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Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

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Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

#151

Post by thrower123 »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #40

I kinda wish that there was a timelapse for Google search. Search seems to be heavily biased towards stuff popular right now. It seems older things disappear fairly quickly. I've been in a position where I wanted to search for a website that was popular in 2012 without having the exact name, and having to find an old forum post that linked to it to find it.

I miss the ability to get the cached version of a page easily, without having to jump into the advanced search settings - if it is even possible to do that anymore, they may have pulled it completely.

Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

#152

Post by kubanczyk »

dint wrote: post #43
Spooky23 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overpopulation crowd is like a meta-NIMBY. People with high income, “concern” for various problems, and who are amused by their toys and aren’t family oriented usually fall into that position. Of course, like all NIMBY types, their consumption of air and Brazilian hardwoods is just fine.

This is a straw man. There are absolutely people who are concerned about both overpopulation, and individual overconsumption. I am one. I limit my personal carbon footprint. I do not own a car (and hopefully never will). I rarely eat meat. I live in a cheap, inefficient apartment because I'm living on a student income, but I keep the heat low to try to limit my energy consumption. I probably won't have kids, because…

Just for the sake of fun and clashing some worldviews, I am quite concerned that the population size will be shrinking.

As soon as some nation makes contraceptives economically available, the native population growth goes negative. Do you know many families with three children? Because that seems like a minimal number, no?

Immigrants who (1) come when younger, and further (2) have more children mask this problem a bit, but their supply is limited. (Sorry for my insensitivity, I'm not from The West myself.) The easy contraceptives will get to even poorest countries in a generation or two. There will be a Big Shrink before the narrative of fertility takes hold again.

Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

#153

Post by pmastela »

keithwhor wrote: post #61

What's really striking to me about timelapse videos of the Earth is how, at a grand enough scale, the growth of human settlements on Earth really looks no different than the growth of bacterial and fungal colonies on Petri dishes. We think of ourself as special, as having conquered environments, technology and more - and when zoomed out you could explain everything we've built and accomplished as the achievements of…

Here's a specific example of your slime mold hypothesis [1] in which a slime mold grew a network just like Tokyo's rail system.

Slime mold doesn't have the same ring as "rail network planning AI", but it seems that's what it is.

1: https://outline.com/t8hxKh (original: https://www.wired.com/2010/01/slime-mold-grows-network-just-...)

Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

#154

Post by Infernal »

mullingitover wrote: post #105
keithwhor wrote: post #61

What's really striking to me about timelapse videos of the Earth is how, at a grand enough scale, the growth of human settlements on Earth really looks no different than the growth of bacterial and fungal colonies on Petri dishes. We think of ourself as special, as having conquered environments, technology and more - and when zoomed out you could explain everything we've built and accomplished as the achievements of…

I think of humans as a form of fire uniquely cursed with the ability to see the beauty in what it's burning, and to feel bad about it.

I just wanted to let you know I really appreciate this idea - there is beauty in the layers of analogy.

Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

#155

Post by divbzero »

keithwhor wrote: post #61

What's really striking to me about timelapse videos of the Earth is how, at a grand enough scale, the growth of human settlements on Earth really looks no different than the growth of bacterial and fungal colonies on Petri dishes. We think of ourself as special, as having conquered environments, technology and more - and when zoomed out you could explain everything we've built and accomplished as the achievements of…

I suppose we would still be in the exponential phase [1] and haven’t yet reached the stationary phase or death phase.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacterial_growth

Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

#157

Post by cblconfederate »

keithwhor wrote: post #61

What's really striking to me about timelapse videos of the Earth is how, at a grand enough scale, the growth of human settlements on Earth really looks no different than the growth of bacterial and fungal colonies on Petri dishes. We think of ourself as special, as having conquered environments, technology and more - and when zoomed out you could explain everything we've built and accomplished as the achievements of…

life is fractal

Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

#159

Post by samstave »

OrbitRock wrote: post #39
dsaavy wrote: post #24

This is an incredible tool. I know there are other ways to look at timelapses of aerial views but this is just so easy and useable. Watching the change of specific suburban areas in the US brings a lot of negative emotions for me. Seeing what used to be green areas slowly transform into more suburban sprawl, I can't help but think of the number of species who experienced their ecosystem's walls closing in on them. As…

I’m into geospatial science, and I get so much aesthetic appreciation out of it. It is super artistic. The earth is beautiful!

Agreed, and great username.

I cant wait to see what everyone, including myself can create with this!

EDIT; This should be one of the most important augmenting data tools for Environmental Impact studies.

Take a site that was built at the beginning of this dataset - which had an EIS done, compare the results seen in this tool to the predictions in the EIS... and use that for MANY EIS which had some of the same impact or variables and see how the surroundings compare etc...

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