@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, (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

#AmtrakCascades #WSDOT #Washington #WashingtonState #Cascadia #Amtrak #CascadiaRail #PNW

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

alan, to AirBNB
@alan@subdued.social avatar

Ooh, here's a much better version of that Airbnb eclipse map that's been going around, by Alex Fitzpatrick and Erin Davis at Axios:

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/05/airbnb-bookings-eclipse-april-8-map

#airbnb #vrbo #axios #eclipse #eclipse2024 #maps #cartography #dataviz

alan,
@alan@subdued.social avatar

@kristinHenry sure the aesthetics are better, and also (not to dunk on the original map too much) the color ramp in the axios map is more informative than the diverging scheme in the original, and the proportional circles are also much more effective in the new map too. Plus the map projection.

The original:

alan, to maps
@alan@subdued.social avatar

Apparently it's now a race to see how quick you can get a Blender map to render with new data after a news event? ;)

Well done James Farrell (eastofnowhere.co) via: https://www.instagram.com/p/C5Yv2b7utDq/

alan, to random
@alan@subdued.social avatar

Saw this going around on Tiktok: some interesting maps of baby name similarity between US states over time:

More maps and animations in the published research paper from the University of Rome: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1507143112

Via this tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cirruslyyesterday/video/7350814314753821983

nyrath, to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240403-dark-star-at-50-how-a-micro-budget-student-film-changed-sci-fi-forever

alan,
@alan@subdued.social avatar

@nyrath I haven’t seen this movie in decades, but I still remember most of it vividly. I have to thank my parents (who were also big fans) for turning me on to it at a very young age. This was certainly my first understanding of what a “cult movie” was. Highly recommended.

alan, to random
@alan@subdued.social avatar

[T]hey were not explicitly told that the army’s goal was “revenge,” but expressed that “as soon as every target connected to Hamas becomes legitimate, and with almost any collateral damage being approved, it is clear to you that thousands of people are going to be killed. Even if officially every target is connected to Hamas, when the policy is so permissive, it loses all meaning.”

https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

alan, to random
@alan@subdued.social avatar

Another aid organization, Anera, is pausing operations in Gaza because Israel is killing too many aid workers.

https://www.anera.org/blog/anera-is-pausing-gaza-operations-amid-rising-threats-and-attack-on-wck/

alan, to trustandsafety
@alan@subdued.social avatar

We just expanded the section in our #SubduedSocial server rules to conform to the #IFTAS guidelines against targeted misgendering and deadnaming in the fediverse.

Read more here: https://about.iftas.org/2024/01/30/targeted-misgendering-and-deadnaming-in-the-fediverse/

#BetterSocialMedia #moderation #FediMod #MastoMods

cc @jaz

alan, to random
@alan@subdued.social avatar

Seems like this was the weekend where everyone learned about the asterisk in "trans*".

I didn't realize it had been in the OED since 2018: https://time.com/5211799/what-does-trans-asterisk-star-mean-dictionary/

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