ProfT @ProfT@social.cleverlibre.org

"...the city of Paris has made enormous investments in public transit, built hundreds of miles of bike paths, and closed many streets to cars. Car trips within the city dropped by almost sixty per cent between 2001 and 2018, car crashes dropped by thirty per cent, and pollution has improved. The city is quieter and calmer; test scores go up as the air around schools cleans up."

#TheWarOnCars #Paris #climatechange

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/to-save-the-planet-should-we-really-be-moving-slower

Favourite summary of the current situation, from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/07/twitter-is-burning-bluesky-is-smug-where-is-the-best-place-to-do-your-pathetic-doomscrolling?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

"It's unfair to have cities where parking is free for cars, and housing is expensive for people."
— Donald Shoup.

Simple urban math.

Evolution of cars in urban spaces.

1. We all need to be able to drive to the center of the city!
2. Let's widen streets & build parking so we can make that happen.
3. Wait! Where did the city go? And why are we driving in circles?

From Schneider's Autokind vs. Mankind (1971) 🧵

Sir Isaac Newton's "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" was published #OTD in 1687. Often referred to as just “the Principia,” it presents Newton’s laws of motion and his universal law of gravitation.

336 years old and we still teach its main results!

So wunderbar zu sehen was gerade in London geschieht. Neben der Ausweitung der City-Maut, verfolgt London eine mutige Radpolitik. Die Stadt baut jährlich neue und sichere Radwege. Bis 2030 soll der Radverkehr nochmal um ein Drittel steigen und 40% aller Einwohner:innen soll dann maximal 400m vom Radverkehrsnetz entfernt sein. Seit 2000 ist der Radverkehr in ganz London um unglaubliche 155% gestiegen. In der City ist das Rad jetzt schon mit bis zu 40% das wichtigste Verkehrsmittel. Das sieht man❤️

I'm SUPER EXCITED to share with you this series of quantum physics explainer videos I produced with the Perimeter Institute! Check out Episode 1: Wave Particle Duality now ➡️ https://youtu.be/DfQH3o6dKss Subscribe the channel to catch each episode as it’s released! #Quantum101

It's because cars have to be parked in off-street garages. Since 1962, you've need a shako shōmeisho ("garage certificate") before you're allowed to drive one off the lot. You're not allowed to warehouse private cars in public space, which is at a premium in dense cities. The parking laws lead to some interesting arrangements; cars squeezed into tiny garages (how do you open the door to get out?); car elevators; multi-storey lots where cars are stacked like battery hens.

“Why do the creators of ChatGPT call their chatbot an AI instead of a proper term like large language model? For the same reason that Disney World calls their employees "cast members," corporations use the term "right-sized" when they lay people off, and workers are given a "friendly reminder" right before a manager fires you. In short, all these are examples of corporate doublespeak, where language is used as "an agent of power and control.”” https://www.patreon.com/posts/genre-grapevine-85417093

Note from an overachiever...

Had to be done 🤷‍♂️

Two raisin cakes, both with the same number of raisins, but one twice the size & eight times the volume of the other.

The classic illustration of how spacetime expands & the galaxies move apart as it does.

As baked by my wife for the #ESAEuclid pre-launch press briefing at our European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt today 🙂👍

#SciComm #SpaceScience #LetThemEatCake

Our universe is rippling with waves caused by massive events, such as merging black holes. Up until yesterday, we didn’t have any evidence of long-wavelength, ‘background’ #GravitationalWaves. But now @nanograv has announced a detection! A network of pulsars measured very carefully has revealed a faint hum in spacetime itself. Though luckily you don’t need pulsars to detect these cookies, a mouth works just fine 😉

#astronomy #astroart #scicomm #science

Während in Berlin 1 Parkplatz weniger bereits eine Zumutung ist, führt New York ab 2024 eine City-Maut von 17-23 $ ein, um Straße & Luft zu entlasten. 1 Mrd. € will die Stadt damit einnehmen und so den ÖPNV ausbauen. Die ganze Welt scheint es verstanden zu haben. Nur wir nicht!

Lots of NANOGrav folks are rightly making the news; I want to highlight Prof. Sarah Vigeland, who shies away from the limelight, but is the chair of the NG gravitational-wave Detection working group. It's meticulous scientists like Sarah who make sure the analysis is right!

Cosmic Webb, meet cosmic web 🤝

Galaxies gather in clusters and threads stretching across the universe, punctuated by vast voids. Now Webb has discovered an early strand of this cosmic web — 10 galaxies that existed 830 million years after the big bang: https://go.nasa.gov/433qCnk
#JamesWebb

The motion of black holes and other massive objects can cause ripples in space-time – gravitational waves. Scientists now see evidence of a universal background of gravitational waves, created by supermassive black hole pairs swirling in space. https://go.nasa.gov/3PwynPD
#NASAExoplanets