"I think that's wheel bearing noise. Better put the quieter tires on to be sure where it's coming from before spending $$$ on parts." Sigh.

Had an old Bernina sewing machine with a speed control issue. Support tech on the forum said "you could buy a new pedal for $250, or, if you know how to solder, try replacing this $2 capacitor and there's a 90% chance it'll be good as new." She was right.

This "minimum FRU is the entire board" thing gets really tiresome. It's only marginally better than "just replace the whole damn machine".

Boat looks great all decked out like that!

There's $50m in the new package for "affordable housing" projects. Sounds laudable, but at $300/sqft construction cost that's only an extra 0.71 square feet of housing per homeless person.

Is there anywhere in Ontario where $4930 a year is enough to put a roof over a person's head?

And that's all related programs together, including support for developers building "affordable" housing, addiction treatment, etc.

Colour me skeptical.

$75.5m in a province with pop. 15m. Or $5 extra per capita, bringing the total spent on these programs to $96 per capita.

Ontario has 234,000 homeless. Article suggests current expenditure of $4600 per homeless person on HART hubs & homelessness prevention. Now it'll be $4930.

Count me in, folks :)
Glad to see @kingstonist.bsky.social revitalizing local journalism for the 21st century at a time when we really need it.

An excellent piece of work – difficult but necessary.

What would 20th century chemists & physicists say if they saw the expensive, toxic results of their early mistakes now?

Biologists now have a chance to not make similar mistakes at all.

5/5 Finally, I was honored to write an op-ed with my esteemed co-author on the Science piece, Wilmot James, former MP and Shadow Health Minister in South Africa, relating this new work to my previous work on AMR and COVID-19, and Dr James’ work towards global health equity. Link soon to follow.

4/5 Mirror bacteria are not right around the corner, so we have an opportunity to start a broad and inclusive effort to better understand these risks, and to find a responsible path forward. See mbdialogues.org for more about the first steps here.

3/5 I’m in awe of my synthetic biology colleagues who previously sought to eventually build mirror bacteria but are now urging for this goal to be abandoned. Not an easy thing to do!

2/5 As an evolutionary microbiologist and ecologist, I was asked to evaluate the potential for mirror bacteria to invade diverse hosts and ecosystems. I was initially very skeptical (as all scientists should be!), but after collaborating on the report, I have been left profoundly concerned.

I'm going with the Precautionary Principle on this one.
Chemists and physicists both made similar mistakes in the 20th century and we're spending fortunes to clean up the resulting messes. Biologists should err on the side of caution when making things that could get out of control.