As someone who sees MS Word forms regularly force Canadians to use Month/Day/Year formats which were never native to Canada and don’t meet the ISO standard either, I am inferring the impetus transition.

But truly, I old enough to recall many standards being harmonized in the early 90s in the wake of the North American free trade agreement.

Whether or not a digital archive document demonstrates that Canada Post intentionally harmonized to match the US is TBC.

But it is a verifiable fact that the two-letter standard for provinces and territories has not been commonly established in all federal regulations or data standards or in provincial and territorial data systems standards.

That is to say, it has not been formally adopted as by Canada or as the ‘Canadian data standard.’

The two-letter system was already in place in the United States mail system before the 80s.

It wouldn’t be the first time Canada adopted a US data standard to ease utilization of US made or standardized equipment.

It was the old form. Other than BC, the old postal short forms were 3 or 4 letters.

BC

Alta

Sask

Man

Ont

Que

NB

NS

PEI

Nfld

The 2-letter acronyms came up from the United States relatively recently.

The Backlash as Canada conservatives’ ‘our home’ video features other countries Party deletes video after viewers list gaffes, including scenes of US, Serbia and Slovenia – plus Russian jets

No joke, and the story has legs internationally regrettably.

This isn’t 10 or 15 years ago when global stock video clips were just taking off standard resource in ad company toolboxes.

This is also raising questions of foreign interference/influence in democratic process.

In Canada, the federal Elections Commissioner has been called on to investigate the source of bot campaigns for the leading opposition party: Online bot campaign backing Pierre Pollievre prompts call for probe.

The maple leaf last year was well done.

Suggest you look back on the canvas thread to see what was done last year.

We managed to do a comm badge and the 1701 Enterprise and a Klingon symbol.

Some context on the Saskatchewan aspect that puts helps to understand the concerns being raised:

“Weekes also said Harrison once sought permission to bring a gun into the legislature. Harrison initially denied the allegation but resigned last week after admitting he had forgotten about the incident, which happened more than a decade ago.”

The CP photo caption says the incident happened in 2016.

The article suggests that the environment plays a significant role in gasturlation, especially the chemistry.

If identical twins develop in the same uterine environment, there would be greater likelihood of the same genes expressing.

I’m still seeing this as an active posting, linked on other UN pages e.g.,

https://dppa.un.org/en/gazas-new-terror-booby-trapped-cans-of-food-unwary

However, a similar claim in January was found to be false by fact checking news orgs.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/feb/01/instagram-posts/no-viral-footage-doesnt-show-explosives-disguised/

From the webpage for King Arthur’s GF Bread Flour:

Description

Use our Gluten-free Bread Flour for your best breads and baked treats – completely gluten-free.

As if by magic, all your favorite breads can become gluten-free with this versatile gluten-free bread flour. Made with gluten-free wheat starch to give baked goods incredible taste and texture, it’s ideal for classic yeasted recipes like artisan boules, bagels, cinnamon rolls, and burger buns.

I’m not in the US, and hadn’t been aware of the distinction between their bread flour (which does have wheat starch) and their 1:1.

So agree on that, and appreciate the clarification.

I keep on getting social media recommendations for recipes made with King Arthur and for an EU analogue that uses ‘cleaned’ wheat starch. It makes me concerned that these are so heavily promoted without any cautions.

But the King Arthur 1:1 is a rice and starch mix, not ideal given the risks of a high rice diet (arsenic & aflatoxins) which we can’t mitigate as consumers when we have no idea where the rice is grown or how harvested, dried or processed. And rice heavy mixes produce dry baked goods as a rule, that go stale quickly. Can’t recommend it.

I’m going to respectfully argue back that it’s not helpful for the community when name brands with market power like King Arthur’s take up so much of the supermarket GF shelf space with problematic mixes. In doing so, they crowd out space that might let be given to newer GF producers with better products that eliminate gluten and other allergens for a larger group of consumers. I’ve been baking GF for about 25 years and have seen availability actually go down as some of the major brands have rolled into the segment. So, can’t really send kudos for that.

I feel strongly about Bob’s Red Mill in this regard as well by the way. We don’t know what the second generation management will do, but up to now Bob’s has dominated shelf space while refusing to separate its lines to eliminate other major allergens like milk, soy or tree nuts.

Prior to the FDA requirements on top allergen labeling going up in the US, we regularly saw our Canadian Food Inspection Agency pulling Bob’s products from shelves here based on lab findings of undeclared allergens. So, stores were wary to rely on Bob’s, but more recently Bob’s has displaced a number of better smaller mills on supermarket shelves.

As it happens, King Arthur’s flour isn’t available for sale in Canada while most other GF brands from the US are. King Arthur wheat flour was my favourite brand in the US when I was a student there many years ago, so I’ve been curious to see what they did for GF. Was pretty shocked when I looked it up to see a wheat-derived bread flour hitting the mass market under a GF label.

That’s a mostly rice and starch blend. Can work for pastry and cakes etc.

Rice flour negatives:

1. Tends to make things that go stale super quickly

2. Depending on where grown, rice takes up arsenic from the soil which is a seriously toxic metal

3. Depending where grown, under what conditions and how it’s stored and processed, rice can have a microorganism that produces a serious toxic chemical called aflatoxin which cannot be mitigated by cooking.

The EU is studying these risks in populations that eat diets high in rice. In the US, there have been academic studies. You can get a good lay summary of the issues on the Lundberg Farms website. They do their best to minimize these toxins in the rice products they sell but when you buy rice flour you have no idea of where or how that rice was grown or processed.

For bread you will need different recipes. Suggest looking for ones that don’t call for a commercial flour mix and that include psyllium.

King Arthur’s uses ‘cleaned’ wheat starch, supposed to be <20 ppm gluten.

This isn’t ok for many with wheat allergy or gluten intolerance that is not celiac.

Stay away from rice flour and starch heavy GF breads, as they will be drier and go stale quickly.

GF alternative flours tend to have higher hydration requirements than wheat and it seems few GF bread manufacturers have a clue about this. PhD inorganic chemist and cookbook author Katerina Cermelj has a lot to say about that in her book ‘Baked to Perfection.’

There are decent recipes out there, especially ones that include psyllium, which makes it possible to make a gel that can give better texture and hold moisture.

They’ve been happily living in British Columbia all along.

If I’m recalling correctly, there was one statistic in the 1970s along the lines that there were more bald eagles living in Vancouver’s Stanley Park than in the lower 48 US states.

No effort at all to see their nests from the outdoor theatre at Malkin Bowl.

https://stanleyparkecology.ca/2018/02/28/eagles-nesting-stanley-park/

I was referring to the one in Vancouver.

I wouldn’t call it a ‘trial’.

It was in place for a couple of decades. Agreed that it failed in the end, as did Rideau street in Ottawa.

We’re deep in the summer NBA doldrums but !torontoraptors@lemmy.ca is trying to get traction.