Alec. K. Thomas

I wonder how the “anyone but them” vote has shifted. There are unfortunately still evils in British politics to be expunged. I would even swallow my pride and vote Tory if that meant Reform didn’t win a seat, I say that knowing I’m in a safe Liberal seat.

YouTube video by carlsagandotcom Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupT... A timely reminder.

The Garden Route is like your highlight reel. Anywhere on that route is a treat.

Skeleton Gorge is a great way to hike Table Mountain. Make sure you turn left at the top, away from the tourist area.

Easily one of the top charts of all time

Do you, by any chance, have the raw data (numbers) to support this? I have been trying to backward engineer something and I am drawing blanks.

I think the US road stat is extraordinarily skewed by major roads like route 66 (just to name one we all know). These long straight roads shouldn't have fatalities on them, and largely don't. Those liminal spaces are long and artificially increase the driven kms per fatality. Skewing the data.

Surface albedo regulates aerosol direct climate effect - Nature Communications This study shows that decreased surface albedo leads to significant cooling from the aerosol direct radiative effect, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, moderating the expected warming from surfac...

I'm always bemused by how they can't even lie with the really clever stuff. Most idiots know that the excess CO2 has greened the planet. The really mind-bending stuff that would get a lot of people questioning what they know is if you remove aerosols as well as CO2 the planet would temporarily warm.

Similar crisis occurred in pharmaceuticals after Covid. 100s of clinical trials put on hold because there was a global glass shortage.

Pleading ignorance here. I am fully aware of the American history, but what's going on in the British isles?

...winner being flanked by two German athletes on the podium. It reminds me there is a chance that we can have peace and we can move on from the troubles of the past. There will be a world where Russian and Ukrainian athletes share a podium again, the olympics is the best place for that to happen.

Remember this isn't strictly the IOC's decision this is the IOC acting on behalf of the athletes. The athletes asked for this rule to be enforced by the IOC.

It begs the question if people still think the olympics has any value. Personally I think it does, last night seeing the GB skeleton...

…it’s hardline and tough decisions. The Olympics is a bubble, and completely alien to the ‘real world’ we all inhabit. I don’t agree with it but I think it’s understandable, especially with the right context.

Under the IOCs charter Israel haven’t done anything worthy of being banned. The IOC has always toed the line and it always looks bad from the outside. The ‘36 Olympics should obviously never have happened for example. All the being said, I think the Olympics endures because of not inspite of…

It’s obviously a weird, esoteric law that feels wrong in this context. The IOCs laws are famously esoteric. Remember the Russian Olympic committee is not banned for the war in Ukraine they are banned for transferring the occupied regions to the ROC from the UOC.

Important context is lost here. This is based on advice from a survey of athletes undertaken by athletes on the wording of rule 50. The rule would permit him to carry the helmet to the start line, change the helmet, slide for around 56s then put the same ‘banned’ helmet on.

The only peace that will come from the Epstein files will be a trial of everyone involved on the scale of Nuremberg. The last major prosecution took place in 2020. 80 years.

The resulting upending of culture will be catastrophic. Or it won’t. Hugo Boss made the SS suits and Ford made the trucks.

Protected bikes lanes.

Every, single town and city I've lived in needs protected bike lanes.

The left is a bike "lane" on the main road along Lac Léman in Switzerland, simply not good enough.

The right is in England. A bike zone at the front of traffic, inviting you to be overtaken.

...hypothesis is wether the human individual produces spermatozoa or ova. Spermatozoa for men and ova for women. Men can suffer from Klinefelter’s syndrome where an extra X chromosome evolves into developmental differences that include testicular azoospermia where no sperm is produced in the testes.

The obvious irony being that the history classroom has been biased towards British exceptionalism for as long as we’ve taught it. Somebody should write a book about it.

Brian Jacque’s Redwall mocapped liked Avatar.

A ‘patriot’ whose grasp of reality is not too dissimilar to a Harry Potter fan running into brick walls at King’s Cross.

Likewise, as we’ve been told too often. The medium is the message. What story are you telling? The story will always be better with the written word.

He was later posted on the isle of St Helena watching over Napoleon before he died and reportedly carried his casket (a tall tale I think). His wife was also present as far as we’re aware.

Go back to the days of empire and what our red coated ‘gents’ got up to with the Indian children. My great-great and so on grandfather brought back a VERY young girl and got married to her in the Forest of Dean. That story followed the family as far as Australia.

Sex, Gender, and Sexuality: It’s Complicated When a baby is born, the obstetrician or midwife announces “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl.” As toddlers, children learn to classify everyone as either boy or girl. When our firstborn was ver

Incase anyone was wondering, it's all a lot more complicated. Elon knows this, he's not stupid, but he thinks everyone else is.

The cleaner air, the connection to place and people, the freedom and options afforded by cycling are also important. But if it is physical health, more work needs to be done, and as you from the graphs it is definitely not helping people's waste lines.

this average is close to 4 met hours a week. (Mets are metabolic equivalents, a kind of universal number for how much an activity counts). My concern and argument is that efficiency in the cycling network on average reduces the distance that people cycle. It would be wrong to paint it as all bad.

And we can see that it's not helping with the fact that obesity is simply too high. Numerous studies indicate that active commuting has limited benefit to health outcomes. The benefits of exercise (not the same as physical activity) start to have real effects at 11.5 met hours a week,

If you were to be generous and take a 'slow' Amsterdam cyclist at 15 km/h and assume the upper bound of 2.5km of cycling a day. The average rider is only cycling for 10 minutes. Although you can't argue against the benefits for the environment. The individual benefits are negligible.

Our world in data is useful for this kind of stuff. Obesity is a problem everywhere.

I speak mostly from a world of physical activity. And this 2.5km average is simply not enough physical activity, it's also an overestimate. In Copenhagen the largest group of riders travels less than 2km.