I had a mini sitting there for about a year before someone pointed out it was upside down on my desk. I thought the side that says “Mac mini” was supposed to be facing up? But no, apparently it’s the Apple logo side. With the power button on the model name side, I think that could fuel a nice, juicy OCD argument with my coworker?

Yeah, I was never a fan of the Whopper for that reason, but the IW is pretty good!

Yeah I always get that bun! If you go often, I strongly recommend the app. It remembers previous orders and what sort of toppings you like on your burger. It takes around 10 minutes to prepare it, so if you order before you head out, it will usually be ready by the time you get there. Also, you can get Scene points towards your next movie.

I like the Harvey’s veggie burger. It’s kind of old school, predating all the new plant-based ones, but it hits the spot for me and often goes on sale in the app.

I wish we had an Odd Burger where I live. My daughter and her vegan boyfriend are always saying great things about it.

Awesome. I will add it to my list of places I want to visit just based on name alone. A few others include Batman, Turkey, Shitterton, England, and Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, Québec.

I’ve been playing around with the disabled GIL build and though I use threads fairly extensively in my projects, it’s been smooth sailing so far. I feel like my GUI scripts might be a bit more responsive now? (I tend to farm out user events to dedicated threads, so this is entirely possible.)

But overall, everything is stable and awesome! I’m so excited! This has been a long time coming for Python.

Yeah it’s kind of an arm’s race with people feeling they need to be the biggest thing on the road to feel safe. I’ve driven a few larger vehicles as airport rentals when they had nothing else in stock, and I’ve noticed they also tend to have a lot more blind spots than what I’m used to.

I remember when I was taking lessons, my instructor said I should think of the airbag as being a spring-loaded spike that will impale you if you screw up. I guess he was trying to impress on me that it’s not good to feel safe and smug when you’re driving? And actually, I’ve read since that air bags can be pretty violent when they go off, so he may not have been as far from the truth as I thought?

Totally agree. Some people seem to think it shows moral fortitude to stick to your guns and never admit fault, but these are really the weak-willed people in society.

Another lesson of adulthood it has taken me an embarrassingly long time to learn is that when you are enjoying something and see someone—particularly a younger person—looking interested, bring them in on it. If it’s something you bought for yourself, let them have a go. This may entail a small amount of sacrifice if you let them borrow it for a time, but the joy it brings will make it worth it, and the world needs more of that today. I think about people who have done this for me in the past, and I have mad respect for all of them.

Holy shit that was one intense week! I really feel for you. Glad you got it looked at in time and hope for calm seas ahead.

Take it easy for about half an hour or so after eating and then do some kind of physical activity. I learned that this has the best effect for lowering blood sugar in battling type 2 diabetes, but I think it’s generally good advice for anyone? It doesn’t have to be a heavy workout or anything. Even just getting up on your feet and walking around a bit makes a difference.

I wish there were more regulation on the size of private vehicles, particularly in North America. It’s pretty clear at this point that what is contributing to higher pedestrian/cyclist fatalities despite better urban infrastructure is the increasing curb weight and ground clearance of automobiles. We can hope that collision-avoidance tech in newer models may reduce human-error type accidents, but at the end of the day, kinetic energy is a bitch.

I wonder how the EV transition will affect things? On the one hand, an EV would weigh more than an ICE of the same class since batteries are heavy. On the other hand, batteries are also the most expensive component by far and you need more in a larger vehicle, so from a dealer’s perspective, the margins may not necessarily grow the bigger you go like with an ICE. The sweet spot might actually be something smaller. (In fact, for me, it’s actually ebikes.)

This is sadly par for the course in green tech articles. Journalists who flunked high school sciences should not be reporting on this stuff, or at least consult with someone who has even a passing knowledge of physics.

Now regarding actual storage amounts, I have noticed utilities seem to target around 4 hours of capacity at full discharge. That seems to be the sweet spot for lithium ion at least. So by that measure, 1 GW would translate to 4 GWh…ish.

These battery farms are more about dealing with spikes in power demand than bulk energy storage. This is still a valuable role in that they can replace peaker plants which are often low-efficiency diesel monstrosities, but we still need something else for the latter application. Mechanical storage schemes like pumped hydro come up a lot in that discussion, though it’s possible something like flow batteries might be a better fit for this than lithium ion if you want to go the battery route?

I’m not an expert on any of this though, so feel free to correct me.

I saw the Danforth side last time I was visiting relatives in the area and was definitely impressed! I would hate to see them take away the cycle tracks there.

I haven’t lived in Toronto in years, but was a bike courier there in my student days. My recollections, dated as they may be, are as follows:

• University is a huge expanse of road with ample room for bike lanes. I can’t imagine why you would remove them? I suspect it has something to do with Queen’s Park sitting in the middle of it and Ford having a personal axe to grind?
• In all the time I lived in Toronto, I don’t think I ever drove on Young St. At least not in the downtown core. Does any self-respecting local do this? I always thought it should be made into a pedestrian mall like Sparks St. in Ottawa.
• To be fair, I tended to avoid Bloor on my bike except in places where you really can’t avoid it like crossing the viaduct. This was more to do with it being a perpetual construction zone than because of automobile traffic though. I don’t know how it is now?

So we’re basically back to year one Ford who tore down wind turbines at taxpayer expense because they annoyed him.

Whoever that is, I am a fan now. The way she switched to Canadian and American and then back to Australian without missing a beat… Was not expecting that! And yeah, the Canadian one in Saskatchewan was one of the first CCS projects and it set the bar very low for everyone else to follow.

Later that year Ravil Magonov, the chairman of Lukoil, an oil giant, died after falling out of the window of a Moscow hospital.

I had to follow up on this part since they didn’t mention what caused his hospitalization in the first place. Did he fall out of his apartment first but it wasn’t high enough, so they sent him to the tallest hospital in Moscow?

But no. He apparently suffered a heart attack. His window death was then deemed a suicide as it was known he was on antidepressants. Case closed. The suicide prevention unit at that hospital, I gather, is on the top floor with easy-to-open windows?

Man. Now I’m wishing they made phones too.

I worry about what this legislation could mean for medium-sized cities like where I live that are only now starting to put in bike infrastructure. It is underutilized at this point, but that’s because it is still incomplete.

You have, for example, a wonderful off-road trail that is 90% complete connecting the suburbs to downtown, but there is one section where you have to cross a bridge with no bike lanes or anything. Until that part gets done, few people will use the rest of it. But if they decide to take a lane away from cars on the bridge, the province could argue that no one uses the trail in the first place and shoot it down. Uuugh!

I was recently in Montreal and omg it’s cycling heaven! Bikes outnumber cars in many places and vehicle congestion seems less in spite of this. Also, drivers seem more cautious in general in the downtown core, even on roads where there are no cycle tracks. It’s a bit like the college campus effect I guess? When you have a high density of non-automotive road usage, the cars tend to slow down and be more patient. They’re moving slower but there is still a steady flow of traffic. Not a lot of gridlock.

If you haven’t been there yet, OneZoom is fun to explore. I am continually surprised by what I find there going down some random branch.