Chris Holdenried
banner
chrishcdn.bsky.social
Chris Holdenried
@chrishcdn.bsky.social
Engineer, PhD. Electoral reform advocate, including for my home province of Alberta. Tweets & likes are my own. He/him
Was reading Maureen Jenning's 'Heat Wave', set in 1930s Toronto.
A character in the book didn't want a horse to be whipped. She feared if the horse died, it could be "sent to the glue factory." The phrase became a common, albeit grim, idiom for an old or unwanted horse being sent to slaughter.
November 12, 2025 at 3:39 AM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
Friends, can I ask a favour.

Our latest Honest Government out is a serious warning to Canada from Australia, which acts as a cautionary tail about the harms of the gas (LNG) export industry... Hence the cameo (spoiler alert) from our own aussie climate criminals, Woodside Energy

1/🧵
November 10, 2025 at 5:28 AM
A great read, I'd highly recommend The World of After!
#Books
Very pleased to receive a visit from my MP @orourkeguelph.bsky.social to help me promote my novel *The World of After* ( @cormorantbooks.bsky.social) --my bestselling title of the day-- at today's Book Bash in #Guelph, @downtownguelph.bsky.social.
November 10, 2025 at 9:00 AM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
Very pleased to receive a visit from my MP @orourkeguelph.bsky.social to help me promote my novel *The World of After* ( @cormorantbooks.bsky.social) --my bestselling title of the day-- at today's Book Bash in #Guelph, @downtownguelph.bsky.social.
November 9, 2025 at 9:46 PM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
The Fraser Institute published a study on the fiscal cost of Canada’s low-carbon economy -- one that (shocker!) found lots of money spent on relatively few jobs.

I fact checked it for them. It didn't go well.

maxfawcett.substack.com/p/lies-damn-...
Lies, damn lies, and Fraser Institute studies
Maybe they didn't expect anyone to fact check their work. I did it anyways.
maxfawcett.substack.com
November 7, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
We know Mark Carney is trying to drive a "grand bargain" on climate and energy. It's time for him to lay out his side of the arrangement -- and learn from the communications mistakes of his predecessor. #cdnpoli

www.nationalobserver.com/2025/10/30/o...
Mark Carney needs to come clean on climate
The prime minister has been conspicuously quiet about an issue that seemed to define his politics before he entered the partisan arena. That needs to change.
www.nationalobserver.com
October 30, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
This might be my favorite JWST image from the nearby Universe so far. You’re seeing the late stages of evolution of a star like the Sun, after it’s exhausted its nuclear fuel. This is a transient phase where it’s ejected its outer gas layers, which are then irradiated by the hot stellar remnant.
Another STUNNING image from JWST, this time of the Red Spider Nebula—the vast, wispy, gaseous remains of a now-dead star, the white dwarf core still glowing in the centre.
October 29, 2025 at 4:07 AM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
Hey Edmonton and area friends! Are you tired of government that creates one-sided policy (cough cough *refusing to negotiate class sizes)? Come on down to Dewey's and see an alternative in action. #abpoli
October 24, 2025 at 12:58 AM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
The region of #Spain where *Don Quijote* is set no longer has shepherds due to population decline. Spain is seeking foreign shepherds, showing why Europe needs immigration!

Ya no hay pastores en La Mancha. España llama a inmigrants para cuidar sus ovejas.
www.libertatea.ro/stiri/meseri...
Meseria pe care spaniolii nu mai vor să o facă
Los Cortijos se numără printre sutele de sate și orașe din câmpiile Castilei-La Mancha, regiunea din centrul Spaniei devenită celebră datorită clasicului „Don Quijote”, care se confruntă cu depopularea. Aceasta a făcut dificilă găsirea de păstori, o meserie care există încă din timpuri biblice.
www.libertatea.ro
October 25, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
Here's a handy link to bookmark and share with others outside of Bluesky that is my entire pinned mega-thread about universal basic income study results, all on one page.

skyview.social?url=https://...
I've been researching the idea of Unconditional Universal Basic Income since 2013. Here's a collection of findings I've compiled from various UBI experiments and studies of cash transfer programs around the world.

This will be a VERY LONG and ongoing thread focused entirely on empirical evidence. 🧵
October 24, 2025 at 9:11 PM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
"Housing experts are sounding the alarm about a new bill by the Doug Ford government proposing changes to security of tenure rules, which they say threatens the foundation of tenant protections and rent control in Ontario."

#OnPoli #GiftLink 🎁

www.thestar.com/real-estate/...
October 24, 2025 at 10:10 PM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
October 17, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
A quarter of Ontario PC voters say they’re only voting Ford’s party because they don’t see a better option.

That’s what first-past-the-post does — it traps every voice on the right under one leader.

Proportional representation means real choice, not one-party control.

#onpoli
October 22, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
Two Prize-winning Palestinian Authors Freed from Israeli Prisons

Two award-winning Palestinian authors serving life sentences in Israeli prisons were released on October 13 as part of the exchange for Israeli captives held in Gaza.
Two Prize-winning Palestinian Authors Freed from Israeli Prisons
Two award-winning Palestinian authors serving life sentences in Israeli prisons were released on October 13 as part of the exchange for Israeli captives held in Gaza.
arablit.org
October 15, 2025 at 10:18 AM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
The Dutch, naturally, have this sorted.

At this #Delft intersection, people on bikes and pedestrians get a continuous green.

The arrival of a car or truck sets off a sensor, which allows it to cross. The default is green for humans, red for cars.

Video @modacitylife.com
October 15, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
“When you're on a bike, you actually notice things around you as you go! One of the many side benefits of being on a bike is you just keep discovering new things about the city, specifically businesses.” #yyc #yycbike #BikeLanes #yyccc
The data on #Bikelanes are clear & consistent: GREAT for cities in just about every metric you can think of. So why are politicians across Canada attacking them? We dig in with @bikecalgary.bsky.social's Doug Clark & Alyssa Quinney

PODCAST: www.podcastics.com/episode/3835...
#yyc #yyccc #yycbike
Divide & Conquer: The B.S. Against Bike Lanes
Build barriers between cyclists and cars, not between people and their neighbors.
www.podcastics.com
October 10, 2025 at 9:23 PM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
A fascinating read.
A life update: this wound up paying off. I'm still applying to several jobs that are hopefully careers, but I've got my survival needs covered by a job at the airport that I'm apparently pretty good at.

And instead of being in an office alone, which was driving me mad, I see 20k people a day.
There is a line around this building to get to the line entrance to wait to get into this job fair.

At the airport. For airport jobs.
October 7, 2025 at 10:02 AM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
Skateboard

xkcd.com/3152/
October 9, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
In which I debunk some very common (and popular) myths about renewable energy and the energy transition.

Warning: It's long, pedantic, and full of charts.

open.substack.com/pub/maxfawce...
When "blindingly obvious" facts about the energy transition are anything but
Debunking Don Wright's well-meaning interventions on the subject
open.substack.com
October 10, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
A federal coal auction in Montana drew just one bid: $186,000 for 167 million tons of coal — a 99.9% collapse … The next auction was immediately postponed. Why? Because while #coal can still sell today, its future is already bankrupt.

app.wedonthavetime.org/posts/d9a9be...
Historic ‘Clean Coal’ Auctions Collapse — Clean Energy Outperforms Everything
Something remarkable just happened in America’s coal heartland — and almost nobody noticed what it really means.This week, the Trump administration’s long-promised revival of “clean, beautiful coal” c...
app.wedonthavetime.org
October 12, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
September 21, 2025 at 11:40 PM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
"Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering — because you can't take it all in at once."

- Audrey Hepburn
October 12, 2025 at 7:47 PM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
The best political news of the year came down to the very hard work of Maia Sandu and her colleagues — it was not at all a sure thing, and Putin had spent at least $100 million to make it not happen

www.theglobeandmail.com/world/articl...
Victory for Moldova’s pro-EU party averts a dark outcome and angers Moscow
The Kremlin spent a fortune to keep a former Soviet state from getting closer to Europe. On Sunday, it failed
www.theglobeandmail.com
September 29, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by Chris Holdenried
You can also make a public-good argument about research trainees. Not everyone who does fundamental research stays in academia, so training people in technical skills and research methods benefits everyone when those folks go off and apply their expertise to something else.

4/🧵
October 3, 2025 at 7:32 PM