Shan Kothari

is LL the other one?

No one of you is going to mistake this short column of mine for trenchant economic analysis. Nevertheless, here’s my attempt to explain to a popular audience why I think they should join the “raise my taxes” movement:

www.christiancourier.ca/raise-my-tax...

YouTube video by Remarque NYU Karen Hao on Empire of AI

my interview for the Digital Theory Lab with Karen Hao @karenhao.bsky.social at the Remarque Institute
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZpH...

Fundraisers warn of ‘catastrophic’ drop in donations to Gaza since ceasefire ‘The world thinks Palestinians don’t need help any more,’ aid organiser says, despite desperate need as winter nears

Quality of life in Gaza has not improved since the "ceasefire". Most are still displaced and without food. Many are still dodging violence from Israeli attacks. Aid is still not being allowed in at anywhere near the levels required to help the population.

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

I suspect that as long as there are human drivers, some of them will be tired, distracted, angry, or drunk

another guy in India songs the outsourcing industry taught me

there's a @dsquareddigest.bsky.social post about this: backofmind.substack.com/p/another-gu...

Almost everywhere in the City of Toronto has fewer people that it did 50 years ago

Rebel Without a Clue | Los Angeles Review of Books Elizabeth Alsop picks up the trail of Kelly Reichardt’s alienated art thief in “The Mastermind.”

For the Monday morning crowd! My take on THE MASTERMIND and the politics of the heist film for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social lareviewofbooks.org/article/rebe...

every once in a while, just for fun, I take a passage I admire and write a paragraph describing its contents and tone to produce an LLM pastiche. the results often impress on a first read-through—which again, I think reflects a mastery of affect—but after that I start to notice everything that's off

often the first thing (sometimes the only thing) people appreciate about a poem is the affect it cultivates, and I've seen LLMs do a great job at replicating that, at least within some limited range! but beyond that I haven't been convinced so far

CBC posted a video talking about a building losing its on street parking due to bike lanes. Somehow they failed to mention the building’s TWO visitor parking lots. One of which you can even see in the video. #yegbike

just a reminder that the 8 Dems who folded need to vote again later in the week (thanks to dumb senate procedure, unsurprisingly)

light their phones up tomorrow at 9AM

A big part of the issue is that Edmontonians and new arrivals (for a mix of cultural and job market reasons) don't see a ton of value in living centrally, so development at Century Park, Blatchford, etc is slow. But it is happening!

Three out of four of these were also part of the original LRT line in 1978, so I don't think they reflect on the choices in current transit expansions

Yeah, so two of those (Belvedere and Stadium) have big ongoing TOD buildouts, and a third (Coliseum) will once the Coliseum comes down. But also, this has nothing to do with the original contention about building restrictions!

I... don't think Alberta's cities have done that? Certainly Edmonton hasn't. We have tons of residential construction downtown and big TOD buildouts around Century Park and the NE stations, and a lot of land around the in-progress VLW has just been blanket-upzoned

it's definitely something to work up to, though, I would not recommend it to a first-timer

being a mildly precocious anti-war 10-year-old in 2003 and seeing the lust for war from every responsible grown-up institution is a feeling I've never quite managed to shake

on the one hand, sure, TOD development has been really sluggish in Edmonton, but on the other hand it's fairly easy and affordable to live in neighborhoods like Wihkwentowin, Downtown, Garneau, or Strathcona with good transit connectivity

James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who died Thursday at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers.

A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death.

Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written."

Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating.
🧪🧬🧫

honestly more offended as an ecologist than as an Indian person

to be clear, I'm not trying to insinuate that Edmonton is actually conservative or that the election results were somehow unrepresentative! but I do think the relative coordination on the progressive side was an asset

I mean, it seems reasonable to think that the mayoral election could have turned out otherwise had there been fewer candidates on the right or in a broadly anti-incumbent slant (and of course Anirniq)

I'm not sure that any of the incumbents had anyone running to their left who got any meaningful share of votes (except maybe Principe? I don't know much about the other candidates in her ward)—although many candidates in many wards never seemed to articulate much of a platform at all

wait, what about Anirniq? (and the mayoral race—there was no incumbent, or PACE candidate, but Knack represents a degree of continuity and nearly all candidates were running to his right to varying degrees)

Herbarium spectral digitization workflow from specimen collection to global integration, and challenges.

Next-generation specimen #digitization: capturing #reflectance spectra from the world's #herbaria for modeling plant biology across time, space, and taxa

#TansleyReview by Jeannine Cavender-Bares, et al.

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

#PlantScience

Opinion: Let's make Whyte Avenue less scary for pedestrians We experienced the conflict between Whyte’s energy and vibrancy, with the danger and chaos perpetuated by its car-centric design.

Whyte Avenue is Edmonton's most vibrant main street, but that doesn't mean we have to accept noise, traffic violence, and congestion

In an opinion article we submitted to the Journal, ETR Chair Daniel Witte talks about his experience spending Halloween on Whyte

edmontonjournal.com/opinion/colu...

High‐temperature acclimation of photosystem II in land plants The effect of high temperature on plant performance and survival is a topic of great interest given the ongoing rise in global heatwave frequency, duration, and intensity. The temperature at which ph....

New paper led by @bposch.bsky.social out in @newphyt.bsky.social . We reviewed evidence, mechanisms, and consequences of high temperature acclimation of leaf heat tolerance: nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I suspect that a big part of it is indeed the perception that BE is UCP-aligned—and also the fragmentation of the right compared to the unity of the progressives

Yale lab reports mass killings in Sudan, calls for student activism The Humanitarian Research Lab was told this week that over 10,000 people in Sudan were killed within three days.

“Individuals on the ground sent a message that reached us Monday morning that 1,200 were dead,” Nathaniel Raymond, the lab’s executive director, said. “By that evening, they said 10,000. By Tuesday, we couldn’t reach them anymore. We assume our ground contacts are dead.”