“Your Appliances Got Worse On Purpose” — including the wild stat that Americans spent 43% more on appliances in 2023 than 2013 (inflation-adjusted!), because appliances are so much less reliable.

This picture is misleading, here. This is a better indicator of the opposition to Alto. And of course, there are polling numbers that show how many people actually support this.

Here I go again on my phone

“yeah i can tell it was AI generated. how? just vibes, yeah. it has that certain gen-AI sais quoi”

Take the Billy Bishop survey and just answer all the questions with NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. (Okay I was more eloquent than that, but you know what I mean. There is no "mitigation" there is only "fuck all the way off.") #NoJetsTO

The federal government is running a public survey on Billy Bishop Airport expansion so they can say they consulted with people, but the questions are designed to elicit positive responses about the economic impact, while framing concerns around “what would make airport expansion ok with you?”

Anthropic Institute, the research arm of Anthropic, published a report speculating on what it sees as potential future trends in AI development, and media literacy took an absolute beating from it. A thread: (1/22)

Yesterday I brought a resolution to tell the federal government regulate super bright LED headlights at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in Edmonton. Local governments across our country agreed to improve road safety for many people with visual impairments and all road users. It passed.

Look at a map of the area, then look at the Zoning map. Street after street of "residential" areas that can only be modestly intensified (a recent permission change). So what happens? Sneaky Dee's becomes way, way more valuable as a development site and here we are.

Romanian drivers are INCREDIBLY attentive to certain traffic safety rules. The reason is because they are enforced. “Culture eats policy for breakfast” my ass. The culture of impunity in America is driven by a policy of non-enforcement.

Say what you want about the Billy Bishop takeover, it's objectively funny that Ford's two biggest developments in Toronto are: -A fancy waterfront spa -Extending an airport runway to a point approximately two football fields from the fancy waterfront spa

“Content” also insidiously shifts significance and validity to the platform, not the substance — content is contained, what defines content is the existence and form of the container

Ah but time and money to tackle cyclists, still.

Chart of the day. The energy transition is happening in real time! 😍

almost 40 people died on our roads last year because of drivers, but the police apparatus continues to pick on cyclists, pedestrians, and transit users in this city. as they do. this is the latest.

A bicycle is a vehicle (this person appears to have been riding on the roadway = a vehicle). This behaviour is no different from 3 police officers dragging a driver out of their car for rolling through a stop sign. Make it make sense.

I have taken my life in my hands and written a column about off leash dog owners (and maybe on what “danger” is & how its perception can be manipulated by politics).

I wish people would remember this before freaking out about greedy developers tearing down older building to put up new housing. We’ve created a system where that’s pretty much the only option, in order to preserve the inflated value of single family homes.

yes! “saving” existing venues is only as important as it is because we’ve made it next to impossible to open new ones. a healthy city isn’t frozen in amber

Also also, the city would not let a place like Sneaky Dees open today if someone tried bsky.app/profile/jord...

UGHHHH when will city councillors accept some of the blame here. Major streets zoning in Toronto means our commercial corridors are threatened with densification because we can only build there!!! If you let people build in million-dollar neighbourhoods instead we'd reduce development pressure!

Oops. Narrative violation. www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quo...

Hello Canada. We are GO ALTO. Canada has waited long enough for high-speed rail in the Québec–Toronto corridor. We’re here to make support visible and build momentum. Explore the campaign and add your name: go-alto.ca/en/updates/n...

Richards Street in Vancouver has four rows of street trees. This is only possible because the City repurposed space that is usually reserved for cars.

Toronto had a put a political kill switch on a tiny pilot project during an election year to get a little bit of this.

Just as Mark Carney muses about privatizing publicly owned infrastructure such as airports and ports, the British government is reestablishing public ownership of the UK rail system following privatization in the 1990s, which led to increased costs and deterioration of service.

I keep waiting for a signal of the Carney Liberals pushing progressive policies of any kind. Over a year in power, I tally: income tax cuts, broad cuts to government programs, new restrictions on refugees, a massive boost in military spending, and advancement of oil pipelines. And now union busting?

Since @alexbozikovic.bsky.social reposted this dashed-off bit of snark, I'll unpack the flaws and elision Florida's op-ed in a thread. He opens with the anecdote below, about an American-educated "software consultant" delighted to bike-then-fly to work in NYC. Why does this matter? 1/x

What you see in the Sun, is the Chicago skyline from the Indiana Dunes beach, across Lake Michigan. You can see it from 50 miles of distance due to a form of superior mirage, because the skyline is seen above where it's actually located. [📷 wesskywalker]

✍️ New post: Ad Infinitum Google announced the biggest change to Search in 25 years at #GoogleIO. But where are the ads…? 🤔 matthiasott.com/notes/ad-inf...

"According to conventional planning wisdom, this [successful thing] should not exist." Many such cases.

I don't where the election will land in terms of themes, but I think Lorinc is on the right track. For so many problems, the city needs to remember how to do the things it says it will do. Much more correct than say an austerity framing. www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

We naturally think of infrastructure as being solidly fixed and unchanging, but considering alternative histories allows us to consider the weight of our decisions today. infrastory.substack.com/p/new-yorks-...

@chittimarco.bsky.social’s Transit Priority Atlas is live! tpa.transitcosts.com

Really starting to wonder what Doug Ford is so desperate to hide 🤔

3-4% of a government parking garage for sketchy foreign spa company

this looks like an extra tough captcha test

This graph shows two things, 1) obviously that the cameras reduced speeding, but 2) that the improvement kept getting better over time. Speeders tend to get one or two tickets and then learn and change their behaviour. This isn't a cash grab, it's an extremely useful intervention.

This is a brilliant way to think about infrastructure: “for every obstacle encountered: is this a rock, or is this a person?”

My God, it's like Ontario Political Corruption Bingo

Metrolinx is refusing to tell the public how much it paid to the premier’s close friend for implausibly-valued air rights he didn’t even own www.thetrillium.ca/news/politic... #onpoli

With his trademark snark, @nerd4cities.bsky.social does the calcs and shows that to replace the Lexington Av subway, you’d need THIRTY lanes *in each direction*. This is why cars can never be a transit replacement, no matter how good the automation. youtu.be/bdCyZSIRhww?...

“Google participates in the web standards process the way a bear participates in the ‘camping’ process.”

I've decided to start writing a newsletter. Its name is Infrastory, which I've long thought captures what I focus on. It's a portmanteau of infrastructure and history, but it's also about telling the story beneath ("infra") the surface. You can find & subscribe at infrastory.substack.com

I’ve posted it before, but it feels evergreen The two hardest problems in Computer Science are 1. Human communication 2. Getting people in tech to believe that human communication is important

AI psychosis is just “I really think the stripper likes me” for guys who don’t leave their house

oppositional defiant disorder 🍻❤️💐 but only for computers

Cover-up: Under RCMP investigation, Ford government uses new FOI law to withhold records of potentially unlawful “investment opportunity meetings” between political staffers and Greenbelt lobbyists, including a meeting between minister David Piccini & Mr. X www.thetrillium.ca/news/the-tri... #onpoli

New from me in @thestar.com: The long planned pedestrianization of Yonge is being warered down & pushed further into the future. Question is: how does a planning process approved by council get so off the rails?