No Food for Thought

No Food for Thought wouldn't be complete without a rant against Canada's Phoenix pay system. This week I worked with an unfortunate former government employee who's been compensated incorrectly ever since Phoenix was deployed, in 2016.1 She is still affected by Phoenix's mess, even though she retired 5 years ago! While this post doesn't pretend to be complete―which will have to wait until this fiasco's end―as the government reveals it's already paid over 4 million compensation hours to its employees, and with costs already in the order of a billion CAD, it's high time to start that rant.

Ah, if only "conservatives" could actually be conservative. Here's hoping Phoenix will die soon, but most importantly, that we Canadians at last start valuing governance and never allow such a phoenix to regenerate.

Some people are bored enough to break the law in order to find distraction. Why not get a wild cat like a serval (even if they're illegal in Nova Scotia)? Maybe because wild animals are themselves bored, when kept in captivity, and reputed to be great at recovering their freedom.

For anyone who's owned a cat and tried to keep it inside, feline escaping skills should be little surprise. What I find slightly surprising is the transformation of courage into fear visible in this encounter between very different cats. It seems the legal cat got its daily dose of adrenaline...
Angle matters!

Half a decade after the famous treatise on the matter, quitting or speaking remains a constant dilemma. In particular in rogue autocratic regimes like Vladimir Putin's Russia... and about a topic as political as the Russo-Ukrainian War.

👏🏼Russian businessmen Arkady Volozh and Oleg Tinkov👏🏼 have managed to take the right decision, clearly voicing their opposition, despite a forced very costly exit.

Fast Company has written a 5-point rant against Google Maps. The first 4 points honestly don't bother me much... but as for the last one, it was quite a relief to read, about a year after realizing it and wondering if I'm going crazy for being the only one getting this behavior and going mad about it:

Slashdot's coverage of the article has lots of comments about that problem, some of which suggest the persistence of such a flaw does not result from incompetence, but rather an intentional business decision:

Unfortunately, the issue is not just limited to your surroundings. Maps fail to show road and waterway names even when exploring different regions. And no matter the explanation, I have to admit that at this time, I'm still using Google Maps.😒

Having contributed to countless projects via volunteer organizations, I know that organizational dysfunction is―if not a rule―almost a norm, in particular in organizations with little funding, no staff and no management.

There are some obvious explanations for that, including volunteer burnout, but what is more surprising is the frequency and persistence of harassment. Jeroen Camps highlights an interesting scientifically studied phenomenon called moral licensing which may help explain that.

I am skeptical about the existence and importance of moral licensing, but if it affected everyone, very few of Kohlberg's stages of moral development would remain plausible.

Qu'y a-t-il de pire que de subventionner le secteur privé? Mal subventionner le secteur privé. Chose bien trop commune dans notre pays.

J'allais cotiser à mon REER+ du Fonds de solidarité des travailleurs du Québec aujourd'hui. Après 2 minutes, je constate, sans grande surprise, que ce n'est toujours pas possible. Les cotisations sont toujours suspendues; du moins on le suppose, puisque le site web ne semble l'indiquer nulle part. Je ne ferai pas partie des chanceux qui pourront cotiser cette année; on repassera pour la solidarité.

L'article du Journal de Montréal explique une partie du problème. Suffit d'ajouter qu'au lieu d'encourager les particuliers à détenir des investissements au Québec, on les encourage à en acquérir. Oups! La nuance fait toute la différence, transformant une intention d'encourager l'économie locale en une pure dépense, empirant notre déficit. Sacrés incitatifs pervers

Ah, si seulement on pouvait remplacer le crédit d'impôt relatif à un fonds de travailleurs par un crédit d'imposteurs au Parlement du Québec!

Il y a de l'espoir, tout de même. Cet article de Julien Arsenault indique qu'à défaut d'encourager la détention, on allonge une période de détention minimale... à une nouvelle tout aussi arbitraire, mais sans doute moins pire que la précédente. L'article a aussi le mérite de rectifier celui du Journal de Montréal en indiquant que le problème des émissions n'est malheureusement pas la faute de la FTQ, mais bien... de la régulation gouvernementale! Et du même coup, on éliminera le crédit pour les « riches »... car n'est-ce pas plus facile d'ajouter encore davantage de règles que de les rationaliser? Ainsi, on aura bientôt un crédit avec une période de détention minimale, un plafond salarial et une limite annuelle (pour ne mentionner que les plus importants des critères). Et bien sûr, sur des actions qui resteront difficiles à se procurer. Si on cherche à économiser, ce n'est certainement pas de la complexité!

This month, the USA's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has paid its largest award ever to an undisclosed whistle-blower who helped identify a presumably major securities law violation. Indeed, the reward amounted to 279 million USD.

The case being confidential, it is hard to judge the collaboration's value. But the incentive is pretty clear. What is easy is to wonder what would happen if instead of—or in addition to—exceptional awards, whistle-blowing was properly valued consistently. The SEC's own policy on awards is questionable, ignoring cases under 1 million USD in sanctions. For many people, the difference between no reward and a 200 000 USD reward may have more impact on their behavior than the difference between a 200 000 USD reward and a 279 million USD reward.

It's not easy to imagine that most of the 2022–2023 Pentagon document leaks could have been prevented with only 150 000 USD, had it been awarded early. How many hundreds of lives and tens of millions of dollars would such a reward have saved?

I remember being halfway through high school when I had the idea of optimizing solar energy by putting panels around the Sun and relaying the energy to Earth. I did not promote the idea a lot at the time, but it turns out that wouldn't have changed much. Even the concept's name was already established when I was born: unfortunately not a "Cloutier panel", but a Dyson sphere, named after Freeman Dyson, who explored the concept... in 1937.

Not only was I ignorant of its name, but I also didn't know such structures were considered as the defining element of "type II" civilizations, on the Kardashev scale.
Here's hoping our species goes type II before burning through our planet I.

L'assurance de ses propres biens est bien entendu facultative. Les locataires de logements n'ont donc pas besoin d'une assurance habitation, mais qu'en est-il de la responsabilité civile?

L'assurance de responsabilité couvre un assuré qui serait poursuivi pour des dommages qu'il aurait causés. Notamment un résident qui endommagerait des résidences adjacentes en causant un incendie. À priori, la loi québécoise n'oblige pas les locataires à souscrire une telle assurance.

Règlements

Par contre, plusieurs locateurs exigent de leurs locataires de souscrire une assurance responsabilité civile et même d'en fournir la preuve au propriétaire. Cette obligation venant avec des coûts considérables—en argent mais surtout en temps—on peut se demander si de telles clauses sont abusives. Si vous avez signé un bail doté d'un règlement vous imposant une assurance responsabilité, êtes-vous obligé de le respecter?

Selon un jugement de 2019, oui.

Ainsi, au Québec, l'obligation de détenir une assurance responsabilité dépend du règlement de sa résidence.

It might seems strange for someone who was part of Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party of Canada government for 7 years to teach about integrity.

It's nevertheless interesting to see how former astronaut Marc Garneau looks back at his career in an interview with Paul Wells:

For want of honesty from politicians, it's nice to see occasional meta-(dis)honesty from former politicians. I for one can't wait for Vladimir Putin and his USA presidency puppet to exhibit some honesty about how much dishonesty they will have resorted to.

How wonderful would our world be if it wasn't for dishonesty?