joostjakob

u/joostjakob@lemmy.world
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Wel yes, sketching is exactly the manual labor I was talking about. The TIGER import was indeed massive and very automated, but the US community is to this day working on reviewing it. The Dutch situation is very similar - because it had early, high quality open data. In countries were data was released later or of poorer quality, the OSM map had already been filled up to a degree that doing these massive imports became very hard. Majority opinion is that that's actually a good thing - it seems like countries where the map was filled organically (both by hand alone or also with smaller, slower imports) have a more thriving mapper community. I don't think the Ordnance Survey data was used for a massive imports, but rather as one source during the mapping process (the others being notes from going there yourself, open street view images, aerial or satellite imagery, ...). As an example, here in Belgium we started importing buildings around 2019, which you can clearly see here. But it only sped up an existing process of adding those buildings to the map.

Huh, ok! Good app in a place that should be in very good mapping condition. If you have a specific example, I can investigate. Also, you could look if there's some local OpenStreetMap meetups. They are likely to be happy to help you out in person.

There are many OSM apps, results may vary a lot. For search and adresses, Magic Earth might be your best choice. They also integrate some open data sources to improve address search, and there's some live traffic data. Of course, if the road data is simply wrong, there's little to be done about that. But some fixes are easy enough to do yourself without previous experience, or you can just drop a map Note on OpenStreetMap.org describing the issue and someone will fix it for you. OpenStreetMap in the US doesn't have the same level of detail as in Europe, but it is evolving quickly. So even if it is not perfect now, don't give up on it forever.

I used to follow the Gallup polls for this, because of the long time series and general reputability. But then it turned out they do not have a spine. Since then I always look at the aggregated results at https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bulletin . Every poll has a significant margin of error (depending on sample size) and bias (depending on methodology), so aggregating them is generally a good idea.

on rule · c/onehundredninetysix · 7 pts · 13d

It's a gift that keeps giving because each minute the clocks are refreshed with new madness

on rule · c/onehundredninetysix · 6 pts · 13d

What the other one said. Keep the page open for a minute, and a new set of clocks from the same models appear. Sometimes, a perfectly good clock will be replaced by nonsense.

Nope.

One more for the collection of "quotes that should have ended a career... but didn't". Other faves are "the purpose of a tree has always been to be cut down" (Schauvliege, minister of the environment) or "all of us will have to tighten our belts" (prime minister Peeters, forgetting that poor people exist).

In the EU, there's been a shift to centre-right in the latest elections, and there are "more immediate concerns" now (after covid, the new excuse became defense and keeping our industrial sector alive). So progress has slowed down a lot here too. Here in Belgium, utter silence so far - both on the fires and the heat deads.

On this map you can see the size of the burnt area on an OpenStreetMap basemap. The whole core of the High Fens - the area with the largest actual fen area - has burnt down entirely. (source data)

It's a peat area, so the fire continues underground. Back of envelope calculations say that this fire may be equivalent to about 1% of annual CO2 pollution of Belgium. Expected political consequences: none. Expected increased attention for climate change: zero.

About the same reaction we had after we lost about 2000 people (the highest excess death rate in Europe) in the June heat wave: crickets. Of course, the majority of dead people were old, so who cares. The day the heat wave started, this was our defense minister:

It’s been hot for two days, and we’re all going to die again, just like that. Man, man, those journalists—where do they keep finding them? Enjoy the beautiful weather. And LIVE! (Photos coming soon of the pool, a cold Stella, and the barbecue.)

(Theo Francken, June 19th)

[EDIT: the screenshot is likely a bit exaggerated, as it is based on satellite detection of heat. The huge smoke plume will also show up as burned, the area west of the highway should normally be mostly spared]

How did all these other countries do that, and not the US? I think it starts with "America doesn't have poor people, they have temporarily embarrassed millionaires". So everyone is voting in the interest of the capitalist class, because they want to believe they are part of it. Where that comes from is a matter of historical processes.