"Treating road fatalities and serious injuries as accidents is part of the human impulse to invite forgiveness and acceptance during a time of awful grief. But it also protects the system from scrutiny and change."
Sadhbh O' Neill on the need to treat rising road deaths and injuries as a public health crisis.
This is good news. Drone delivery always seemed to me to be a solution looking for a problem to solve. We don't need to pollute our skies in the same way that we've polluted our urban streets with cars. I can see a real benefit in using drones for urgent medical deliveries but drones to deliver your Krispy Kreme order, or your latest package from Temu? No, thank you!
RTE news : Drone firm Manna announces end of deliveries in Ireland
http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2026/0619/1579350-manna-drones-ireland/
RE: https://mastodon.ie/@ccferrie/116775375357180204
While others campaign for 15-minute cities, Infantini is going for 15-city weeks.
It is estimated that the World Cup will generate about 9m tonnes of CO2e. Air travel is responsible for about 7.7m of that.
Bosnia and Herzegovina face the most arduous schedule during the group stage, travelling 3,144 miles from Toronto to Los Angeles to Seattle, as well as returning between games to their training camp in Salt Lake City.
It's like they designed the tournament to maximise climate damage.
In case you didn't hate Gianni Infantini already, it turns out he's using a private jet provided by Qatar Airways to attend as many World Cup games as possible. Between Thursday and Sunday last week he visited Mexico City, Guadalajara, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver and Miami.
He is attempting to attend at least two matches a day in a tournament that spans four time zones and three countries, with the 16 stadiums up to 2,800 miles apart.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/16/infantino-private-jet-world-cup-matches
I was at an ESRI talk this morning on the "Causes, Costs and Consequences" of car ownership.
On the way back to the office I had a taxi driver deliberately drive his vehicle at me twice before trying to block my way by pulling into the cycle lane.
And shortly after that I had a van driver pull across me as I was cycling down hill and then claim that he had the right of way and that it was my own fault if I got killed.
That's a consequence of car ownership that wasn't discussed this morning
They are the same parties that introduced a Local Property Tax that disincentivises carrying out improvements to properties.
They are the same parties that have blocked the renovation of existing social housing because of a misguided fixation on housing unit numbers.
They are the same parties who give first time buyers grants only to people buying new properties and nothing to people buying second hand properties.
For years they have treated housing as a commodity rather than a right.
The government, run by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, who have systematically stripped power and funding and revenue-raising capacity from Local Government over the last three or four decades, are "angry and frustrated" at local authorities for "badly failing" on dereliction.
Do they take us for fools?!
If they want to know who is responsible for the failure to tackle dereliction they only need look in the mirror.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/politics/arid-41862528.html
Secondary schools are closed for the summer, Junior Cert is finished, no big subjects on for the Leaving Cert this morning. It's almost as if Galway's transport problems are a function of our inability to provide school transport solutions that don't involve being driven by a parent.
The United States of Idiocracy
Things I love about Mastodon (in no particular order):
- @georgepenney's #Spotted in Aotearoa New Zealand posts
- @DJDarren's #ThePlaylist radio show every Monday evening and the gang that gather there
- @psneeze's nightly "Get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow we..." missives
- The German photo hashtags #MeerMittwoch #FensterFreitag
But above all, the general soundness of the people I interact with daily and their tolerance for my ranting into the void.
British government now explicitly linking an isolated attack in Belfast with the broader issue of immigration, playing right into the hands of the fascists in East Belfast who are burning people out of their houses because of the colour of their skin.
Idiots.
RTE news : UK govt to step up immigration checks along CTA routes
http://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2026/0611/1577842-immigration-checks/
The state of Dublin fascists blindly copying East Belfast fascists.
I don't believe for a minute that that swastika is anything other than a show of intent.
https://www.thejournal.ie/oconnell-street-blocked-protest-7066395-Jun2026/
The poem:
Envoi in chalk
I'm calling my son from the end of the estate
when my eye snags on green pastel words.
He has chalked on the pavement:
The world is great
This is just the line I need to read,
my mother in hospital, my shoulder inflamed,
future employment uncertain,
Earth eyeballing Armageddon.
Yet how right, his perception.
He bolts up on his yellow scooter,
eight-year old fringe quiffed with gel,
on the cusp of the age of cool.
Emily Cullen
The world is, indeed, great...
"I wrote a poem about my son - years later it appeared on his exam"
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4gd2eyvp1o
A satirical verse in Punch magazine of 1907 summed up the attitude from some drivers: "The roads were made for me; years ago they were made. Wise rulers saw me coming and made roads. Now that I am come they go on making roads – making them up. For I break things. Roads I break and Rules of the Road. Statutory limits were made for me. I break them. I break the dull silence of the country. Sometimes I break down, and thousands flock round me, so that I dislocate the traffic. But I am the Traffic."
"Car drivers assume the roads were built for them, but it was cyclists who first lobbied for flat roads more than 100 years ago"
An oldie, but a goodie from @carltonreid
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2011/aug/15/cyclists-paved-way-for-roads
Advocates for 15-minute cities who spend their time flying long distance around the globe for speaking engagements 🤔🤷♂️
The tenor and tone of the questions seemed to me to be coming form a place of acceptance that AI is an essential tool for the future of the architectural profession and the profession needs to be upskilled to reflect that.
I reject that hypothesis entirely.
I completed a survey on the architectural profession in Europe today. It asked me several questions about AI:
Do I use it for any of a specified list of tasks?
How concerned am I at the threat posed by AI to the industry?
Have I done any training in AI?
Do I intend to do any training in AI?
I fear that the answers I gave will lead to a conclusion that I am not sufficiently prepared for AI's impact on the profession, not that I have deliberately rejected the use of AI in my work.
