@alan@subdued.social avatar

alan

@alan@subdued.social

Admin of subdued.social in #BellinghamWA. Lead Cartographer at https://vis.social/@stamen. Social media for https://social.ridetrans.it/@CascadiaRail. 15 minutes of fame: https://subdued.social/@pop_vs_soda

Was https://subdued.social/@mappingmashups on Twitter.
#cartography, #dataviz, #urbanism, #RankedChoiceVoting, #ElectoralReform, #ProportionalRepresentation, #HighSpeedRail, #OpenStreetMap, #TheExpanse

Don't want local content? Just mute the #BellinghamWA hashtag.

pronoun.is/he

Older posts: https://mastodon.social/@mappingmashups

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

alan, to olympia
@alan@subdued.social avatar

"Evergreen State College to explore Israel divestment after deal with students"

"Protesters at The Evergreen State College in agreed to remove their week-old encampment Tuesday night after striking a deal with administrators that includes the school publicly calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and exploring divestment from companies that profit from 'the occupation of Palestinian territories.'"

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/evergreen-state-to-explore-israel-divestment-after-deal-with-students/

alan, to cycling
@alan@subdued.social avatar

This is a big deal for bikes in Bellingham! We have a new protected bike lane on Holly Street, the most important thoroughfare through downtown, and previously a big gap in our cycling network. Very excited to use this new route!

https://mstdn.social/@mgrass/112372352727627934

alan,
@alan@subdued.social avatar

@mmb I guess only a few blocks of it right downtown are “parking protected”

Wijfi, to random
@Wijfi@fosstodon.org avatar

Stayed up too late playing writing shaders to use on layers in @maplibre

Psychedelic patterns drawn on a map of Mexico

alan,
@alan@subdued.social avatar

@Wijfi @maplibre Dang!

alan, (edited ) to random
@alan@subdued.social avatar

I hadn't visited @OpenInfraMap in a while: it's a pretty impressive custom rendering of power and telecommunication infrastructure in OpenStreetMap.

If you need something new to map in OpenStreetMap, looks like lots of neighborhoods still need to have their power poles mapped! 😳

https://openinframap.org

#OpenStreetMap #OpenInfraMap #OpenInfrastructureMap #OpenData #OSM #Infrastructure #cartography

alan, (edited ) to random
@alan@subdued.social avatar

I dug into my archives and found this map I made of 2016 election results aggregated by the (then) new Whatcom County council districts introduced in 2017. Gives a rough sense of the political alignment in our small county here in the northwest corner of Washington State.

I need to update this map with new data from all the elections since 2016, obviously, but it's a hassle to work with the precinct level results. Soon.

alan, to random
@alan@subdued.social avatar

Southwest Airlines is pulling out of Bellingham International Airport, citing delays on production of Boeing planes.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/25/business/boeing-problems-southwest-ends-service-4-airports/index.html

#Southwest #SouthwestAirlines #BLI #BellinghamWA #Boeing #BellinghamInternationalAirport

alan, to random
@alan@subdued.social avatar

"Here’s a Clever Way to Uncover America’s Voting Deserts:
Mathematicians are using topological abstractions to find places poorly served by polling stations."

https://www.wired.com/story/voting-deserts-maths-topology/

Sure, this is clever. But you know what's even more clever? Eliminating polling places entirely and switching to 100% vote-by-mail like in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Vermont, and Hawaii.

(With some in-person polling places as needed for accessibilty reasons)

alan, to random
@alan@subdued.social avatar

"Learn about the world’s smallest park on the world’s smallest website"

https://www.oregonlive.com/trending/2024/04/learn-about-the-worlds-smallest-park-on-the-worlds-smallest-website.html

Hey @morganm how do you think this website will fare on your speedloading tests? :)

http://millends.com/

alan, (edited ) to maps
@alan@subdued.social avatar

I was interviewed in @WillametteWeek about the @pop_vs_soda map I made a million years ago: https://www.wweek.com/drink/2024/04/18/do-you-say-pop-or-soda/

I guess it's about time to create a Mastodon account for that project...

alan,
@alan@subdued.social avatar

@xangregg @kristinHenry yes, great maps! I remember seeing those over on The Other Site. That scatterplot in the triangle legend is really a nice addition too.

alan,
@alan@subdued.social avatar

@xangregg @kristinHenry I was just starting a Pinterest board collecting all the various maps people have made, and I already had both of your maps on there (both color schemes) https://www.pinterest.com/mappingmashups/pop-vs-soda/

alan, to random
@alan@subdued.social avatar

I have to say this is my new number one favorite explainer video about Proportional Representation and Single Transferable Voting:

https://www.vox.com/videos/24091275/why-us-elections-only-give-you-two-choices

(my previous go-to video was by the inimitable CGP Grey, and it's still great if you want more details about the mechanics of STV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI)

alan,
@alan@subdued.social avatar

@woody open list is pretty good too. But for me STV is still best because it doesn't even require parties to exist. You can still get PR that matches the electorate's perspectives, factions, vibes, etc, which might might be cross-cutting across parties in other cases.

The downside to STV that open list doesn't have is that there's a practical limit on the size of districts and number of candidates before the ranked ballot gets too complicated.

alan, to USpolitics
@alan@subdued.social avatar

Big news: Maine joins the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact! The inter-state agreement now includes states with 209 electoral votes, and will come into effect when enough states join that include 270 votes. Making progress!

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4596054-maine-joins-effort-to-elect-president-by-popular-vote-with-new-law/

alan, to washington
@alan@subdued.social avatar

Hey people in Washington State, have you written to WSDOT to ask them to revise their Amtrak Cascades long term plans to include faster travel times? Comments close on April 18, so please write now!

https://secure.everyaction.com/HVT8mYmSxkyyMnV37gAQbQ2

alan,
@alan@subdued.social avatar

@mgrass don’t leave us in suspense!

alan, to random
@alan@subdued.social avatar

I was aware of the Long Now Foundation's cute stylistic thing of adding a leading zero when they write the year (like this year is "02024") but I didn't realize they also had a cute name for it:

"Y10K Compliance"

https://longnow.org/ideas/long-now-years-five-digit-dates-and-10k-compliance-at-home/

alan,
@alan@subdued.social avatar

@kgjenkins I know, right?

alan, to maps
@alan@subdued.social avatar

Cool map showing the date of the most recent total eclipse for every point in Indiana. Made by the Holcomb Observatory & Planetarium at Butler University.

Great concept, and I'm wondering if anyone has seen a similar map for a larger area, ideally an interactive map for the entire world where you can see the year of the last eclipse wherever you are. The data is available, so surely someone has made such a map?

alan,
@alan@subdued.social avatar

@akkana @fraser @Wijfi regarding annular eclipses, I think I’m in the camp with @awoodruff which says that only total eclipses are worth counting.

alan,
@alan@subdued.social avatar

@not2b I think it’s right? Here’s that 1869 eclipse. The paths do vary in width from eclipse to eclipse. https://nationaleclipse.com/newspapers/images/map_08071869.png

alan, to Astro
@alan@subdued.social avatar

A reminder that there is no inherent reason that the apparent size of the moon happens to be the same as the sun creating perfectly aligned solar eclipses (except when it isn't, in the case of annular eclipses).

But how much of a coincidence is it? According to some random person's calculations on Quora:

"Given all the assumptions made let us say the probability of earth having a moon that would cause a total eclipse is between 1% and 4%."

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/548841/how-big-a-coincidence-is-the-sun-and-moon-having-almost-equal-apparent-sizes/806645

alan,
@alan@subdued.social avatar

@harry_wood Due to the elliptical nature of the moon's orbit we do get some variation in terms of how much of the sun is covered by the moon. This is called the Magnitude of the eclipse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitude_of_eclipse

And this varies even over the course of each eclipse. There are some "hybrid" eclipses that begin as annular eclipses then become total as the shadow moves across the earth.

An example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_April_20,_2023

(I'm just learning all this stuff today!)

alan,
@alan@subdued.social avatar

@harry_wood So in a hybrid eclipse, if you were standing at the transition point (where the eclipse magnitude is exactly 1) you'd get an incredibly short moment of totality. And the path of totality would be incredibly narrow at that point. So yes that would be somewhat less exciting.

However! You'd see more of the corona right up to the sun's edge, which is probably exciting for astronomers but maybe not a general viewer. You might also get more exciting "Baily's beads" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baily%27s_beads

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