Michael Tobis (mt)

I just want to say: this isn’t “odd weather.”this is climate change.

No snow, no refund: weird weather tests Big Ski’s business model

oh… so we’re doing this again

that was quick

In Toronto, snow is melting. Long stretches of the city smell like puddle water and dog shit. Spring is approaching.

Rut-roh

After a Decade of Missteps, a Texas City Careens Toward a Water-Shortage Catastrophe - Inside Climate News Officials in Corpus Christi expect a “water emergency” within months, and to fully run out of water next year. That would halt jet fuel supplies to Texas airports, trigger a surge in gasoline prices a...

Without significant rainfall in Corpus Christi, TX, officials warn the city’s water supply could run out by year’s end—threatening jet fuel shipments to Texas airports and crude exports from one of the nation’s largest oil ports, with potential ripple effects across energy markets.

It Wasn't Fascism All Along Conservatism was a distinct ideology but it is dead and it is not coming back.

"There is a tendency to assume that high polarization means even polarization. But there is nothing about two bitterly opposed teams that necessitates they be of the same size. (. . .)What if (. . .)across developed countries polarization stayed, but the contours changed to 70/30 rather than 50/50?"

a current Honda Civic is the same size as a 90s Ford Ranger

It's amazing people will claim "Canada and the USA have the same culture" and then on something as fundamental as "do you trust your fellow citizens to be good" we are further apart than any other two countries

But the dice are still in the air. It’s not at all clear where they will land.

More than most places, we’ve never really been in contril of our own destiny. Carney is the right person for the moment, but it’s a strange balancing act he’s performing.

Canada will definitely come out of this with a very different experience from America’s, reversing an 80 year convergence.

I’m not at all suggesting that Americans’ attentions should be directed to relations with Canada at this point. And I’m so grateful to be back here in Canada, in this place that’s so peaceful as to be a bit dull. Boredom is a privilege nowadays.

But our entanglement with the States is so strange.

But intellectually, it’s hard to make a case that we aren’t slipping into a gratuitous world war, one in which the lines of alliance and opposition aren’t even clear.

It’s ridiculous that part of me is responding by wondering if I’ll still get avocados.

Life in Canada remains stubbornly normal, so much so that I expect many people to blame PM Carney for the sudden spike in gasoline prices. But meanwhile some people see the situation as existential. It’s a head scratcher. It doesn’t *feel* like everything could fall apart.

Pierre Trudeau’s analogy of the Canada-US relationship being like sleeping with a friendly elephant takes on a different tone when the elephant is delirious.

While it’s true that American attentions are everywhere and it’s true that America would be ill advised to cut off 10% of the until recently fully integrated North American economy, it’s also clear that we can’t expect rational behaviour from the Americans anymore.

I was in an informal discussion with local folks in Ontario discussing food security in the event of a closed border with the US. Canada of course is a net exporter of food calories, but mostly grains, legumes, and cooking oil. Most of our produce either originates in the US or comes via US ports.

#graphicdujour

A metric on which Canada and the USA are at opposite extremes

www.pewresearch.org/religion/202...

bsky.app/profile/mtob...

while i am not an academic i did see this coming and post about it on bluesky, which is why i am quoted in this article

How many plants do you need to breathe? TESTED YouTube video by Joel Creates

A: Lots!

youtu.be/xWRkzvcb9FQ

I believe I’m not the one making assumptions here…

If they created the same number of jobs they eliminated within the same company they would be pointless.

It’s not obvious that more jobs will be created in other sectors, as they are all automating as well.

But go ahead and linearly extrapolate a nonlinear situation. Nobody will stop you.

Bluebells at Riverbend Park, Fairfax County, Virginia Photo Michael Reinemer

“A sustainable future is not guaranteed—if we want it, we need to create it.”

— Dr. Hannah Ritchie
“Not the End of the World” 2024

Demand the Data: What’s Really Going Viral? | Mozilla Foundation Social media platforms aren’t sharing what goes viral on their sites. Tell YouTube, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, and X to disclose their most-viewed content. Sign now.

Mozilla Foundation made a request to YouTube, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, and X: share the top public posts per EU country.

These are public posts that have already been seen, in some cases, by millions.

But so far, every single platform has refused.

www.mozillafoundation.org/en/campaigns...

The core error:

Separatists doing "easy math" treat federal taxes as "lost money" instead of the cost of operating a country.

You wouldn’t eliminate a level of government.

You’d replace Ottawa with Edmonton. (Or Washington, DC, who would have even greater control over natural resource revenue.)

An independent Alberta would need to fund:
• National defence
• Border services
• Foreign affairs & trade
• Immigration
• Higher level courts
• Aviation regulation
• Debt servicing
• Central banking, etc.

This stuff is also conveniently left out of the "-$23B" fiscal balance calculation.

In practice, I gather that houseplants don’t freshen the air in your house enough to make a big difference, as I suspected.

It turns out that many people have taken this on and therr’s a plethora of answers depending on constraints.

Of course the lifecycle of a plant is exactly carbon neutral if the remains of the plant are allowed to decay. In your sealed environment you would want to eject dead leaves and dead plants.