By Tyler Orton
While we Canadians are still paying a lot of attention to our newly elected prime minister, it appears China is still ignoring its own PM after Li Keqiang was appointed in 2013.
In China, the PM is charged with handling day-to-day operations while the general secretary runs the party.
Only, General Secretary Xi Jinping has turned out to be a “Putin-style strongman” that has marginalized economist Li. It doesn’t appear the slowing Chinese economy has done the PM any favours but there’s still a chance he could stick around for a second term, if only as a scapegoat.
And while our election was nearly a month ago, I’m still fascinated by the voting breakdowns.
There are some assumptions the Conservatives and NDP swept the vote in Canada’s “sprawling hinterland” at the expensive of the Liberals. But data shows it doesn’t quite turn out that way if we examine the numbers based on rural, urban and “rurban” — ridings featuring a mix of rural and urban voters.
Now, if we need to break down this election business for any Americans who might be interested, it looks like our southern neighbours will soon be introduced to one Peter Moosebridge in next year’s Zootopia.
The CBC’s chief correspondent will be voicing an animated Canadian character — a moose of course — and I only hope Peter Mansbridge’s brush with Hollywood turns out better than Stewart Butterfield’s.
The Vancouver-based founder of Slack and Flickr found himself on the receiving end of an f-bomb dropped by thespian Robert De Niro, who didn’t take too kindly to Butterfield’s rather innocuous remarks about being in a room full of actors.
But the tech entrepreneur took it in stride, even attaching the hashtag #lifegoals to his tweet documenting the encounter.
But back to animated characters for just a moment: Strangely, I’ve always found myself reluctant to send emojis unless I know my friends are using an iPhone like I do.
Do the other operating systems run them correctly? Will a sarcastic remark tempered with an emoji be misinterpreted if it’s not translated correctly on another phone?
My idiosyncrasies have been justified after discovering just how different some emojiis appear depending on the OS. What looks like a woman performing tango to me actually looks like a morbidly obese Pac-Man attempting to eat flowers for my Android friends.
And while Pac-Man has yet to mount the comeback my inner child would like to see, I continue to be impressed by Lego’s renaissance.
The Danish toy company is churning out 72 million blocks daily but even this incredible production output is unlikely to keep pace with demand as Christmas approaches.
As far as toys my adult self would go for, it appears jetpacks will soon be making a significant push into the marketplace.
I’ll take that option for getting to work over the self-driving Google car that was pulled over by police for going to slow.
