For those not following along, when transit vehicles go faster they complete more trips in a day and you can get the same service level for fewer vehicles and a lower wage bill

CRUCIALLY, this is a non-London problem We calculated the grad wage premium for each UK region and nation a few years ago, and you see declining graduate wage premia in every English region except London If we want to diagnose why the UK is such an outlier the answer is in the regional story

The p<0.001 thing is important because a lot of smart people think lowering the p value threshold will save us. I’m very skeptical of this.

"Pheidippides, for all his valour, lacked a sports watch."

something I learnt recently: Galileo Galilei was really into visual art. He was once an instructor at the Florentine "Accademia delle Arti del Disegno". This helped him as a scientist when he made his famous moon drawings (first pic). We also have some other sketches from his notebooks (pics 2-3).

Finding ways to improve trade with the EU is great. But on the other point in the poll: even considering EU membership is not great. It is likely infeasible. It is very surely unwise. The reason is that we are North American not European.

The French organist Thomas Ospital visited Rochester, NY to play a recital and do a masterclass. I had the good fortune to attend! The end of his concert included three improvisations, which I've written a description of on Facebook: www.facebook.com/story.php?st...

Seeing a concert by one of France's best organists, Thomas Ospital, tomorrow night. So excited!

Get pharmacies to switch from fax machines (Canadian edition) Challenge level: impossible Gift link from the Globe and Mail: www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/acfc5cc...

Elon's decision to shut down USAID is the direct cause of countless deaths. That he isn't persona non grata in many communities after that is a source of shame.

Kinda fun to see someone discover Gladwell for the first time

"stop doing the thing that hurts" is advice applicable far beyond the context of RSIs!

This is a big step, folks! Been watching this one a while, broad spectrum SARS vaccine! Would be a big deal even w/o Covid but with its 🌟🌟🌟

87.4% for Poilievre. www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

Perhaps Claude will be able to read sheet music soon 🤔 techcrunch.com/2026/01/29/m...

Seems like one of those issues that should greatly concern everyone regardless of their politics.

I tried to join the marsupial observatory unfortunately, they said I didn't have the requisite koalafications

sneaked into a private club to hear a friend's viol consort concert :)

Wouldn’t have made it out of the VEEP writers room

After 5 years I can finally share a full WP of our project conducting cognitive interviews of life satisfaction reporting. Main findings: 1. LS scales are psychometrically valid, but... 2. Standard statistical assumptions made when analysing LS data are not credible. osf.io/gv5e3/files/...

I was into crypto arbitrage in its heyday. I remember the crunch for time, when every minute felt (and was) insanely valuable. The current moment, with Claude Code etc., feels like that.

Here’s the really bad part: over time, this dynamic breeds bigger and bigger crises. Markets keep updating their beliefs about TACO, so it takes ever more extreme actions to convince them he might not TACO. Buckle up.

His opposition didn't even TRY. They didn't even SUGGEST HE SHOULD BE REMOVED

Any good articles explaining why Carney chose Qatar in particular?

If I'm being honest, the collapse of the post-Cold War international order and the violent occupation of an American city are making it difficult for me to concentrate on housing policy.

So it appears the far right have abandoned their conspiracy theory about the World Economic Forum being some sort of world-domination blood-libel plot now that they’re using it as a meeting place on the regular

I was joking with my friends about the seashore it appears they took it littorally

From The Economist: the US Congress has stood up to the president on science funding. Funding will be essentially unchanged from last year. Link for Economist subscribers: www.economist.com/united-state...

BC tried a laissez-faire decrim compared to Portugal's non-carceral but paternalistic decrim. The former was politically diasterous, after public order decayed while public drug use skyrocketed while the later has proven politically sustainable and a model that continues to be held up.

Having seen several abductions up close, it is really hard to convey how much the thing they’re doing is roaming in military convoys until they see someone who is alone and isn’t white, and then jumping out in large numbers, pulling them into a van, and screeching off, all in 90 seconds or so.

welcoming new neighbours the best way I know how! (NB.—two jars out of frame of final pic)

The Canadian liquor boycott had some unexpected consequences.

I've been working for ages on a comprehensive revamp of the Stanford Encyclopedia Entry on "Animal Consciousness", with new sections on non-Western perspectives, methodological challenges and evolutionary big pictures, and it's out today: plato.stanford.edu/entries/cons.... Hope you find it useful!

This is a serious question: when did the White House start liking Elon Musk again?

Reading whatever grabs your interest is great because you occasionally come across sequences of words such as: “The story of the horn in Austro-Bohemia begins with Count von Spork”

did you hear about the mechanical loom? it cotton in a flash

I was stumped by a challenge and for advice hired a duo of shrimp they recommended a two-prawned approach

Almost no one has articulated a positive vision for what comes after superintelligence. What should we be trying to aim for? Utopias from history look clearly dystopian to us, and we should expect the same for our own attempts. We don’t know enough, or have the authority, to decide the details.

it’s so insane that the most annoying caricatured leftist ideologue you can think of has moved from being mildly incorrect to unabashedly correct about the US in like a weekend and anyone who thinks otherwise can be proven wrong by simply reading the news

1/ McGill is searching for high profile candidates (advanced associate or Full) to apply for the Impact+ chairs funded by the Federal Government of Canada.These chairs are for candidates who are currently not residing or working in Canada.

Novo Nordisk is responding to the expiration of its patent in Canada in an odd way: it's creating rebranded versions of Ozempic and Wegovy that are identical in everything but name; the rebranded versions will differ only in marketing and price. www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...

“ … the tendency of large families to devolve into singing ensembles—a phenomenon described by political scientists as the ‘Captain vonʼ Trap.”

On pre-internet workplace distraction: In the late 1990s, Clinton is at a trade talk in Chile, with 33 other leaders. Mid-meeting, he asks Sandy Berger, his national security advisor, for the red folder. Its cover reads “FOR THE PRESIDENT’S EYES ONLY”. Inside are three NYT crossword puzzles.

The Globe just went full Melian Dialogue.

Here is what *would* be going into Canada's public domain tomorrow if we hadn't extended copyright under CUSMA. Instead, we'll need to wait until 2046. WRITERS: Hannah Arendt P.G. Wodehouse Julian Huxley, biologist and brother of Aldous Arnold J. Toynbee

learning about the horn player whom Mozart enjoyed trolling en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_...

"Do you have any diary restrictions?" "My doctor says I can't record any events that take place on Tuesdays."

Y’all might not appreciate it, but it took him 87 moves and 14 hours to get here

time to visit everyone's favourite website: isitchristmas.com

Pipe organ maintenance logs as a source of British climate data: www.thereengineer.pro/p/church-org...