Y’all might not appreciate it, but it took him 87 moves and 14 hours to get here

Like, how can you not see that eroding the credibility of the main concept to describe real hostility and violence against Jews during a period of seriously rising antisemitism is dangerous?

The preferred way to compare government budgets over a long period of time is as percentages of GDP. But when long GDP time series are not readily at hand, using logarithms works reasonably well. #cdnecon

some of whom have called it a ‘monstrosity’

Some of the biggest "winners" of congestion pricing are drivers, who enjoy much faster commutes because there is less congestion. Part of the reason these schemes become popular after being implemented is many drivers realize paying the fee is a great exchange for less traffic!

this is incredible stuff. most state DOTs would spend tens of billions on highway expansions to try and see numbers like this (that wouldn’t even pan out anyway thanks to induced demand lol)

A definitional element of extremism is that harming an out-group is inseparable from the success or survival of the in-group. For extremists, such harm becomes an intrinsic need. They come to believe that denying them the right to harm out-groups is the same thing as denying them the right to exist.

The Ottawa LRT was built to have (unnecessary) human drivers. And then they cut frequency because the labour costs were too high. 🙃

NY transit workers union demanding double the level of staffing on trains that other cities have is what I mean by unions interest’s not always being the public’s interests. Totally legitimate and appropriate thing for union to push for, would make transit system worse overall.

Rode Line 6 again off-peak as an experiment to see how much faster service could be with optimisation. Trip time: 41 min Dwell from lights: 11 min Dwell from schedule padding: 4 min Actual run time: 26 min Increase the speed limit, and I'd say we could safely do 25 min off-peak/30 min peak.

did not realize election #8 was confirmed

surveys can easily be manipulated to create specific narratives; i prefer regurgitating what i see on social media, which famously cannot be manipulated to create specific narratives

(Eyes rolling back as I begin to recite every opera ever written)

Two cross-national trends are 1) anti-incumbency and 2) strengthening of the far-right over centre, so it's interesting that Sweden is seeing the first but less the second

Gov Hochul will veto a bill to require both a conductor and a driver on every subway train, according to two sources familiar with the decision. Story to follow. Details on the bill here: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/n...

www.ft.com/content/30a4... Very good frame from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com

People say you’re driving a moral panic, that you’re blocking good regulation, that there’s no point in resisting. And then you enforce a phone ban and miracles happen (qualitatively): nymag.com/intelligence...

People talk a lot about the Nordic model but it’s cool that there’s already an example of a welfare state right here in North America. It’s not quite Nordic. But Quebec has cheap tuition, subsidized daycare, strong parental leave. Healthcare, obviously. Would be cool to make a video about.

I have been shown enough arguments in opposition that I’m not sure that section 230 is the mechanism through which to do it, but I’m still firmly of the belief that liability exposure for algorithmic content should be far higher for platforms. You put it in front of people, you’re a publisher.

My response to anything over the next two weeks

techbros: we have created AGI cognitive scientists: you fucked up a perfectly good spreadsheet is what you did. look at it. it's got anxiety

“Following the decision, the transport ministry is expected to abandon the current plan to start construction on the extended section in fiscal 2026.” ok why don’t I go fuck myself

bro should lean into it and take the two remaining consonants out of their name

Wow, what a horrific typo. Right on the cover.

Just realized that the 50km end to end travel time of the Montreal REM is the same as the 10km end to end travel time of Toronto's Finch W Tramway (55 min).

The Line 5 Eglinton Crosstown LRT contract specifies average speeds up to 25 km/h (49 min peak, 45 mins off peak over 19 km) Their current test schedules are running 20 km/h (56 mins). The 2012 benefits case said 29 km/h, averaging 34 in the tunnels and 25 on street. (1/2)

Having to pay a lot of money for an Uber during a transit outage sucks! However, surge pricing (higher prices during a demand spike) also incentivizes more drivers to come take trips. Banning it might just replace “my Uber was expensive” with “I can’t even get an Uber”.

My most malicious trait is that I want Evil Taylor to get the boy in You Belong With Me rather than Good Girl Taylor. It just seems to me likely that Evil Taylor has a more interesting story to her, there's more going on there. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuNI...

I’m a single issue voter and my issue is that those busses that bend in the middle should make accordion noises

Canadian housing permits jumped 14% in data released today, hitting the 4th-highest level in modern history as multifamily permits hit the 3rd-highest ever Canada is now on track to allow roughly 300k housing units this year

Paige Saunders recommended this two years ago in this video!! The posting to policy pipeline is real!! youtu.be/OvcHSKud1Z0?...

Next challenge: crank it up EVERYWHERE there's a red dot below. We already paid for the infrastructure; make it work!

Here’s my cut at what the stop removal portion of a St Clair streetcar upgrade could look like, cuts intermediate stops by a third, from 26 to 17, with only limited reduction in rider catchment within a 5 min walk. Together with signal priority upgrades, would cut travel times a lot -worth piloting!

Canada is moving ahead with the first leg of ALTO high speed rail, between Montreal and our Capital Ottawa. Chosen for its easy geography, this segment of HSR will cut travel times on this route to under an hour from 2 hours today. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Of all the things the US has chosen to do differently than the rest of the world, I think this may be the dumbest. You'd have trouble finding any urban neighborhood in Europe or Latin America without a plaza. It's just so basic. And yet the US has virtually none! No public space, no public.

This obviously has tons of historical antecedents, but I do really think this is at the heart of however you want to define this current social malaise: a complete disconnect between the world as a represented thing and the world that you experience in the course of living.

"What Swift’s defenders didn’t realize was that they were pushing back against a false narrative that had been seeded and amplified by a small network of inauthentic social accounts. Worse, they were helping to disseminate those bad-faith allegations by earnestly engaging with them."

"Canada Plans to Fast-Track Immigration for US H1-B Visa Holders in New Talent Drive" ☹️ share.google/WtKFYfJNhfye...

@metrolosangeles.bsky.social I know gondolas are like sexy to show in Powerpoint presentations and stuff, but consider: A light rail that splits off the A Line to hit Dodger Stadium, then up to Griffith Park and LA Zoo utilizing the still vacant remnants of the old Pacific Electric Red Car route

more seriously I think the main problem here is that mass media in general and social media specifically really, really broke the societal pressure valve of allowing the kind of latently prejudiced to sort of passively opt out of change. ragebait is fundamentally corrosive to social cohesion.

Had the real honor of being published by @liberalcurrents.com this year, who ran this essay I wrote trying to explore Zionism as part of broader nationalist movements, instead of as a sui generis phenomenon, either for good or for evil.

It was also kind of crazy to be reminded of how much the needle has moved on housing policy the past few years in Toronto and Ontario, in part thanks to orgs like @moreneighboursto.bsky.social. Of course the needle needs to be pushed much further and there’s much more work to do!

It's so funny to think about how close the Framers came to a parliamentary system. Like, they invented Congress, then for the purposes of picking the Executive they invented Congress 2 of exactly the same size. Just define the EC as the House+Senate!

“Zoning was invented to separate housing from noxious uses” Everything below happened after zoning came to the US. We were better off without it

(11/12) An eye-opening performance that deployed volume and timing in really unconventional ways. Sorita realized that communicating intensity doesn’t require a consistent fortissimo, that subito pianos can be more surprising than strong accents, that a lot of phrases can work without a strict pulse

Really thorough history. Why the West was downzoned www.worksinprogress.news/p/how-the-wo...

Tools especially. Like, why spend $500+ on this stuff that rarely gets used Chicago has a tool library www.chicagotoollibrary.org

Here's the latest in "every person in the Ontario government is corrupt as hell" news

This new Ontario SDF scandal is not to be confused with last month's Ontario SDF scandal, around career colleges