benjhm

My dog certainly has a theory of my mind, she's always out in front guessing where I'll go and happiest when she gets it right, or suggesting ideas when it seems I lack one.

Fine map, good to see the old names. But some of these routes are pretty impassable even today - for example I doubt the Wakhan corridor was ever a major route, even the bottom of that narrow valley rises above 4000m. And note Torugart pass (been there...) is north of Kashgar on the way to Issyk Kul (missing lake), not on the way to Osh. So, considering the mountains, I guess a larger fraction than indicated crossed the steppe further north - horses wouldn't need roads or cities, but it's easier.

If small crawling robots could replace all functions of tractors (incl herbicides/pesticides), then we could really see an efficient agricultural revolution!

Thanks for the tips. Indeed i noticed they become gradually more digestible (inulin->frutcose) as spring approaches, but then you can't store them - they grow...

Does anybody know how to make a brew from topinambours aka sunchokes aka 'jerusalem artichokes' (silly name) - that's all i've got too many of at this time of year ?

Nice article, many examples. Except that it’s not just mountain communities that depend on glaciers - those are a key source of water for the main rivers during the dry season, especially at the western (Indus) end of the Himalayas.
Of course India could be better prepared, but the government needs to show this is a priority, rather than temples and Hindutva.
Maybe regional state governments could do better ?
The article is right to say that 1.5C is only a political goal not deduction from physical-science, a target which the Indian government did not, afaik, explicitly support, despite pressure from all the smaller neighbouring countries which clearly did. India always emphasised equity in the climate negotiations, but too much from a point of view of equitable access to global atmospheric space (i.e. right to burn coal too, proportional to population). So they got lumped together with China which has hugely higher emissions (also higher per-capita than europe), rather than with the most vulnerable countries (especially in Africa) which will receive most of the adaptation funding.

[Edit after revisit...] It's nice to have a map-based interface. However, my expectation for a trans-europe-planner is to cross from one corner of europe to another, not to start by choosing one of only four cities within the centre - ok this is only a prototype example, but maybe not the best start-locations to illustrate the concept.
I can already go to DB site and get a long list of options from say Belgium to Poland, most with options to buy a through ticket, and can specify details like via station, transfer-time, train-types (although too few people know this is possible). However I can sometimes find more interesting or cheaper combinations by splitting the trip, consulting openrailwaymap to understand where are fast/slow/wiggly lines, or consulting a european night-trains map etc..
So there's great potential to blend this in one tool including such a route-map interface. However the current background map shows motorways and forests before it shows railways - and then road numbers ... why not build on openrailwaymap and/or opentopomap (or even better but less standard - a vector-map instead of tiles) as a base ? This could help people discover smaller railways with fine views, including passes between mountains, or along coasts or river valleys. Don't just go for big famous cities.
Maybe the key innovation I see here is the parallel layout with blocks (trains) which can be dragged around to adjust timing - the lines indicating when trains depart are a clever way to condense info (although this does assume all have similar speed).

Useful compact image to explain to people who don't know the fediverse.
On the other hand, it makes me think - why are so many boxes necessary when we have activitypub? Why should anybody need to go to a different tool for each service, why no one-stop-shop software, at least for casual beginners?
(btw I'm aware mbin and friendica had that concept to some extent, but don't try to cover everything, and I fear that if they did and it took off, scaling-up might be an issue with such php-based stacks).
So, instead of re-implementing 2nd-hand concepts from big-tech, fediverse "killer-app" should be that you just need one identity in one place - you still have to choose that instance, it’s decentralised, but it can do more than any of those big-tech services.

Maybe stupid provocations by US can galvanise climate cooperation by rest of the world. I remember COP6 in Den Haag - which failed due to miscommunication between US (end of Clinton admin) and EU (within which, FR and UK failed to understand each other). Six months later at COP6bis, with the US then led by Bush administration (after blocking recounts in Florida) and similarly pulling out of Kyoto protocol, the rest of the world united against US, the deal was done and the whole COP went for a celebration party cruise down the Rhine (yes the numbers were smaller then, but the boat did feel a bit 'top-heavy').
Now, compared to then, US controls much smaller chunk of total emissions and GDP, and the technology transition has momentum. The bigger questions are whether India will follow a similar coal+concrete pathway as China, and eventually how Africa will evolve.

Can use Scala to gradually transition away from java - convert code module by module, interop just works, until eventually no java left, can then compile instead as js, native or even wasm (i recently tried this for my climate-system model which evolved from old java). Also, btw, made in europe, not big-tech, and scala3 looks more like python.

Is this also a double-source-trolleybus ? How much of Mexico has infrastructure ready for that ? Or are they pure battery, it's not clear to me (trolleybuses are still used a lot in eastern europe, also in switzerland, but i wasn't aware that was so in Mexico ).

Thanks for this explanation, better than anything i read in media. However, is it really plausible for the student-professor transitional government plan to happen ? (Maybe recent events in Bangladesh inspire hope, although that's a very different country). If they don't get this , but there is instead a "routine" election under SNS management, would most opposition participate or boycott again ? I guess like many countries in europe, the mood in villages is rather different from in cities ?