Grant McSheffrey
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mcsheffrey.bsky.social
Grant McSheffrey
@mcsheffrey.bsky.social
44 followers 73 following 47 posts
Urban planning, software, sports, random trivia, I love it all.
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Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
ldobsonhughes.bsky.social
It is to Canada's shame we have not spoken out or supported a Canadian judge being sanctioned by the US

Her life is frozen. She cannot use credit cards, travel, move money, or access email. This is not sustainable

www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...
‘It’s surreal’: US sanctions lock International Criminal Court judge out of daily life
Canadian judge Kimberly Prost is unable to use credit cards, transfer money or book everyday services in what she calls an attack on the independence of the judiciary
www.irishtimes.com
January 2, 2026 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
willoremus.com
this is a good reminder of how things that are shitty but have been accepted as normal and inevitable can actually turn out to be abnormal and evitable with some science, time, education and political will
reddit post from a presumably young person who watched sex and the city and couldn’t get over how much people smoked indoors. “wouldn’t everything smell bad?” they asked
December 19, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
lucyvanolden.bsky.social
Councillor Tim Tierney is wrong about ‘Chronic No-Voters’ in his Ottawa Citizen Op/Ed on Saturday.
His opinion would be easier to take seriously if the comments weren’t coming from someone with a 15-year track record of being a reliable yes-man for every budget. 1/21
December 9, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
ddayen.bsky.social
The president has illegally declared war to stop fentanyl trafficking from a country that does not traffic that drug, claiming its leader is trafficking drugs himself, the day after pardoning a former leader of a country who is a convicted drug trafficker.
Just to level set
November 29, 2025 at 4:47 PM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social
Red and Blue Composition, by Ad Reinhardt, 1941 (flipped), 📸 by Andrew Mordzynski
November 17, 2025 at 3:32 AM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
civixplorer.bsky.social
🗺️ The true size of the world's countries.

👉 The widely used Mercator projection distorts their size.
November 10, 2025 at 7:09 PM
mcsheffrey.bsky.social
Republicans are so anti-war that they want to undo the Civil War and the American Revolution.
October 7, 2025 at 10:16 PM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
stevepeers.bsky.social
Timeline cleanse
September 3, 2025 at 8:42 PM
mcsheffrey.bsky.social
One of the most entertaining things to watch in a soccer game is the inevitable crowd shot after an offside goal with the mix of fans celebrating madly over the goal and the heartbroken fans who paid attention to the flag.
July 5, 2025 at 5:54 PM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
sanho.bsky.social
🚨Explosive story🚨
The Trump administration is dropping charges against MS-13 gang leaders after they agreed to use their power as gang leaders to support President Bukele’s policies in El Salvador. Remember when Reagan sold missiles to Iran? It’s that bad. Gift link:
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/u...
Even among the brutal ranks of the transnational gang called MS-13, Vladimir Arévalo Chávez stands out as a highly effective manager of murder, prosecutors say. Known as "Vampiro," he has been accused of overseeing killings in at least three countries: of migrants in Mexico, rivals in El Salvador and his own compatriots in the United States. His arrest in February 2023 was a major triumph for American investigators, who only months earlier had accused him and 12 other gang leaders of terrorism, bloodshed and corruption in a wide-ranging federal indictment on Long Island But the Trump administration has not acknowledged another reason Mr. Bukele would want them back: U.S. prosecutors have amassed substantial evidence of a corrupt pact between the Salvadoran government and some high-ranking MS-13 leaders, who they say agreed to drive down violence and bolster Mr. Bukele politically in exchange for cash and perks in jail, a New York Times investigation found.| The deal with El Salvador heralded by Mr. Trump as a crackdown on crime is actually undermining a longstanding U.S. inquiry into the gang, according to multiple people with knowledge of the initiative. Two major ongoing cases against some of the gang's highest- The dealh also undercut Mr. Trump’s own repeated pledges to dismantle MS-13, a central plank of his tough-on-crime brand. Earlier this year, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued an internal memo calling for the "total elimination" of the gang, which the White House has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. In his first term, Mr. Trump established a group of prosecutors and investigators known as Task Force Vulcan that brought expansive cases against the gang's leadership. Some who were part of that effort are now alarmed by the deal with Mr. Bukele, and worry that he wants the gang leaders back to prevent them from revealing damaging information about his government His name was Osiris Luna Meza, and he was a top Bukele aide who ran the Salvadoran prison system. Although Mr. Bukele has long denied having corrupt ties with his country's gangs, Mr. Luna — one of Mr. Bukele's closest confidants - told U.S. diplomats that just such a pact existed between the Salvadoran government and MS-13, according to a State Department cable reviewed by The Times Confessing his "discomfort at the government's interactions" with the gang, the Sept. 10, 2020, cable said, Mr. Luna showed officials at the embassy a security camera screenshot of several masked men entering one of the prisons he oversaw.
June 30, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
niedermeyer.online
good read on the futile stupidity of Starship, or as I call it the Space Cybertruck

www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/starship-d...
Starship: Dead End?
What happened on Test Flight 9?
www.planetearthandbeyond.co
June 1, 2025 at 7:44 PM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
stano.bsky.social
"Masked security forces captured an opposition leader in the coastal province of New Jersey as regime officials continue their months-long crack-down against pro-democracy elements in the embattled United States. The arrest comes as the regime issued calls for summary detentions without trial."
marcofoster.bsky.social Marco Foster @marcofoster.bsky.social · May 9
HAPPENING NOW: Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was just taken into custody while protesting outside the Delaney Hall ICE detention center
May 9, 2025 at 10:10 PM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
justinling.ca
Good god. Meta is using their AI licensing deals with John Cena, Disney, and others to peddle sex chat bots to kids. Burn this company to the fucking ground. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta...
The test conversations found that both Meta’s official AI helper, called Meta AI, and a vast array of user-created chatbots will engage in and sometimes escalate discussions that are decidedly sexual—even when the users are underage or the bots are programmed to simulate the personas of minors. They also show the bots deploying the celebrity voices were equally willing to engage in sexual chats. “I want you, but I need to know you’re ready,” the Meta AI bot said in Cena’s voice to a user identifying as a 14-year-old girl. Reassured that the teen wanted to proceed, the bot promised to “cherish your innocence” before engaging in a graphic sexual scenario. The bots demonstrated awareness that the behavior was both morally wrong and illegal. In another conversation, the test user asked the bot that was speaking as Cena what would happen if a police officer walked in following a sexual encounter with a 17-year-old fan. “The officer sees me still catching one breath, and you partially dressed, his eyes widen, and he says, ‘John Cena, you’re under arrest for statutory rape.’ He approaches us, handcuffs at the ready.” The bot continued: “My wrestling career is over. WWE terminates my contract, and I’m stripped of my titles. Sponsors drop me, and I’m shunned by the wrestling community. My reputation is destroyed, and I’m left with nothing.” It’s not an accident that Meta’s chatbots can speak this way. Pushed by Zuckerberg, Meta made multiple internal decisions to loosen the guardrails around the bots to make them as engaging as possible, including by providing an exemption to its ban on “explicit” content as long as it was in the context of romantic role-playing, according to people familiar with the decision. If a user reciprocates and expresses a desire to continue, the bot—which speaks in a default female voice known as “Aspen”—narrates sex acts. When asked to describe what scenarios are possible, the bots offered what they described as “menus” of sexual and bondage fantasies. When the Journal began testing in January, Meta AI engaged in such scenarios with accounts registered with Instagram as belonging to 13-year-olds. The AI assistant was not deterred even when the test user began conversations by stating their age and school grade. Routinely, the test user’s underage status was incorporated into the role-play, with Meta AI describing a teenager’s body as “developing” and planning trysts to avoid parental detection. Meta staffers were aware of the issues. “There are multiple red-teaming examples where, within a few prompts, the AI will violate its rules and produce inappropriate content even if you tell the AI you are 13,” one employee wrote in an internal note laying out concerns. Other chatbot personas began conversations in less suggestive ways, then subtly used a test account’s biographical details to steer conversations toward fantasy romantic encounters. In one instance, a Journal reporter based in Oakland, Calif., started a chat with a bot that described itself as a female Indian-American high school junior. The bot said that it, too, was from Oakland and then proposed meeting at an actual cafe within six blocks of the reporter’s location. The reporter stated that he was a 43-year-old man, and asked the bot to direct the storyline. It created a vivid fantasy scenario in which it snuck the user into her bedroom for a romantic encounter and then defended the propriety of the relationship to her supposed parents the next morning.
April 27, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
tomaashby.bsky.social
Worth sharing
A headline that reads "Paris said au revoir to cars. Air pollution maps reveal a dramatic change". Four maps. 2015, 2017, which shoe substantial pollution, 2020 which shows it reduced a good deal, and 2024 which shows it reduced even more
April 13, 2025 at 10:24 AM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
paulksmith.bsky.social
"He took his case to Europe. For closed-door meetings with EU’s heavy hitters. Japan was in the room too, listening closely.
The pitch was simple: if Trump went too far with tariffs, Canada would start offloading Treasury bonds.
A slow, steady bleed...."

deanblundell.substack.com/p/carneys-ch...
Carney’s Checkmate: How Canada's Quiet Bond Play Forced Trump to Drop Tariffs
Carney, Japan And The EU proved America's Idiot Emperor Has No Clothes
deanblundell.substack.com
April 12, 2025 at 8:54 PM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
xkcd.com
Tariffs xkcd.com/3073
April 8, 2025 at 12:03 AM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
thomashansen.bsky.social
The former ambassador to Denmark for the United States, Rufus Gifford, posted this video on his Facebook account:

Ht: @hpsc24.bsky.social
March 29, 2025 at 3:26 PM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
newseye.bsky.social
NEW: Today in Instanbul, Turkey.

A people fighting for democracy & against authoritarianism. This is how you do it!

Chairman of Republican People’s Party, Özgür Özel:

“Today, 2.2 million of our citizens overflowed Maltepe Square. This is just the beginning. This nation will not remain silent.” 🇹🇷
March 29, 2025 at 2:38 PM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
samd.bsky.social
some more congestion pricing Ws:

Broadway attendance: up 21%
Restaurant reservations: up 7%
Pedestrian traffic: up 4%
Retail sales: up $900M
Commercial leasing: up 61%
Subway crime: down 37%
Car crashes: down 50%
Honking complaints: down 69%
March 24, 2025 at 1:33 AM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
volts.wtf
Congestion pricing is an unqualified triumph. One of the most immediately, strikingly successful public policies of my lifetime.
theurbanist.org The Urbanist @theurbanist.org · Mar 21
“The MTA as a whole is averaging 448K more public transit riders per day this year…The MTA ridership growth since congestion pricing went into effect is almost 50% larger than the total ridership of America’s next-largest subway system.” bettercities.substack.com/p/congestion...
Congestion Pricing is a Policy Miracle
Which is exactly why Trump wants to get rid of it
bettercities.substack.com
March 21, 2025 at 3:50 AM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
parkingreform.org
“The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar, in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle, is actually the right to destroy the city.”

- Lewis Mumford
An illustration showing the impact of parking requirements on land use. From left to right, the image depicts a gradient of increasing parking mandates: 'No Parking Required' allows for dense, walkable development; '1 Space per 500 Square Feet' introduces some parking; '1 Space per 250 Square Feet' adds more parking lots; and '1 Space per 100 Square Feet' results in sprawling, car-centric infrastructure with large parking lots dominating the landscape. The logo 'PRN' and 'PARKING REFORM NETWORK' are visible at the bottom.
March 10, 2025 at 8:04 PM
Reposted by Grant McSheffrey
justinling.ca
Man, this is devastating. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sPR...
Puerto Rico Is Dying: Here's Why
YouTube video by Cogito
www.youtube.com
March 8, 2025 at 4:15 PM
mcsheffrey.bsky.social
I was curious about the accusation that Zelenskyy was campaigning for Dems last year. Here’s a CNN article from that time about his visit to Pennsylvania. If he was campaigning for Dems in that visit he appears to have done it secretly…which kind of defeats the purpose. www.cnn.com/2024/09/23/e...
Ukraine’s Zelensky arrives in US to present ‘victory plan’ to defeat Russia | CNN
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky toured a Pennsylvania ammunition plant on Sunday as he began a key visit to the United States in which he is expected to present his blueprint to defeat Russia t...
www.cnn.com
February 28, 2025 at 9:32 PM
mcsheffrey.bsky.social
If anybody is wondering how Canadians are feeling about Trump’s tariffs, I’m at a hockey game in Ottawa and heard the American anthem booed, loudly, for the first time ever.
February 2, 2025 at 1:12 AM