What I’m reading – Page 6

How Ideologues And Opportunists Built A Massive New Universe Of Partisan News

At its root, the analysis of 667 websites and 452 associated Facebook pages reveals the extent to which American online political discourse is powered by a mix of money and outrage.

The result is hundreds of partisan news websites being run not only by dedicated American conservatives and liberals, but also by the now-famous Macedonian teens, by internet marketers, and by others who saw a business opportunity. As an example, BuzzFeed News’ analysis found that a conservative Facebook page being run by a 20-year-old Macedonian frequently outperforms some of the larger conservative pages operated by Americans.

Source: How Ideologues And Opportunists Built A Massive New Universe Of Partisan News – Buzzfeed

From gutting sardines to shipping pregnant cows, this Maine port wants your business

“They were also making cosmetic glitter from the colorful slime off the back of the scales, it’s called pearl essence. There were three pearl essence factories here,” said Chris Bartlett, a commercial fishing specialist with the University of Maine who moved to the area in the late 1980s.

Bartlett said, eventually, sardines, and other fishing businesses dried up. And the town did, too….

A few years back, the Eastport Port Authority got an unusual phone call. A Texas company was looking for a place from which to ship cows to Turkey. Pregnant cows….

And so, for three years, the city was kind of booming again. Then in 2014, the cow exports collapsed when southern Turkey became too unstable.

“It’s funny, in an international situation when you’re a port like this, what happens anywhere in the world affects you,” said Peacock. “And you figure that out pretty quick when your income comes from piloting ships, and all of a sudden there are no ships because of a war in Syria.”

Source: From gutting sardines to shipping pregnant cows, this Maine port wants your business | Public Radio International

NGA director hopes to foster next “unicorn” by inviting innovators to feed at agency’s data trough

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency plans to establish a public-private partnership that would allow companies and academic researchers to dip into its vast geospatial-data archive in exchange for access to the new products and services they create, like change-detection algorithms, hyperspectral imagery applications or automated ways to label objects in images.

Source: NGA director hopes to foster next “unicorn” by inviting innovators to feed at agency’s data trough – SpaceNews.com

How the U.S. Lost Its Mind

When I say that a third believe X and a quarter believe Y, it’s important to understand that those are different thirds and quarters of the population. Of course, various fantasy constituencies overlap and feed one another—for instance, belief in extraterrestrial visitation and abduction can lead to belief in vast government cover-ups, which can lead to belief in still more wide-ranging plots and cabals, which can jibe with a belief in an impending Armageddon.

Why are we like this?

The short answer is because we’re Americans—because being American means we can believe anything we want; that our beliefs are equal or superior to anyone else’s, experts be damned. Once people commit to that approach, the world turns inside out, and no cause-and-effect connection is fixed. The credible becomes incredible and the incredible credible.

Source: How the U.S. Lost Its Mind – The Atlantic

Radio navigation set to make global return as GPS backup, because cyber

The eLoran system gets its enhanced accuracy in much the same way that enhanced GPS gear squeezes greater accuracy out of the civil GPS signal for tasks such as surveying and mapping—by using differential correction. A stationary receiver at a known fixed location checks the signal arriving from the beacon and measures the difference between its actual distance from the beacon and the distance calculated from the signal (based on the difference between the signal’s timestamp and the time it was actually received).

Source: Radio navigation set to make global return as GPS backup, because cyber

How to Read a Map

Any good map will tell you how to read itself. Take the above legend from a standard USGS quadrant map. From left to right, it gives you information on where and when the map data was compiled, the area’s magnetic declination, the scale (note the contour interval below it), the location of the shown area in relation to the state it’s in (in this case, Texas), and a key to the symbols used to represent roads. Let’s look at what this information represents and how you can use it.

Source: Outside Online: How to Read a Map

GeoNotebook

This is so awesome; Jupyter and GIS together!

GeoNotebook is an application that provides client/server environment with interactive visualization and analysis capabilities using Jupyter, GeoJS and other open source tools. Jointly developed by Kitware and NASA Ames.

Documentation for GeoNotebook can be found at http://geonotebook.readthedocs.io.

The Rise and Fall of the ‘Freest Little City in Texas’

For the last few years, Von Ormy has been in near-constant turmoil over basic issues of governance: what form of municipal government to adopt, whether to tax its residents, and how to pay for services such as sewer, police, firefighters and animal control. Along the way, three City Council members were arrested for allegedly violating the Open Meetings Act, and the volunteer fire department collapsed for lack of funds. Nearly everyone in town has an opinion on who’s to blame. But it’s probably safe to say that the vision of the city’s founder, a libertarian lawyer whose family traces its roots in Von Ormy back six generations, has curdled into something that is part comedy, part tragedy.

Source: The Rise and Fall of the ‘Freest Little City in Texas’

11 Geographic Markers That Are Totally Inaccurate

In some cases, the identifying plaque or signpost was simply placed at some convenient spot close to the actual point. In other cases, these cartographic frauds show just how hard it is to accurately measure the globe. The constant shift and movement of the land, along with administrative changes like labeling new regions or redrawing borders can send calculations tumbling. At the same time, our methods of measurement have evolved through the years, calculating slightly different spots with each technological advancement.