Paul Lee

BBC News leading with a cancelled concert. Second on news list: US president threatens civilisational erasure

For decades, urban planners have rigorously tracked every car in New York City while completely ignoring the pedestrians. An MIT research group has finally built the first complete model of foot traffic in an American city. They took baseline counts from the Department of Transportation and mapped a routable dataset covering every pavement, crosswalk, and footpath across the five boroughs. The resulting data exposes massive flaws in how cities allocate infrastructure funding. Midtown Manhattan hits nearly 1,700 pedestrians per block per hour during peak times. Because officials see these massive raw numbers, they funnel the bulk of pedestrian safety investments directly into the city centre. The MIT model proves this bias is a mistake. Neighbourhoods in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx routinely register hundreds of pedestrians per block per hour. People in these outer boroughs are walking in huge numbers, but they don't get the infrastructure to match. The model also rewrites the maths on urban safety. Governments typically rank dangerous intersections by tallying up total crashes. High-traffic areas like Herald Square or Times Square rack up lots of accidents. Planners look at those totals and assume the area is highly dangerous for walkers. The new system calculates risk on a per-pedestrian basis instead. When you divide the accidents by the millions of people walking through Midtown, the individual risk is actually very low. The true danger zones are around highway off-ramps and heavy car infrastructure in low-density areas like Staten Island. A pedestrian walking there faces a drastically higher statistical chance of being hit by a vehicle. This framework changes how urban development works. Los Angeles is already applying the model to prepare its public transit and mobility networks for the 2028 Olympics. The state of Maine is using it to evaluate 140 different towns to identify necessary safety upgrades. Planners finally have the hard data to prove what walkers have known for years. We spent the entire twentieth century designing our environment around the automobile. We finally have the tools to start building cities for people. Link to paper: nature.com/articles/s4428…

As a priest, who has celebrated Holy Communion twice today and is departing for a Cistercian monastery tomorrow, can I just say that this 'Easter Egg rage' is nonsense. If you care that much, get yourself to church, and then perhaps you will realise that our faith is not based on confectionary or its packaging.

Same is true for newspapers etc Rishi Sunak joined Anthropic and Microsoft last October. A few weeks later he became a Times columnist. He’s since written several times for the paper on AI and related issues — no mention at all of his paid interest

I had pretty much lost faith in the UK government’s ability to regulate AI fairly, after they proposed handing creatives’ work to AI companies for free. But there are new ministers working on tech & AI, and their response to the Grok debacle has been superb. Increasingly hopeful that it is a sign these new ministers will be less subservient to US big tech, and will actually stand up for the British people.

For the people asking if the Apple Google deal means there is no differentiation, think about it in F1 terms: multiple teams run the same engine, yet deliver vastly different results based on design and setup. Same here

Lowest London murder rate in a decade, after significant decline. taking into account population, since records like this began in 2003 At 1.1 in 100k one of the safest major cities in the globe, safer than all big American cities, & every single US State bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

Many Teslabros commenting on this saying buttons are unsafe etc. Get a grip, please. As someone who has worked for a few years in automotive ergonomics, here’s the science of why physical buttons are better: The human body remembers where things are and relates them to touch. When you walk into a dark room in your house, you don’t look for the light switch do you? You know where it is and reach for it, then confirm the place with the touch of your fingers, your brain registering the shape of the switch. That’s ’muscle memory’. You absolutely, 100% cannot do that with a touchscreen. You might be able to get to the general location but then you need to look, taking your eyes off the road. Especially for that second press as there’s no way they’re just one menu deep. So to summarise, touchscreens are not safer. What they are, is much much cheaper, which is why manufacturers like them. The people who buy the cars though, on the whole, do not.

London is a brilliant and on all key metrics a safe city ( except do protect your mobile phone) Trump, Musk etc are pernicious and wrong.Don’t believe the fake gloom about London via @FT giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/ac…

This morning @DailyMail admits that it published a statement it claimed I had made when I have never said anything like it. 🤔

If you're a public service broadcaster, you absolutely should not leave the answer to a question like this hanging in the tweet.

I am not a Labour voter but what Trump says about Sadiq Khan is rubbish. He keeps pushing the line that London is broken and that Khan is to blame. I live here. I do not just stick to the west of the city where I live, I move around and see it as a whole. London is alive, busy, and brilliant. It is nothing like the picture painted by Trump or the right. Trump is not confused, he knows what he is doing. He plays up division because it suits him. The truth is that London’s strength comes from the mix of people who call it home. Different cultures, faiths, beliefs and backgrounds all live side by side. That is what makes the city powerful and wonderful, and why I think it is the best city in the world. And whilst I do not vote for Sadiq in London, I believe he is a decent man, a man of principle, and that counts for far more than the sneering right who shout down any good he does for their own political gain.

Just watched @elonmusk's despicable incitements to Tommy Robinson's far right march in London. Musk is a disturbed and vicious man. If Britain or any other democratic government had any spine they'd make him persona non grata.

Every single time there's one of these Tommy Robinson marches in London they end up fighting with the police and pissing everywhere. Every single time.

Londoners love their bike lanes. In the five years I have been commuting to work by bike, I have never seen it so busy. Thank you @willnorman for making this possible! 🚲🚴‍♀️🚴🚲 @London_Cycling

@ben_greenstone @UpstartsMediaCo @localglobevc @cjpedregal @meetgranola That room has a really interesting looking undulating ceiling

Very pleased to have worked with @UpstartsMediaCo and @localglobevc to host a conversation with @cjpedregal (@meetgranola founder). Packed full of wisdom that I probably should have used Granola to distil…

My article today - why every leftwinger should have @RachelReevesMP as their hero. Her fiscal rectitude lowers interest rates, and allows the government to spend more on healthcare etc. Read (free) in the excellent @TheHouseMag politicshome.com/opinion/articl… (1/2)

When media outlets cover Bob Vylan at Glastonbury it would be nice if more of them pointed out that the festival currently has a population bigger than Oxford's and even 95 percent of people who are actually here wouldn't know what you are talking about.

The answer is staring us in the face. Why are democracies in crisis? Because voters have lost the plot. We only elect leaders who make impossible (and utterly unaffordable) promises, then howl when the inevitable betrayal plays out thetimes.com/article/23aa7c…

guy who hasn't understood any pulp lyrics