Happy birthday Chicago! "Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning."

the aquifer that supplies joliet is running out of water, yet officials are moving forward with a plan to build the state’s largest data center in the city. the project, spearheaded by two out-of-town investors, could consume up to 55 million gallons of water and 1.8 gigawatts of energy each year.

Happy National #GrammarDay! Our website includes guidance on 🔹 avoiding anthropomorphism 🔹 creating parallel sentence structures 🔹 active and passive voice (both permitted) 🔹 using first-person pronouns 🔹 singular “they” 🔹 and more! 🔗 https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar

Today Dominic Packer & @jayvanbavel.bsky.social republished @minzlicht.bsky.social's post about "The Downfall of Stereotype Threat" in their widely-read The Power Of Us newsletter. I felt a certain way about that & the evidence presented there & thought I'd respond:

Student Success | UC Davis Library Emerges as Campus ‘Third Place’ From therapy dogs to tutoring hubs, Shields Library is redefining itself as a welcoming space for learning, connection and growth. https://bit.ly/4cZYQk5 #EDUSky #AcademicSky #HigherEd

Robots on the streets, robots on the sidewalks, robots in the air. Our world is blighted.

Bernie's new billionaire wealth tax would raise $4.4T from the super-rich over the next decade. That's more than enough to reverse Trump's Medicaid cuts, raise teacher pay, make childcare affordable, and build millions of affordable homes. And guess what? The super-rich will still be super rich.

Northern Lights Roy Henry Vickers ~ Haida, Heiltsuk, Tsimshian 2014

Canada has decided it likes international law, actually. bsky.app/profile/jour...

Come at me bro Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary Chicago. 3/3/2026 #Birds

WATCH: If you STILL don’t understand how car-dependent suburbia is HEAVILY SUBSIDIZED by downtown and all the urban parts of your city, watch this EXCELLENT video by #NotJustBikes with #Urban3 & @strongtowns.bsky.social. And PLEASE SHARE it as much as possible. I’ve sent it to a LOT of politicians.

I don't always agree with Strong Towns and Chuck Marohn (which is normal and healthy), but they're absolutely right on this issue. A key part of their argument is that suburbanization and car-dependency are making cities fiscally insolvent

ICYMI: Suburban development costs 38% more in upfront public costs & 10% more in ongoing costs than compact development, PLUS has only 1/10th the tax revenue per acre, confirms report summarizing 17 studies. Via @smartgrowthusa.bsky.social The blunt truth? Sprawl is heavily subsidized by ALL of us.

‼️ New invasion alert!

#IdeasAtWork A month in hospital costs: $30,100 Month in prison: $9,400 Month in shelter: $6,800 Supportive housing per month: $3,800 @uhn.ca's Dr. Andrew Boozary h/t @urbantruth.bsky.social www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Gotta love how academic books don't earn you money, but LLMs can make money off of stealing them in the aggregate and if you write enough, they can also profit from stealing your personality after you are dead.

It is not the government’s job to provide storage space for your private property. Cars are no different. Roads exist to move people and goods, not to store private vehicles. Governments at all levels need to start calling out and enforcing that reality.

Hannah Ritchie has built a fun little tool where you can compare energy usage of various products and activities. This is super helpful imho, because it's so hard to develop intuitions even just about the scales involved here. hannahritchie.substack.com/p/does-that-...

Because no one could get CDOT to care about the Darrow Bridge, they are spending 1.2 million to pave "desire lines" from the east parking. It's not "restoration" if it never existed. Also no $ to fix the Nancy Hayes Bridge, that desperately needs it. 1/n blockclubchicago.org/2026/03/02/j...

Frustratingly true.

"Our new Prime Minister was the banker to the climate finance world. #MarkCarney wrote 'Values' in 2021, he was all warm & fuzzy on #ClimateChange, warning of existential crisis! If there was ever an economist you'd think would get the #EnergyTransition it'd be Mark Carney. Instead what do we get?"

"Canada cannot endorse the unilateral & illegal use of military force, the killing of civilians or the kidnap & assassination of foreign heads of gov't while also insisting that our sovereignty, our rights and our independence must be respected." @wgreaves.bsky.social www.thestar.com/politics/fed...

All of the above. Who can really concentrate in this context?

'In Defence of Walkability as a Crime Prevention Strategy'. New preprint with @ianloader.bsky.social We challenge the consensus that walkable neighbourhoods are more criminogenic. We highlight two flaws in the literature: i) overreliance on police statistics; and ii) neglect of motoring offences.

The costs of this Iran war debacle will likely be more than the cost of extending the ACA health insurance subsidies. If you asked Americans, which do you want: another war in the Middle East or lower health care costs at home, is the margin 90 to 10? 95 to 5?

We welcome all of you to use our ad graphics and messages in your own posts, in addition to sharing our posts. The whole point is to spread them as far and wide as possible, along with the messages and conversations they support. Just give us a shout-out please, to help grow our audience. Thank you!

NEW STORY // Op-Ed: Nobody Wants to Live Next to a Highway Op-Ed by Anna Zivarts (@nondriver.bsky.social), via @theurbanist.org // 🔗 www.theurbanist.org/2026/02/25/o...

I was so proud and grateful in 2003 when PM Jean Chrétien refused to involve Canada in the US war on Iraq. Beyond Trump's existential threat to Canada, it doesn't matter whether the target country is good or evil. International laws and conventions exist for good reason.

This is consistent with earlier psychometric work that suggests 5-7 is the best response scale options, but good to see that the finding holds up in contemporary research. Also, good to see that labeling scales whether anchored or not has little impact on findings. academic.oup.com/ijpor/articl...

"Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium. But the creators of traditional novels, paintings, and films are drawn to those art forms because they see the unique expressive potential that each medium affords."

Boosters love to say that people need to "understand" LLMs. I don't think people should waste their time learning about specific architectures, or "testing" these garbage products. I *do* think we should understand why LLMs don't "reason", and how we trick ourselves into thinking that they do.

"We have been here before, and once knew better. In 2003, Canada refused to join the American invasion of Iraq because there was no Security Council resolution, and the case for war rested on preventing a hypothetical future WMD threat. Today...we are embracing the very doctrine we used to reject."

It’s March 1! When the architectural nerd’s fancy turns to #MarchArch. 👇 A passageway in the Real Alcázar, Seville. #Andalucia #Architecture #Photography #BlueskyArtShow #PhotographersOfBlueSky

My recipe for my first #StainedGlassSunday contribution to BlueSky: Begin with stained glass. Add sunlight, Lincoln Cathedral, and stir. Blend the material with the immaterial.

“The effort to quiet Paris complements the wider campaign to make Paris greener, cleaner & less car-dependent, which include vehicle restrictions in the center, crackdowns on polluting vehicles, & an ambitious expansion of bike networks. Those have cut the city’s average noise level by 2 decibels.”

This is it. This is the baseline assumption I think we should be working from. "we are up against an ideology that has given up not only on the premise and promise of liberal democracy but on the livability of our shared world [...] The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death.

Canadians remain deeply concerned about climate change — and they expect leaders to act. ✔️ 70% say they’d feel proud if Canada became a renewable energy superpower. ❌ Only 30% feel that way about oil and gas. New insights from Re.Climate & Abacus Data ⬇️

It is clear Raymond Moriyama was more then the architect of the OSC building. He was a visionary founding father, celebrated and honoured by the Ontario Science Centre itself. The soul of @OntScienceCtr torn down by Doug Ford, for 🇺🇸 tourism. #ontario #toronto #onpoli #topoli

A final visit to Lurie Garden before it closes on Monday through early July for repairs. news.wttw.com/2026/02/25/l...

'More breathing space' by contemporary UK printmaker Janis Goodman #WomensArt

Spoke and Bird, South Loop. Brought to my attention by someone who doesn't even live in Chicago! Guess I'm out of the loop in more ways than one.

New study of media collision reporting from @patrickrerat.bsky.social "Cyclists are placed at the center of the narrative, while motorists are either omitted or reduced to their vehicles... Making these biases visible is essential for challenging motonormativity" findingspress.org/article/1575...

Is there anyone out there who'd be willing to put up a poster for tomorrow's 8am session at SPSP? My colleague who was supposed to present is sick and I'm not available. I have the poster and will be on site after lunch!! #SPSP2026

Emma Haworth, contemporary London-based painter known for her observations of the streets and parks, with a hint of otherworldliness #womensart

Great new paper led by @bringmannlaura.bsky.social, highlight the need to collect qualitative data in ESM / EMA research. #PsychSciSky 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Suburban Sprawl may seem cheap, but even the costs we CAN count are far too high, and we ALL pay them. HT Smart Prosperity Institute #UrbanTruth institute.smartprosperity.ca/library/publ...

It Will Be a Lovely Day. Today's temps for the final Friday of February will be near 60-degrees. Enjoy the weekend...and a pint.

Why are tactile sensations suppressed during movements? In our new preprint, we explain this as optimal integration of sensory signals with an internal model. Work led by @fatatai.bsky.social with Dimitris Voudouris, Katja Fiehler and @c-rothkopf.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...