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Lethbridge police officers temporarily demoted in connection with surveillance of NDP cabinet minister

CHAT News Today

Sgt. Jason Carrier and Const. Keon Woronuk of the Lethbridge Police Service have been temporarily demoted after unauthorized surveillance of Lethbridge West MLA Shannon Phillips and stakeholders in the protections of the Castle region in southwest region.

Carrier was on-duty but on a meal break with two other officers when Phillips entered the Chef Stella Diner to meet informally with stakeholders on the Castle region changes during the morning of April 17, 2017.

Carrier texted Woronuk — who was acting sergeant on duty at the time — with a picture of the meeting and location. Woronuk attended the diner shortly thereafter.

In a conversation between the two uniformed officers as they left the diner after taking photos of the meeting, Woronuk said to Carrier that he, “would hate to see Phillips drive away from the restaurant and there was a reason to stop her,” according to the penalty decision.

In addition to taking photos, Woronuk was involved in setting up surveillance and subsequently following one of the stakeholders while running a police information check on them.

Full article after the jump:
Continue reading “Lethbridge police officers temporarily demoted in connection with surveillance of NDP cabinet minister”

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Watch the Celebrity-Filled Fan-Film Version of The Princess Bride

Westley and Princess Buttercup look at each other

Vanity Fair:

While stuck in quarantine over the past few months, some of the most famous performers in the world worked in secret to shoot a homemade fan-film version of the classic on their phones—which will be shown on Quibi chapter by chapter, day by day, for two weeks starting this Monday.

Filmmaker Jason Reitman devised the idea back in March, seeing it as a way to stay busy during the lockdown while raising funds for the World Central Kitchen charity, which has been helping thousands of restaurants stay afloat during the quarantine by paying them to provide millions of meals to the needy.

The creators hope the footage can also provide some laughter to viewers in a time of hardship. Their scrappy version of The Princess Bride leans into its continuity lapses, utilizes absurd household props and back-of-the-closet costumes, and deploys multiple castings of the same roles to show that in a true fantasy, anyone can play anything.

Super delightful project.

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Imagineering in a Box

Working with the Kahn Academy, Disney Imagineering released a free course on theme park design called Imagineering in a Box.

Imagineering in a Box is designed to pull back the curtain to show students how artists, designers and engineers work together to create theme parks. We take a behind-the-scenes look that learners love and make it an active experience through student-driven projects. We do this by weaving together videos and exercises into lessons that culminate in a long form project. The goal is to make students aware of careers they never knew existed and deepen their understanding of the process, concepts and terminology of the creative workplace.

The course is comprised of 32 videos designed to encourage viewers to think about a wide range of skills including story development and conceptual design, math, physics and engineering. Completing the first three lessons, I agree with the write-up… this course, “ignite[s] curiosity, inspire[s] creativity, and cultivate innovation in the minds of students and teachers alike”, all the while creating a fun and engaging opportunity to explore new concepts. They say it’s aimed at middle school or high school so I’m not sure I would present it to my grade five class, but I sure am tempted. I live for this kind of thing.

(via Waxy)

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iPhone SE 2020

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced the second-generation iPhone SE, a powerful new iPhone featuring a 4.7-inch Retina HD display, paired with Touch ID for industry-leading security. iPhone SE comes in a compact design, reinvented from the inside out, and is the most affordable iPhone. The new iPhone SE is powered by the Apple-designed A13 Bionic, the fastest chip in a smartphone, to handle the most demanding tasks. iPhone SE also features the best single-camera system ever in an iPhone, which unlocks the benefits of computational photography including Portrait mode, and is designed to withstand the elements with dust and water resistance.

iPhone SE comes in three beautiful colors — black, white and (PRODUCT)RED — and will be available for pre-order beginning Friday, April 17, starting at just $399 (US) [$599 CAD].

“The first iPhone SE was a hit with many customers who loved its unique combination of small size, high-end performance and affordable price; the new second-generation iPhone SE builds on that great idea and improves on it in every way — including our best-ever single-camera system for great photos and videos — while still being very affordable,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.

Except this new iPhone SE doesn’t “improve” on small size when the form factor has moved away from the original 4″ size of the original.

I’m guessing the reason for the larger size is that just as the original SE used the form factor and internal layout of the iPhone 5, the 2020 iteration will do the same with an iPhone 8 layout. There is no ready to implement layout of internal components that includes iPhone XS camera, the iPhone 11 Pro CPU and the battery size of the iPhone 8 (which may be required for that high end A13 Bionic processor… I don’t know) that would fit in the original iPhone SE shell.

Michael Tsai:

“So, this is a better, cheaper iPhone 8, but unlike the original SE it seems unlikely to inspire down-switchers. The wildcard is that, if we all end up wearing face masks for an extended time, Touch ID could end up being more important than any new feature in the forthcoming iPhone 12.”

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80 Minutes of Seinfeld Bloopers

If you like Seinfeld, you may enjoy these bloopers discovered on an unmarked DVD that came inside a flea market DVD player.

From Reddit:

At the Raynham flea market 2 years ago I found a DVD with 80 minutes of previously unseen Seinfeld bloopers. These are different from the official DVD bloopers, which are already on YouTube. This DVD was in a bootleg case with a bootleg design, and a simple unvarnished disc inside. I ripped the footage from the DVD and uploaded it raw to YouTube. Forgive the video quality; the DVD has low-grade video.

The DVD was produced in 2000, which makes me think it’s a bootleg of a blooper DVD made for the cast and crew of Seinfeld in 1998 or 1999, to be shared in the days before internet. There is nothing else on the disc.

(Via BoingBoing)

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The Silent Generation

“Do your parents like the Beatles?”
“My mom does.”
“But not your dad?”
“Well, now he’d probably say they’re ok, but as a kid he thought they were a bunch of wild long haired hippie teenagers. He’s not a Boomer you know. He’s part of ‘The Silent Generation’.”
“Silent Generation? I’ve never even heard that term before.”
“Yeah, that’s because they’re silent.”

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COVID-19

The Atlantic is providing free ongoing access to its Corona Virus information.

This recent article from Kaitlyn Tiffany’s conversations with a number of public health experts about The Dos and Don’ts of ‘Social Distancing’ is enlightening. From the article:

If you’re confused about what to do right now, you’re not alone—even these experts occasionally disagreed on the answers to my questions. Where there were discrepancies, I’ve included all the different answers as fully as possible. This guide is aimed toward those who are symptom-free and not part of an at-risk group, with an addendum at the end for those in quarantine. If you are symptom-free but are over 60 years old; have asthma, heart disease, or diabetes; or are otherwise at risk, experts recommend defaulting to the most conservative response to each of these questions.

I created this graph of the number of cases in Alberta compared with the rest of Canada. This is just the beginning. I, for one, am skeptical that Alberta is going to have much success flattening the curve until they cancel school. Hopefully that happens before it’s too late.

Data collected from https://www.alberta.ca/coronavirus-info-for-albertans.aspx

Update: School in Alberta is cancelled.