Sam Bird 🏔️🍁🇨🇦
@sambir.bsky.social
4.2K followers 850 following 1K posts
Geographer. Mostly harmless. Mountains > oceans. Permafrost is cool. Rivers and lakes are pretty nice too.
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Reposted by Sam Bird 🏔️🍁🇨🇦
socialmedialab.ca
Canada has a long history of being surprisingly provincial. However, relinquishing digital sovereignty without a fight represents a strategic misstep in the broader project of nation-building, as technological autonomy increasingly shapes economic security, cultural identity, & political legitimacy.
sambir.bsky.social
Kids in schools? Schools with teachers?! Sounds ambitious.
sambir.bsky.social
If not shedding enviro standards on paper, effectively in practice. Kicking clean up even further down the road to an uncertain future & for the next generation to deal with.

Delay until defunct.
There's never enough clean up money during the booms. How little will be available during the end bust?
sambir.bsky.social
Planning to organize the deck chairs waiting for a global oil boom too save us is ruinous?
Yes.
Oil is plentiful. Prices are going to be low, low, low even w/ increased consumption.
CCS innovation is less likely than battery innovation b/c profit. It's a race to the bottom of the barrel in the end.
Cartoon of a man on his knees praying with a look of desperation, the text reads, "Please God send us another boom and this time I promise not to piss it all away."
sambir.bsky.social
Wonder why the super majors are cutting global staff despite huge profits? They know the days of oil are numbered. It's uncertain what the number is but one battery innovation is all it takes. Another pipeline is not going to change this. They are planning accordingly. Canada, & Alberta should too.
sambir.bsky.social
Want to gain weight? Eat leaded protein powder!
Want to lose weight? Eat leaded protein powder!

No, not really. Do not eat lead! Lead is bad for you. Lead is bad for your brain. It's bad for your health.
Unregulated supplements should be viewed with much skepticism.
paris.nyc
my latest investigation for @consumerreports.org is based on months of reporting and 60+ lab tests of leading protein supplements

we found that most protein powders and shakes have more lead in one serving than our experts say is safe to have in a day (🧵)

www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein...
Protein Powders and Shakes Contain High Levels of Lead - Consumer Reports
CR tests of 23 popular protein powders and shakes found that most contain high levels of lead.
www.consumerreports.org
sambir.bsky.social
Interestingly, this describes a few rare & for some reason, more expensive neighbourhoods in Calgary. Almost as if there's demand for this sort of thing but mostly just more sprawl produced.

I am also amazed that $4B+ ring roads & $100M's interchanges escape scrutiny the ideological label.
Reposted by Sam Bird 🏔️🍁🇨🇦
duanebratt.bsky.social
Can I tell you how indispensable @sprawlcalgary.bsky.social has been in its coverage of the Calgary election. Whether you are following it closely or not. Videos of numerous ward and mayoral forums. And there most valuable service, a campaign primer. www.sprawlcalgary.com/calgary-elec...
Meet the Calgarians running for mayor and council in 2025 | The Sprawl
Follow along with our candidate tracker.
www.sprawlcalgary.com
sambir.bsky.social
In Altadore a small worn bungalow on a 50' lot just sold for $1.2 M! That is the land value, not house value.

The 2 infills that replace the house will each no doubt cost about $1 M.
= demand for 2 homes in the same price range met instead of only 1 available. Something something supply & demand.
sambir.bsky.social
Science demands repeatable results. In the known literature, a couple friends found similar "bunged up" results, variables of bears & dinos.

FTR, as the results of future experiments do... ahh, come out, I only want the abstract & a brief conclusion. The rest of medical articles are shit to read.
sambir.bsky.social
The citizenship test is haughtily looking askance at the goings on in the neighbour country. Extra points for tisking. We assume you're born here if you can't look away from the US long enough to know Canadian governance beyond hockey & the Jays.

I don't make the rules.

Think you can pull it off?
Reposted by Sam Bird 🏔️🍁🇨🇦
volts.wtf
All I want in life is to persuade everyone, when encountering politics & culture, to ask, "why are we talking about this?" I mean that very literally: anything you encounter on your screens reflects a choice. Someone covered that, talked about that, rather than the many other things out there. Why?
sambir.bsky.social
Thanks, this is what I'm going to think about over my coffee and warm bread from now on. What the heck?
This is why people hate science and learning you monsters!
museumofscience.bsky.social
Why do ancient mummies smell like warm bread? 🍞🧪

Nobel Prize–winning scientist Svante Pääbo shares that the scent comes from the Maillard reaction. This is the same chemical reaction responsible for the browning of bread, seared meat, and roasted coffee.

Watch the full video here:
Why Mummies Smell Like Bread
YouTube video by Museum of Science
youtube.com
sambir.bsky.social
I need to get on this mailing list. Finally, an email I'll want to open.
Reposted by Sam Bird 🏔️🍁🇨🇦
kikkiplanet.bsky.social
Oh, #ableg & #cdnpoli

I hope you’ve all seen this. If not, you should.

Eby is 💯 correct. This “pipeline” is more Danielle Theatre. It’s a means to eventually blame BC & Ottawa for her gov’ts failure. It’s a means to distract from the AHS scandal. It’s pandering to her base.

IT. IS. NOT. REAL.
hollyhoye.bsky.social
Danielle Smith loves to pick fights but if I were her I might have thought twice about picking one with a guy who is 6’7”, spits facts, and absolutely nailed the real reason she’s shilling for a pipeline.
sambir.bsky.social
Maybe a third post to summarize that because of uneven density, it is incorrect to say underpopulation is a climate catastrophe. These things are not the same.
sambir.bsky.social
2/2
0.003%of the population lives in the territories (40% of land).
22 ish million people are packed in a dense-ish southern ON/QC triangle.
The population is highly urbanized & the urban density is improving.

So the NUMBERS in the uneven density matter alot nationally & even within provinces.
sambir.bsky.social
Kind of but not really. Except for international myth spreading in bars, the national population density number is functionally useless & is misused ALL THE TIME. Telecoms are big offenders using CDN ignorance as cover for high costs but their coverage maps show the uneven population density well 1/
Map of Canada showing cell phone coverage for Telus. Spoiler, the VAST majority of people, and therefore coverage are concentrated along the southern border. Saskatchewan and Alberta are weird (surprising I know) because the coverage is over a much larger percent of the land area.
About 80%of the country has no cell coverage because there are too few customers in these areas to pay for cell towers... or power lines... or roads...
sambir.bsky.social
I didn't say there aren't times when a truck is the right tool for the job. Ideally evacuations etc are rare exceptions.
The observations are my own. I took note because the % of large trucks & SUVs seem much different than Calgary.
Is a small SUV a truck or a car? As they say, mileage may vary.
sambir.bsky.social
At the risk of besmirching a European explorer's vaulted name, Magellan did not circumnavigate the globe.

An impressive journey all the way to the Philippines... where he did not make friends & was killed. The expedition's navigator, Juan Sebastián Elcano commanded the rest of the way.

++PR though
sambir.bsky.social
Canadians don't know how to recycle properly either. I guess that means we should send every citizen for mandatory service in a recycling plant so they can get on board and can defend the planet?
sambir.bsky.social
No shortage of swords & such lying about the place but his collection is down at least a little after recently boosting Canada's swordy stockpile.

Kinda dumb for the US to be talking takeover while giving away their limited sword supply just as Canada is stocking up.

www.bbc.com/news/article...
Screenshot from CBC News. Title reads, "King Charles gives his Canadian attendant a sword as sovereignty threats intensify"
Photo in a palace room of King Charles, wearing a sharp dark suit, picking up a sword from an attending Royal Navy officer. A man with grey hair and beard and a lady stand waiting to accept the sword from the King.
sambir.bsky.social
As a rule of thumb, boring government is a sign of high success and should be a goal for voters. No news, no grandstanding, really is good news.

Outsource the boring hard work to competent elected representatives so that the rest of us can get on with doing the things in life we like doing! 😁
natefor8.bsky.social
LET'S GET BORING.

Elections are too often about slogans and big promises. But what about ideas and policy we can actually get done?

That's what Nate for 8 is all about.

I made a joke at a recent debate but it's true, and we have a full platform to prove it 1/

#yyc #yycc
sambir.bsky.social
How (not) to win friends and influence people!

Manufacturing divisions and new gripes to fuel rage bait for party fund raising is the goal. Danielle Smith knows how to execute that strategy to successful completion. It is not in her personal interest to build a successful Canada or even Alberta.
sambir.bsky.social
I'm sure adaptation to market forces is a factor (an underlying principle of effective carbon taxes or any sin tax) but this shows the practicality of alternative choices in the Canadian market. Whatever "need" buyers convince themselves for big vehicles, "winter" mostly isn't a real one.