Thanks @typewriteralley.bsky.social for the nicely curated 🧵 of comments. 🤗

Oh thanks I failed to connect the dead babies comment to orca calves!

An equal area projection can’t do the job here and will make for bad UI, noticeably worse in some parts of the world. And that is why although Google and Apple (and all other modern map renderers) support a global view at world scale, Web Mercator as you zoom in.

But where it is ubiquitous (and @theguardian.com gets this wrong—Google too) is at subcontinental scales, because it preserves angles, and therefore shapes, and when you zoom in and out of driving directions or pan around and search, it looks “right”, no intense oblique angles at high latitudes.

It’s fair to say that we shouldn’t be using Mercator for world maps, it’s not intended for that scale unless you are navigating using a sexton and compass.

It’s true of course that Mercator distorts shape, more so Europe, North America and Greenland actually because they are far from the equator. It makes them much too large.

It must have read your book!

😉

Chat “geo folks” GPT helped me come up with algorithms for custom label placement.

I guess asking how to draw radial lines outward from a center point called “brc_man” was a bit of a tell…

Chat “geo folks” GPT helped me come up with algorithms for custom label placement.

I guess asking how to draw radial lines outward from a center point called “brc_man” was a bit of a tell…

The cognitive dissonance comes when we try to talk to intelligent, caring, [wounded, embattled] people living in Israel about Gaza and they tell us the photos are fake, or that Hamas is responsible, etc. etc.

All the while the IDF is leaking to the New York Times.

💩

Enough.

Meanwhile they are telling the Israeli public: “we’re fighting for you, to free the hostages and because Oct 7 was horrible, please blame Hamas for everything.”

THIS is cynical.

I’m stuck on what IDF officials are willing to say to @nytimes.com anonymously—I take it as a signal of what has to be true: career officials witnessing what’s happening first-hand know it is unconscionable and want the international pressure to continue.

Thanks for parsing this out!

This is evident even just from SDOT’s website. Rudderless is the right word. Just passed a massive levy and now heading into an abyss! This should be an exciting time, new $$, new opportunities to think and analyze the whole multimodal network. I was hoping I was just missing something.

From the Ynet article:

“An electrical line has been connected to a desalination plant in the south of the Gaza Strip, the IDF will open ‘humanitarian corridors’ for UN convoys and aid organizations.”

🤞🏼

You mean this?

“In a statement clarifying that ‘there is no starvation - and this is a false campaign by Hamas,’ the army said that the Air Force itself dropped seven pallets of flour, sugar and canned goods into the Strip”

It is so cynical and the cognitive dissonance it creates is maddening.

I was started to read of IDF officials telling @nytimes.com that the criticism of the UN was overblown. Let’s send the US mercenaries home now and cooperate with the agencies that have supply and distribution channels, STAT.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/w...