Skip to main content
Topic: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?  (Read 125863 times)

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #325
Cute map, but it has not been updated to show that Pärnu line has been discontinued since the end of 2018.

At the same time, there's a dashed line indicating the projected Rail Baltic. So somebody behind the map is optimistic about the future, but not very realistic about the present,


Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #327


From latest Eurobarometer. Some colourisation mistakes. The numbers match, but several countries should have darker colours.

.


Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #328
A test question @jax

61% in Germany. 62% in Estonia. What explains the fact that the numbers are so low and so close to each other, compared to 83% in Lithuania and 90% in Finland?

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #329
They are slightly above European average (60%), though lower than their neighbours. Likewise Netherlands and Portugal are higher (must be their tea shipping tradition). I didn't expect non-NATO neutral Ireland to be this high on a "military equipment" question.

You cannot really tell on a single poll question. These are agree/disagree questions, and people could disagree for a number of reasons. EU gives too little, EU gives too much, EU gives the wrong things, it shouldn't be the EU doing the giving, they might be against EU itself etc. It could simply be "I don't care".

Put together with other information, "don't care" does not seem to be the major issue (though many think military assistance is wrong on principle, thus this score lowest).

Generally it seems to correlate with pro-Russian sentiments in a sizeable minority, offset by a pro-Ukrainian majority. This minority could be political, regional, ethnic or all of the above.

Germany has gotten over its long-ingrained pacifism, but the far left and far right are significantly more pro-Russian, and these parties and pro-Russian sentiments in general are strongest in the former East Germany. Older Germans often feel some gratitude to Russia for not causing trouble during reunification, or an allegiance to Ostpolitik. Younger Germans are more likely to see today's Russia as a threat to Europe.

In the Baltic States there are large differences between majority and minority attitudes to Russia. This particularly applies to the Russian minority, which is relatively much larger in Estonia and Latvia than in Lithuania.

In former Warsaw Pact countries there is a correlation of pro-Russian/anti-Ukrainian sentiments and nationalism, and with old age.

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #330
This particularly applies to the Russian minority, which is relatively much larger in Estonia and Latvia than in Lithuania.
This is the correct answer. (Everything else is rather irrelevant.)

Estonia and Latvia have to deal with a sizeable bunch of actual Russians inside our own borders. This particular issue is sharply dividing the country along ethnic lines.

I find polling in the EU, by the EU, pretty atrocious. Now, this Ukraine issue is of course appropriate material for polling, but the other day a report about the livability of cities was published. The obvious problems:
- It's based on polling, asking what people think. Isn't livability objectively measurable, such as number of kindergartens/schools per parents etc?
- It is a weird selection of cities. From Nothern Europe nd Baltics they take just the bare ridiculous minimum, i.e. the capitals, while there are many cities from Central and Southern Europe, and also cities from countries outside the EU, from countries that will never become the EU (Turkey).
- The results are very off. Number ten in overall ranking is Cluj-Napoca. I have been there. I know what kind of city it is. Number one is Zürich. I have been there. I know what kind of city it is. There are subjectively (since this report is subjective) easily better, nicer, prettier, cleaner, better-managed cities with denser amenities in both countries. There must have been a weird slice of population who got polled, such as EU interns' own kitchen pals or such.

When making an objective report, it should be possible to measure all cities (of the EU), or all cities starting with a certain size. In this case apparently the goal was not to get an objective report out, to learn something from the data, but just to conjure up some nonsense regardless of the damage it causes in those who stumble on the nonsense that has an official stamp on it.

When you do a report, stupid EU, do it thoroughly and properly, fairly and objectively. But clearly you are not able to do it, so get replaced by ChatGPT.

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #331
It's based on polling, asking what people think. Isn't livability objectively measurable, such as number of kindergartens/schools per parents etc?
I partially disagree with that. At best you might leave things on the table, at worst you'd risk measuring in the wrong direction. Asking people could act as a sanity check for whether something like the number of kindergartens/schools per parents actually does what you think it does.

But I see where you're coming from of course. For example Dublin shows up as people being very satisfied with the noise level. From personal experience I can say that Groningen, ranked slightly lower on that list, is tremendously quieter than Dublin. It's been over a decade since I visited, but this noise map doesn't suggest it's become any quieter: https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2023/03/18/tyres-road-surfaces-and-speed-being-considered-in-noise-reduction-plans/ Similar notes clearly apply to many of the categories.

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #332
For example Dublin shows up as people being very satisfied with the noise level. From personal experience I can say that Groningen, ranked slightly lower on that list, is tremendously quieter than Dublin. It's been over a decade since I visited, but this noise map doesn't suggest it's become any quieter: https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2023/03/18/tyres-road-surfaces-and-speed-being-considered-in-noise-reduction-plans/ Similar notes clearly apply to many of the categories.
Yes, this is the point that I am making. The method we (you and I) apply here is anecdotal, but let's not underestimate this, because it *is* objective. We want a city to be objectively livable, on your example quieter, not quiet in the opinion of locals who have suffered noise for so long that they don't notice it any longer and it does not occur to them to complain about it. In some places the polled people may think à la, "Oh, this is the EU asking questions. I better make my home town look fantastic" just like Russians who see on TV that their economy is doing brilliant, so it is not worth a mention that they have to burn their boots and pieces of old furniture to warm up their home.

This is a report on the regional policy website of the EU, so definitely some EU regional policy kommissar looks at it and decides, "Romanians are catching up nicely. Good job!" This is the important reason to have objective measures, to get from our anecdotal observations to more adequate auditing, so that EU's regional policy would not be as terrible a systemic failure as its geopolitics is. But alas, they are shooting themselves in the foot with a machine gun in both areas.

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #333
Incidentally noise data does seem to be fairly readily available for some cities.

https://gemeente.groningen.nl/geluidkaarten-voor-omgevingslawaai-inzien in the PDF file "Vaststelling geluidskaarten 2021"

Also available more dynamically on http://www.icinity.nl/ but that's a bit harder to navigate.

Compared to the Irish map, also available at https://gis.epa.ie/EPAMaps/ which is somehow even harder to use, it looks to me like it has many more roads at over 70 dB while it seems their equivalents in Groningen are mostly at 65-70 dB, with slightly fewer at that level.

While I'm at it, here are the noise maps for Flanders:
https://omgeving.vlaanderen.be/nl/klimaat-en-milieu/gezonde-veilige-en-aantrekkelijke-leefomgeving/geluid/geluidsbelastingskaarten

And here's one for North-Holland:
https://geoapps.noord-holland.nl/app/geluidsbelasting/

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #334
Hospitality map of Europe.



Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #335
That map is severely lacking in context. All I can say is that it smells grossly inaccurate, unless they mean something more subtle. For example, it's conceivable that we don't shove food in people's faces at 14 o'clock while down south they insist you should stuff yourself even though you probably just ate lunch.

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #336
In my experience, the map is quite accurately indicative of several cultural differences. First, when you are a guest for at least half an hour, you invariably get tea/coffee/juice/water suggested  everywhere outside the red area. In dark blue areas, this invariably includes wholesome snacks like sandwiches. In red area, a similar suggestion may (or may not) come up when you are a guest for half a day or so.

"Suggested" is different from "shoved in your face" but it is true that there are cultures where you cannot always refuse. For example when offered vodka in Russia, there is hardly a way out.

Also, in blue areas it seems to me that there is hospitality and liberal sharing when the guest brings nothing of his own. In red areas it is expected, e.g. when there is a party, everyone bring own drinks. In other areas it is more common that the host offers everything—the guest may suggest his own inputs, and depending on the culture/situation these suggestions are either happily accepted or politely declined.

(Edit: In some places in the dark blue area where I have been, it is expected that the guest suggest his own input and enter into an argument about it for a minute or so. It is not about the guest's input, but the guest making the suggestion and going through an argument about it. It is considered impolite to fail to make the suggestion and impolite to drop the argument too quickly. Tricky one, I know.)

And finally, nobody except the red area people are puzzled about what the "context" of this kind of map might be.

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #337
First, when you are a guest for at least half an hour, you invariably get tea/coffee/juice/water suggested  everywhere outside the red area.
I don't know where you'd come up with the idea that we don't offer anything to drink. :)

In dark blue areas, this invariably includes wholesome snacks like sandwiches.
As stated, that depends on the time of day. If you expect sandwiches at 14:30 you could be disappointed, though there'll be a variety of snacks and pastries.

In red areas it is expected, e.g. when there is a party, everyone bring own drinks.
Umm… what? [Edit: that's not to say that what's called a potluck in English doesn't exist but I think the default is that there's a host.]

And finally, nobody except the red area people are puzzled about what the "context" of this kind of map might be.
I asked what the context was because it's either nonsense or it's talking about something specific.

Edit:
For example here is a Danish person discussing the same map, doesn't really sound any different either https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/vz9a5d/will_you_receive_food_as_a_guest_at_someones_house/
Quote
Yes, ofc. It is seen as basic decency and hospitality. Ofcourse you're not going to be offered to stay for dinner up-front if you arrive ~1 pm., but when dinnertime approaches, it is normal that people offer their guests to stay for dinner. Or if you visit around lunchtime, and the host hasn't had lunch, it is common to ask the guests to join for lunch.

What would the alternative be? Just have your guests seated at the table, but without offering them food?

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #338
Seems to be some reverberations of Twitter #swedengate


I’m Swedish – it’s true that we don’t serve food to guests. What’s the problem?



(Basically, families don't feed other people's children, that would be imposing. Somebody with immigrant background described that as traumatising as a child. Add Twitter, and there we go.)

Scandinavians drink less coffee now, but it used to be impossible to enter any home without being offered a cup of coffee, probably with something aside (cake, waffle or whatever).

As children, when visiting my mother's home village we had to do the round to announce ourselves to the neighbours, meaning drinking something like 6-8 cups of coffee, so we were pretty caffeinated by the time we'd finished.

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #339
Quote
Times have changed, too – today, it’s a different story. In Sweden now, if you have one child who comes over, they would likely get food as well. It’s not so much the way it was 20, 30 or 40 years ago, when I was growing up. But even then, it really wasn’t the “big deal” people on Twitter are making it sound like it was. Everyone did it. You just continued playing with dolls (or whatever it was) while your friend ate with their mum and dad.
This particular scenario of sticking around while the family is eating does sound odd to me as a non-Swede. Here you'd leave to go home or you'd ask to eat along, and your friend's parents would normally ask about your dinner arrangements before making dinner. For lunch it's different because lunch is bread-based; that doesn't require any planning. I think there's also a factor of summer vs winter, which is to say parents generally want you to come home before it's dark.

But this does go back to my question as to what exactly the map is trying to say. If it's that by default we might head home around 17:30 to 18, while eating along is common enough but not the default, then that might be true. But I think that's something very different than what the map seems to be trying to imply.

 

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #340
Here you'd leave to go home or you'd ask to eat along, and your friend's parents would normally ask about your dinner arrangements before making dinner.
And of course you'd have to call your parents to ask if it's okay that you're not eating with them unless you arranged it in advance. They have meals to plan too.

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #341
It is a fairly unusual scenario. Children are supposed to be home for dinner, and if both families eat at roughly same time there would be no waiting around. Even when they don't, unless they are far from each other, it would as you said better to go home and meet later.

Only case I can remember is if other family already was eating when I arrived, then it would make sense to wait a few minutes till they were done.

Children flowing around houses aren't considered "guests" though. If they were actually travelling to someone, being brought somewhere else by adults, this would be different. In that case shared dinner would be in order, dependent on timing.

Of course families could arrange that a child would eat with the other family, but the child would likely consider that to be very awkward (but families and children vary).

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #342
Anybody here still likes maps?
Curators at The Map House in Kensington will mount the largest ever display of Beck’s manuscripts and draft designs, including a rare early proof of his first pocket map of the tube system. The drawing is annotated with his own edits and suggestions, including the tricky matter of whether or not to use the name Willesden Green (New Station), or the simplified Willesden Junction.


“Beck’s design totally changed the way people thought about making maps,” said Charles Roberts, curator of the show, Mapping the Tube: 1863-2023, which opens on 25 October. “Others had similar ideas, but he was the one who did it. The tube map really is something that deserves to be called iconic: it is even an international icon really, because so many people have used it as the basis of their own network designs.”


Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #343
The stylized map is more useful while you're on the metro, trying to figure out how many stops until you have to switch, but the geographical (also very clear) map is better for figuring out where you actually want to go.

I'm mainly curious if this is an Anglo- or even British-centric outlook on these maps. I have no idea what the Paris, Tokyo or Istanbul metro maps looked like for example.

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #344
Here is a good sequence of Paris metro maps https://www.lebonbon.fr/paris/news/le-metro-parisien-de-1905-a-aujourd-hui/

There is a clear evolution towards schematicity between the 1930 and 1939 samples. This is notable because in most respects the maps are the same, representing only the river, metro lines, station names, and city limits, but the 1939 map has more strictly straight lines and a distinctive logo. It seems evident that the latter was influenced by the newer London underground map design.

The basic building blocks of map design are said to be dot, line, and area. This sounds highly schematic, but I'd also add symbol, which can be a pictograph or a written name, as another usually required element. Once upon a time in last millennium when I was a boy and wrote a newspaper for the gang of boys of my village, I experientially discovered all the manners to design a map.[1] You literally have to select what to show and what not to show. Some of the village roads had bushes alongside, then fields or houses behind bushes, while other roads had houses or fences immediately at the road without any bushes. To draw the bushes or not? To draw the fences or not? Omit them all the way or selectively? To draw the roads as simple lines or to show somehow how wide each road is? I had to highlight some strategically important trees in otherwise plain areas, show some important clearings in otherwise forested areas. Such maps ended up being a network of roads/paths with mostly symbols around them. The best maps had a true representation of crossings of roads/paths, everything else — much of it in symbols — being relative to the road network without trying too hard to get the scale right.

For fun, here is a supposed map from stone age https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bronze-age-slab-oldest-known-map-europe-180977439/
It is designed only with dots and lines only, no symbols. It is not certain however whether it is indeed a map.

And here's a drawing titled "scenes of Tokaido" depicting locations on Tokaido, the most important road in early modern Japan https://ja.ukiyo-e.org/image/mfa/sc200306#&gid=1&pid=1
No dots or lines there, symbols and names all the way. And I'm fairly positive it can serve as a wayfinding tool, i.e. a map, as long as you don't err too far from Tokaido.
We were in a game war with the boys of the neighbouring village and the war naturally needed documenting and reporting all the way with hand-drawn photos and maps. Later in school we had a lesson to plot an actual chart to scale. And still later I briefly worked as a land surveyor too.

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #345
Schematics have their limits, as with the Tokyo rail map.



For the more complex cases you'd need something more dynamic and interactive, including switching between views, and particular your current needs.

Do you want an overview, getting from one place to another, or something else?

Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?

Reply #346
For the more complex cases you'd need something more dynamic and interactive, including switching between views, and particular your current needs.
I hate apps.

For the more complex cases one can make a set of maps, instead of a single map. In Helsinki and Stockholm there are public transit network maps for the region/län, another for the city, another for city centre, and more for different suburbses (or whatever the plural for it is), and even more per transit mode (tram, bus, metro) and finally also maps and schedules per line. All schedules in one is a thick book, but one or few lines that you need is thinner.

When you are in Tokyo for the first time, you'd have to locate yourself on that crazy metro network map and figure out your itinerary before stepping on the train. But once in the (hopefully correct) train, all you need is to keep watching above the doors for the station to step off at.