“They just want to help children safely across the road on their way to and from school. Yet lollipop people [crossing guards] are having to wear body cameras after an increase in abusive & dangerous drivers. How did things get so out of hand?” We know how. We need to stop acting like it’s ok.

I was looking for the mailing address for an Ontario university last year. Took me quite a while to find it, and it included a postcode (and maybe a town?) in BC.

The 30% minimum tax on (after-inflation) capital gains will close a significant tax loop-hole in Australia

Good news. Less people have dementia. Used to be 1/3 by age 85, now more like 1/10. Bad news? We actually don't know why. Less lead, valium and alcohol? More screen time for neural simulations? 🤷

Tasmanians! Isn't the best way to catch up with friends, family, colleagues on a trip in the great outdoors? How about a raptor survey? Book into #WhereWhereWedgie on any/all of Fri-Sun 15-17 & 29-31 May. 1st weekend deadline's *tomorrow* (Weds). Details & bookings: naturetrackers.au/projects/whe...

This hits rather close to home just now. But imo: just because something is hard and unpleasant to deal with doesn't mean it is OK to bury our heads in the sand and leave people suffering.

Really promising evidence on the early effects of California's mandatory school start times policy (which I was a big advocate for back in the day!). Glad to see this is scaling well www.nber.org/papers/w3518...

Regression Discontinuity alert

a woodblock print titled "Moon on the Lake" (Kojo no Tsuki) by the contemporary Japanese artist Shufu Miyamoto

'Me? No, I'm not stealing these. I picked them just for you.' A likely story. An #EasternRosella pruning my tree while staring at me intently. Today’s #BirdOfTheDay theme chosen by @alan678.bsky.social is #LockedOn any bird with an intense gaze. The alt is #Breezy birds in windy conditions.

On May 10, 1975, Sony launched the very first Betamax player/recorder. In the US it was originally sold as a combo set, housed inside a wooden console next to a 19” colour TV and it cost $2,495. #BringbackBetamax

“Typical recent parks offer little seating, little shade, few trees and no reason to linger. There is never a café, too rarely a washroom, rarely a water feature. Playgrounds, sculpture and chin-up bars are thrown together seemingly at random.”

Boo, short form!

Nine times out of ten, "they didn't teach us this in school" is shorthand for "I didn't do the assigned reading".

I think more Canadian urban planning nerds need to come to Waterloo to see Northdale (I'm not not saying @mdruker.app and I wouldn't do personalized Jane's Walks). This is technically a suburb that most of the year probably has a higher pop density than many large Cdn downtowns.

I really wish people aspiring to write understood what a competitive advantage being able to write without AI will be in the coming years.

“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.” ― Iris Murdoch

Australia's target of 82% renewables by 2030 has long been dismissed as impossible. Batteries and domestic solar are putting it within reach. Tech improvements, cost decline are important. But so is government policy. Nice one, @chrisbowenmp.bsky.social, keep going.

I was just thinking about how my first favorite author was Andre Norton. She really vanished after her death. Nobody talks about her at all. I just think it's interesting how some authors you "have to" read and some, for no reason I can figure out, fall out of circulation really abruptly.

Because of demented anti-Science Trump, top U.S. battery scientist is moving to Singapore to do her research www.science.org/content/arti...

Not actual parody, just a report about my friends' social media posts right now

My today's Substack 99 percent Utopia and money For full happiness is possible only in stagnation branko2f7.substack.com/p/99-percent...

The economy explained. My @smh @theage cartoon.

Australia's superb fairywren caught in a rain shower: why the most iridescent bird on the continent has no real waterproofing https://sinapti.ca/post/en/the-blue-malurito-surprised-by-the-rain-when-feathers-lose-t-0vcnr46i

So strange, I thought the US doesn't have to worry about oil supply issues in the Gulf because it has lots of sweet oil of its own. How could it possibly happen that events elsewhere in the globe affect prices in the US? You might almost think prices were set on global markets ...

I'm not a fan of using fines as operational revenue as you'd hope offences would drop off as people learn. But £56k to buy and equip this vehicle and it's earned double that investment within ONE month. Why aren't all councils doing this? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It's 2026 Census Week, and to celebrate we put the refreshed CensusMapper live. It's got a fresh look and feel and advanced map-making capabilities for everyone. Check it out! Read about what changed in our blog post:

U.S. automakers are the BlackBerry of the car industry.

Yes. If you base your measure of social or economic health on households, and those measures impact household formation, you are inviting substantial collider bias.

If we had built quarantine facilities, like I said during the early C19 years, those passengers could have disembarked into a proper airborne disease control facility. But no…. We don’t need those. Just keep repeating cruise outbreak disasters.

Comparative advantage is often the benchmark used for true but non-trivial social science concepts people should know. Average tax rate != marginal tax rate seems like it's too obvious to be a contender, but the number of people who misunderstand it suggests that is not the case.

I missed this encouraging news last week. 23 right whale calves were born during the calving season from November to April off the southeastern U.S. — the highest number recorded since 2009. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Also on Kobo (CAD1.99).

A group of high school students use a makeshift stretcher and put their Duke of Edinburgh Award training to the test while rescuing an injured hiker.

Taking cars off the road is one of Poilievre's goals now? So, he'll be supporting better train and bus service then? And ensuring that drivers pay the full cost of driving (including environmental) through something like a tax on km driven, or maybe fuel used in driving?

An Oxford University study found that shifting the global energy system to a near zero-carbon by 2050 could save the world more than $12 trillion. Solar, wind, #batteries #EVs are becoming cheaper much faster making the transition economically smarter www.ox.ac.uk/news/2022-09... #ActOnClimate

Renewables are now 53% cheaper than nuclear for total system cost - not just generation cost. Each year nuclear adds only as much net global power capacity as renewables add every two days.

I'm old enough to recall the days when malaria medicine was only for visitors from the Global North. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Australian Pink Robin.💜

Batteries are reshaping electricity markets in real time. New data from Australia's energy market operator (AEMO) shows what happens when you double grid-scale battery capacity in a single year.

There’s some lag time before the U.S. really starts falling behind in new preventive strategies, but we are rapidly approaching it. A Phase I trial of an mRNA vaccine against Epstein-Barr Virus has just launched in Australia, and this vaccine could prevent multiple sclerosis, among other things.

It's been 80 years since Aboriginal workers in the Pilbara up-ended a slave-like labour system. The descendants of those involved fear its legacy is being forgotten.

Writing tip: "The literary canon" is a collection of valuable written works. "A literary cannon" is a big gun for shooting books at people.

Followed the law and slowed my bike down as I was approaching a four way stop sign, to let the car that got there before me go. The driver tried to wave me through, which I refused (coz I had it timed). As she drove off she shouted at me for being unappreciative. Can't win.

This rate of change in methane gas use is insane. 25% decrease in one year. "That growth in battery capacity managed to shift about three times as much power from the daytime...It has caused the need for gas-fired generation to drop by more than a quarter from the same time last year"

This cause is close to my heart - please sign: petitions.getup.org.au/petitions/le... @getup.org.au

Very early #OnThisDay, 30 April 1944, New Zealander Nancy Wake parachutes into occupied France to be a courier for the Special Operations Executive. Nick-named 'the white mouse' by the Gestapo, she's never captured. She died in 2011. #WomenInHistory 🗃️ #History #WomensHistory #WorldWar2 1/2