Connecting Doug Ford dots. 🤔
Eliminate bike lanes so self driving cars can be trained on Toronto's winter roads? Am I crazy for thinking this? ⚠️ Cyclists Beware!

"Waymo is coming to Toronto. But the road to get there will be an often snow-covered one — and experts say that will take time and training data to overcome."

#Toronto #Onpoli #Canada
#BikeTooter
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/waymo-toronto-winter-self-driving-9.7384550

More immediately, I need to find a buck. It's just about breeding time so I can have milk next year. How worried should I be about introducing diseases to my herd? How careful should I be with the buck? Is anyone even selling a reasonable buck this year? Do I have to make a facebook account to find things people are selling? ☹️

This has been a bad year overall for my goat herd. I don't talk about the sad parts of goat farming much, because who needs that when *waves hands around* is happening.

I had 5 goats die from various bad things happening this year, by far the most I've ever lost in one year (also lost my llama to old age). Would be great if there was a farm vet who worked on goats, but there aren't any within 100km, so I have to figure it out on my own.

Good news: there's a special "invite only" reception beforehand and they will feed me!

It scares me a bit how much those years of living way below the poverty line (with a baby) during grad school/early postdoc has made me ALWAYS seek out free food.

Did experiencing that make me a better person? Yeah, probably. Do I think others should go through that to "build character" or something? No.

Academia really sucks sometimes.

Got all the hay bales from the field. The downside of very large Saskatchewan farms is that I had to drive the tractor almost half a mile to get the farthest ones. Glad I only have to do this once a year! That's enough tractoring for me for a while...

Possible space debris in Minnesota, close to the path of the Zhuque-2E upper stage reentry on Sep 15.

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:asi7x5b2rniqda5glwovjd4y/post/3mxxsiy2nos2d

This afternoon's orbital data suggests - subject to confirmation - that Russia's Kosmos-2612 has carried out a rendezvous with the US ICEYE X36 radar sat, within a few km. To my knowledge this is the first LEO rendezvous of two active sats where the owner of one of the sats did not give approval.

According to calculations by Dr Marco Langbroek, the COSMOS 2612 (aka KOSMOS 2612) and ICEYE-X36 are already with 1-2 km of each other.

By early morning tomorrow, KOSMOS 2612 might approach ICEYE-X36 to within a few meters.

"That is very worrisome. This RPO (Rendezvous and Proximity Operation) is completely non-consensual.

So I wonder and worry whether we are perhaps watching a first actual on-orbit ASAT attack in the making here."

Or perhaps a jamming exercise?

https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2026/10/kosmos-2612-and-iceye-x36-worrisome-cat.html
3/n

Trump, Musk clash over who deserves more credit for betraying Ukraine

https://www.thebeaverton.com/2026/10/trump-musk-clash-over-who-deserves-more-credit-for-betraying-ukraine/

> WASHINGTON D.C. - President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk are reportedly feuding once again as each demands full accolades for giving the order to throttle Starlink usage for Ukrainian forces as they fight to repel Russian invaders.

Lovely bike ride! We had a couple of very windy days, so most of the fall colour is already gone off the trees. Not too many animals out besides birds, and most of the birds have migrated away already. But I saw a grouse, and some good footprints (deer, moose, badger!) in the muddy roads.

Also had to stop and dig mud out of my bike fork with oat stalks (from the edge of a harvested field) which might be the most Saskatchewan thing ever.

Russia just performed another orbital manœuvre to get even closer to an ICEYE Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite used by Ukraine.

Bart Hendrickx: “In the past two days or so, Cosmos-2612 has made a further orbit adjustment which has now brought it in the immediate vicinity of the ICEYE satellite.
According to the latest TLE sets, the Russian satellite is now just about 1.5 km from ICEYE and getting closer.”
https://www.satobs.org/seesat/Oct-2026/0055.html

😬 😬 😬 "Why Canadian Starlink subscribers (probably) shouldn't worry about U.S interference"

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/satellite-us-government-starlink-starshield-9.7383834

Ok time to go for a (cold but not windy) bike ride

Hhahaaha and to those of you suggesting both, that is very tempting but you are overestimating both my stamina and how much time I have for fun things! (I've got a LOT of hay bales to get from the field today...)

Do I want to go for a bike ride now while it's still a little frosty but not windy? Or wait until the afternoon when it will be windy but warm? Hmmm

Woooo Friday night partaaayyyyy*

*No auroras, so I'm heading to bed at 9pm to read some fluffy science fiction!! Wooo!!!

This is showing the behaviour of the equation below with different values of m and n. This is using the measured orbital elements of a real TNO, showing how it's constrained by Neptune on long timescales. Mean-motion resonances are SO COOL and I'd much rather work on this than satellite pollution.

Oh this is good too. You don't even need to know anything about what this is showing, it's just neat looking.

At least I finished a cool plot for the incredibly obscure mixed-mode resonant dynamics paper that maybe someday I'll actually get to finish writing.

Meeting delayed via email, people still didn't show up, sent apologetic email asking if I could still meet, no one showed up to my second zoom meeting, and now I'm playing email tag with the first people and severely regretting not blowing everything off and going for a bike ride instead. Which might still happen if they don't respond soon.