It starts with "I find you very attractive" and before you know it you've been sucked in. A tale as old as time

A million to one!

A map

M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. A spiral galaxy in collision with its neighbouring galaxy

The Markarian Galaxy Chain. OMG there are like so many galaxies

MOAR GALAXIES

It's really not suitable for that. Even single galaxies are a bit small and need cropping, and end up a bit lacking in resolution. It's better with bigger scenes like nebulas and clusters

Going to leave the scope out tonight and hope it stays clear for me to get more in Messier 51, which is coming together nicely

The thin crescent moon, photographed tonight

Just now

Oh I feel your pain. Our drama queen of a dog has to be drugged up to go to the vet too. Given we have to give her pills the night before and on the morning of the visit, I can't think what we'd do if she had an emergency

Ford CEO Draws Line In Sand: Keep Chinese EVs Out Of US – 'Should Not Let Them Into Our Country' Ford Motor Company paused its electric-vehicle growth efforts, but is pivoting to a major push in 2027. With lower-cost production methods and new models in development, the legacy automaker’s CEO wan...

Just checking on how the Invisible Hand of the Market is doing

What If Cities Onboarded Residents Like Employers Onboard Employees? Authored by Aaron Hurst, Founder and CEO of the US Chamber of Connection I have hosted dozens of dinners in my home in Seattle over the past few years, bringing together people across backgrounds and…

A simple way to expand toward transit/biking trips in your city: Offer new arrivals a welcome package including a transit pass and free bikeshare trips. 

These are the moments when people form new travel habits, so it's a great time for nudges!

It's the shared cultural assumption that motor travel is normal and universal, and that its harms are inevitable. It leads to outcomes like placing facilities where they are inaccessible to people without cars, and being unambitious about making streets safer. There's a fuller link in my pinned post

This is our moment, we're on the cusp of a BIG win for pedestrians in England We know pavement parking is not only an irritation for many, but outrightly dangerous to wheelchair users, visually impaired people and parents walking their children to school. Write to your MP toda...

One of the downsides of living in Wales is I can't get involved in this @livingstreets.bsky.social campaign to address pavement parking. But for those of you in England, perhaps take a look? act.livingstreets.org.uk/page/189938/...

🤞

Well, let's now see if we can translate it into action to reduce the problem! I've been invited to address the European Commission's Road Safety Directorate later this year, which feels like a major step forward in that direction

A graph showing the rise in citations for our 2023 motonormativity paper, up to 101 in total today

Given the considerable lags in the academic publishing process, I'm surprised and gratified by how rapidly motonormativity is becoming a thing in the literature

Can you imagine the headline: 'Attempted murder arrest after knife hits pedestrian on Argyll Street'? No, of course you can't. Because no sub would ever write that!!

Not the ideal tool for tiny galaxies - it's intended more for big wide shots - but it got the job done with some aggressive cropping

This is a Dwarf 3 smart telescope, which is very small and simple

Incidentally, here's another supernova within another galaxy, which I photographed back in 2012

Drivers are walking and cycling more over fuel price spike – survey Nearly three in 10 drivers (28%) are walking and cycling more because of the spike in fuel prices, a new survey suggests. A further 15% of respondents to the poll commissioned by charity Cycling UK sa...

Nearly three in 10 drivers are walking and cycling more because of the spike in fuel prices, a new survey suggests

If you want to feel particularly insignificant this morning, I took this (very quick and noisy) photo of galaxy NGC4205 last night. Every star here is relatively close, within our own galaxy... except the one marked with red lines. That's a supernova within NGC4205, 65 million light years away

Nearly 160,000 uninsured cars seized on UK roads Seizure numbers hit a 17-year high as an estimated 300,000 uninsured vehicles are driven each day.

"Nearly 160,000 uninsured cars seized on UK roads"
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A lot of the time these companies are asking questions for other people. I've commissioned them myself, and other similar companies. They advise on how best to frame the questions, but usually they're not the ones setting the topic

Sometimes it's hard to understand the causes of climate change. While the basic idea -- we emit greenhouse gases, which warm the planet -- is well known, it's easy to get lost in the details.

But here's a summary with some more detail -- showing the fundamental sources & sinks of warming pollution.

Ah, the old "Real Reason Sandwich"

Interesting example of motonormative double standards from Germany .

At present, fare evasion on public transport is a *crime* that can land you in prison, not just get you fines.

For illegal parking, however, that is not the case.
www.zeit.de/politik/deut...

Moment of panic there as I wondered if this was the survey I'd been advising on recently! Thankfully not

Survey from YouGov ‘how many complete trips do you take in a typical day in your car?’ Answer options one to four or more

Good example of motonormativity from YouGov today. Question before was had I driven a car in the last 90 days. Then jumps to assuming I drove every day! Imagine how daft that would seem for trains, films, shopping or anything else. One for @ianwalker.bsky.social

"Vous etes les gongoozlers"

Why do all those definitely genuine human writers use the same number of paragraphs of exactly the same length? Squint your eyes and those submissions all look identical. But, of course, they're definitely all written by real human humans