Pals

1. Have you experience the glory that is "It's Raining Tacos"? Because my children have subjected me to it over 5,000 times now...

(tags:music video children food funny )

2. Mapping Edinburgh planning applications

(tags:Edinburgh planning maps visualisation )

3. The UK's North-South divide in transport funding - mapped

(tags:uk transport government money )

4. AI - where are we now?

(tags:ai programming globalwarming economics )

My brother Mike got me this for my birthday, and it just takes a weight off my mind being able to say "bring the steam temperature up to 95 degrees and hold it there"

(Control over oil temperature when frying eggs is also awesome.)
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

I spent the day feeling bad for lacking focus, and wondering why I couldn't get anything done.
And then I slept for an hour on no notice.
And now I'm very wobbly and all of my muscles gently ache.
So I think I'm going to chalk it up as "The Plague" and hope I feel better tomorrow.

1. First case on AI and copyright referred to the CJEU

(tags:europe law copyright ai )

2. Therapy Chatbot Tells Recovering Addict to Have a Little Meth as a Treat

(tags:ai drugs )

3. What it's like being made responsible for the behaviour of Conservative MPs

(tags:Conservatives chaos politics UK )

4. Reform leads in voting intentions - but where does their vote come from?

(tags:voting polls uk politics )

5. The Universal Tech Tree

(tags:Technology history visualisation )

1. Microsoft will make Windows use your selected browser for searches. But only in the EU. Because they're dicks.

(tags:Microsoft OhForFucksSake regulation Europe )

2. Voters In Labour-Reform Battleground Seats More Likely To Rely On Disability Benefits

(tags:welfare inequality disability politics uk )

1. Musk Weighs Return To Politics After 60th Death On 'Elden Ring Nightreign' Tutorial

(tags:ElonMusk satire games politics )

2. Download festival clarifies stance after being slammed by Manchester band in trans bathroom row

(tags:LGBT transgender festival Manchester toilets )

3. Vodafone and Three UK Officially Complete £16bn Merger

(tags:phones business UK )

4. Brits think that we should spend more on defence, but we shouldn't raise taxes or cut other spending to pay for it.

(tags:tax military uk money government )

British Voters are happy that UK net migration is down. But they still think it's too high. Sadly, there is no information about how much immigration voters would like, but I suspect that they think that zero is good. And probably that negative is better.

And a fair chunk of this is because Labour and the Conservatives are both backing the idea that immigration is a bad thing. Lib Dems are in favour of being more humane about it than either of them, but only the SNP seem to have a policy that recognises that if immigration doesn't go up the economy is fucked.

Britain is aging. With serious economic consequences, with insufficient people entering the workforce to make up for the people leaving it, and increasing healthcare costs.

If we want the economy to function then either we will have to have more children or to bring more people in to work here. Those are the two options. And nobody has successfully managed to get a developed society to do the former*. So either we deal with an insupportable economy or we increase immigration. But neither of the big political parties wants to deal with the Daily Mail screaming at them, so we're going to spend the next few years doing the economically** stupid thing.

* Except Israel. Who we are unlikely to emulate.
** Obviously I haven't touched on the moral case here.

I occasionally see people complaining that Edinburgh Council hate cars. And, to be fair, I suspect that some of the council members do dislike them (The Green Party are not known for being big car fans). But the Green Party don't run the council (it's currently Labour supported by the Tories and Lib Dems - but their policies about cars vs buses are very similar to the SNP administration), so why is it that people think the council as a whole hate cars?

It's because the council has very little choice.

In a very rural area cars make total economic sense and buses make very little. There aren't enough people travelling between any two points at a given time to make it worth running buses that often, so buses either don't exist, or only connect larger areas rarely. And because they don't run that often, you can't just wander out and leap on to one to get where you need to. So you pretty much *have* to have a car.

Once you more urban you have a situation where buses are running regularly on key routes, so if you live on them then you'll be able to rely on a bus to get too/from work/school. And if you're doing that enough that you're paying for a bus pass, or that you're able to get to most of the places you want then a chunk of people don't need cars any more.

And then, as you get even more urban, you reach a key point where there are *lots* of buses. And to manage the concentration of people in the city you run out of space on the roads, at least at key parts of the day. You now have traffic jams at rush hour. And that's because you have vehicles that are 4.5m long that are carrying one person and other vehicles that are three times that length that are carrying 100 people. If you want to keep those 100 people moving then one of the most efficient ways of doing it is to get the incredibly wasteful vehicles carrying only 1 person out of the way.

Now, this is problematic. If you do it before you have decent bus routes set up for people to switch to then there will be a lot of resistance. You clearly need to hit a critical point to make it doable. And obviously you need some exceptions. But *something* like it is inevitable as people get more concentrated together. You simply cannot fit everyone in the roads if they are using cars, you need something more compact than that.

1. What does "Undecidable" mean, anyway (in computing terms)

(tags:computers logic )

2. Survey on the impact of school working hours on parents and businesses in Edinburgh

(tags:edinburgh school time )

3. Edinburgh's LEZ one year on: More walking and cycling, less pollution and fewer fines

(tags:pollution transport Edinburgh GoodNews )

4. The Two Extremists Driving Israel's Policy

(tags:religion Israel genocide Judaism )

5. The secrets to incredible photos taken inside musical instruments

(tags:photography music )

6. He Won the Nobel Prize for Physics. Then He Changed His Mind.

(tags:physics )

Gideon's nursery had photos taken. I like them.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.