Helsinki opens Kruunuvuori Bridge to crowds Helsinki opened the Kruunuvuori Bridge to pedestrians and cyclists, drawing large crowds to the new link between Laajasalo and Korkeasaari as the city prepares for tram service in 2027.

A 1.2km bridge for trams, walking, and cycling has opened in Helsinki with an estimated cost of about €130 million for the construction of the Kruunuvuori Bridge itself, and a total cost of €326 million, including two other bridges and a tramway! www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finl....

Here is another Article 2; this one is in the EU Israel trade treaty. It is being ignored.

Sitka Spruce the Amazing Timber Tree This is "Sitka Spruce the Amazing Timber Tree" by iPLANiT Productions on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

This video, and 2 copies of the matching book, have been sent to **every primary school in Ireland**.

It's possibly THE most outrageous industry propaganda I've ever seen. The descriptions of Sitka deadzones are so totally false, it's hard to know where to even start.
share.google/0vebeGw2dwTd...

The cyberattack on The British Library in October 2023 knocked out ebooks and almost ever other computer thing there for years.

Ebooks just came back. They were knocked out everywhere using the BL’s license (legal deposit libraries I think? More libraries?)

Distributed physical copies matter.

There are renewable powered alternatives to much of this. But only if other heavy users like Data Centres aren’t prioritised. Production of bio-fuels from feedstuff will have to be re-examined too. We are burning the equivalent of 15 million loaves of bread a day in Europe.

The Persian Gulf is deeply embedded in food distribution as well as fertiliser and agri- chemical production. Cost increases arising from the war will in the short term push an additional 45m people into acute hunger according to the UN.
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docs.wfp.org/api/document...

Farmer growing 70% of Irish broccoli says solar farms threaten food security Plan for 140MW solar farm on 338 acres in Kildare is sited on ‘some of the most fertile and productive agricultural land in Ireland’

A more accurate headline might read: 'Broccoli farmer has his facts wrong on solar energy & land use'.

For Ireland to hit its target of 8GW of solar power would require 0.25% of farmland.

Somehow the remaining 99.75% isn't adequate to maintain food supply...?

www.irishtimes.com/business/202...

I would expand on that. If less use or production of something is necessary, regulate it.

Regulation by taxation is regressive (unfair), and uncertain in effect.

Instead, directly regulating production is certain in effect, but alone can be regressive. Adding rationing to that makes it fair.

Screenshot of a Substack note by account 'JoJoFromJerz' that says: 'In a sane administration, the FBI Director doesn’t go on the morning news to prove he’s not a drunk, the Defense Secretary doesn’t quote Tarantino to prove he’s a man of God, and the President doesn’t take multiple cognitive exams to prove he’s not insane.'

None of this is normal.

'A clear step change': European EV sales jump by over 50 per cent in March Over 224,000 battery EVs registered last month, as businesses and consumers respond to soaring oil prices

EVs won the war.

That sounds like a very low estimate. Israel probably spent that much to destroy it.

Just to compare, an estimated $2.5 trillion will be invested in genAI infrastructure this year alone.

"The AI bubble is about to burst because the hyperscalers as they are called have used up all their own cash and are now borrowing money. They are effectively net-debtors at a time when they are spending huge volumes of money on data centres without having the guarantee that they are going to make profits. And it is that worry that actually there isn't money to be made in the business which is gradually dawning on investors, which is going to be why they are going to pull away. Infact there are already signs of people withdrawing from the AI sector because they fear that this is indeed a bubble. It seems to me utterly inevitable, the only question is only when." - Ann Pettifor

A warning from the economist, Ann Pettifor.

Simon Harris distances himself from Varadkar comments that farmers ‘bring costs on Ireland’ Fine Gael leader Simon Harris has sought to distance himself from comments by his predecessor, Leo Varadkar, who described farmers as a “cost on Ireland”.

Varadker's comments reflect a wider erosion of the influence of farm organisations and their public image, which is a good thing

www.independent.ie/irish-news/p...

Proposal to increase EU tariffs on goods from Israeli settlements Divisive debate inside EU about sanctioning Israel for ‘grave’ human rights abuses begins again

Good report by Jack Power on the conflicting currents within the EU member countries over continued support for Israel. Tomorrow is a big day.

State sponsored "price caps" on internationally traded commodities? *Even more* fossil fuel subsidies from the State?

Yeah ... that's really the worrying implication of a prolonged middle east war... 🤦‍♂️

Every time I see someone trying to use AI to make learning easier, it feels like the same thing. The goal isn't for students to complete the problem, the goal is for them to learn to complete the problem. If the AI is making it easier, so often the student is working less and learning less.

Might be time to bust out one of my favourite climate stories of all time: how BECCS was mostly a kind of model hallucination

This is what "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" thinking gets you: a leader fundamentally incapable of acting in a way suited for the times, and scrambling to worsen fossil fuel reliance rather than decouple society from it

Reactionary centrism always ends up as a pro-fossil ideology

To be clear: at best, stable CO2 *emissions* means that we are "merely" still hurtling at reckless speed to climate disaster (as opposed to still *accelerating* into it).

Climate deniers and delayers are going to start saying "sorry but we can't start reducing our emissions, what about the US"

It will be a truly wonderful thing if this thing fails. It's comfortably #1 by size on the list of new fossil gas power stations for data centres. Stuff like this shouldn't exist even as a ridiculously named idea

www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ferm...

"In retrospect, basing the entire global food system on fossil fuels may have been a poor idea." -- @benehrenreich.bsky.social
www.ft.com/content/3634...

Climate removed from top level navigation on BBC News.

Can we finally agree that burning wood for energy is a terrible idea and won't be carbon neutral, let alone carbon negative, in our lifetimes? BECCS using wood certainly shouldn't qualify as CO₂ removal (CDR).

Decades of increased emissions from forest-fuelled BECCS - Nature Sustainability Governments are considering subsidies for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage fuelled by wood from existing forests. However, a transparent model estimates that this will probably increase emiss...

Many govts hope capturing carbon from power plants burning wood will cause "negative emissions." New Nature Sust. paper today finds this likely increases emissions for decades, generates no negative emissions within 150 years, and increase electricity costs ~3.5-fold.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Are we hearing this message, Ireland???

We could well be in *very* deep trouble if we don't.

Gardaí appealing for witnesses after collision between car and motorcyclist on main Sligo to Donegal road Gardaí are appealing for witnesses following a serious injury road traffic collision on the N15 near Cashelgarran, Grange, Co. Sligo on Sunday 19th April 2026.

A textbook example of car-brained framing in the Irish media: a motorcyclist is identified as a person, while the other party is reduced to “a car,” as if it acted on its own.

Once again, the driver disappears from the story entirely.