“Nova Scotians elected me with a clear mandate to starve government revenues before making catastrophic cuts to their standard of living,” Houston said, standing in front of a completely-drained Halifax Harbour. “Or at least, that’s how I interpreted it.” www.thebeaverton.com/2026/03/ns-b...
Let's talk about the morality of the negative economic impact of Tim Houston's attack on Nova Scotia www.halifaxexaminer.ca/morning-file...
Let's talk about the cost of collisions. A fender bender isn’t minor. A crash with injuries isn’t rare. A fatal collision costs society ~$8 million. In Canada, road crashes cost ~$36 billion every year, about $99 million every day. Safer street design isn’t expensive, crashes are #VisionZero 1/2
HRM will hire a project manager dedicated to road safety with this funding. Before road safety was just something PW fit in between working on road projects. So while this year won’t be a huge change, some RRFBs, some intersection design, it does set things up for more in future years.
"“I want to stop killing people on our streets and so I would rather do a more thoughtful plan than accelerate something we don’t have the capacity to do at the moment” - Cleary.
Our vague outline plan with an unambitious goal needs a VZ overhaul
www.saltwire.com/nova-scotia/...
“Shaw Street was busy with bikes, but it wasn’t working for everyone. There were too many motor vehicles using the street for riding to be comfortable…But in 2020, the City of Toronto undertook a project that decreased vehicle volumes by up to 60% and tripled the # of people biking in some places…”
Here's another Hall of Fame sign from last year's MARCH 7th National Day of Action in Washington Square Park, New York City. What's your sign going to say this year?
Visit standupforscience.net/march7 to find your local SATURDAY, MARCH 7th NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION RALLY!
You are finishing your PhD and looking to continue in science?
The Martin lab @biology-unige.bsky.social has an open postdoctoral position in cell biology to study cell-cell fusion. For more information, please consult mocel.unige.ch/research-gro....
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Predicting the protein interaction landscape of a free-living bacterium with pooled-AlphaFold3
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
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Government breaks stable sources of revenue, claims unforeseeable tough economic situation, and presents austerity budget. Tired old ideas.
Province House roundup: Cuts to nursing home staff; Premier links NDP to arts protest www.halifaxexaminer.ca/province-hou...
Austerity is code for erasure: What one disabled educator, researcher and Nova Scotian thinks of the budget www.halifaxexaminer.ca/commentary/a...
CBASS is a cyclic nucleotide-based antiviral system in bacteria that is related to cGAS-STING signaling in animals. One of the big questions is how CBASS is activated during phage infection? We made some progress on this during my final year in the Kranzusch lab.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Halifax is about to be destroyed because we have to pay for weekend parking downtown, since that’s what happened to every other city where people pay for parking. It’s just like that time letting dogs on patios caused all those horrible tragedies.
Houston unbalanced the books with unwise tax and toll rollbacks, then used massive deficit to rationalize slashing crucial programs and public services www.halifaxexaminer.ca/commentary/h...
...I guess he's done "listening to Nova Scotians".
Farewell to a Nova Scotia that will no longer tolerate cuts to programs that enrich us all www.halifaxexaminer.ca/morning-file...
And this year we have to cut our capital spending plans by $1-2 billion because we can't borrow any more money. Our credit cards are maxxed out.
Right now council wants to buy 10 busses and we do not have the debt to buy them. And it's only like... $10-20 million.
/9
Council has been explicit in their desire to make the city this fiscally vulnerable. Rec centres that were mostly sustainable with user fees had the user fees removed and put on the general tax rate. Rec centres used to be a $700k line item (attachment 1)
/7
And council just keeps making the same bad decisions year over year because no one wants to be the one to tell their constituents that they need to start paying their fair share. They've been subsidized for so long the fair share is now fucking huge. Which of course it is, that's what scams are.
/6
This has led to over a decade of council deferring maintenance, deferring spending and doing debt spending, all to keep taxes low for suburban and rural councillors, so they didn't have to do the political suicide thing of making their districts pay their fair share of the tax burden
/5
Which leads to a situation where the minority of council represents districts who generate massive revenue surpluses, and the majority of council represents districts who are subsidized by downtown's revenues. This sets council up to (usually) vote to loot downtown to keep taxes low
/4
On top of that, the city's underlying financial model is not sustainable. In theory the city provides services to residents and recoups the costs for those services through taxes. But in reality large parts of the city cost more money to service than they bring in, in taxes
/3
First, council has been keeping taxes low and below inflation for, now, 14 years. Which in practical terms Halifax has had 14 years in which we have not spent enough money to keep up with basic city needs.
/2
Tax the people (developers) who fund this god awful Mayor & Premier. Tax them all the way back to Bermuda.
Shout out to Boston
This is an A+ sign.
#PostdocRecruiting:
My group at the University of Texas at Austin is recruiting a Postdoc in virology and structural biology. Please see more details here:
utaustin.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UTstaff/job/...
Informal inquiries are encouraged, and see more lab info here: zunlongke-lab.org
Halifax councillors say the math ain't mathing in Andy Fillmore's office budget www.halifaxexaminer.ca/government/c...
