Notices by AskPippa🇨🇦 (askpippa@c.im)

Turns out Project 2025 has now been replaced with Project 2026.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-project-2026-heritage-foundation-b2894824.html

I've been saying for years that public health agencies need to work together and hire a big marketing agency to help them develop better communication tools to get messages across to the their various audiences more effectively. I think #environment / #climate agencies need to do the same thing.
Government comms are too unimaginative and rigid. They need to find ways to break out of overly formal ways of communicating information.
Marketing/advertising firms try messages out in focus groups, know how to target messages to different audiences and use #marketing #psychology techniques (yes that's a field of study), know how to use social media effectively, how to counter bad information, etc. They have all sort of interesting tools they work with. https://theconversation.com/climate-misinformation-is-becoming-a-national-security-threat-canada-isnt-ready-for-it-271588

I still haven't solved my problem with @Libreoffice. Each time I try to open a document, there is a delay with a "waiting for printer" message appearing, which I have to cancel before the document will open. Looking online, it turns out it's been an issue for at least a couple of years. Something possible with printer or Windows settings? Can anyone walk me through a fix? (Pretty please)
And yes, I updated LibreOffice.

So, why is it every time I launch LibreOffice, a black window appears saying "Waiting for printer to respond" and won't go away until I hit Cancel. And then the document finally opens?
If there is a setting to change, I don't know how to find it. Hints welcome.

Ha!

Canada shares a land border with Denmark on Hans Island. Also, a maritime border with France (at Saint Pierre and Miquelon). Plus, a lot of us speak at least some French as well as English, and we have British royalty on our currency. So, we must be part of Europe. Maybe worth signing up for the wait list to join the EU? (It would give us a stronger currency)

Several years ago, my Swiss army knife went missing from checked luggage. When I mentioned it on social media, loads of people described things that went missing from their checked luggage. In this article, this woman not only found several items missing but things not belonging to her were added.
When my knife went missing, I contacted the transportation authority to say what had happened -- because I was concerned if something can be removed, something can be added to your luggage. Something I consider a security and safety risk.
Years ago a woman travelled from Melbourne Australia to Thailand. A luggage handler in Melbourne added a bag of dope into her luggage which a partner in Sydney was supposed to remove. He missed it. Thailand has zero tolerance for drugs -- and locked her up with a life sentence. They didn't care how it got into her luggage.
If people write this CBC reporter with their concerns about things being added or removed from luggage, maybe this topic will get the attention I think it deserves. Someday, it could be an explosive.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/air-canada-mystery-baggage-1.7592756

EV #battery recycler in #Ontario goes under because "the market can't sustain the industry without proper government regulation providing incentives and structure."
From @cbc_top_stories
#EV #recycle #Canada #energy #cars
https://www.cbc.ca/news/climate/ev-battery-recycling-regulation-1.7547790

If Canada is taken over economically or otherwise - no other election issues will matter. We'll lose control over things like heath care, various rights, etc. Don't assume you know the results. Polls can be wrong. Please VOTE.
#CanadaVotes #election2025

This explains why the US has an #egg shortage and other countries don't. It's about bird flu, and the size of egg-laying farms. When massive US farms are hit with flu, it means huge numbers of egg-laying chickens die - resulting in far fewer eggs.
Other countries tend to have much smaller chicken farms. So when one is hit with bird flu, it doesn't really impact the overall supply.

#eggs #birdflu

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/18/nx-s1-5330454/egg-shortages-record-prices-usda-canada

#Ontario is seeing a big surge in measles mostly among unvaccinated people. 372 total cases (including 7 pregnant people) and 31 hospitalizations.
The #measles #vaccine has a long track record of being safe, and of preventing disease (breakthrough infections are rare). It's a great way to avoid getting sick in the first place. I mean, who wants to get even a little bit sick?

#health #medical #medmastodon @medmastodon
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2025/03/13/ontario-measles-cases-double-outbreak/

Anyone else starting to think that maybe the goal is global domination? And you can't really play by the rules and expect to do well against people who don't play by the rules.

Home Depot, Lowes and even Rona are all US owned companies (Rona used to be Canadian but was bought out). To buy Canadian, look at #HomeHardware, local building supply places, independent locally owned hardware stores and #CanadianTire.
While the US-owned stores employ a lot of people, bigger demand in Canadian-owned placed means they'll have a chance to expand -- and hire more people. Not overnight, but if demand shifts it would happen.
Then, look to see where products come from. A lot of stuff isn't made in Canada, but the US isn't the only place that makes these things.

#buyCanadian #shopCanadian #Canada

@libreoffice @aquarianoak1 I started using it a couple months ago and am impressed with how smoothly it works. I'm recommending it to other writer friends.
2 features I would *like* to see in the word processor: embedding links in words; a comments mode.

Who needs American alcohol when we can buy awesome strong beers in #Canada by Unibroue? What made-in-Canada stuff are you getting? #buyCanadian #tariffs

Should I take the plunge and have a Linux OS on my next 'spare' laptop? The spare laptop is basically the one I'll use when traveling, or on the tread desk -- mostly for writing, a simple spreadsheet, reading PDFs, and dumping photos onto when traveling. I have to get a new one. (The heavier work is on my desktop). So, thinking of a lower priced laptop. I'll be using LibreOffice on it, not the MS Word suite.
How much RAM should said lower priced laptop have?
is 256GB good enough?
Is i5 good enough?
Linux OS (Ubuntu?) -- is it as easy to use as Windows? I don't have the motivation to fuss a lot and troubleshoot. (Already using LibreOffice on the current dying spare laptop)
***EDIT: Oh, and will I be able to view photos from my iPhone in their HEIC format?

Walked into shop in the local Chinatown that has a lot of vases, dishes. etc. Noticed some tea thermoses that were loose-leaf friendly and spent a lot of time comparing them. Was talking to a women who said the man who kept talking in Chinese was the new owner/manager. She translated back and forth. We started talking about tea. I mentioned I prefer black tea -- he didn't know the teas I named, and I wasn't familiar the teas he named. But there were packages there of 2-3 types of teas (big, flat rings of pressed leaves) that he opened and let me smell. I bought one of the glass thermoses. I showed him a sealed tea bag (Tazo Awake -- an ok black tea blend) I happened to have in my pack -- he didn't know it (I carry a couple around in case of tea emergencies). But then he pulled out his personal container of loose leaf tea, measured out a small amount for me to take home to sample. So nice! And it turned out the woman didn't work there, she was another customer. Tea really does cross cultures and there's something special about the connections it can lead to.

Recently, I had conversations with 2 people who turned out to be vaccine skeptics. They stopped getting #COVID vaccines after their first jab or two. So, I told them about the 30+ year history behind mRNA vaccine development. That it has been (and continues to be) worked on for treating cancer as well as for other diseases. And that mRNA vaccines were part-way developed for #SARS during the 2002-2004 outbreak (but work stopped because the infection petered out for various reasons) and for Zika. And that when the pandemic came along, most of the pieces of for creating an #mRNA #vaccine for COVID were already in place -- which is why the the vaccines came out relatively quickly. And that they underwent clinical trials before they were approved for release.
Both conversations ended with "Wow, I didn't know any of that. You've given me something to think about."
I'll take it as a win.
Sometimes it's #history more than #science that can help get a message across.

Sources:
1.Timeline: https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/decades-making-mrna-covid-19-vaccines
2. One of the best summaries of the mRNA vaccine and its history. https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/

#publichealth @medmastodon #medmastodon #IDmastodon

@wigglytuffitout @gutocarvalho maybe promote tips in Portuguese on how to the platform!

@HistoPol @davidho @rahmstorf You can bet they hired PR companies and other agencies to create some of these campaigns as the oil companies wouldn't necessarily have the communications expertise and structure to do it all in-house.