Make no mistake, what I have taken to calling a hyper El Nino is building rapidly, and set to bring extreme weather mayhem and record-shattering global temperatures in 2027

Something I'll never understand - if I want to make substantial enough changes to my house, it has to go through a neighbourhood consultation process, but someone on my block can buy a vehicle that significantly increases the chances one of my kids gets run over.

David Zipper@davidzipper.bsky.social · 6d ago

Which vehicles most endanger the drivers of other cars? Giant pickup trucks — and the Dodge Charger Source: www.iihs.org/news/detail/...

même dans les Pays d'en Haut 😉 surtout si tu y pose des serres (ou si tu aimes l'ail et les framboises)

Sarah Taber@sarahtaber.bsky.social · 6d ago

So let's break it down! "Productive soil" can basically mean 2 things. 1) A high-organic-matter soil that keeps pushing out good yields of *bulk commodity crops*- even after decades of abuse. 2) Any soil that someone is managing to be productive! This can be nearly any soil!

Ok so this lady says solar panels are getting built on "the most productive farmland" in her area. Which just ain't true at all. It ain't true here in NC either. Where I ALSO hear that talking point over & over again. Smells like astroturf! So let's get the dirt on solar farms & dirt ✨

David Roberts@volts.wtf · 6d ago

I genuinely don't know what to do about this. In our diseased information environment, one MAGA-adjacent "influencer" can do more to shape public opinion than mountains of studies or facts. Where are the pro-clean-energy influencers to counter this shit?

Concerns over fake phenomena cannot be held in good faith. There's no such thing as "good faith" concern over razorblades in Halloween apples or vaccines causing autism. If you still have 'concerns' about these issues you are uninformed, a bigot or being manipulated. No other option.

Yes and ... maybe. Quebec has an unfortunate habit of adopting all of the bad ideas from the rest of North America, just 20 years later.

Jeffrey Tumlin 🏳️‍🌈 🌁@jeffreytumlin.bsky.social · last wk.

Stop going to Europe for inspiration about making US cities better. Go to Quebec.

En même temps il faut absolument qu'on arrête de penser qu'avec plus de contraintes ou plus d'incitatifs, le privé construira autre chose que des «condos locatifs de luxe». Un logement «abordable» coûte presqu'autant à construire!

ScarletCoral@scarletcoral.ca · 7d ago

« Ces dernières années, on a construit trop de logements haut de gamme pour une clientèle aisée, et pas assez de logements abordables pour la classe moyenne et les gens moins nantis. « 𝐋𝐚 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐝𝐮 𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭, 𝐜’𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐝𝐮 𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 », résume Maëlle Boulais-Préseault. »

« Au Québec, les régions où la fécondité est plus élevée sont d’ailleurs celles où l’accès au logement est encore globalement plus facile » si on veux plus d'enfants dans nos quartiers il faut construire plus de logements c'est donc logique que des retraités réactionnaires s'y opposent

Que révèle la baisse de la fécondité au Québec ?

Avec un indice synthétique de fécondité de 1,33 enfant par femme en 2024, le Québec a atteint le niveau le plus bas de son histoire démographique. Pourtant, les couples aspirent toujours à élever deux...

lactualite.com

«Le sans-dessein a pourtant sa place à côté de l’épais, du moron, du nono, du tarla, du toton, du twit, du deux de pique, du ti-coune, du ti-clin, du niaiseux, du niochon, du cave, de l’innocent et de l’insignifiant.»

Benoît Melançon@benoitmelancon.bsky.social · 7d ago

«Sans dessein» (@lapresse.ca) ? À votre service : oreilletendue.com/2021/01/25/d... • #langueqc •

Catelli@catelli.bsky.social · last wk.

LOL the hypocrisy of PC MPPs. "The federal government must ensure that any potential future rail project minimizes impacts on farmland and is supported by the people affected." www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

what the actual fuck

Conor Curtis@conorcurtis.bsky.social · last wk.

Couple of things you need to explain: 1. How is this your new principal advisor: “If we really want to end the violence and depravation that plagues Canada’s remote Aboriginal communities, we need to help them leave these communities, forever,” said Gilmore, the PM's new advisor. 2. See below.

Félicitations Michigan! On travaille fort pour doter le Québec d'un ajustement réglementaire semblable. #polqc

Welcoming Neighbors Network@welcomingneighbors.us · 2w ago

🎉 Big win in Michigan! 🎉 Single-stair buildings up to 4 stories are now law! Lower building costs, more home choices that Michiganders can afford. HUGE congrats to @abundanthousingmi.bsky.social for their hard work to help make this happen. 🙌

sticking to my modest proposal (based on difficult personal experience) to simply stop issuing building permits or permitting any zoning changes in an election year #problemsolved

GRIDS Vancouver@grids.reillywood.com · last wk.

ABC deserves more blame for this outcome than anyone; it was their policy and they dropped it like a potato at the first opportunity. Also it was very, very dumb to have this vote so close to the election. Not sure who's most to blame for that.

✨troisième lien✨

𝚃𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚜 𝙶𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚎 🚇@taras-grescoe.com · last wk.

Cable cars: Not just for ski vacations. In La Paz, Medellín, and a half dozen cities in #France, they're being used as robust forms of urban transit. I gave #Paris 's C1, Europe's newest (and longest) aerial tram, a test drive, and here's what I discovered: www.highspeed.blog/up-where-the...

Not all climate solutions are created equal. Jonathan Foley makes a strong case for why we should stop chasing what sounds good and start funding what works. The biggest levers in food? Land use, food waste, fertilizer, and diet — not vertical farms. 🥗 🔗 https://bit.ly/47OjOiK

Blocking housing for not being affordable enough does not make housing more affordable.

Peter Waldkirch 華彼德@pwaldkirch.bsky.social · last wk.

Orr: supports affordable housing, supports 6 storey apartments and corner stores, mixed use communities. But Villages Plan could result in significant tenant displacement. Not enough affordability requirements. "Unfettered growth has real consequences." TAKE THAT YOUNG PEOPLE & IMMIGRANTS!

ah good, *** has finally *****ed itself like it was asked to

POLITICO Europe@politico.eu · 2w ago

The nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party that ruled Poland from 2015 to 2023 has split in a political rupture that undermines the conservative camp’s attempts to topple pro-EU Prime Minister Donald Tusk in an election next year. 🔗 www.politico.eu/article/poli...

Dans quotidien Le Devoir du jour, un article truffé d'unités métaphoriques. https://www.ledevoir.com/actualites/transports-urbanisme/997256/frugalite-heureuse-creative-desengorger-depotoirs

Une «frugalité heureuse et créative» pour désengorger les dépotoirs

Un mouvement prend racine au Québec pour réutiliser les résidus de chantier et revoir les façons de faire.

ledevoir.com

Like, LLM "thinking" text is really a wildly inefficient way of guiding a sampling algorithm to find a good local maximum, but you can read it and say to yourself, well, it sure looks like the computer is thinking (or, I dunno, "vibing" or "combobulating"), because it's done with language...

It's the ELIZA effect all the way down, not just that language is sparse (redundant, low-entropy) so easy to fake with enough parameters, but also while humans are wired to find intention and meaning in everything, with language we don't even notice because that's literally how language works.

Caravelle@caravellin.bsky.social · 2w ago

Seems language is a lot simpler than is often assumed It kind of makes sense when you think about it, a sparse symbolic representation of reality will always be orders of magnitude simpler than reality.

You're Absolutely Right! Diverting the Syr Darya away from the Aral Sea is not only a good idea — it's 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗸𝗲𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗴𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝘀𝗶𝗮. Would you like to talk about 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗠𝗕𝗞 𝗻𝘂𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝗮𝗳𝗲𝘁𝘆 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 next?

idéalement on trouverait le moyen de soutenir les travailleurs agricoles tout en punissant leurs patrons véreux en attendant, c'est tellement facile de boycotter des produits de luxe, on serait, euh, cave de ne pas le faire

Urban Land Rent 🇸🇴🚰@urbanlandrent.bsky.social · 2w ago

Don’t buy our ag products or visit. Totally fair game given the circumstances. But also the agribusiness chuds in CA hate the rest of the state with a burning passion. Highway 5 is lined with like one hundred miles of signs elaborating on their resentment of urbanites. They don’t speak for us.

"lowest common denominator city" 😬 I do like it when NIMBYs just straight up say what they really mean. Do you think people should be able to have choice in where they live? Should the city use legal tools to create class-walls around neighbourhoods? I don't think so.

Not a lot of info here about what kinds of agreements, with whom, and finances. But another example of data opening up for “AI” that wasn’t open for researchers. I fought many data wrangling battles at Semantic Scholar over missing ACM data. All research papers should be open access!

Association for Computing Machinery@acm.org · 3w ago

We are opening a consultation on the inclusion of ACM publications within AI licensing agreements for access and training purposes. We have published this piece as to why we believe it is the right time now to enter into these discussions. buff.ly/VTatuda

which begs the question, if you have to go to great lengths to make sure your agent doesn't do something stupid... ...what would it have cost to just not use the agent in the first place? we should probably be asking ourselves (not LLMs) this question (even if the answer is, use the agent anyway)

Dare Obasanjo@carnage4life.bsky.social · 3w ago

I’ve spent the past few weeks battling the fact that AI agents are unreliable because the underlying LLM technology is. My main conclusion is that the most useful tools you have are assuming everything an LLM says is wrong until verified and automating some verification with adversarial LLM reviews

There's no fossil fuel based energy security in the age of ubiquitous cheap long-range attack drones.

Vehicular cyclists have been at this for 50+ years. If public education was the key to bike safety, the United States would be the safest country for cycling in the world. These holdouts from a bygone era can't see that their philosophy is bankrupt and hasn't worked.

prominently featuring @worldbollardassoc.bsky.social

The War on Cars@thewaroncars.bsky.social · 3w ago

"Some 40 years [ago], Finland´s capital started to design new solutions to reduce deadly road accidents - and then eventually eliminate them. Those efforts have now paid off. 12 consecutive months without a single road death..." You mean they didn't just try telling people to follow the law?

chaque fois qu'on me sort la vieille cassette que la sécurité routière doit passer d'abord par l'éducation et la sensibilisation je pense à ceci

The War on Cars@thewaroncars.bsky.social · 3w ago

The writer, Paul Schimek, is a longtime devotee of John Forester and an adherent of "savvy cycling" or "bicycle driving," other terms for vehicular cycling. As the first bicycle program manager for the City of Boston, he is a big reason the city was behind on installing protected lanes for so long.

Un texte intéressant à (re)lire en ce matin de canicule et de ciel teinté par la fumée de feux de forêts: Un Québec bouleversé par un climat perturbé. La province est en retard en matière d’adaptation aux multiples conséquences du réchauffement planétaire. www.ledevoir.com/actualites/e...

Un Québec bouleversé par un climat perturbé

La province est en retard en matière d’adaptation aux multiples conséquences du réchauffement planétaire.

ledevoir.com