Daniel Munro
@dkmunro.bsky.social
Director, Research & Innovation, Actua. Co-Director, Shift Insights. Senior Fellow, Munk School. Recovering political philosopher. MIT PhD. Innovation. Science policy. Ethics. Skills. Space. JAWS. Running. Chronic napping. 🇨🇦 www.shiftinsights.ca
Fun fact: The Canada Innovation Corporation - a $2.6B innovation agency announced in Budget 2022 - never launched in part because my dear friend who was supposed to lead implementation got hit by a car at a poorly designed Ottawa intersection & spent the next 4 years in physical and mental therapy.
“An Ottawa councillor wants the city to explore more options to keep commuters moving this fall…including allowing right turns on red lights at some downtown intersections.” Get ready for a surge in pedestrian and cyclist deaths this fall. www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/artic...
Councillor wants Ottawa to explore more options to keep traffic moving downtown this fall
An Ottawa councillor wants the city to explore more options to keep commuters moving this fall as public servants head to the office four days a week, including allowing right turns on red lights at s...
ctvnews.ca
Ostensibly about an AI bubble, my piece for CIGI is really a call for deliberation about AI, pop or no pop. We need to do the “hard work of exercising collective judgment, making distinctions and wielding sovereign power to shape the AI future we want.” www.cigionline.org/articles/aft...
After the Pop: Should the AI Economy Be Rescued or Set Adrift?
What we do in the face of the AI bubble depends on our assessment of the value produced or damaged by different kinds of AI.
cigionline.org
Apropos imminent junk crashing into the Moon, here’s my 2024 piece on space junk for @thewalrus.ca. thewalrus.ca/mess-up-oute...
Are We Going to Mess Up Outer Space Too? | The Walrus
As nations jockey for military edge in orbit, there is a growing threat from above
thewalrus.ca
Reuters@reuters.com · 20h agoPiece of SpaceX rocket will crash into the moon Wednesday reut.rs/4wc94nn
NSF will spend $47M over the next five years on the pilot. More than 30 universities, including Columbia, NYU and Northwestern University have already signed letters of intent to participate, as have industry partners such as Procter & Gamble, BP and Rolls Royce. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
NSF rolls out ‘industry PhD’ programme — joining a global trend
The US pilot programme will provide financial support for four years to more than 250 students, who will gain industry experience.
nature.com
Apropos imminent junk crashing into the Moon, here’s my 2024 piece on space junk for @thewalrus.ca. thewalrus.ca/mess-up-oute...
Are We Going to Mess Up Outer Space Too? | The Walrus
As nations jockey for military edge in orbit, there is a growing threat from above
thewalrus.ca
Reuters@reuters.com · 20h agoPiece of SpaceX rocket will crash into the moon Wednesday reut.rs/4wc94nn
“The world needs to act before a few powerful states and companies are able to create norms that then just become the rules.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/01/b...
The High-Stakes Battle for Invisible Real Estate in Space
nytimes.com
If we really wanted to address under-employment of young men through vocational education, we'd encourage care professions Care professions are growing and largely AI-immune. Men joining a female-dominated profession in large numbers boosts the status and pay for everyone. It's a win-win
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Lauren Dobson-Hughes@ldobsonhughes.bsky.social · 2d ago"An iron rule of education systems is that the earlier they select into academic and non-academic routes, the greater the socio-economic gap. Parents with resources will spend whatever is necessary to ensure their child gets on to the higher status stream" samf.substack.com/p/burnhams-f...
I’ve started wearing a bucket hat on some of my runs and I get some varied looks. Nice to see another bucket hat athlete crush a race. www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/artic...
‘I’ve been dreaming about this since I was a little kid’: Calgary’s Kiyan Sunderji wins Ironman Canada-Ottawa
The Ironman Canada-Ottawa event kicked off today, sending thousands of people swimming, running, biking and cheering across the capital on a rainy Sunday morning.
ctvnews.ca
Can a man eat too many popsicles during a week of vacation? Join me on my journey. For science.
"Come to Canada, we're a stable, serious, non-politicized place to do science." (And then we name the program after an overt partisan) A future government looking to cut research funding now gets to frame it as scrubbing Liberal branding. Why hand them that? OK, soapbox put away now.
Ian Milligan@ianmilligan1.bsky.social · 5d agoImpact+ hardly rolled off the tongue, and there's some logic to name our new research chairs after Eddie Goldenberg. But, to be honest, I am not sure about naming core programs after a Liberal Party insider/lobbyist. www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...
I’m not saying that simply locating Ceuta on a map will explain everything, but it certainly clarifies a few things.
PSA: It’s 11am EDT. You have just 60 minutes to send something to colleagues before becoming the jackass who sends something on the Friday afternoon before a long weekend.
“meteorologists, scientists and forecasting experts said that Canada will have less information or forewarning ahead of severe weather events, and that the country must reduce its reliance on American data for its modelling.” The free-riding is over, kids. www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...
Whither the weather balloons? U.S. changes leave Canada with less notice of storms, experts say
American stations have strayed from regular launch times observed around the globe as part of co-ordinated scientific effort
theglobeandmail.com
My late neighbour, who was in his 90s, used to walk to a retirement home to visit a friend. Had to cross a 4 lane road at an intersection to get there. He walked slowly so it took 2 light cycles to cross. About 40 seconds. City couldn’t be arsed to extend it. Cities designed for cars, not people.
Terri@terriclarke.bsky.social · 6d agoNext time someone tries to blame pedestrians for headphones or cellphones 60% of peds getting hit are seniors even though they make up only 14% of the population. “Drivers should be driving on the assumption the person in the road is not looking or seeing them, because they might not be able to”
“The full closure of the St. Laurent Station and both tracks would be required for five to six weeks for the work.” I get it. The original station was built in 1985. Needs repairs. But was there no thought given to this when the LRT was being built a decade ago? www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/artic...
O-Train St. Laurent Station could be forced to close for several weeks for rehabilitation work
The St. Laurent Station needs to undergo a multi-million-dollar rehabilitation to address leakage into the tunnel that could force the closure of the major O-Train Station to trains for several weeks.
ctvnews.ca
the age-old path for a space startup: science fiction scheme with no customers pivots to infrastructure the government might pay for
Alan Boyle@b0yle.bsky.social · 6d agoThanks to NASA's $30 billion #MoonBase initiative, Interlune and Vermeer are pivoting their partnership to focus on building lunar construction tools as well as mining precious helium-3 on the moon. www.geekwire.com/2026/interlu... H/T @interlune.bsky.social
As an aside, back in the late 1980s, kids like me would stop in Lakeside Park or at the side of Lakeshore Road, put on side 1 of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and just marvel at this thing.
Trevor Heywood @metroscapes.ca · 6d agoHuge news out of Mississauga. After 80 years of operation, oil refining at the Mississauga Lubricants Centre will cease operations by next year. The Dallas-based owner, HF Sinclair, said they will maintain a presence on site for research, blending operations, and packing / supply chain / logistics.
Lollapalooza 2026 streaming on Disney and Hulu? I know it’s only 9:20, but these bones that attended the very first Lollapalooza need to go take a nap.
Every conscientious journalist covering the space program should use descriptors 'white supremacist' or 'fascist' every time when referring to E__ M__. Really puzzled at the free pass given by space enthusiasts/journalists. See @jamellebouie.net in NYTimes today: www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/o...
Well that sucks. www.engadget.com/2225849/goog... Least bummer interpretation: AlphaFold served its purpose, DeepMind already spun off a drug lab, so it was time to reassign the time.
Google shuts down its Nobel-prize winning AlphaFold project as it focuses on Gemini - Engadget
DeepMind's award-winning AlphaFold team is no more.
engadget.com
As Creig Lamb and I have been saying since 2019, the “intangible” economy runs on tangible rails. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/b...
A.I. Companies Are Recruiting Electricians and Carpenters by the Thousands
The future of artificial intelligence depends on finding more skilled humans for some very physical jobs.
nytimes.com
The amazing thing - well, one of the amazing things - about @robertkelchen.com's database here is the sheer number of institutions with enrolment drops of 30% or more - it's 360, or about 13% of the total. And it's only going to get worse.
Is Your College Losing Money?
Search this database to see how your institution stacks up.
chronicle.com
Weaponized enshittification. aka Sinking Submarines in the Great Lakes (Apologies to @jamespmcleod.ca).
David Roberts@volts.wtf · last wk.Israel is giving Trump's former campaign manager millions of dollars to fill the internet with pro-Israel articles written by AI, not so that anyone will actually read them, but so that *LLMs will train on them* & regurgitate their perspective. This is the future of the information environment.
Impossible to put into words how useless Gmail search is. No wait, these guys did it!
say what you will about AI, always-on voice recording and auto dictation has been a game changer for my workflows. Save post and close app. Yeah Footlong meatball sub on white. No veggies. Don't toast it. Ranch and barbecue sauce. Yeah, ranch and bargecue sauce. More. More. Little more please
