,545.
You could be eligible for credit if you bought tickets for any of the following events. These are the 12 events for which, as per Ticketmaster’s own admission, refunds were not available prior to November 30, 2020:
kmlaw.ca
In May of 2020, a person called Ryan MacIntyre helmed a class-action lawsuit against Ticketmaster Canada and Live Nation. With him were Canadians who purchased one or more tickets from the parties for events taking place after March 13 that year, that were postponed, rescheduled, or canceled.
If the settlement for Beaucage v. Ticketmaster Canada Holdings ULC et al. is not approved, litigation is expected to continue. Ontario Superior Court of Justice will hold a hearing on December 15 at 10:00 ET to share the verdict.
Taylor Swift: Antitrust Hero
The DOJ and multiple state attorneys general are investigating Ticketmaster following its disastrous handling of Taylor Swift's recent tour sale.
Taylor Swift’s legion of rabid fans might just be able to accomplish something decades of legal scholars, millions in political lobbying, and the Biden administration couldn’t: implement meaningful antitrust reform.
Sources speaking in a New York Times report Friday say the U.S. Department of Justice has launched an antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment, Ticketmaster’s parent company, following the disastrous fallout of the pop star’s most recent tour ticket sale implosion. The investigation into the ticket selling behemoth, long disdained by both consumers and artists alike, will reportedly revolve around whether or not it possesses anti-competitive monopoly power in the music industry.
Ticketmaster’s website crumbled earlier this week under the immense weight of Swift fans desperately attempting to purchase presale tickets for the artists’ “The Eras” Tour. On Thursday, the day Swift’s tickets were intended to become valuable to the public, Ticketmaster made the unprecedented decision to cancel ticket sales entirely. In a Tweet, Ticketmaster said they opted to cancel the sale due to, “extraordinary high demands on ticketing sales and insufficient remaining ticket inventory.”
Though the disastrous handling of Swift’s tickets will almost certainly come up in the investigation, DOJ officials have reportedly had their eyes on Ticketmaster for months, the Times notes. Investigators have spoken with music venues, and others within the industry to try and determine whether or not Ticketmaster’s notoriously noxious business practices amount to monopoly actions. The Live Nation Entertainment juggernaut is the result of a 2010 merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster who were both among the industry’s largest players at the time.
DOJ investigators aren’t the only ones looking into Ticketmaster either. This week, following a groundswell of complaints from Swift fans, the The Attorneys General of Tennessee and North Carolina each launched their own investigations into the company’s business practice to determine whether or not they violated consumer rights and antitrust laws. Members of Congress, meanwhile, are reportedly planning to hold a hearing by the end of the year where they will discuss Ticketmaster’s mishandling of the Swift ticket sales and other aspects of its business consumers have decried for years.
“Ticketmaster’s power in the primary ticket market insulates it from the competitive pressures that typically push companies to innovate and improve their services. That can result in the types of dramatic service failures we saw this week, where consumers are the ones that pay the price,” U.S Senator Amy Klobuchar wrote in a letter addressed to Ticketmaster.
Swift, who’s received her own share of criticism for her alleged complicity in the ticketing drama, spoke out against Ticketmaster this week in an Instagram post.
“There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward,” Swift wrote. “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could. It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”
The sustained outrage expressed by Swift fans has managed to fast track antitrust concerns related to Ticketmaster experts and advocates have nurtured for years. Earlier this year, an alliance of organizations led by American Economic Liberties Project launched a news campaign aimed at breaking up Ticketmaster. The coalition argues Ticketmaster sustained market dominance, which they say accounts for as much as 70% of the primary ticket and live event venues market, has exploited customers and held sports and music fans “hostage.”
“We are thrilled to see the Department of Justice Antitrust Division investigate Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s ongoing monopoly abuse of fans, artists, venues, and live events professionals,” the Break Up Ticketmaster Coalition said in a statement Friday. “This is a day of optimism and hope for over 40,000 people who have called on the DOJ to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster, a corporation that has bent and broken the industry to its will since its entities merged in 2010.”
Live Nation Entertainment did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
Swift fans’ massive public backlash this week is just the latest in a string of high profile vocal complaints raised against Ticketmaster. In October fans attempting to purchase tickets for a Blink 182 reunion tour were forced to pay exorbitant prices, in some cases well over $600, for general admission tickets. Those absurd prices are made possible, in part, due to Ticketmaster’s so-called “dynamic pricing” algorithm, an anti-scalping feature created in coordination with Bruce Springsteen. That model, which works somewhat like Uber’s surge pricing, is intended to measure the market price of a concert ticket and jack up prices high enough to effectively wean out resellers. In reality, the system ends up pricing consumers out of tickets entirely.
Elsewhere, critics have accused Ticketmaster of price gouging withholding tickets, and rolling out ever more onerous and difficult to parse “service fees.”
“Everyday Americans are being scammed and extorted by Ticketmaster for wanting to see their favorite sports teams and artists perform,” Helen Brosnan, Executive Director of Fight Corporate Monopolies said in a statement. “More than a decade later, their merger has resulted in consumers being held hostage by a company that uses its monopoly power to make everyone’s experience miserable—artists, concertgoers and sports fans, and independent venues alike. It should have never happened in the first place and the DOJ must step in and break them up.”
Mass layoffs don't deter tech workers as they stick with sector, look to startups
Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press Nov 17, 2022
When Mary Hailu learned she was being laid off from her executive assistant job at Toronto auto sales startup Clutch in June, all she could think about was her eight-year-old daughter.
"I was feeling very anxious, very worried about the future. I think I probably cried for two weeks and I still cry now, when I think about it."
Hailu's experience places her in a growing group of tech workers that have experienced a layoff this year as investor exuberance around the sector fades and companies re-examine payroll costs in preparation for a potential recession.
Despite the apparent downturn, tech workers like Hailu aren't fleeing the industry. A month after her layoff, Hailu was settling into a new role at a software startup.
"People in the tech industry are committed to the craft and they really are quite eager and quite motivated by what the industry has to offer," said Abdullah Snobar, executive director of the DMZ tech hub in Toronto.
"Although many are getting laid off, they're able to find new jobs quite quickly."
Several job boards show hundreds of tech openings at startups, big-name software companies and even banks, retailers and health care organizations even as Amazon.
A recent report from the Information and Communications Technology Council, a not-for-profit organization offering labour policy advice, predicted employment in the Canadian digital economy would reach 2.26 million by 2025, triggering demand for an additional 250,000 jobs.
But the near-term is offering many reasons for tech workers to be spooked.
Local startups — Clearco, Hootsuite and Wealthsimple — and global heavyweights — Meta, Twitter, Netflix, Microsoft, Oracle and Intel — have all made cuts in recent months.
Amazon.com Inc. began cuts this week that will reportedly slash 10,000 staff from its workforce, including several Canadians who announced their departures on LinkedIn.
Layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi has counted layoffs at 788 companies worldwide, resulting in at least 120,699 workers losing their jobs.
Several companies have also seen their valuations fall, which makes stock options less attractive, but workers are still sticking around.
Hailu's family recommended she look for work at a larger corporation, which they perceived to be more stable. Instead, she took a job with another startup because she felt she could make more of a difference at a smaller company.
"With larger corporations, it's difficult to make an impact. You don't always feel heard, sometimes you end up feeling like just a number," she said.
Tech culture is a big draw, Snobar agreed.
Tech companies offer splashy offices with foosball tables, free meals and even nap pods. Many treat workers to unlimited vacation, embrace flexible hours and foster more relaxed environments, where staff feel they can experiment.
"Sometimes in more traditional industries, you're told to think within the box," Snobar said. "There's too much bureaucracy and too much red tape and nobody wants to go back to that."
That's part of why Jermaine L. Murray, who was laid off from Toronto finance company Wealthsimple in July, is still focused on helping people find jobs at tech companies like Meta, TikTok, Shopify and Microsoft.
The radio-host-turned-recruiter took a job at the Toronto finance company because its leadership team supported diversity plans others might think were too bold.
"I said, 'My goal is to double the amount of Black people that work here. Are you going to get in my way or are you going to help me?'" he recalled.
"They said, 'tell us what we can do to help' and that's when I knew this is where I want to be."
He was later laid off, but it felt like "a breath of fresh air" because he realized he could build out Jupiter HR, his career coaching and recruitment business that places workers at tech companies including Wealthsimple.
It's common for tech workers to build companies during downturns, said Snobar. Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Uber and Airbnb all started during recessions and went on to be wildly successful.
Stella Alexandrova is hoping to repeat the pattern.
She got her "dream job" at Shopify Inc. in 2019, before COVID-19 lockdowns and a corresponding spike in e-commerce sales facilitated by the software giant soared.
Hiring was constant during that time and work was so "hectic" the growth lead was in "shock" a little over three years later, when she was laid off alongside some 1,000 colleagues.
"It was very sudden. We didn't even see it coming ... because I was so deep in my work," said Alexandrova, who lost her job in July.
"You kind of feel like this big part of your life is just over."
She logged off for the day to process the news that 13 per cent of the Ottawa company was out of work and as CEO Tobi Lutke admitted he had misjudged the growth of e-commerce.
Two days later, she decided to treat the cut as an opportunity. She started her own tech company, Mave, a trip planning app she long dreamt of building.
"I thought, 'I'm going to start running and then I'm not looking back,'" said Alexandrova.
"The layoffs were in the past and I was moving forward."
Canada's slumping housing market weighs on Home Capital's loans
Despite the market turmoil, Home Capital’s borrowers have continued to make payments on their mortgages.
Kevin Orland, Bloomberg News Nov 8, 2022
The Close Not shopping around for a better mortgage rate is a mistake: John Shmuel
John Shmuel, managing editor at RATESDOTCA, joins BNN Bloomberg to talk how many Canadians are concerned about renewing their mortgage in the current interest rate environment. He says some Canadians are saying they have no choice but to take on debt or use their line of credit to make rising monthly payments.
The tumult in Canada’s housing market is starting to take its toll on lenders, with Home Capital Group Inc. reporting a plunge in third-quarter originations.
Home Capital, which lends largely to borrowers considered somewhat riskier than prime customers, said Tuesday that single-family mortgage originations plummeted 28 per cent from a year earlier. The lender’s so-called Alt-A borrowers include self-employed workers or those who are new to Canada and don’t have extensive credit histories. Total mortgage originations fell 23 per cent to $1.85 billion (US$1.38 billion), missing the $2.5 billion estimate of Royal Bank of Canada analyst Geoffrey Kwan. Sign up to get breaking news email alerts sent directly to your inbox
Sales activity in Canada’s housing market has slowed, with transactions down 32 per cent in September from a year earlier, as the Bank of Canada’s aggressive rate-hiking campaign ratchets up mortgage costs. Prices have fallen for seven straight months, and are down almost 9 per cent from their peak.
The market spiral had yet to make its way to lenders’ results, with Canada’s biggest banks all reporting growth in their mortgage books in their most recent earnings. Home Capital’s results provide a window into a segment of borrowers who are considered riskier than those the big banks typically take on, and therefore pay more to borrow.
“The housing market is currently in a period of transition as buyers and sellers adjust to a higher-interest-rate environment,” Home Capital Chief Executive Officer Yousry Bissada said in a statement, adding that the Toronto-based company expects “softer market conditions to persist in the near term.”
The drop in originations contributed to Home Capital’s net income falling 43 per cent to $31 million, or 77 cents a share. Excluding some items, profit was 95 cents a share, matching analysts’ estimates.
Home Capital’s shares fell 4.8 per cent to $25.23 at 10:32 a.m. in Toronto, bringing their decline this year to 35 per cent. That’s the fourth-worst performance in the 29-company S&P/TSX Financials Index.
Despite the market turmoil, Home Capital’s borrowers have continued to make payments on their mortgages. Net non-performing loans accounted for 0.16 per cent of gross loans last quarter. That compares with 0.15 per cent a year earlier and 0.47 per cent in the same period in 2020.
Scientists dig for answers inside mineral-rich meteorites
Staff Writer | November 13, 2022 | Meteorite GRA 06100 depicts overlay of X-ray and neutron imaging. Red denotes iron-rich compounds; blue denotes hydrogenated compounds, including water.
(Image courtesy of the National Institute of Standards and Technology).
US-based researchers have combined two complementary techniques—X-ray imaging and neutron imaging—to peer inside crevices and mineral-rich deposits inside meteorites.
The goal is to analyze the minerals, metals and water the rocky bodies deliver to our planet and, thus, uncover new clues on the early history of planet formation and how the young earth acquired the ingredients essential for life.
According to the scientists, neutron imaging is ideal for searching for water and other hydrogen-bearing compounds because neutrons readily ricochet off hydrogen. In contrast, X-ray imaging is best for finding deposits of heavy elements, such as iron and nickel, because X-rays are primarily scattered by the large number of electrons in heavy-weight atoms.
Neither imaging technique significantly harms or alters meteorites, unlike other methods of analyzing the chemical composition of the rocks, which require cutting thin slices of the meteorites. Although each imaging method has been used separately in the past, the team is among the first to use the two techniques simultaneously to create X-ray and neutron-beam snapshots.
In the pilot study, the group examined two meteorites whose mineral and water contents were already well known so that they could assess the accuracy of the combined imaging methods. One of the rocks, dubbed EET 87503, is a fragment from the surface of the large asteroid Vesta but also contains material from a different, water-rich variety of asteroid.
Movie of the meteorite EET 87503 depicts overlay of X-ray and neutron imaging. Purple and orange denote two different classes of iron-rich minerals; green denotes minerals that contain water in their structure. (Video courtesy of NIST).
The other meteorite, GRA 06100, rich in iron and nickel, is classified as a chondrite—a rock that has not been altered by melting or other processes since the early days of the solar system. It also has a significant amount of hydrogen-bearing silicates formed by past exposure to water.
To create three-dimensional views of the meteorites, the researchers used the X-ray and neutron beams to image cross-sections of the rocks. Individual images of different cross sections were then combined to create a 3D image, a technique known as tomography, or CT scan.
The imaging methods accurately revealed the locations of metal-rich minerals, silicate minerals, water and other hydrogenated compounds in the two meteorites. Neutron imaging pinpointed and characterized the chondrite grains within GRA 06100, which could then be extracted for further study. The 3D imaging can test theories of how water entered the rock and what pathway the liquid took to alter the composition of minerals and become bound in the sample.
Although water accounts for 70% of earth’s surface, exactly how the substance arrived on our planet remains the subject of a longstanding debate. Some planetary scientists suggest that meteorites and comets—icy relics from the frigid, outer solar system—delivered the water, along with the building blocks of proteins essential for life, after our planet’s core had formed. Others suggest that earth acquired the water during its formation 4.5 billion years ago from bits of gas and dust that swaddled the infant sun and fused together to form our planet.
Water comes in two forms: ordinary water, consisting of hydrogen and oxygen, and heavy water, consisting of deuterium (hydrogen with an added neutron) and oxygen. One way to determine if meteorites were a primary source of terrestrial water is to compare the relative abundance of these two types in the rocks to the relative abundance of the water on and beneath the earth’s surface. Planetary scientists have measured the abundance in some meteorites but need to examine a larger number.
The neutron and X-ray images can assist in these studies. By pinpointing the location of mineral, metal and water deposits locked inside meteorites, the images could guide researchers on how to best slice sections of the rocks so they can measure these abundances as well as the composition of other compounds.
Following this initial trial, the team now plans to use its dual imaging technique to study less familiar meteorites so that their water and mineral content can be mapped in detail for the first time.
South African efforts to clear coal railway derailment disrupted by violence Bloomberg News | November 13, 2022 | Transnet train. (Reference image by Transnet SOC).
South Africa’s Transnet SOC Ltd. said extortion and violent acts significantly disrupted efforts to clear a train derailment on a coal export line as the country increasingly sends more of the fuel to Europe.
The state-owned company has declared force majeure on the North Corridor route that runs to the Richards Bay Coal Terminal. After the derailment occurred on Nov. 8, the company planned to meet with community leaders to diffuse tensions with what it described as disgruntled parties seeking business opportunities.
Instead, a group known as the Ulundi Business Forum demanded contracts, the company said in a statement late Friday. “Transnet rejected this demand and the Forum resorted to violence, which included assault, blocking access roads and the discharging of a firearm,” it said. “Transnet condemns these acts and will be laying charges of violence, tampering with essential infrastructure and extortion.”
Work has since resumed and once the line is cleared a determination can be made over the return of normal operations, the company said in an emailed update on Saturday.
The incident marks another obstacle for Transnet and South African coal miners who depend on the line. The company declared force majeure due to a wage strike last month as well as events including riots in the KwaZulu-Natal province in July 2021, a cyber attack that incapacitated its container terminal, and a fire that disrupted bulk shipments.
Coal exports to Europe from a consortium of producers that own the Richards Bay Coal Terminal rose eight-fold in the first half of the year from 500,000 tons in 2021, according to Thungela Resources Ltd., the nation’s biggest shipper of thermal coal. “Thungela is engaging with Transnet Freight Rail to understand what the impact may be,” a spokeswoman said in response to emailed questions.
In order to mitigate the impact of the disruption to the North Corridor, Transnet said it will temporarily divert some critical shipments like chemicals, via the mainline between Durban and Gauteng.
