Time for this week's geothread, a dose of #geoeducation rather than #geoweirdness
Today we thought we'd cover a common geocoding use case: extracting the coordinates from images 📸 and geocoding the location the image was taken.
1/n
So we woke late last night to the sound of Madame Harriet, one of our #cat overlords here at our current #UK housesit, making kind of noise that any cat person will immediately recognise as "I am walking through the house with a present for you. Get ready for entrails. Yay entrails!"
We promptly turned on the light to see her sitting on the end of our bed with one of my socks in her mouth and was proudly declaring she'd killed it for us. The sock looked decidedly dead. If it could have entrails, they would have been on show. She obviously understood how to murder a sock with both skill and panache.
We thanked her for her services to the Society for Making Sure There Is Only Ever One Sock In Any Pair Left After A Week and went back to sleep.
Some time later, I woke to the feeling of something running up my leg. It was small, scratchy and definitely not my imagination.
On reflex, I whipped off the duvet and froze when I saw a very alive mouse hunched down against my knee.
Swearing, meowing, bellowing and roaring ensued but I can safely report that mouse, humans and cat are all still living, with mouse relocated to garden. No sign of entrails at all.
Meanwhile Madame Harriet kept my sock in her mouth the entire time, obviously not wanting anything to do with a ghastly mouse when she had her trophy sock to hand.
I now need a nap. A long, mouse free nap.
The saga continues...
This week, I went over to Bluesky and asked people who'd left Mastodon why they left, and lots of people told me. I grabbed the replies and crunched them and wrote up a summary. I think it's really interesting and often kind of wrenching.
https://erinkissane.com/mastodon-is-easy-and-fun-except-when-it-isnt
For those of you who wanted the full history of how Musk lost control of X during the X/Confinity merger, @every were kind enough to commission me to write it.
Come for the Microsoft vs Linux internal war. Stay for the boardroom coup launched during the Sydney Olympics... #technology #history https://every.to/p/twitter-s-future-is-a-return-to-elon-musk-s-past
I wonder. At some point, deliberately raising your emissions will be regarded as a crime on a par with genocide. Because it is genocide, it's just slow and the responsibility is shared. I wonder at what point we will see the first threats to declare war if a country wilfully refuses to cut its GHG emissions.
Note that I do not doubt this will happen. Just when and who.
I regret to inform you all that the Wombles have been moved on from Wimbledon Common by the Metropolitan Police exercising their powers under §60E of the Police, Justice and Public Order Act 1994, as amended by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. Great Uncle Bulgaria refused to leave when requested to do so by a duly appointed constable, and is currently serving a 10 week sentence in HMP Wandsworth.
Spoilers: Hardspace: Shipbreaker
@drandrewv2 - I don't know if you're a gamer but you'd like the story. Just the contract you have to sign to start playing is hilarious. I can't find a copy online (I guess I could screenshot some of it for you), but among other things it insists that when you die (which you will) your employer legally owns the clone of you that it's going to put back to work. The cloning programme is called EverWork(TM).
Spoilers: Hardspace: Shipbreaker
Just finished Hardspace: Shipbreaker. It's really nice to see such an unapologetically pro-Trade-Union piece of work in a computer game. And a good computer game as well! I thoroughly recommend it both to those who like good games and those who could use an illustration of what collective action is for and what it can accomplish.
Designer: if you want the head that size, you should really consider knuckle walking so the pelvis can actually get the baby out
Client: NO!!!! REDESIGN THE BABY HEAD SO IT'S SQUASHY
#Medieval Saharan #Trade #Routes. #Map #Maps #MapHistory #History #Africa #Histodon #Histodons #Image #Cartography @histodon @histodons
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Niger_saharan_medieval_trade_routes.PNG
Attribution: T L Miles, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
PC-815. Built as a cheap submarine chaser, it spent 68 hours bravely fighting a known magnetic anomaly, declared war on neutral Mexico, arguably inspired Scientology, and finally ended an all round superb career of uselessness by ramming a friendly destroyer and sinking itself. Sterling stuff.
Liquid Gold sunrise, taken from Glastonbury Tor this morning.
#glastonbury #glastonburytor #somerset #sunrise #sunrisephotography #landscapephotography #somersetlevels
@bojacobs @sts @histodons This is a popular myth but it’s not true at all. This stuff will last 10,000 years at most. The really nasty stuff will last about 300 years.
There are other things we produce that will actually last forever. Arsenic, for example, which is both a byproduct of burning coal and of certain industrial processes. Unlike radioactive material it does not become less harmful over time. That’s with us forever. 1/?
Well I guess I could stop eating and pose for you😂Taken this morning in Glastonbury.
#glastonbury #glastonburytor #somerset #ponies #poniesofinstagram #sunrise #sunrisephotography
Post Office scandal
Please read this. The Post Office scandal is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in history, but it is being almost completely ignored and the people responsible for it will almost certainly walk away entirely unscathed. Marina Hyde is rarely serious, but in this piece she is as serious as a heart attack.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/18/post-office-scandal-cover-up-justice
Software Engineer, Trade Unionist, Gamer, Geek, Dad. Lives in Devon