Krishnan Viswanathan @matungawalla@transportation.social

What is this? This is a GPS receiver made by Trimble, one of the biggest GPS companies. Why is it shaped like an ambulance? Good question. This is a 6 channel GPS receiver from 1993, which was relatively early for consumer GPS tech. On the back is a Motorola 68HC000 and 64k of RAM. Look it even has a little red light on top. And a silk screened steering wheel.

‘As Mr. Stratton points out, in most American cities, “all the infrastructure we create to handle water — roads, sidewalks, sewers — is overseen by different departments with different priorities, none of them specifically responsible for storms. There is no dedicated authority or budget for storm water in most cities.”’

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/headway/hoboken-floods.html?unlocked_article_code=1.7kw.qWpM.5gh2qGAALmyH&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

YES.

White House spokesman Andrew Bates responds to the Republican Speaker:
 
"We absolutely reject the offensive accusation that gun crime is uniquely high in the United States because of Americans' 'hearts.' Gun crime is uniquely high in the United States because congressional Republicans have spent decades choosing the gun industry's lobbyists over the lives of innocent Americans."

Luckily, being able to count votes and persuade others aren’t big parts of being Speaker of the House.

Autobesity

The trend of vehicles growing larger and heavier as people want to drive oversized vehicles they don't really need.

Examples are people who buy four-door pickup trucks to occasionally haul a bag of dirt from home depot. Or drive a large SUV to the bus stop because they're afraid to let their two children walk by themselves.

http://autobesity.urbanup.com/17860250

“The issue known as ‘car bloat’ and ‘autobesity’ refers to vehicles bought today being bigger than the ones they replace…A US study showed that children were 8 times more likely to die when struck by an SUV compared with a normal passenger car.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/08/autobesity-on-course-to-worsen-air-pollution-caused-by-motoring

"It's almost impossible to over-invest in communication." -Elaine McVey
#PositConf2023

The American Library Association, an organization founded in 1876, is under attack by the US right-wing. The race to the bottom continues.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/09/15/american-library-association-book-bans/

Fantasy Forecasting Follow-up https://www.transportist.net/p/fantasy-forecasting-follow-up

Fantasy Modeling https://www.transportist.net/p/fantasy-modeling

🔨 stringr::str_squish() 🔨

"removes whitespace at the start and end, and replaces all internal whitespace with a single space.". This includes removing *new lines*!

https://stringr.tidyverse.org/reference/str_trim.html

#RStats

It's not someone else's problem.

Climate refugees. Canadian
Climate refugees. Hawaii.

#climatecrisis

The multiple Trump indictments are a harsh reminder that none of this would have been necessary if law enforcement -- federal, state, and local -- had held this slimeball accountable for his crimes in New York over the decades.

One reason they didn't is that our top "news" media organizations treated him like a celebrity. They mostly ignored what a crook he was -- and that extended well into his presidency.

When the prosecutors and the journalists collaborate in this evil way, evil prevails.

The marketplace of ideas is when the government chooses which subjects colleges may teach. Academic freedom is when the state decides your subject shouldn't be allowed. The Classical Liberal Arts Tradition is when political appointees get to judge whether something is science.

We should recall what happened a century ago, when cars arrived en masse.

US streets were redesigned for vehicle speed. Pedestrian deaths skyrocketed, sidewalks were ripped up, jaywalking was invented, and transit service collapsed.

We still suffer from those decisions.

Turns out love was a zero interest rate phenomenon

Wow! 16 pro-amateur astrophotographers imaged the Whirlpool Galaxy, then combined their data to produce an image with 255 hours integration time. This is the result.

Credits and results in here: https://www.astrobin.com/7hwtz0/?fbclid=IwAR1pAzvCnwViMAZebbwJ0ypUHmzZ9YFLWNyM_ZMT8Id1W_nRcix5A7ajLRg

I absolutely love hearing about amateur and pro-am communities collaborating and working together to really highlight the contributions they can make to science.

These communities are pretty much self-funded but can deliver lots!

More on the processing of this image can be found here as well: https://theastroenthusiast.com/m51-processing/

There's also a video they have put together here as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkES2ltGSoc

#Astrodon #Astrophoography #Astronomy #Science #Community