I've always known malls to be outdoor, public, pedestrianised spaces that are flanked by retail buildings. The Queen Street Mall, Brunswick Street and Chinatown Malls, Pitt St Mall. These are all places with diverse destinations with their own architecture and design.

Free employee parking is a subsidy paid by the employer and not all employees drive. Allowing those who don't to cash out this subsidy instead and take it as earnings, per-km payment for non-car commuting, or even employer provided transit passes are winning strategies that incentivise staff.

This, and I just watched a video about Groningen's traffic circulation plan. Brisbane doesn't have the leadership to reduce traffic in the city centre. TransApex project wasn't about reducing that, it was about providing bypasses for cross-city car trips. At least we have 50c public transport fares.

Adjusted for ~40 years of inflation, my parents bought the house I grew up in for $200,000. If you were a child care teacher and stay at home parent expecting a 3rd child nowadays you wouldn't afford a home. You'd struggle to even make rent on a place you could get to work and back on the same day.

This is absolutely going to be used to target ATSI people, dark-skinmed teens and other "undesirables" simply for existing. Causing anxiety, what a laugh. Nation of laidback, knockabout larrikins indeed.

Queensland's new ebike regs are absolutely bonkers. A 10km/hr speed limit on shared paths for pedal assist bikes and e-scooters. Just this morning I was doing 13km/hr up a slight incline on an acoustic Dutch city bike without pushing especially hard. On the flat I can easily do 20km/hr.

Pro tip: If you ever get homesick and want to hear an Australian or New Zealand accent in a European city, go to the best café you can find.

Preliminary results from #SAvotes reinforce that Liberal/LNP collapse leads to big Labor wins so long as they stay just ahead of One Nation, much like how the Conservatives collapsed in the UK and Labour won a huge majority on the back of Reform splitting the right wing vote.

Democratic consultants: To replicate Mamdani’s success with the young people we must appeal to their short attention spans with memes and TikTok Mamdani (actual quote): In the fifth century in what we now know as Ireland, a British warlord named Coroticus had laid waste to the countryside

Every day is a good day for sharing one of the most useful papers about research data ever written. PLEASE get your people to understand and follow this advice. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Planning research tasks and let me tell you, I really miss JIRA as a way off coordinating a plan across more than one person. Heck even for one person it's a valuable way of tracking tasks. If only there was a company with a human-centred approach to product development.

Just submitted a pull request for some minor changes to a shiny app that I last touched six years ago because I want to show it to some public health students as an example of how we use statistics in public health work beyond just running Chi-squares tests. @bquilty.bsky.social please approve ;_;

Just. Build. Rail.

Malls/shopping centres take the idea of a walkable neighbourhood, put it in a box, replace the natural light with artificial light, and make it feel like only people who are there to spend money are welcome.

It has taken four months but Rob Jetten has finally been sworn in as Dutch PM, leading a D66-VVD-CDA minority government. Here's hoping the cabinet is more stable than Schoof's. PVV will oppose everything for not being hard right enough and PvdA/GL will no doubt try to drag each bill leftwards.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026... Some top class journalism behind this story. It turns it wasn't just "an Amazon driver relying on satnav just drives into the sea" although safety governance of gig-economy drivers and managers (inc. use of satnav) is an important part of the story.

What does RFK Jr think of this? Does he agree that a changing climate and increased emissions are no danger to public health?

The first congratulations are rolling in from around the country. #libspill

Those sour patch kids Oreos taste okay but they smell exactly like Mortein (an Australian bug spray).

Tomorrow, my daughter starts school in the suburbs of an Australian city. In Amsterdam we had a good routine of when to leave home and the cycle there took more or less the sane time every day. She's now too big for a seat on my bike and isn't yet skilled enough to ride the whole way by herself.

Apparently to turn off Bing's AI search results I need to sign in with a Microsoft account but it won't let me set one up with my work email and I'm not logging in to my personal email on a work laptop just to turn off AI. So anyone using Edge without logging in and disabling it is forced into AI?

Have settled into two rhythms with my commute. It's either cycle 1km to the train then transfer to a short bus ride and walk down the hill or cycle 4km to a 20 minute express bus ride through a road tunnel and busway and then walk up the hill.

Just to update everyone on this, it was absolutely delicious.

"This appears to be a long document. Save time by reading a summary using AI Assistant". It's an 18 page project plan. Lord almighty give me the strength to break the algorithmic looms that have spread their foulness across workplace software.

Ringing in the new year with a 50-year banger of an album.

All five grandkids 5+ at our family Christmas-New Year brought their tablets with them but apart from the beach and pool the most popular activities have been playing with my nearly one-year old's bucket of blocks and doing tattoo pens with stencils on each other.

Bought 2kg of brined (but not smoked) pork shoulder to turn into our Christmas ham this week. Went to a butcher around here that I've known about but never been to before. A 2kg piece ended up costing $16.60 (£8.20/€9,40). An absolute steal. It's going to get a marmalade, mustard, maple glaze on it

I have a bike. The integrated front hub needs adjusting because it is not spinning fast enough, and there's a bunch of nuts that need tightening, but I have a bike.

Borrowing my dad's bike in suburban Brisbane. It's clearly for recreation not transport as there's no lock. Front tube got a puncture in the last few days but there's no pump here and the nearest bike shop or even petrol station isn't within walking distance. Time to hit up Facebook marketplace.

Today's Lifeline Bookfest haul includes "Practische Recepten", a 1949 Dutch cookbook that has multiple recipes for mayonnaise, a few for coffee, an entire section on stamppot, other classics like oliebollen and kaasbroodjes, and a recipe for Siberische Omelet (which I think might be Baked Alaska).

The UK is discussing a digital ID. the Dutch one was very straightforward to use despite there being some difficulties in setting it up as a non-EU citizen. Now that I'm having to deal with Australia's myID I am having no end of trouble linking multiple government services to it

Doing my Dutch lessons in Drops and I'm not such a fan of the words in the apocalypse movies session being overwhelmingly about epidemiology.

Totally forgot that coffee ceases to be available after about 3pm in Brisbane.

Broken bike crank and a traffic collision just in front of the tram I took instead this evening means I got home at 7pm and have done ~22k steps.

And now it's gone. metro.co.uk/2025/11/20/b... Good riddance to bad design.

The footway parking ban in England consultation closed 5 years ago tomorrow. The Tories' inaction is now Labour's inaction. www.gov.uk/government/c...

Me when a non-Australian expresses the smallest bit of interest about The Dismissal

Alright, time to start the next phase of the job hunt. Oh. Bum.

www.seek.com.au/job/88156697... Today on "actually interesting stuff from old job alerts" I know a handful of LSHTM MSc Health Data Science grads who'd be perfect for this. Alas it requres applicants to be Australia/NZ residents (including international students already in Australia).

With Klaver reelected as GL-PvdA leader it's a big day for two groups: those who are hopeful for a D66-Kabinet that includes GL-PvdA and VVD; and Resse shippers.

Some days you just need to walk and walk and walk to get your baby to stay asleep.

The recent Dutch election, especially the use of TikTok by D66 and their supporters, has turned my wife into a Resse shipper.

We can't fix car dependency because people are dependent on their cars!!!!

Fingers crossed for a D66+VVD+PvdA/GL+CDA government out of all of this. I know they have their differences but a coalition that has groups from slightly either side of D66, with a D66 Minister-President could work.

This is on a post from a state government road safety account from about how travelling faster than 50kph around pedestrians increases the risk of them dying if a collision occurs. Apparently pedestrians should take personal responsibility but asking drivers to is over-regulation.

Six weeks ago, I picked up a year-old tawny owl with a broken leg off the main road near our home and dropped him off at our nearest vet. After a few days, I received one of the most bizarre phone calls I’ve ever had, asking “So when are you coming to pick up your owl?” 🧵

"Over half of the e-cargo bike mileage ridden during trials substituted for car use." doi.org/10.1016/j.jc...

She's had the book less than an hour and is already customising Tolkien's maps.

My kid has already done more geocaches than me. I have done one to their four.

Passing a series of structals which is actually the same data frame multiple times to a udf so that it can be executed with a window function in pyspark is certainly a thing you can do.