Al Burton

Albertan (get it?).

[Vincent Geloso @VincentGeloso]

A nice paper (from 2016 in Essays in Economic and Business History) by Andrew Odlyzko. He revisits a claim that Britain's 19th century railway network could have been built more efficiently had the government engaged in more centralized planning of the roads during the Railway Mania of the 1840s.

Odlyzko agrees that the historical railway system was highly inefficient. But he argues that existing counterfactual miss a crucial point: planners in the 1840s did not know what we know today. They misunderstood both the nature of railway demand and the nature of economic growth. Victorian policymakers and investors believed railways primarily served long-distance travel between major cities, leading them to favor expensive "direct lines." In reality, most traffic turned out to be local. They also failed to anticipate the sustained growth in traffic that characterized the second half of the nineteenth century.

The deeper lesson is not really about railways. It is about the limits of central planning under uncertainty. If almost everyone—including politicians, investors, engineers, and experts—held incorrect beliefs about future demand and growth, there is little reason to think government planners would have avoided the mistakes of the market. Indeed, Odlyzko argues that stronger central planning might actually have produced an even worse network because planners were often among the strongest advocates of the flawed "direct line" philosophy. The paper is ultimately a cautionary tale against evaluating historical decisions solely with the benefit of hindsight.

[Duane Bratt🇨🇦 @DuaneBratt]

While the attention of most Albertans is on the separation referendum, the AHS procurement scandal has not ended. It continues to be investigated by police.

[Al Burton @DavidFoyCalgary]

@TristinHopper I find doing sloppy drywall very engaging and relaxing.

[Peter Menzies @Pagmenzies]

@rgfray1 Mostly because NHL is an American league dominated by American owners and American rights holders. It’s their game now, corporately. We just supply labour

[Al Burton @DavidFoyCalgary]

👏👏👏

[Jeffrey Gross @KlassicalKat_88]

This. It’s like 12 bar blues. An extremely restricting form, which is why it unleashes so much creativity

[Jon Meddings @JMeddings]

I think accountability is the under appreciated problem with Cdn h/c. MD's work privately and aren't accountable to the system. The gov who designs the system is not accountable for results or efficiency and we, as pt's, don't hold anyone accountable for the mess we are in.

[Samuel Hughes @SCP_Hughes]

@s8mb Extraordinary map. Policy works!

[Peter Menzies @Pagmenzies]

Oh dear. She doesn’t know that truth be known we’re actually the most USA of all non-USA nations and our broadcasters are essentially resellers of USA content

[L. Wayne Mathison @WayneMathison]

@eucopresident @MarkJCarney @vonderleyen Speak for Quebec, maybe. Canada is not European. Canada is North American, resource-rich, Arctic-facing, and tied economically to the U.S. Pretending otherwise is exactly how Ottawa keeps drifting away from reality.

[Pessimists Archive @PessimistsArc]

In 1908 the Lancet called for an 18+ age limit on reading in bed for U.K. children.

[Beefeater @Beefeater_Fella]

This should cheer you up. Watch till the end…

Politico awarded Kallas the prize for the worst "poker face".

Her face became a "symbol of Europe's discontent towards Americans", the article says.

The head of European diplomacy pursed her lips and puffed out her cheeks when US Permanent Representative to the UN Walts talked about Washington's successes in ending numerous wars.

[Bret van den Brink @BretVDB]

Ursula K. Le Guin on Emily Wilson’s Odyssey:

“I finished the Wilson Odyssey with some disappointment—too often her ear turns to tin, she uses the flat word or the weak construction. Still I enjoyed it much more than Fitzgerald, infinitely more than Fagles. It moves as swift and certain as a boat on the sea with a good wind in the sails, and I loved the voyage.” (Email to Harold Bloom, 16 January 2018)

[Michael Weiss @michaeldweiss]

JFK once invited to dinner 49 Nobel laureates, Robert Frost, William Styron, Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin, Katherine Anne Porter, John Dos Passos, James Farrell and Lionel and Diana Trilling, and others. His line on the occasion became famous: “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House—with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

Some of you were alive when that happened.

[Tristin Hopper @TristinHopper]

TIL: The guy who invented kerosene, and thus the modern oil industry, was a Nova Scotian forced out of Canada by special interests and red tape.

[Bill Kristol @BillKristol]

They warned me that if I voted for Kamala Harris we’d get a new deal with the Iranian regime worse than the JCPOA. I voted for Kamala, and they were right.

[Andrew Leach 🇨🇦 @andrew_leach]

Pretty dramatic change in Canadian crude oil export patterns per StatCan data

[Warren Kinsella @kinsellawarren]

Worse. Trump has transformed Iran into a regional superpower and rendered their dictatorship permanent.

[Caolan @CaolanReports]

I cannot believe what I’m witnessing in Kyiv tonight. Priests at the Kyiv Lavra one of the holiest Christian sites in Europe are rushing to save crucifixes, icons and sacred artefacts while Russia attacks the city.

This is what Moscow’s “Christian values” look like.

[Al Burton @DavidFoyCalgary]

If you think exporting to Trump's tariff regime is expensive, wait until you experience the regulatory hellscape that is the EU.

[Scott Robertson @sarobertson_]

Carney on Canada-Ireland-European integration: Combined, the population is more than twice that of the US. We have a larger cultural export industry and a more diverse one, a similarly sized GDP. Together we are one of the largest economic, cultural, technological, financial blocs in the world.

[Al Burton @DavidFoyCalgary]

This is beyond barbaric. I've been there. This is like bombing The Hermitage.

[Jason Jay Smart @officejjsmart]

🔥🔥🔥 Russia just targeted the 950-year-old Dormition Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra.

📌 Having lost control of this Orthodox holy site, Moscow is operating on the exact logic its proxies voiced last week:

👉 If Russia cannot own the world, the world should not exist.