tobychev @tobychev@qoto.org

My Deutsche Bahn train is now so delayed that the Swiss won’t let it in (the Swiss railways nowadays only let German trains in if they are on time. Yes that’s a thing. The passengers then get dumped at the Swiss border and take local (so on time) transport https://www.iamexpat.ch/expat-info/swiss-expat-news/10-most-delayed-trains-switzerland-2022-revealed

Some Lissajous animations for Pi Day. You can find the (not very good) code at https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2024/03/14/pi-day-circles/

A few months ago I made a network map showing the high speed rail connections in #France. Unfortunately, the official #SNCF #TGV map only shows the stops and whether there is a connection or not. However, I wanted to better understand which cities and regions are directly connected.
Voilà the 2024 update of my 🇫🇷 high speed rail map! Feel free to explore and boost!

https://larstransportmaps.com/2024/03/11/high-speed-rail-in-france-2024/

#ClimateDiary

“In a drastic attempt to protect their beachfront homes, residents in Salisbury, Massachusetts, invested $500,000 in a sand dune to defend against encroaching tides. After being completed last week, the barrier made from 14,000 tons of sand lasted just 72 hours before it was completely washed away”

#massachusetts #CoastalErosion

https://www.thedailybeast.com/dollar500k-dune-designed-to-protect-massachusetts-homes-last-just-3-days

Floristic homogenization of South Pacific islands commenced with human arrival.
Strandberg+
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02306-3

"using fossil pollen records from 15 sites on 13 islands within the biogeographical realm of Oceania ...
show that floristic homogenization has increased over the past 5,000 years ...when two islands were settled by people in a given time interval, their floristic similarity is greater than when one or neither of the islands were settled."

As I said yesterday there’s no relationship between being able to raise money and running a startup. A checkout button startup being valued at $11B when Shop Pay, PayPal, Apple Pay, etc existed was always absurd.

However Breslow was able to raise money because he looked the part

UK, Germany, Netherlands, Norway and Denmark have failed to align #oil & #gas🛢️ policies with 1.5C #ParisAgreement climate pledge, finds Oil Change International https://buff.ly/43cL5HY

The myths of automation obscure the truth: AI relies on human labor, undervalued and precarious. Rather than replacing workers, tech shifts jobs to lower-income countries, deterring unionization. Time to rethink Silicon Valley ethics—and rhetoric. https://www.casilli.fr/2024/03/09/how-robot-drive-thrus-scare-and-exploit-fast-food-workers/

🚨🥳🇪🇺Great news: after over two years of negotiations, in a last-minute twist worthy of a movie, EU adopts platform work directive.

The milestone was achieved at the March 11, 2024 meeting of the labour ministers, where Estonia & Greece moved past their previous abstentions to vote in favor. Done in "a spirit of compromise", this showcases EU's commitment to progressive labor policies.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/gig-economy/news/at-long-last-eu-countries-adopt-the-platform-work-directive/

RNC purge reportedly underway. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/11/bloodbath-at-rnc-trump-team-slashes-staff-at-committee-00146368

#Biden's State of the Union address in context #unionaddress
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2024/03/driving-while-looking-in-the-rearview-mirror.html?utm_source=pocket_mylist

Bad news also on global hunger. After decades of (modest) improvement in cutting hunger, the number and percentage of undernourished people is rising again.

Some interesting results showed that urban agriculture in Sant Feliu de Llobregat may produce ~3.500 jobs and the 50% of the fresh food consumed in the city. It may reduce 1.26ºC the urban heat island and run-off by 20 mm.

"The Musk Foundation, for instance, gave $5 million to a United Nations program that helps countries identify rural schools that need internet access. In at least two cases, those countries then became Mr. Musk’s customers, connecting their schools with his Starlink satellite service."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/us/elon-musk-charity.html

The #oil🛢️ industry has fought against government support for clean technologies for more than half a century, the Guardian can reveal, even as vast subsidies have propped up its polluting business model https://buff.ly/3IszECq #lobbying

I took a class on precision questioning which I found to be extremely valuable in understanding a topic.

I learned over time it also makes you cone across as an asshole who interrogates people especially if you’re in a leadership position.

Overall I’ve found showing signs of empathy and positive reinforcement while asking the questions you need answered helps them land better. Also explaining why you’re asking helps.

Most importantly avoid precision questioning in writing as much as possible.

"It turns out that generative AI companies don’t like it when you steal, sorry, scrape, images from them. Cue the world’s smallest violin."

In Moment of Unbelievable Irony, Midjourney Accuses Stability AI of Image Theft

https://www.themarysue.com/midjourney-accuses-stability-ai-of-image-theft/

poll: when you see this message in `git status`:

”Your branch is up to date with 'origin/main’.”

do you know that your branch may not actually be up to date with the `main` branch on the remote?