Winter has arrived (hopefully? Maybe?)
There's a slightly cheeky, slightly not-safe-for-work meme at the end of this post
I know some people like to complain about it but I like winter. Or, let me be more clear: I like a good, consistently below zero, snowy winter. Moonlight on snow is much more cheerful than dark and rain, and skiing, skating, etc is more fun than trudging through +3 C sleet. So this is great:
The question we have to ask ourselves these days is will it last? The pessimist in me says no, based on recent experience, we will likely have at least one and likely more thaws by Christmas but I’m still hoping this is the beginning of some consistent snow on the ground. Either way, good news from the Caledonia Nordic Ski Club who have received a grant from the province to track cross-country trails out at Bear Lake, where it does get snowier and colder more consistently. So there’s that, at least! The Citizen has a photogallery of kids enjoying the snow and in more cross-country news, My Prince George Now reports that the paved summer roller-ski trails are done with the grand opening set for May.
Bluesky is popping and I have mixed feelings
I left Twitter roughly two years ago, around the same time I started publishing this newsletter. One of the things I liked using Twitter for was sharing local news, especially small things that might not fit into the purview of a news story in the context of my job at the time. However, over time I also became aware of the fact that in so doing I was also encouraging a non-zero number of people who enjoyed those sorts of updates to also be on Twitter at the same time that I was thinking about the unhealthy aspects of being constantly connected on a real-time social network and, in a final push, one that could be bought up by the world’s richest person and used for his own ends while someone like me is essentially providing free labour by posting on it and getting more people there for him to sell ads against. At the time, he had not delved into the politics he’s involved in today, so it was more about the principle than the particulars (this is the same reason I am not particularly active on Facebook except as a research tool).
But I have not given up posting altogether and have been on both Mastodon and Bluesky in the time since, and in the last few days Bluesky has exploded with users. For the first time, there’s an active number of folks from British Columbia and even Prince George on there, and another user has created a "Starter Pack” of some of those accounts (a starter pack is a way to follow a bunch of users that have been curated by someone else).
All that said, I have somewhat mixed feelings about a new real-time social network that could take up more of my time. I have spent the last two years de-programming from about a decade of being super active on social media and it’s overall been good — less time scrolling, less time watching people fight each other, while still being just as informed about the world because I visit news websites instead of websites where you read other people reacting to the news that elicits strong emotional (usually negative) reactions. So I do want to say, by all means join these other websites if you’d like to BUT my committment is that I am not going to use them to replace, supplement or in any way bypass what this newsletter is — if there’s news about Prince George worth sharing, I’ll be sharing it here — and, more often than not, only here, not on some other social network.
News roundup
Pretty big fan of this story: Iranian brothers become instant Prince George Cougars fans. “It’s more exciting than soccer, where the field is much bigger… Here, everything is around you in a smaller location and it was fantastic because you got all the people’s energy.”
City of Prince George sues designer of $39M pool a 2nd time, claims mechanical system is faulty.
Family grieving after man dies shortly after being in police custody/
Here's how to pay your City of Prince George bills with Canada Post on strike.
7 kittens rescued from hazardous & unhealthy living conditions in Fort St. James.
PG’s Hiller captures gold in Team Sprint at Four Continents Skating Championships.
Paved trails completed at Otway, grand opening eyed for May.
Judy Russell and PGSO make beautiful music together in Sweeney Todd.
Here’s the slightly not-safe-for-work meme (context, if you don’t get it):
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Send feedback by emailing northerncapitalnews@gmail.com. Find me online at akurjata.ca.
I appreciate your principled decision making regarding Elon Musk’s media company, formally known as Twitter.