Here is osmium, a framework and tool to work with OpenStreetMap data.

Here ya go.

Laboratory instruments controlled by shitty software that’s somehow tied to a particular version of Windows, and won’t work with 11. And, of course, the manufacturer won’t update it, because they’d much rather you drop a quarter million on the new model.

Just gonna leave this here:

The dictator’s dilemma: The distortion of information flow in autocratic regimes and its consequences

Abstract

Humans have been arguing about the benefits of dictatorial versus democratic regimes for millennia. Despite drastic differences between the dictatorships in the world, one of the key common features is the Dictator’s Dilemma as defined by Wintrobe [1]: a dictator will never know the true state of affairs in his country and is perpetually presented distorted information, thus having difficulties in making the right governing decisions.

Sucks when reality pierces the bubble created by the yes-men around you.

I drove to the East Coast and back twice in recent months, and… I don’t know if parents try to keep this fact from their children in order to try to shield them from the harsh realities of life, but I feel like that’s doing them a disservice, because then they have to discover on their own that there is so much Ohio.

I’m not a gamer, so I had to look up the definition of a third-person shooter. It seems like very poor terminology; it’s actually a second-person shooter. There’s the player (1st) giving commands to an on-screen avatar (2nd). Where’s the 3rd person?

I’m thinking a true third-person shooter would consist of an NPC shooting at your unarmed avatar?

?

By the time I left r/fuckcars, people were asking this question several times per day, or every 15-20 minutes at peak times. I recall that the moderators had an auto-mod bot that would respond, and my paraphrase of it is something like this:

We don’t hate the cars, per se, but rather the physical, environmental, and social destruction wrought by designing all aspects of daily life around their use (to the near-exclusion of anything else). Small, cheap, utilitarian motorcycles are better than cars in a lot of ways (space, cost, fuel economy), and worse in others (noise, pollution). They’re fine, as long as the riders aren’t demanding that the entire landscape and society be structured and built to cater to their machines.

Based on how CBP has been treating people for years… they’d be shipped to CECOT for lying about not using social media.

LPT: Statements that include the word “problematic” can be safely ignored. If the speaker could articulate the problem, they would.

Should I feel targeted, as this description applies to several hundred million people in the U.S. alone.

Why does that scene from The Life of Brian play in my mind when reading this?

As legal-bullshit specialists, I wouldn’t put it past 'em to figure out how it’s legal for the Republican Party to spend on federal races, but not Democrats.

There’s a reason New Yorkers hate going to Times Square :]

They’re privacy-conscious and don’t want to appear in stock footage?

I just listened to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio series, and I’m reminded of this exchange:

Trillian:…ever since they reinstituted the death penalty for insurance executives.

Arthur: For what offense?

Trillian: Offense?

That’s brilliant! Now, when users replace their phone, they also have to replace a second device. Hooray for planned obsolescence!

And just like that, MAGA loves participation trophies.

In fact, they want to increase antisemitism around the world. The state of Israel faces demographic challenges, namely that the Arab population has historically had a higher fertility rate, so it has been relying on immigration to ensure that the Jewish population growth rate outpaces the Arab one. If Jewish people feel unsafe enough in the countries where they live, more of them may be driven to make aliyah.

(Also, there’s been an uptick in emigration from the state of Israel since the Oct. 7th attack, which AFAICT has not been significant in sheer numbers, but a worrying trend for the leaders. Antisemitism around the world makes leaving less attractive.)

No true Scotsman, eh? This is the U.S. military, like it or not. If you served, and believed in honor, my condolences.

Crikey, very well-written and well-reasoned! I would just add:

(4)(b) Human have perfect information about the world.

In order to make rational choices, producers and consumers need perfect information. This also ignores so much of reality. Again, there are so many examples, but even in a simplified model transaction of buying a loaf of bread includes so many variables that it would be impossible to know them all: All of the bakeries offering bread, the prices they ask for their loaves, the sensory quality of the bread, the nutritional quality, the bakeries’ food safety standards, and so on. Imagine trying to investigate the food safety record for the producer of each item in your typical grocery cart—an impossibility.