New video from prolific High Speed Rail Youtuber "Lucid Stew" about Cascadia High Speed rail, which sketches out the details of a new hypothetical route between Eugene and Vancouver, BC. What do you think of this route?
@kristin Yeah that shows a "You don't have any lists yet. When you create one, it will show up here" message, and a brief "401 The access token is invalid" error in the lower left corner. So maybe only available to datavis.social accounts.
That feeling when you spend a bunch of time tracking down people's Mastodon handles so you can properly credit them with something awesome... and find that their Mastodon accounts have been dead for a year and they're active daily over on bluesky.
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!
@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.
(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)
@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.
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!
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:
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?
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%."
@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.
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.
@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