nyan

There are limits on donation amount per contributor (I don't remember how much off the top of my head, but it isn't that high a number).

That assumes all the trees survive. A lot of them apparently don't.

It's one of the weaksauce paywalls that can be bypassed by just not allowing their Javascript.

Apparently we need even stronger controls on political donations, since it seems that purchasing politicians is pretty cheap.

I seem to recall that scarring around the electrodes, which eventually causes them to stop functioning, is a known failure mode of older experiments along similar lines. It's one of the reasons I didn't hold out much hope for this iteration.

I just hope the patient doesn't take any long-term damage from the implant.

It's really, really complicated.

There are two basic principles for recognizing citizenship: jus soli (being born on a country's territory) and jus sanguis (being the child of one or more citizens). Countries differ in which of those they accept and to what extent. Canada recognizes jus soli always, but jus sanguis only under limited circumstances, and the exact rules for claiming citizenship here via jus sanguis have changed recently.

It's possible for a child of two people from countries that don't recognize jus sanguis (or who are stateless themselves) who was born in a country that doesn't recognize jus soli to have no citizenship by birth at all. This is particularly a problem for refugees, but can happen to just about anyone from any walk of life.

Under the current law, a Canadian citizen born abroad can't pass Canadian citizenship to their own child via jus sanguis anymore, although the rules were looser thirty years ago. The child is still a citizen if born inside Canada (jus soli), but the subject of the article linked in the opening post was born abroad.

The number of stateless people in the world apparently numbers in the low millions at present. It is a big issue.

She may not have a previous citizenship, depending on how Jamaica determines citizenship, even if she didn't explicitly renounce it. That would leave her stateless, which is . . . not a good thing to be.

The article doesn't say, but I'd bet this woman applied for something (a passport? Government benefits?) that only citizens are eligible for, and that triggered a routine check, which then triggered a deeper check because she was born outside Canada, which led to the discovery that something was a bit odd. Your tax dollars at work.

There weren't enough doctors five years ago, either. If demand is already huge, a small increase in supply is not going to catch up. Furthermore, what percentage of those doctors are in family medicine? I haven't heard that there's nearly as much of a shortage of specialists (except in more remote areas where there's always been a shortage of specialists).

Percentages are deceptive here. What we need are absolute numbers: how many primary care practitioners (both family doctors and nurse-practitioners) are needed, how many we already have, how many new ones are entering the field vs. how many are leaving, and a breakdown of those numbers per region.

I think OnStar is satellite-based, so it might reach areas where cell service doesn't. I believe the stretch of highway I was thinking of (Ontario highway 655) does have at least partial cell coverage now, although it didn't at the time when I was driving it regularly. It isn't extremely remote—it would take emergency services from Cochrane or Timmins about half an hour to reach the farthest point, so they might get there in time, depending on what exactly the damage was.

That depends a lot on where you drive. I've been in situations where, if I had hit a moose, there would have been no one around to call for help except the moose (assuming it had survived the collision, but they often do if it's a smaller vehicle). That stretch of road didn't get many passers-by on snowy Sunday nights in January. Maybe a half-dozen vehicles an hour. Combine that with poor visibility, and it could have been a long time before someone noticed and called for help. Fortunately, I never did have an accident along that stretch.

Of course, if you're only driving in built-up areas or along major transit corridors instead of in awkward parts of northern Ontario in the middle of winter, your chances of having someone call in for you are much higher.

Amazon lost its way when in started acting as a storefront for others, rather than a bookstore. In other words, a good twenty years ago.

Tech gear in particular is one of the things that's extremely risky to order from there (along with food, meds, and anything for babies/small children), as there are a lot of fraudulent or damaged goods mixed into their supply. Go to a specialist supplier instead. Newegg isn't great, but at least they don't appear to mix inventory from different sellers the way Amazon does.