Given I've got Swansea University colleagues who work on perovskite panels, I'm absolutely gutted that they didn't invent this WHAT WITH IF RAINING HERE ABOUT 346 DAYS A YEAR

So terrified are Labour ministers of being thought of as “anti-car” that their belated acknowledgement that sharing transport is a good idea was buried in a blink-and-you-miss-it “strategy” document. 🧵1/3

Last chance to get your application in for this exciting CAST PhD studentship at the University of East Anglia, expiring on 16th April at 11:59pm. 📣 Apply now on our website: cast.ac.uk/cast-careers/

This is a great data visualisation. It clearly shows why policy interventions that support/subsidise driving tend to not just miss an opportunity to reduce inequality, they are likely to entrench inequality, because those in the most deprived areas will derive the least benefit.

The Iran War has once again led to a bout of what @isabelschnabel.bsky.social memorably dubbed 'fossilflation'. It's en vouge to talk about the solution as some massively complex undertaking. It really isn't. Get off fossil fuels faster. My latest just out @nature.com rdcu.be/fdxig

$30m an hour: big oil reaping huge Iran war windfall from consumers, analysis finds Exclusive: Climate action blockers including Saudi Arabia, Russia and major fossil fuel firms set to make extra $234bn by end of 2026 @globalwitness.org #rystadenergy Story by me www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Great thread, diving into the data on how wealthier people drive more (except London) and how we're not helping the poorest if we assume they drive

𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 | Climate change added an estimated £361 to average household food bills in 2022-23. Staples like coffee, cocoa and olive oil have already spiked sharply. And the risks are growing. Our new report traces the impact at every stage of the food system, from farm to fork: buff.ly/MtXrKNM

Finally got around to this great video about bike lanes featuring @ianwalker.bsky.social and @urbanismspeakeasy.com youtu.be/etwt75kYYhk

Very interesting new article in @theconversation.com by my @swanseauni.bsky.social colleague Jamie Torrance, who studies the practices of the gambling industry and how practices like "free bets" are used to pull people in theconversation.com/gamblers-don...

What other crimes should we excuse, especially when it's "only a little bit?" Burglary when they only take the TV but leave everything else and don't break in? Arson when only one room was damaged and nobody died? A shooter when they didn't hit anyone and didn't mean it really?

Excellent and thought provoking video from #GCN on #ActiveTravel (and featuring @ianwalker.bsky.social). Cycle lanes may not be ‘fair’ but they are less unfair than the #motornormative status quo. @sirichardson.bsky.social @walkridegm.org.uk

The European Union is tightening the regulatory backdoor through which US automakers have been quietly importing around 7k large SUVs and pickup trucks/year. “The revised rules, expected to launch in 2027, are designed to close loopholes that Brussels says allow unsafe vehicles onto European roads.”

Break out the Tokaji

This is really good, with great input from @urbanismspeakeasy.com on the wisdom (or otherwise) of putting proven street safety proposals out to the community for yes/no votes, and also from @ianwalker.bsky.social on how access to a car or van skews away from low income households.

There is always more money that can be found for cars www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Corporate Welfare. UK Govt to give £380m grant to Tata battery factory in Somerset. The Govt isn't taking an equity stake in return, won't receive any dividends. It isn't a loan and isn't repayable. Political parties demonize human recipients of welfare but hand free money to corporations.

GCN's move into urbanism continues with this new video asking whether cycle infrastructure might be unequitable. Features Andy Bonau and me, one of whom was looking far scruffier than the other...

It may seem like nerdy detail that the increasing weight of cars is worsening potholes, but it matters. The car makers push to sell wider and heavier cars is increasing road maintenance costs and that affects us all. Not to mention worse crash outcomes and less space to pass (wider) parked cars.

This is a really important story. If Europe makes Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) with products of beef farming linked with tropical deforestation, then we're only decarbonising on paper and getting nowhere.

It's always fun to mention flared side-road junctions just to watch somebody pop up and explain how essential it is that you can drive to every house in the country with your aircraft carrier

It won't come as a surprise to many, but good to see The Times pointing out that people actually like less traffic in local neighbourhoods. It concludes that no big change is ever introduced without some initial opposition - so leaders should stick to their guns! www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

Haha this is very validating

If the map of deaths on railways looked like this, it'd be treated as a national emergency.

"Ah ! Enfin une occasion de montrer aux gens que l’achat d’un SUV n’est pas ridicule, que ça peut servir à quelque chose ! Z'allez voir !"

I'm idly comparing some graphs here and am failing to see any meaningful relationship between fuel prices and how much people drive their cars

Predictably, I posted this then found a better way to clean up the background. I really should learn to be 100% happy before posting

Anyway I've had a little bit of clear sky these last two nights and have been grabbing Messier 101

"Younger adults exhibit higher car dependency than older adults, yet demonstrate potential for increased active travel if provided comparable socioeconomic resources" - interesting new work from China this week: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Reader, it will not.

I have a father and mother in law in Iran. I have a sister in law. A niece. She's 14. She likes silly pink headbands and purses and dresses, just like kids her age all over the world. There are 93 million people like her in Iran. People who do all the normal mundane life things as the rest of us.

I got another hour on this last night. I was going to suggest these vast views might give us a sense of perspective, but this light was emitted 15,000 years ago and a quick search tells me this was a time of climate change, sea level rise and rapid extinction so... plus ça change I guess?

Running for two series from 1982-1984 “The Young Ones” was an anarchic BBC sitcom starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson along with a host of stars from the British alternative comedy scene. Despite being set in North London almost all of the outdoor scenes were filmed in Bristol. 1/2

Another important case of pluralistic ignorance, much as we found with transport policy. Policymakers really have to start using more systematic methods to find where the public's views are

Perhaps I've missed it, but have any of those calling for temporary fuel duty reductions for "those with no options" also said they now realise the problems of car dependency...?

Excellent article from @profkyd.bsky.social here on how unambitious our legal system is about addressing dangerous driving

I got three more hours on Bode's Galaxy last night - look at that detail!

Another very rough work in progress, but I couldn't help giving this a first pass after an unexpected patch of clear sky last night. This is a wide patch of sky in the constellation of Auriga, just over 5 degrees across I've also included an annotated version in case you plan to navigate there

British politicians can't be trusted with "emergency" fuel duty cuts: they're never brave enough to reverse them when fuel prices drop back to normal levels. They're also not brave enough to change how fuel duty works to make it stabilise prices. So that makes short term cuts unaffordable. Sorry.

Fuel duty is *already* 34p per litre lower, in real terms, than in 2010 Its been frozen or cut for 15 years Its cost the Treasury over £200bn in tax - and hugely incentivised people to keep using ICE cars and driving. It's favoured the richest If anything we should be restoring it to 2010 levels

~1.7 million lives were saved in 2019 because of decreases in air pollution More lives are saved when cleaner air goes hand in hand with: - reducing social inequalities - more equal access to healthcare for everyone in society New study share.google/tx06aJ8S65gX...

And another 90 minutes last night, despite the mood. This stuff is addictive.

BTW cheapest train ticket to London from Germany is 4x the price of a fossil flight.

Now I've experimented with the settings and got it to 75 frames per second, a 5-second video is now 2.1 GB... With the right settings this thing is rated to over 100 fps, but I don't think my hard disk is going to be happy

Does law make motonormative assumptions in its response to injury and death on the roads? How might we act differently towards road violence if we step outside of these framings? In this new paper, I set out some answers to these questions. academic.oup.com/bjc/advance-...

I've just bought a specialised, extremely high frame-rate video camera designed to be jammed into a telescope in the hope of catching occasional short instants where the air is still Holy Moly this thing is a monster - I just recorded a 5-second test video and it's a ONE-GIGABYTE file

New #OpenAccess paper alert! Our study on temperature, humidity & workplace productivity is out in Building Research & Information We asked how various mixtures of temperature and humidity affected people's perceived v. real workplace performance. Perhaps surprisingly, these don't match 🧵 1/7

"[Criminology's] focal concern with public safety does not typically extend to injury and death on the road."

“we should radically decentre criminal punishment as a response to road violence in favour of forms of environmental regulation organized around… harm reduction principles…”