Israel votes today. Here is some info. Don’t be weird.

Political Party Quiz (you're probably the Democrats or Yashar)

Map of Election Turnout (english top left, its been the highest turnout by 4 pm of polling since they started tracking in 1973).

Polls are CLOSED and the major TV exit polls have arrived. These aren't final results, and may end up fairly inaccurate, but they’re probably the best we’re getting for another 9 hours or so. Specific parties hovering around the threshold could take days until the November 4 due date. After coalitions will start forming.

 The longer write-up I had can be read here, to shorten the body of the post

a good general spot for all party lists (many don't matter), another quiz, live results, etc.

A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Tuesday ordered a police investigation into alleged ties between a donor network co-founded by Vice President JD Vance and the presidential campaign of Flávio Bolsonaro in the run-up to Sunday’s election.

Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino directed the Brazilian federal police to investigate the “nature” of the contacts between the Rockbridge Network, which was founded in 2019, and any Brazilian companies or political operatives to aid or finance Bolsonaro’s run.

It’s a crime in Brazil for a political candidate to accept funding or other campaign assistance from a foreign source.

The investigation, Dino wrote, was “necessary to verify if there was the effective furnishment of resources — including human resources — services, or other measurable economic advantages, identifying its origin, its destination and its eventual use in the campaign.”

Rockbridge denied any such contact.

Vance has spoken at Rockbridge donor gatherings as recently as a year ago. His office on Tuesday declined to comment.

Bolsonaro, who lost the election to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, fled Brazil for the United States on Tuesday in defiance of a separate Supreme Court order, three people with knowledge of the matter told The Washington Post. He and his family will be issued visas to stay in the U.S., a senior State Department official told The Post.

Before the election, Rockbridge’s alleged activities in Brazil triggered several complaints by Bolsonaro’s political opponents. One was by Lula’s Workers’ Party, which filed a complaint with the Supreme Court. Another was by presidential candidate Renan Santos, who took his case to the Supreme Electoral Court.

Santos, who was eliminated in the first round of the election, alleged that Brazilians who claimed to represent Rockbridge had discussed providing U.S. support with Bolsonaro campaign officials.

The representatives also approached Santos with offers of campaign help, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private discussions.

The Rockbridge Network said it had no affiliation with the Brazilians who claimed to be its agents.

“The Brazilians made false representations about their relationship with Rockbridge and created documents representing or referencing Rockbridge without Rockbridge’s knowledge or consent,” the network said in a statement Tuesday.

Bolsonaro was already under investigation for his ties to a banker accused of involvement in an alleged multibillion-dollar fraud and to a man suspected of laundering money tied to Brazil’s betting industry.

The order also has the potential to further strain relations between the Brazilian government and the Trump administration, which have feuded in recent years over the prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was accused of planning a military coup to stay in power after his 2022 election defeat to Lula. Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio’s father, is an ally of President Donald Trump.

Trump imposed a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian goods and sanctions on several officials last year to pressure them into dropping the prosecution. They did not. Jair Bolsonaro was convicted last year of attempting the violent overthrow of the democratic rule of law and sentenced to more than 27 years in prison.

Flávio Bolsonaro ran on promises to free his father, pardon supporters convicted in a Jan. 6-style assault on Brasília and impeach the Supreme Court justices involved in their prosecution.

Made a simple chart to help people describe their positions quickly and unambiguously.

SS: The Gray Lady utilizes free speech to denounce the president.

The other thread got broke so we'll try to repost.

Israel voted today. Here is some info I wrote on the other one. Don’t be weird.

Live Results can be viewed here but its estimating based on % collected so don't take it too closely until all the votes are in. Specific parties hovering around the threshold could take days until the November 4 due date.

Map of Votes Collected

Political Party Quiz (you're probably the Democrats or Yashar)

US gameplan for Venezuela is a new Supreme Court year-end (TSJ), new elections council (CNE) in early 2027, Delcy Rodríguez declares a "vacancy in the presidency" soon after, triggering a 6 month period for holding a Presidential vote. CNE power gets reduced. Instead of registering parties or deciding who appears on ballots, it's be a technical body focused on "administering elections, operating polling places, counting votes & reporting results." New CNE & TSJ would have their members picked by a committee of experts & wouldn't require approval from the National Assembly. SecState Rubio is leading this effort & has claimed that Caracas agreed to move forward with setting up a new TSJ & that they've met all the timelines. The National Assembly published a call for applications for new magistrates of the TSJ. Process starts October 28 & goes until November 11. FREE ARTICLE LINK

Submission Statement: South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung was effusive as he welcomed home the crew of the container ship PanStar Acro from a voyage across the Arctic. Hailing the crew’s “courage and sense of responsibility” on “distant seas”, Lee pledged to “answer with unwavering action and open a new path for the Republic of Korea”.

European diplomats in Seoul were less enthused. Sailing the Northern Sea Route, which hugs the Russian Arctic coast, shaves 10 days off European journeys via the Suez Canal but requires extensive co-operation from Moscow.

The voyage, South Korea’s first, which returned this month, was emblematic of what European officials see as a diplomatic and commercial tilt by Seoul towards Moscow, even as the Kremlin deepens its partnership with North Korea and continues its war against Ukraine.

Those concerns were heightened by reports this month that more than 176,000 tonnes of fuel, mostly diesel, were shipped from South Korea to Russia in July and August, including aboard tankers subject to UK and EU sanctions.

Seoul’s relationship with Moscow has prompted some European diplomats to question whether South Korea — which they saw as a “like-minded” democracy, with shared economic and security interests — remains a reliable partner.

“[The South Koreans] aren’t really ‘like-minded’,” said one Seoul-based European diplomat who requested anonymity. “The attitude is that the [Ukraine] war won’t last for ever, and they want to get right back into business with Russia as soon as it’s over.”

European concerns over Seoul’s attitude to Russia predate Lee’s presidency. South Korea’s lax enforcement of its export controls on computer numerical control (CNC) machines, which can be used to produce munitions, has been a particular source of frustration.

Some observers say those concerns have grown under Lee, who took office in June 2025. Mason Richey, professor of international politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, said that South Korean-Russian relations had been “improving quietly” since last autumn.

In November 2025, the Institute for National Security Strategy, which is affiliated with Korea’s National Intelligence Service, held a closed-door conference with the Russian International Affairs Council, a Kremlin-backed think-tank aimed at finding opportunities for political dialogue and “prospects for expanding economic co-operation”, according to the RIAC website.

In June, INSS president Kim Seong-bae travelled to Moscow for a closed-door strategic dialogue with Russian counterparts, according to RIAC.

This month, Lee appointed Song Young-gil, a former leader of his Democratic Party, as special adviser for peace diplomacy. Song, who also served as a presidential envoy to Russia, has long advocated for closer ties with Moscow, and was awarded Russia’s Order of Friendship by President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in 2013.

Meanwhile, Seoul’s relationship with Kyiv has deteriorated following a dispute over the disclosurelast month that two North Korean prisoners of war had been transferred from Ukraine to South Korea.

Lee has accused Kyiv of violating a secrecy agreement over transfer and demanded an apology. Seoul this month recalled its ambassador to Kyiv, its first such move since 2008, while Korea’s foreign ministry said it would withdraw additional embassy staff. Ukrainian officials have disputed the Korean account, calling it a “diplomatic misunderstanding”.

European leverage is also limited by the increasing importance of South Korea’s defence industry, which has helped replenish European stockpiles drawn down to arm Ukraine. Poland alone has ordered more than $18bn of Korean tanks, howitzers, fighter jets and rocket launchers since 2022.

European governments “still need weapons — precisely because of [the Ukraine] situation,” Richey said. South Korea is “not easily replaced”.

Canada’s planned “associate membership” in the European Union to deepen trade and defence relations is intended to build a partnership that comes closer to membership in the economic bloc than anything the EU has done before, EU officials say.

They acknowledged the name describing Canada’s relationship with the EU is still being debated. Last week a number of EU member states including, reportedly, Germany, objected to including the term “associate member” in the planned communique for the summit.

The Globe is not identifying the three EU officials who detailed plans for the Oct. 29-30 Canada-EU summit in Montreal at a background briefing Tuesday because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

One EU official described the status as tailor-made for Canada and not something that would apply to European countries, which can pursue full membership instead. The new relationship is association without accession, they added, referring to formal process for countries that join the EU. Croatia was the last country to officially join the bloc.

Asked if the Canada-EU relationship would end up being closer than the European Economic Area deal that extends the EU’s single market to non-EU nations Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, one official at the briefing said how far it will go hasn’t been decided.

The phrase “associate membership” was proposed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last month. She and members of the commission, the executive arm of the EU, will meet with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government in Montreal during the summit to hammer out this new relationship.

Mr. Carney has said Canada has no intention of formally joining the EU, which would require this country to bring its laws and regulations into alignment with the economic bloc’s.

However, the EU bloc and Canada are trying to boost two-way trade and investment in order to reduce economic and strategic reliance on the increasingly protectionist and unpredictable United States under President Donald Trump.

EU officials said Ottawa and Brussels are working toward a digital trade agreement that will cement rules for online trade including e-signatures and e-contracts, paperless trade, secure cross-border data flows, duties on electronic transmissions and e-commerce. This agreement will expand the Canada-EU trade agreement into digital trade, officials said.

They are also modernizing a nuclear co-operation agreement between Canada and the European Atomic Energy Community to work together on uranium fuel and research, the officials said.

This new partnership includes opening Europe’s supercomputing infrastructure to Canada, giving researchers and businesses more opportunities to use the quantum power from these machines to further research into areas such as artificial intelligence and Alzheimer’s, officials said.

Officials said Canada and the EU are also talking about deepening co-operation on secure satellite connections including Galileo, the EU’s satellite navigation system which is the equivalent of GPS, as well as Iris2, the EU’s planned secure satellite network which would give governments and businesses a communication option that doesn’t depend on U.S. or Chinese systems.

Ottawa and Brussels are talking about Canada participating in GovSatCom, which pools satellite communications capacity from member states for government and military use, officials said.

The two jurisdictions are also making joint plans to protect their respective democratic processes, such as elections, from foreign interference and hacking, officials said.

As The Globe reported last week, Canada and the EU will launch a new “alliance for the future” on trade and defence co-operation at the summit according to a recent draft joint statement that also stipulated that Canada will be treated as an “associate member” going forward.

That statement, obtained by The Globe, said Canada and the European Investment Bank have concluded negotiations of an agreement that will facilitate European investment in Canadian resources such as critical raw materials.

The statement, which is subject to revisions before being released at this week’s summit, says Canada and the EU will co-operate to make it easier for businesses and investors to operate across the Atlantic in order to “increase cross-border capital flows, strengthen financial market integration, and improve opportunities for consumers, financial institutions, businesses and investors.”

These efforts, it adds, will help “mobilize capital for strategic sectors and support long-term economic growth and competitiveness.”

The plan includes “connecting instant payment systems to facilitate faster, lower-cost and more seamless cross-border transactions,” the draft says.

Article link: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/article-university-degrees-humanities-business-engineering-youth-employment/.

Recent university graduates are still struggling in Canada’s unforgiving job market, with post-pandemic unemployment rates among young bachelor’s degree holders sitting at levels not seen since the early 1990s.

These struggles aren’t because young people are making irresponsible career choices; in fact, our graduates’ pragmatic mindset may be making the situation worse.

The youth employment numbers are sobering. Despite a rising population and the continuing retirement of the baby boomers, the number of job vacancies requiring a bachelor’s degree has fallen by 6 per cent in the last year, with 4.9 unemployed people for every job requiring a university degree. It is also taking young people longer to find a job, as the time they stay unemployed has nearly doubled since 2023.

One common misconception is that young people are choosing majors with little practical value. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has spoken about young people taking degrees in “zombie studies,” while Ontario Premier Doug Ford told students worried about Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) cuts that they’re “picking basket-weaving courses and there’s not too many baskets being sold out there.”

These criticisms aren’t just aimed at politicians; they’re aimed at them for creating systems that set young people up to fail. Mike Rowe, host of the TV series Dirty Jobs, is one such critic, lamenting that “we are lending money we don’t have to kids who can’t pay it back to train them for jobs that no longer exist.”

The data, however, tells a different story: today’s young adults are taking a more pragmatic, career-oriented approach to education than previous generations.

Boomers and Generation X were far more likely than today’s grads to choose majors that politicians and TV hosts would dismiss as frivolous. In the early 1990s, when the latter half of Generation X started university, 13 per cent of bachelor’s degrees in Canada were awarded in the humanities. By 2024, that share had fallen to just 5 per cent.

Over the past 30 years, the share of undergraduate degrees granted in health sciences, engineering, business, computer science and related fields jumped to more than 60 per cent from 42 per cent, with no sign of slowing.

Often, the argument is not that young people lack pragmatism because they choose the wrong major while in university, but that they are being impractical by going to university at all, with Mike Rowe passionately arguing that young people would be better served by learning a trade.

However, given alarmingly low apprenticeship completion rates, young people may pragmatically choose programs where they have a higher chance of success.

The brutal reality is that our kids know they are entering a world where they cannot afford to make mistakes or explore their interests. Choosing the wrong major might lead to years of unemployment or underemployment, and not earning enough right away can put homeownership forever out of reach in much of the country.

This pragmatism starts early, as a high-school grade average of 96 is no longer a guaranteed entry into some university programs. No university in Ontario today would take a chance on someone with a high-school transcript as poor as mine was 30 years ago.

Once in university, students choose courses and majors to maximize their chances of getting a well-paying job upon graduation, which is typically interpreted as choosing a “practical” major and selecting courses based on the likelihood of earning a high grade. This safe approach prevents young people from taking risks and exploring their interests.

The undergraduate courses that have benefited me most in my career were challenging advanced philosophy courses, where I had little prior knowledge and often received relatively low grades because of it.

Like many virtues, pragmatism taken to excess becomes a vice. Rewarding students for taking subjects they already understand, and courses where they are likely to earn high grades, is like going to the gym and training muscles that are already strong, at weights that minimize the chance of failure.

It is not the condition for growth.

Perhaps the worst part is that youth have been misinformed about which fields are safe options. Well-meaning parents and guidance counsellors have steered a growing share of students into just a handful of majors, such as business consulting and computer science, even after former president Barack Obama said everyone should learn to code. Ironically, these are now two of the most at-risk fields owing to the rise of AI.

We have done our young people a disservice by insisting they make safe, pragmatic educational choices. Pundits and educators have a terrible track record of predicting which careers will be most in demand, and steering students into a handful of occupation-focused majors increases risk if one of those occupations suddenly declines in demand.

Instead, young people should be encouraged to explore a wealth of their options and take risks, including the occasional course in zombie studies.

SS: Obviously this article and the data is about Canada, but these trends are replicable in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. The larger point reached by Moffatt is that today's youth are pursuing more "meaningful" degrees over "basket-weaving" majors in the humanities, but are still largely coming short in finding meaningful employment.

The US military said vessels that have no need to move between ports in the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz should stay away, as tensions ratchet up in the region.

“Due to the current geopolitical situation, vessels which do not need to transit the area are advised to remain well clear to avoid unnecessary delays to their voyage,” the US Naval Forces Central Command said in an advisory on Wednesday issued via the Joint Maritime Information Center.

“Vessels transiting this area are advised to plan additional transit time to allow for increased traffic density and military blockade enforcement operations,” the notice said.

It remains unclear what prompted the advisory. The US military last publicly issued a similar notice in mid-July, when it began its blockade of Iranian shipping. Back then, it said that the blockade would not impede neutral passage through Hormuz, though ships should expect to be questioned on their intentions.

Traffic through the chokepoint has recovered in recent months, with shuttle tankers making up a big part of the traffic carrying crude oil. These ships make multiple runs in and out of the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, where other tankers unwilling to risk the Strait await to receive cargoes.

Dozens of crude tankers willing to take the risk have helped lift oil flows from the Persian Gulf to near prewar levels, while the US blockade has pushed Iranian crude exports close to zero. At the same time, Iran has been ramping up its attacks on ships to a wartime high of almost 30 in October.

The latest US advisory said that neutral vessels with neutral cargo or are in ballast sailing between these neutral ports may be subject to questioning, visit, and search to confirm their intentions regarding the blockade.

The US Central Command and the US Naval Forces Central Command — the naval unit that is part of Centcom and oversees the naval blockade of Iran — did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

As wealth accumulates and economic opportunity becomes increasingly uneven, the United States faces a question more consequential than how fast its economy can grow: whether the gains of prosperity are translating into greater security, freedom and opportunity for the people who sustain it.

The Purpose of Growth: What Happens When a Richer Economy Fails to Make Life More Affordable?

Relevance: This is the second major deadly train accident this year in Spain. Railway maintenance and safety has suffered greatly during Sachez's time in office. The technical reason is still unknown. Signaling systems and safety systems should have stopped this.