#toronto blizzard

[nostalgia-eh52]

[coolthingsguyslike]

[toffoliravioli]

I just want to see his closet…

Just a peek

It’s fascinating 🤨 he’s a fascinating creature-

[mrbawbdobalina]

MF DOOMFIST

[thewormsingularityisnear]

[stormcenter2024]

Major snowstorm hits Saskatchewan, Canada

[urban-daddy]

My First Childhood Hero: Pele, has Died.

My First Childhood Hero: Pele, has Died.

[iww-gnv]

Esports Illustrated: "Activision Blizzard Reportedly let go of 83% of Esports Staff"

On Sunday, January 28, the Call of Duty League Boston Breach Major I tournament concluded. It was an incredible event, with Toronto Ultra coming out victorious in a 4-1 victory over Atlanta FaZe. However, just two days later, Activision Blizzard have reportedly let go of 60 out of the 72 staff in their esports division, leaving just 12 employees. This is a cut of 83%, and sees some of the most talented members of the esports community without work.

Read the rest here.

[blueiscoool]

100 Years Ago They Disappeared on Everest. But Did They Make it to the Summit?

It’s one of climbing’s greatest mysteries: was Everest really conquered for the first time in 1953, or did two mountaineers make it to the summit in 1924, before dying in mysterious circumstances?

British climbers George Mallory and Andrew “Sandy” Irvine were last seen on June 8, 1924, 800 feet below the peak, before disappearing into clouds. They never reemerged.

When Mallory’s body was found in 1999, hopes were high that it might give a clue as to whether the pair reached the summit. But, tantalizingly, the camera he had been carrying – with which he would have documented the highest point they had reached – was not on the body. Irvine’s body has never been found.

But now, as the 100th anniversary of the mens’ disappearance approaches, one researcher believes that he has solved mountaineering’s greatest mystery.

By studying the expedition weather reports, author Graham Hoyland believes that he has worked out what happened to the pair – and whether they made it to the summit before they died.

Hoyland – a distant relative of another member of the expedition group, who has visited on Everest nine times searching for the remains – believes that the key to the mystery is air pressure.

His relative several times removed, Howard Somervell – another mountaineer, who had got within 1,000 feet of the summit on the same expedition before a lack of oxygen meant he had to retreat – was responsible for tracking the weather during the expedition.

The smoking gun?

The 1924 expedition, including Irvine and Mallory (top two left), aimed to be the first documented ascent of the mountain.

His records – which he submitted after the official report on the 1924 expedition was made, having returned to his job as a surgeon in India – show that the barometric pressure dropped between the morning of June 8 and June 9 at base camp, where Somervell was taking the readings.

Somervell recorded the pressure in inches of mercury, dropping from 16.25 to 15.98. Hoyland believes that these figures equate to a 10 millibar drop in pressure. Weather-related deaths on Everest are generally associated with a drop in barometric pressure at the summit.

A decrease of just 4 millibars can trigger hypoxia; a 6 millibar drop was enough to cause the incident in 1996 in which 20 people were trapped on the mountain, eight of whom died. That story is recounted in writer Jon Krakauer’s book “Into Thin Air.” The bad weather angle was also explored in a 2010 paper by experts from the University of Toronto, led by G.W. Kent Moore.

“They were climbing into an absolute s***storm – not only a blizzard but a sort of snow bomb,” Hoyland told CNN. Hoyland has experienced “snow bombs” himself on Everest. “It’s terrifying – the temperature drops hugely, you’re gasping for breath. There are winds of 100 knots. One guy I know was blown off the mountain, and ended up further up the mountain,” he said.

Effectively, the drop in air pressure meant that the mountain suddenly became higher – around 650 feet higher, to be precise. Hoyland calls it “an invisible death trap.”

The pair – who were ascending along the northwest ridge – were already climbing against the odds. Mallory wrote in a letter to his wife that he put his chances of making the summit at 50 to one. Hoyland thinks it was more like 20 to one. But, he thinks, they would have had no idea what was about to hit them.

“Mallory had seen Norton and Somervell get to to within 1000 feet of the top on 4 June using no oxygen equipment; it would have seemed reasonable to assume that it was possible to reach the summit with the apparatus,” he writes in a forthcoming book.

“What he didn’t know was that the rapidly falling air pressure was effectively making the mountain even higher.

What’s more, the storm and blizzard wouldn’t just have made a drop in air pressure. The pair were wearing layers of silk, cotton and wool. Hoyland – who had a similar made-to-measure outfit on an Everest trip – says that the clothes are exceptionally comfortable but wouldn’t have provided the warmth to survive a blizzard or an overnight.

Previously, it has been speculated that the pair had reached the summit before dying on the way down, something that Hoyland calls “wishful thinking.”

“I’d been trying to prove that Mallory had climbed Everest for years and years – I wanted to prove that I was the 16th Briton to climb it, not the 15th. But unfortunately when you read facts and they’re different, you have to change your mind. You can’t carry on being a wishful thinker,” he says.

Until Hoyland, nobody had closely studied at the weather reports, which were held at the Royal Geographical Society in London.

The summit was eventually reached by Edmund Hillary, a New Zealand mountaineer, in 1953 – the first documented ascent of the peak.

A century of speculation:

The mystery of Mallory and Irvine has intrigued adventurers for decades.

In 1933, another mountaineer, Percy Wyn-Harris found an ax near the summit. It was assumed to have belonged to Irvine.

In 1936, another mountaineer, Frank Smythe, believed he had seen two bodies in the distance. Using a telescope, he saw them at around 8,100 meters, or 26,575 feet.

And Chinese mountaineer Wang Hongbao believed he saw a body during his 1975 ascent.

Finally, an expedition in 1999, instigated by Hoyland, found Mallory’s body at 26,700 feet –2,335 below the summit.

Hoyland believes that the pair, tethered to each other, slipped while aborting the climb and returning to base camp. He thinks Mallory survived the initial fall, but took another, fatal plunge while staggering back to base camp. Irvine’s body has never been found.

Everest ‘Makes People Mad’:

While some of Mallory’s possessions were still to be found on his body, including a pair of goggles in his pocket – which suggests he was either in darkness or poor visibility – there was no sign of the photo of his wife which he had brought, planning to leave it on the summit.

For decades, researchers have posited that, in lieu of more precise evidence, the lack of photo suggests the pair might have reached the summit and fallen while returning.

However, having reviewed the new evidence, Hoyland believes this is not the case. Expedition reports noted a blizzard hitting the mountain at 2 p.m., he says – long before they could have reached the summit. The lack of photo, he thinks, means nothing. Mallory often forgot stuff, he notes.

In his last letter to his wife – digitized to mark the centenary of his ascent – on May 27, Mallory wrote of “looking out of a tent door onto a world of snow and vanishing hopes: and described it as “a bad time altogether.” Both he and Irvine were unwell, and he wrote that “I’m quite doubtful if I shall be fit enough.”

For Hoyland, who is taking part in an event at the Royal Geographical Society about the centenary, “Everest makes people mad.”

“Mallory became obsessed with the desire to conquer Everest – it would have made him somebody,” he said.

Mallory was a teacher, but moved on the fringes of the Bloomsbury set, a group of British intellectuals, artists and thinkers centered on London in the early 20th century.

“Everyone he knew was a famous novelist or a Nobel prizewinner, and he got captivated by it [the idea of Everest],” he said.

“There’s a dangerous thing called ‘summit fever’ – you see the summit, and you think, ‘Right, it’s death or glory.’ You don’t care if you die.

“I know that feeling. You get completely possessed by this mountain. Mallory was possessed by Everest and it killed him.”

Hoyland, who has since swapped mountaineering for extreme sailing, says that Everest has become “a non-mountaineer’s mountain.”

“There are rich men climbing it as a trophy. I wish it wasn’t the highest,” he said.

“Quite honestly I think the best thing to happen would be if the top 800 feet fell off.

By Julia Buckley.

[lenaperseveranceoxton]

Listen, I know I said in this post from June 15th that Emily is perfect as a civilian, and I was vindicated when the Invasion story missions dropped and showed that Emily is holed up in some bunker in King's Row with omnics and bigots alike.

but Blizzard, PLEASE, I need more Emily content. I am starving. She deserves to be given a canon voice like Iggy in the Underworld mission. She deserves to have a canon last name. She deserves the world.

It's so infuriating that the Lena and Emily spray even gets censored in Play of the Games and highlights. I mean, I get why (and you can ask the winners of the 2023 Overwatch World Cup if you don't) but damn it!

I am SO sick and tired of seeing people ship Lena with men, whether it be self-ships, generic nude models in Blender, or male playable characters. (If you fall into one of those categories, please let me know so I can block your disgusting ass.)

I need the cishets to know- to have it absolutely drilled into their skulls- that Lena is dating Emily Overwatch. Give me a voice line about her in the Hero Gallery. Give me a weapon charm version of the Lena and Emily spray, or at least a weapon charm of an orange heart that says "Emily" in the center. Give me a victory pose where Lena is bridal-carrying Emily. Anything.

Also, this is going to sound very weird, but the "Caught you staring!" voice line still makes me uncomfortable every time I hear it in game. I get that Lena is a playful person, but did we learn nothing from the Over the Shoulder controversy in 2016? (Even the current Over the Shoulder victory pose makes me uncomfortable. It's one of the few victory poses I don't have favorited in the Hero Gallery. Why would Lena be striking a pose from a WW2 pinup poster?) I remember hearing complaints that it's unfair that Lifeweaver, Baptiste, and Mauga get to flirt with each other while our lesbian characters don't get to flirt with women, but Lena is in a loving relationship. I think she should be able to express an aesthetic attraction towards female characters (like Sombra saying "You're cuter up close" to any gender like the bisexual icon she is when getting a melee kill), but she should not be alluding to her butt whenever you use all three Blinks. The internet is so quick to objectify Overwatch characters, and it's disappointing to see Blizzard fueling those flames.

Rant aside, I also want to point out that Lena tells Emily to let the omnics in the bunker know about Null Sector.

I remember joking in a Discord server with friends who don't go here but know Lena "Tracer" Oxton is my lifeblood about the idea of Lena having paparazzi that write articles such as "The Rumour Come Out: Does Tracer from Overwatch is Gay?" after seeing them casually plan to meet Emily at the pub in London Calling Issue 1. Does everyone in the bunker just know Emily is Lena's girlfriend? Either way, I love to imagine the conversation that would ensue.

"So, omnics, I've gathered you here today to discuss some important matters. As you may or may not know, Tracer from Overwatch is my girlfriend, and uh... A majority of the omnic population in Toronto has been abducted and possibly even had their minds wiped. Overwatch was late, so they couldn't do anything about it. Sure, Null Sector could very well be breaking into this bunker in no time at all, but Overwatch is prepared now! We're going to be okay... I think."

I'll finish this off by saying that, if she can't come to Watchpoint: Gibraltar, Emily should at least be added to the Miscellaneous section of the Intel Database.

Thank you for listening to my TEDTalk.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

#20yrsago Audio/transcript from BBC Creative Archive talk https://web.archive.org/web/20060306155902/http://digital-lifestyles.info/media/audio/2004.10.28-BBC-Creative-Archive-Q&A.mp3

#15yrsago Heavy illegal downloaders buy more music https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/illegal-downloaders-spend-the-most-on-music-says-poll-1812776.html

#15yrsago Scenting the Dark: outstanding debut short story collection from Mary Robinette Kowal, exploring our relationship to technology and each other https://memex.craphound.com/2009/11/01/scenting-the-dark-outstanding-debut-short-story-collection-from-mary-robinette-kowal-exploring-our-relationship-to-technology-and-each-other/

#10yrsago Surveillance and stalkers: how the Internet supercharges gendered violence https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahjeong/2014/10/28/surveillance-begins-at-home/

#10yrsago Secret recording of corporate lobbyist is a dirty-tricks playbook https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/us/politics/pr-executives-western-energy-alliance-speech-taped.html

#10yrsago NZ Trade Minister: we keep TPP a secret to prevent “public debate” https://www.techdirt.com/2014/10/31/new-zealands-trade-minister-admits-they-keep-tpp-documents-secret-to-avoid-public-debate/

#5yrsago Blizzard’s corporate president publicly apologizes for bungling players’ Hong Kong protests, never mentions Hong Kong https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/1/20944022/blizzard-blizzcon-hearthstone-china-hong-kong-response-j-allen-brack

#5yrsago My review of Sandworm: an essential guide to the new, reckless world of “cyberwarfare” https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2019-11-01/sandworm-andy-greenberg-cybersecurity

#5yrsago Report from a massive Chinese surveillance tech expo, where junk-science “emotion recognition” rules https://twitter.com/suelinwong/status/1190194625572569093

#5yrsago Toronto approves Google’s surveillance city, despite leaks revealing Orwellian plans https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/sidewalk-labs-waterfront-toronto-quayside-vote-1.5342294

#5yrsago Chicago teachers declare victory after 11-day strike https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/31/chicago-teachers-strike-union-tentative-agreement-makeup-days/4106271002/

#5yrsago Airbnb’s easily gamed reputation system and poor customer service allow scammers to thrive https://www.vice.com/en/article/nationwide-fake-host-scam-on-airbnb/

#5yrsago Suppressed internal emails reveal that the IRS actively helped tax-prep giants suppress Free File https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-tried-to-hide-emails-that-show-tax-industry-influence-over-free-file-program

#5yrsago Massive spike in young people registering to vote in the UK https://memex.craphound.com/2019/11/01/massive-spike-in-young-people-registering-to-vote-in-the-uk/

#1yrsago Social Security is class war, not intergenerational conflict https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/01/intergenerational-warfare/#five-pound-blocks-of-cheese

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Toronto city council has declared homelessness an emergency in the city and has agreed to change when warming centres are activated in winter months.

At its meeting Friday, council voted to open warming centres when the temperature falls to –5 C or colder or when Environment Canada issues freezing rain, snow squall, winter storm, snowfall and blizzard warnings.

Previously, the city opened warming centres when the temperature dipped to –15 C or the wind chill made it feel like –20 C, and when the medical officer of health issued an extreme cold weather alert.

The change means warming centres could be open an average of 19 more days per year, but opening them will depend on available space, staffing and funding, the city said in a news release on Friday. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[half-developed-frontal-lobe]

I had a thought after reading some occasionally blizzard and reddit posts, and it's not surprise that people are struggling on the legendary/expert Liberation mission on PvE. Specifically the solo queuers, I don't know how you guys do it, but I commend you. Which only got me thinking.

See, we all knew that Overwatch PvE was partially built around that skill tree they showed us in the trailers. Now that that's scrapped, there really isn't any room for error for tougher levels. At least not for solo players. That one mission at the station in Toronto, I get it's incredibly hard on legendary, but completely impossible on solo queue.

Without some type of large elimination, you can't really get anywhere playing alone, and the bots...are just...bots. You get Mei walled at the worst moments, your Sojourn and Tracer fly off the map, and your tank doesn't stay on point for the objective (I'm lookin' at you, Zarya bot). The only role that's not entirely broken for bots is support. Besides a personal gripe about using ultimates at the wrong times, that's practically it.

Sometimes I like to go back just for the nostalgia, but even I can't tolerate a team of literal bots.

My point being, if they ever decide to do PvE again, that which I have my reasonable doubts, you might want to find a friend group whose willing to dish out the money to pay for the missions and willing to pick it up again whenever you're in the need to grind out some interactions and lore data.

Otherwise, you'll end up trying to do it alone, and failing at the first fight on the tougher levels.

You're gonna struggle with the lack of power initially promised with the mission's design.

[mariacallous]

As a blizzard swept Ottawa in February 1984, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau decided to take a walk. The next morning, he woke up and organized a hasty meeting of his senior staff to let them know that he was retiring.

Trudeau’s walk in the snow has, in the 40 years since it happened, become shorthand in Canadian politics for taking some time to reflect, sleeping on it, and quitting.

Today, many in Ottawa are checking the weather forecast for storms, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau—Pierre Trudeau’s son—faces mounting calls to take his own walk in the snow. Down a finance minister and facing the dueling prospects of an internal revolt and a snap election triggered by the opposition parties, the prime minister has, nevertheless, refused.

Over the past year, Justin Trudeau’s personal popularity has sailed off a cliff, accompanied by support for his Liberal Party. Facing the back end of an inflationary spiral, a cross-country housing crisis, declining social services, rising taxes, economic sluggishness, and a general fatigue with a leader who’s been in power since 2015, things were already looking dour for Trudeau.

But, as I wrote during his first real period of turmoil in 2019, Trudeau’s support inside his own party borders on cultish. So, even if his unpopularity prompted some teeth gnashing, his party remained—at least, up to this week—loyal.

Even after his party suffered a humiliating special election defeat in Toronto in June—the equivalent of the U.S. Democratic Party losing a special election in midtown Manhattan—calls for Trudeau to step aside, at least from his own partisans, remained rare.

Publicly, at least. This summer, I happened to sit next to Steven Guilbeault, Trudeau’s environment minister, in a train station lounge as he loudly mused about how best to quell an internal “campaign to show [Trudeau] the door.” That campaign remained in the shadows for months. Another election loss, this time in Montreal, ramped up the outside speculation, but Trudeau’s patriots again remained  mum. The few politicians who piped up with the suggestion that Trudeau ought to retire were not running for reelection, so their criticisms were brushed off.

Among the 100-odd members of Parliament who plan on carrying the Liberal Party’s banner into the next election, virtually every one of them have bent the knee to Trudeau.

Canadian politicians have always inclined toward a lemming-like loyalty to their party leader. But this is quite a different level.

In the early 2000s, the Liberal Party was rankled by infighting amid a power struggle between Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and his finance minister, Paul Martin. That fight ultimately resolved in favor of Martin, who went on to win one election before being turfed two years later.

More recently, the opposition Conservative Party metaphorically defenestrated its mild-mannered leader in an Australian-style caucus spill in 2022. The party instead opted for populist Pierre Poilievre—who has successfully wielded all manner of anti-woke shibboleths and conspiracy theories, from becoming an enthusiastic booster of the anti-vaccine Freedom Convoy movement to declaring that he would not let the globalists force him to “eat bugs.” (Poilievre, polling high, has since endeared himself to Elon Musk and counts U.S. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance’s college best friend as one of his closest allies.)

But Trudeau has never been one for public spats. That’s why the past week has been particularly surreal.

Rumors have percolated for months that Trudeau has plotted a reset of his government. In part to placate internal dissenters—who had been passing around a gentle letter calling for him to reevaluate his political future—and in part because he had a number of retiring and underperforming ministers, Trudeau planned a cabinet shuffle.

As part of that shuffle, Trudeau planned on bringing in Mark Carney, who has served as a governor of both the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, as Canada’s finance minister. When he informed his current finance minister Chrystia Freeland, about the move, she balked.

Freeland, who also serves as Trudeau’s deputy prime minister, had been at odds with her boss for weeks. Trudeau, desperate to reverse their party’s popularity slide, had wanted to send checks worth 250 Canadian dollars (about $175 in the United States) to the majority of the country. Ostensibly a measure to ease the hurt of inflation, it was a naked attempt to curry favor. Freeland pushed hard against the move, insisting that it was an imprudent use of money, particularly as the Canadian debt is mounting. The move looked only more absurd as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump turned up the temperature on a possible ruinous trade war with Canada.

Facing the prospect of being demoted for her intransigence, Freeland opted to quit instead. In her resignation letter, published last Monday, Freeland reminded the prime minister that Canada could soon be facing 25 percent tariffs from the United States. “That means eschewing costly political gimmicks, which we can ill afford and which make Canadians doubt that we recognize the gravity of the moment,” she wrote.

The move briefly turned off the gravity in Ottawa. A planned fiscal update that Freeland was supposed to deliver, scheduled for Monday morning, was canceled in a panic. Members of the Canadian Parliament raced to the capital—including some who were supposed to be campaigning in a special election on the West coast. (Which they lost miserably.) The Liberals called a hasty caucus meeting, where Trudeau pleaded with his party to keep his job.

The meeting ended, and the parliamentarians filed out one by one or snuck out through the back door, with most refusing to comment on the prime minister’s future.

By the end of the week, things had returned back to a strange calm. Trudeau has made no signal that he intends to leave—and nobody has the power to remove him until, at least, January.

Unlike the Conservatives, who installed an ejector seat in the leader’s chair a decade ago, Trudeau’s caucus has no power to remove a leader. (Unless they just lost an election.) Parliament will have a chance to express a vote of no confidence in Trudeau’s government early next year, though it is far from clear that such a vote will succeed—the center-left New Democratic Party and the separatist Bloc Québécois have continued to prop up his unpopular government.

Instead, the country—including many of Trudeau’s allies—will spend the holidays watching the weather and wondering if, or when, Trudeau will finally venture out for his walk in the snow.

[thewormsingularityisnear]

[nitewrighter]

Your thoughts on pve and creators retconing some lore?

Do you think they will push more pharmercy and debunk gency??

Also, these negative reviews on game

and here I thought pve would help regain OW its former glory

How wrong I was

I mean I was kind of answering questions like this all day yesterday, and it's honestly fucking exhausting, but to recap:

-This is lore that basically makes the assumption of, "Everyone getting into this PvE has the attention span and narrative intelligence of a gnat and also no one was paying attention to any of the lore prior to 2021." Sure, you did have some call-outs, like I loved that Iggy had an appearance and voice in the Underground Event Mission, but they made Rein a calloused and surprisingly anti-omnic moron when that characterization really wasn't there before. Like... this was one of his big promotional images back when the game first came out!!!

He's literally protecting an omnic!!

The Rio mission was spectacular, and honestly makes the Toronto and Gothenburg missions look noticeably less polished by comparison, but if memory serves, the Rio mission was the only one they were allowing players to play at Blizzcon way back so... >.>

-I think they'll push PM more and more because they recognize that's the bigger ship and they don't want to risk alienating whatever players they have left, but they'll likely take their sweet time actually confirming it to drag out in-fandom arguments and by extension keep word-of-mouth up.

-As far as the Steam negative reviews go, I mean, I think that was kind of a given, especially since that's literally TF2's turf and a lot of the fandom for that has been pretty hostile to Overwatch's general existence for years, and now it's crawling onto Steam with all of its ridiculous in-app purchases. It's doubtful that a lot, if not most of the reviewers have even played it, but honestly, given all of Blizzard's practices and broken promises, it's not undeserved.

-Like, again, I have to emphasize that because what we have for a PvE is clearly such a stepped down dialed back version of what was initially promised, what was initially pitched as the reason for OW2's relaunch, and because we had to pay for it in a game that billed itself (ha) as "Free to Play" I don't think even John Cena could have brought the hype up after years of disappointment and breadcrumbs. Especially when they're charging money for the very thing--or what would have been the very thing--that called for all this overhaul to the game. I never really had any notions of Overwatch regaining its former glory. Also there's the fact that what little PvE there is was introduced nearly a year after OW2's launch! Like! You're literally doing an anniversary event in the same season as the PvE!!