New working paper suggests that education may have played a bigger role than previously thought in the first industrial revolution in England www.lse.ac.uk/asset-librar...

So folks, I've finally decided to get off my behind and start arranging an iterinary of my three week trip to Japan in Oct - Nov (yes, yes, I know...very predictable); Toyko - Kyoto - Hiroshima. As I know this place is full of weebs or other questionable types, I should ask for some non-obvious recs

new issue of Vizier Monthly is out

L'Ukraine, c'est toujours pas de production européenne digne de ce nom pour lui permettre de se défendre, c'est des dizaines de milliers de morts en qq semaines au début de la guerre dont personne n'a conscience puisqu'on parle encore de 10 000 morts, et encore, quand on en parle 1/

Q1 2026 USCA commuter rail ridership update: - RTO policy is bringing up ridership overall - Caltrain electrification has grown ridership 70% - Only GO has exceeded prepandemic numbers; ridership grew 8.5% while local transit ridership fell ~5%

So I watched that ZDF documentary that had DB very upset. It's mostly criticising DB for dragging its feet in the rollout of ETCS signals. Which is fair enough, I find it baffling that this got descoped from the Berlin-Hamburg Generalsanierung.

Stanislaw Lem is so good. I was reading an antology of some of his robotic short stories, ending in "The Mask" ("Maska"), described as a most disturbing love story. No wonder, the plot is that a robot assassin disguised as a woman is sent to a royal ball to kill one of the courtiers.

I for one am sad that my local data centre operator went bankrupt.

Eiserfelder Rechenzentrum Dinfra ist verkauft

Dinfra betreibt ein hochmodernes Rechenzentrum in Eiserfeld. Am 21. Juli wurde das Insolvenzverfahren eröffnet. Schon rückwirkend zum 1. Juli wurden Betriebs- und Geschäftsausstattung aber verkauft.

siegener-zeitung.de

Did Germany really pass a law that will slowly defund hospitals? Look, I would understand an active reform promoting efficiency (by e.g. consolidating sites) but you can't expect a good result with a simple budget cut, when the population is getting older and health care fancier.

It's concerning how Ukraine has apparently run out of anti-missile defenses

9 killed, 30 injured in Kyiv following a Russian attack. Our Air Forces managed to shot down only ONE of twenty-seven Iskander-M ballistic missiles and ZERO Zircon/Onyx anti-ship missiles.

Alina Pereverzieva 🇺🇦@perevaa.bsky.social · 7d ago

Russia is attacking Kyiv with Iskander-M and Zircon missiles.

By now, it seems that #Spain has been very able to manage the crisis, and no other member states were negatively affected in any way. The reactions from Italy & Co. have been truly shameful. This is how you destroy trust and solidarity in the EU.

Lorenzo Piccoli@lorenzopiccoli.bsky.social · 7d ago

If the concern is Spain’s capacity to manage an exceptional number of arrivals, there are other ways to respond, including supporting Spain, without restricting free movement across an internal Schengen border.

Russia attacked Ukraine with 284 drones and 74 missiles overnight on July 30. Intercepted or neutralized: • Shahed drones and decoys: 265/284 • Kh-101 / Kalibr missiles: 54/61 • Oniks / Zircon missiles: 0/4 • Iskander-M / S-400 / KN-23 ballistic missiles: 1/9

First day of the heat wave: max indoors temperature was 25.5 against 34 outside. Tomorrow it'll probably go to 27 indoors then 28 on Friday and on Saturday it will already be cooler than that outside. This is completely fine without a/c and heat waves worse than this used to be extremely rare.

Public transport in the Ruhr be like: railway line through dense urban areas, unelectrified, uncomfortable DMUs, only hourly service possible, inadequate stations, terrible punctuality (only 52.1% punctual-within-4mins trains last year) and no concrete plans for any upgrades apart from maybe BEMUs

Looks inspiring! Yes, the left is about public goods, higher demands from but also higher benefits to citizens, and freedom from private tyrants. Whether it's Musk capturing Twitter or NIMBYs capturing the government of a rotten borough.

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · last wk.

"What is the left for?" New @ippr report being launched today for "reciprocism" - a collective politics of democratic citizenship www.ippr.org/media-office...

I like how modern AI tools have completely bridged the gap between vibe prompts and deterministic programming. Doing something for the first time? Use a text prompt. Keep using the same prompt? Make a SKILL out of it. Refine the SKILL by writing scripts for the most routine aspects of the job.

Unemployment rates are also pretty linear with education, the more educated you are the less likely you are to be unemployed. Education is basically always a net benefit for you even if you end up somewhere you didn’t expect

Very enjoyable historical romance set around William's conquest of England. It was my daily companion for the past 6 weeks and I feel a strange hole now that I'm done with it.

Today something reminded me that the railway network near Pisa and Livorno is a great example of the very early efforts of the "Long Modernization" and how railway operations have evolved from the early days of railroading to the turn of the century. >>

The alt left approach to foreign policy, of defunding the army and military disengagement from the world, works great when the point is to clear the way for Russian or Chinese imperialism. But they're gonna be disappointed when Israel turns out not to be a puppet propped up by US military aid.

The Berlin police are seeking out photos, videos and witnesses related to the attack on CSD/pride related festivities near Tiergarten today: be.hinweisportal.de

Philo@opfuchs.gay · 2w ago

I was off to dinner and home long before this, but apparently a potential terror attack tonight at Berlin pride/CSD Potentially up to 44 injured so far www.spiegel.de/panorama/csd...

Only in Germany can you book Leipzig Hbf to Siegen Hbf mostly going through backwater rail lines and be reasonably confident it'll work. Despite all the excitement, after 5h20 and 4 trains I was only 5 min late in the end.

Wtf do you mean another train has priority? My train was an ontime ICE, what could possibly have a higher priority?

High Speed: South Korea tackles a capacity shortfall https://www.railwaygazette.com/high-speed/2026/07/25/high-speed-south-korea-tackles-a-capacity-shortfall/

High Speed: South Korea tackles a capacity shortfall

The South Korean high speed network faces significant constraints both in terms of available seats and track capacity. Benjámin Zelki examines the steps the country is taking to ensure growth can be delivered in the future. The South Korean high speed rail network is struggling to meet huge demand, with the busiest section between Pyeongtaek…

railwaygazette.com

Love how people back in the day were proud of the smoke spewed by their factories.

The deutschland ticket is such a bad idea with its current funding system, it has cut 60 million in income from HVV while having more ridership than pre-covid

Our train did a crazy maneuver in Wroclaw: it left the station 12 min early in the wrong direction, stopped shortly after, then came back. No idea what was going on.

Pros of the Warsaw-Krakow train: it was a Pendolino, with all the modernity and comfort that implies for the interior. Cons: it had also the typical reliability of a Pendolino (we were 45 min late due to a technical failure)

I do like the Warsaw skyline.