-9C is just a degree or two on the warm side of a perfect winter day.

Whoever said the other day that Ontario Man is the Florida Man equivalent about cars was spot on (sorry I can't remember who). Evidence:

Obviously the idea that degrowthers want to promote alternative "medicine" is nonsense. Ideological boogeyman stuff. But I wonder whether alternative "medicine" contributes more to GDP per patient "treated" than real medicine. It's often very expensive. Should growthers support crystal healing?

This makes no intuitive sense. There is no obvious reason why constant growth in fast fashion, SUVs, etc. is necessary so that we can have MRIs and chemo drugs. Of course counterintuitive things can be true. But then Levitz would have to make an actual argument for why these things are connected.

slowly replacing all mass produced things in my house with handmade things and it rules

With Alto high speed rail, it will be faster to get from Ottawa to Montreal than it is to get to the Ottawa airport from Centretown. Alto YOW-YUL: 0:58min LRT Byward-YOW airport:1:02min

I just watched a close family member die of cancer. MAID wasn't the right choice for them. So I saw what the last days of cancer really look like, even with the absolute best end of life care. It's grotesque for the state to force people to undergo that.

His name is Ahmad Al-Ahmad and we can all choose to highlight him instead of the murderers who committed a massacre bsky.app/profile/impl...

On the 10th Anniversary of the Paris Agreement, you’re going to hear a lot about the progress we’ve made — people saying we “are” heading to 2.5 degrees heating instead of four. I deeply regret to tell you that this is complacent misinformation. 🧵

Lmao, Hamilton is absolutely not a reasonable travel distance.

In this case the staff are being failed by the company in exactly the same way the passengers are, and being put in the same dangerous situation. With the added bonus of having to try to manage the emergency, deal with angry passengers, etc. What a nightmare.

Spare a thought for Canadian fossil fuel lobbyists, who have just lost their most annoying talking point. www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-rec...

I don't get this attitude. The extra few pixels in an em-dash versus an en-dash don't make your writing good. Just use en-dashes. It's literally the same. The clankers have stolen em-dashes from us but it's not that much of a loss.

Oh hey, that's me. Love my @lightphone.bsky.social. I don't think "screen discipline" is really much of a thing for anyone. Big tech has hacked our brains too much for that. But to the extent it exists at all, mine is particularly bad. Dumbphones and dumb-ish phones are underrated!

Movie you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Stars (war or trek) LOTR or Marvel.

The external costs of motor vehicles that are not paid by users (including subsidized parking, but also roads, collision risk, and pollution) make up 32% of the costs of driving. 😱 From @toddlitman.bsky.social

Our infrastructure isn’t ready for what’s coming.

"Gramma’s life reminds us that the creatures we nearly lost can become the center of our efforts to make amends." Important thoughts on #biodiversity open.substack.com/pub/rhettaye...

We need to start building a list of universities that do this stuff, so that academics know not to publish with them and prospective students know not to apply there.

Trains really are the highpoint of human development. There is no more elegant, relaxing way to cross large distances than in a train. The ability to look out the big windows, read a book, have meal or a drink, walk around and converse with fellow passengers is something magical.

It occurs to me that the AI industry may have ruined an entire subgenre of sci-fi. AI stories (Ex Machina, Chappie, almost everything by Asimov, etc) are a staple of the genre. But how would you write a new one today? People would just say (wrongly) "we already have that".

The old story about Rapa Nui (Easter Island) was a good metaphor for our own technological hubris. Turns out it's not true. Seems we moderns really are unique in our short-sightedness, destructiveness, and greed.

It's over. It's done. Brits: Join the Green Party. @zackpolanski.bsky.social is running laps around these chunderheads.

It would have made a really good original series Star Trek episode. TOS Season 4 Episode 6: Genius Loci The Enterprise stumbles upon a planet where all decisions are made through conversation with what is called a Genius Computer. Every government office and home is centered around one. [1/5]

Just found out that our neighbours, who we have shared a backyard, meals, parties, bike tools and good times with, are getting evicted by the new landlord so that they can move in themselves. They have a kid who will now have to move God knows how far away from his friends and school.

If you can do it safely, always take the lane anywhere there isn't a bike lane. They asked for this.

I agree that "USian" is awkward and pedantic and I don't use it. But it really is rich seeing Americans get so mad about this when their country just tried to rename the Gulf of Mexico.

The alien number is shockingly low. I guess it has something to do with religious beliefs? Kinda hard to square aliens with Christianity.

Pretty melodramatic to use the word "hoarding".

I know everyone is aware that Noah Smith is ridiculous, but I accidentally stumbled on this today and it really is a new low even for him. www.noahpinion.blog/p/degrowth-w... These are mostly well established interdisciplinary journals. #degrowth

The desire to avoid "picking winners" is extremely hardwired into politicians and bureaucrats whenever they deal with anything even tangentially connected to innovation. Of course in practice this just means they're picking established big players and conventional approaches as the winners.

I backed my parents' minivan into a parked landscaping truck and caves in the rear hatch during my final month of high school.

Anyone who tells you we don't have to phase out fossil fuels is a climate change denier. Anyone arguing against leaving fossil fuels in the ground is a climate change denier. The science on this is crystal clear and has been for decades. #COP30

The extent to which intelligent people can twist their brains in knots to avoid the obvious never ceases to amaze For those willing to confront reality: The IPCC is perfectly clear on the need to strand the majority of fossil fuel assets in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement

If you see this, post your getaway vehicle.

I hope they're treated as pariahs by everyone else there.

Oates represents something Musk fundamentally cannot buy: the authority of cultural memory. this is a concept i call "ontological entitlement"—the hyper-rich, having gained endless material resources, begin to assume an inherent right to emotional, intellectual, and spiritual ones as well.

Yesterday I was at a seminar at work where the presenter talked about achieving energy security through reducing demand. I would have thought this would be uncontroversial. Not so. She's had struggles against people who perceive the idea as a form of #degrowth and thus reject it out of hand.

Bumping this for my Ottawa follows as we get an unexpected 14 cm(!) of snow. I'm going to respond to the whiners with relentless positivity. My baby daughter is going to discover winter today, which is amazing, and I'm not having it undercut by someone complaining about traffic or whatever.

Lansdowne is actually a pretty good visual metaphor for the city of Ottawa as a whole. A weird, insolvent little suburban outpost downtown that we have to put up with. Nobody particularly likes it-not even the people it's supposed to benefit.

This is actually a great idea. There's plenty of open space you could build on. We just gave our progressive urbanist mayor and her party a new majority. We're (hopefully) going to build a tram soon. Gatineau needs more life doentown. And it'd be fantastic way to spite OSEG and Sutcliffe.

Time to start pitching an arena that could hold the @pwhlcharge.bsky.social to Gatineau.

The further a councillor lives from Lansdowne, the more they support ruining it.

Ottawa needs to deamalgamate. The suburbs are an albatross around our neck and this stuff will keep happening until we remove their power to determine what happens downtown. (And yes, I am aware that the path to doing that runs through Queen's Park)

The winter whiners in my life have started up again. Once again I'm resolving to push back in these conversations. Winter is great! And every time someone suggests otherwise I'm going to contradict them and tell them how excited and happy I am for the snow.

I disagree. Campaigning on bike lanes and free buses IS campaigning on climate. Real climate politics is about practical measures that change infrastructure, technologies, industries and practices. Not about paper targets or interminable pointless debates with denialists.

There's a lot of discussion re: Mamdani about how much of his success can be attributed to style vs substance. Is it his talent at communication or his policies. I think that for many recent insurgent leftist politicians in multiple countries, these two things synergize in a really interesting way.

I can't decide whether I want this video team to come to Ottawa and help defeat Sutcliffe; to back Polanski in the UK; or to go help some other insurgent American candidates (LA maybe?) Can we clone them?

@edzitron.com You done anything on public sector AI hype yet? Your listeners in Canada would certainly appreciate it. UK listeners too, from what I've heard about the situation there.

"Understanding the broader effects of AI is also essential, helping to guide our efforts to maximise its benefits." By which Carney seems to mean: Tell me how awesome AI is, bro.