Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

Varada @varada.bsky.social · 54m

Reading an article about cycling in Montreal and apparently 1/3 of all trips in the city are by bike. Pretty cool! I thought I would mention it since 90% of the people I follow on Bluesky have exclusively bike lane politics.

2 1 10

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

Ruth Neese @morrigan6.bsky.social · 4h

Doublethink is holding 2 contradictory beliefs in your mind at the same time and believing both are true. For example, believing “Portland is war ravaged” and that peaceful, costumed protestors are proof of that. Party slogan “war is peace” is another example. Teaches people to believe overt lies.

2 1 7

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

ABC News Bot (unofficial) @abcnewsbot.bsky.social · 3h

A sheep farmer has welcomed the restoration of an internationally significant wetland on his property outside of Hobart. The collaboration of a non-profit organisation with landowners, scientists, the Aboriginal community and governments has allowed the return of a vital ecosystem.

Wildlife returns after Tasmanian sheep paddock restored as wetland

A sheep farmer has welcomed the restoration of an internationally significant wetland on his property outside of Hobart. The collaboration of a non-profit organisation with landowners, scientists, the Aboriginal community and governments has allowed the return of a vital ecosystem.

www.abc.net.au

1 3 5

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

Peter Whiteford @peterwhiteford.bsky.social · 1h

Australia's fertility decline: Evidence and policy experience e61.in/how-financia...

How financial incentives shape fertility in Australia – e61 INSTITUTE

e61.in

1

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

NEP-PBE: Public Economics @repec-nep-pbe.bsky.social · 2h

From Tax Incidence to Emission Reduction: The Pass-through of Air Passenger Taxes

NEP/RePEc link

to paper

d.repec.org

1

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

Ea-nāṣir @jedgarnaut.bsky.social · 2h

𝗩𝗜𝗕𝗘 𝗖𝗛𝗘𝗖𝗞: Negative

Cornell University researcher's artificial heart project halted due to lab shutdown, stalling children's lifesaving technology.

1 1

Chris Neill 🐧 @chrisneill.bsky.social · 4h

Lake O was 20 on Friday, and really fairly lovely. Huron looks like it's 16-17 at the moment, though we will see. Still, should be manageable (at least to the weirdos I'm hanging out with).

1

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

Scott Imberman @imbernomics.bsky.social · 6h

Make sure that on this World Economist Day you call your local economists to tell them how much you appreciate them.

The Sadie Collective @sadiecollective.bsky.social · 1d

October 12th is World Economist Day!

From guiding policy to studying the forces behind growth, economists help us make sense of complex systems and improve lives.

Today we ask you to donate to The Sadie Collective to empower the next generation of economists: tinyurl.com/sadie-wed

#EconSky

3 14

Chris Neill 🐧 @chrisneill.bsky.social · 5h

I am planning a swimming trip to Lake Huron tomorrow.

1 1

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

Marian Vidal-Fernandez @mvidal-fdez.bsky.social · 16h

If you're teaching causal inference here is a podcast on the topic 4 non-Econ.
Thanks 2 R. Taylor (staggered DID), @essobecker.bsky.social (IV), & S. Rahman (RDD), for thoughtful chats 📚 problem sets available 2.
m.youtube.com/@embracingda...
#CausalEffects #Econ #Teaching #Podcast #EmbracingData

3 11

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

🇨🇦 👊🇨🇦 @sorry-iamcanadian.bsky.social · 1d

Some really cool ideas for those who enjoy the Great White North in the raw 👇

Les Stroud is awesome.

#Canada

Survivorman Les Stroud takes you on his top five Canadian outdoor adventures

He's survived adventures all over the globe – sometimes, barely. Here are his top outdoor escapes in his homeland of Canada, from dogsledding in Inuvik to hot tent camping in Temagami.

www.bbc.com

11 28

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

Dale Smith @journodale.bsky.social · 22h

Once again, everything is Trudeau's fault here. Almost nothing about provincial culpability with international students (especially in Ontario, which got a single passing mention), nothing about the provinces' responsibilities about housing or healthcare. Nope, this was all Trudeau.

How Canada got immigration right for so long – and then got it very, very wrong

Canadian immigration was stable, popular and uncontroversial. But a series of changes after 2015 broke the national consensus, and the system

www.theglobeandmail.com

9 29 120

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 18h

Californian Morning' (mid 20thc) by US artist and printmaker Emmy Lou Packard (1914-1998) #WomensArt

Print featuring a line of different wild plants in silhouette with a singing blackbird perched in one and a dragonfly flying above, all in front of the ocean under an orange sun

130 940

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

Herman van de Werfhorst 🟥 @hermwerf.bsky.social · 1d

One of the best things I did in Amsterdam is to tell students that I’d make the taped lectures only available to them when the average turnout at lectures was 67%. Taught them a lesson on collective goods and coordination. It worked!

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 1d

'It is no secret that student attendance has plummeted in recent years, with near-empty lecture halls a staple of the post-pandemic world.'

Really? I lecture to all our 1st years. Lecture hall is full, not near-empty. Student engagement picked up last year and (early days) seems stronger again. 1/2

Fiction ‘brings lectures to life’ as academics face empty classes

University ‘whodunnit’ inspired by attempts to tackle poor attendance as scholars look for novel ways to engage mainstream audiences

www.timeshighereducation.com

4 13 47

Chris Neill 🐧 @chrisneill.bsky.social · 1d

And this is why I didn't put solar on my roof when I redid it the other year but my brother in Sydney did. Just a massive cost difference.

Leo Spalteholz @leospalteholz.bsky.social · 2d

This is how cheap our solar could be if we didn’t tax it like cigarettes

This system would cost over $30k in Canada vs $8500 in Australia

1

Chris Neill 🐧 @chrisneill.bsky.social · 1d

Damn Clive James was very funny.

Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 1d

you can't be doing without the whole thing web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/po...

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

Prof Katherine Schofield 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇪🇺 @katherineschof8.bsky.social · 1d

A perennial favourite.

I reckon the bookshop was Galloway & Porter on Sidney Street in Cambridge. Showing my age there.

Poem by Clive James, published in te FT Weekend Magazine:

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered.
Like a van-load of counterfeit that had been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy’s much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.

12 16 82

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

ABC News Bot (unofficial) @abcnewsbot.bsky.social · 1d

Almost 190 years on, in the place where Charles Darwin first spotted a platypus, the egg-laying mammal seems to have disappeared.

Platypus vanish from river where Charles Darwin pondered evolution

Almost 190 years on, in the place where Charles Darwin first spotted a platypus, the egg-laying mammal seems to have disappeared.

www.abc.net.au

2 13 26

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 1d

“The big advantage of bikes is that they go directly from where you start to where you finish, when you need to go. The advantage over cars is that they need perhaps 1/10th of the amount of space. Roads that jam up quickly with cars can carry effectively unlimited numbers of people by bicycle.”

Why e-bikes are more important the EVs

Bikes can actually transform cities in the way driverless cars promise

danielknowles.substack.com

6 100 350

Chris Neill 🐧 @chrisneill.bsky.social · 1d

Would happily go to a No Kings protest in Canada.

But with a qualifier that I definitely do not support a presidential system with a directly elected president either.

1

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 1d

one of the craziest things to me is we learned basically immediately that this was terrible from a public safety perspective, especially for child/elderly pedestrians

this paper is from 1982 but the earliest version I found was published in *1979*!

Adoption of right turn on red: Effects on crashes at signalized intersections, Accident Analysis & Prevention
Volume 14, Issue 3, June 1982, Pages 219-234

Zador, P; Moshman, J; Marcus, L

ABSTRACT
By the end of the 1970's, all states in the U.S. had modified their laws to permit drivers to turn right on steady red at signalized intersections. Police-reported crash data from six states where permissive right turn on red (RTOR) laws were adopted during 1974–1977, as well as data from three states where the law in effect was unchanged throughout the period, were used to determine the effect of adopting such laws on the frequency of crashes involving right turning maneuvers at signalized intersections. The increase in the overall frequency of such crashes in states that adopted permissive right turn on red laws exceeded by more than 20% the comparable change in states that retained the same laws. Larger increases were found in urban areas (25%), and for pedestrian crashes (57%) especially in urban areas (79%). An increase of over 30% was found for child pedestrians, 100% for adults, and 110% for elderly pedestrians after adoption of RTOR.

https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6015713
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0001457582900331

6 28

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

August J. Pollak @augustjpollak.bsky.social · 1d

I love how the big news on Trump’s tariff announcement is how moments before he made it a bunch of people made insanely profitable shorts on crypto, a thing that Bitcoin Bros are all astounded to see happening in a completely unregulated market of a fake currency primarily used by criminals.

BREAKING: Look at this.

A new crypto account was opened yesterday morning.

30 minutes BEFORE Trump's announcement of 100% tariffs on China, it added a huge multi-million dollar levered Bitcoin short position, per YF.

The market dumped.

The trader made a profit of $192 million in two hours.

Unusual.

JUST IN: An anonymous trader opened massive crypto short positions just 30 minutes before Trump’s tariff announcements yesterday.

They made an estimated $192M in profits.

Donald Trump needs to go to jail. He is thief, he is literally robbing people internationally.

He announced 100% Tarrifs on China and sends the US stock market into a death spiral.

At the same time someone put over 1 Billion dollars into crypto with orders for 100 million being placed on Ethereum and Bitcoin and other crypto currencies across the board whilst markets got wiped after what he said. Billions, and I mean fucking billions got wiped out, whilst Bitcoin had it a biggest dip ever in a single candle losing 20k per Bitcoin, Whilst alt coins lost over 60-70% of value, everyone with leverage on the market with even 2 x leverage got murdered and robbed.

This was co ordinated, this was market manipulation with one anonymous wallet making over 200 million dollars in one day with trades showing that they knew Trump was going to announce this and crash the market.

7 74 220

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

Shelly Lundberg @shellyjlundberg.bsky.social · 1d

Have a look at Dr. Yaghi's bio. bsky.app/profile/uofc...

University of California @uofcalifornia.bsky.social · 4d

Congratulations to @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social professor Omar M. Yaghi for winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his groundbreaking work, which has already shown promise in yielding drinkable water from desert air. 💙 💛 🏅 www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/uc-berk...

UC Berkeley’s Omar Yaghi shares 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry

Yaghi created a field called reticular chemistry, which involves stitching together molecular building blocks to form porous structures — metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) — with myriad applications.

www.universityofcalifornia.edu

1

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

David Zipper @davidzipper.bsky.social · 1d

Deep dive into the surge in US pedestrian deaths:

"It’s not that more pedestrians are getting hit by vehicles; it’s that the ones that are getting hit are more likely to die."

"[That] seems like fairly strong evidence for the theory that the rise in large SUVs is behind the uptick in ped deaths."

Why Are So Many Pedestrians Killed by Cars in the US?

It’s unfortunately not uncommon for pedestrians to be killed by cars in the US.

www.construction-physics.com

40 370 1K

Reposted by Chris Neill 🐧

WIRED @wired.com · 1d

The country’s grid operator says shifting from coal to clean power is not only possible but inevitable. The work there could provide a road map for other countries.

Australia’s March Toward 100 Percent Clean Energy

The country’s grid operator says shifting from coal to clean power is not only possible but inevitable. The work there could provide a road map for other countries.

wrd.cm

24 410 1.5K