tingilinde

moving towards a car-free city

Heidelberg and its environmentally conscious urban planning. Of course they run the risk of making the place extremely attractive and healthy. 

 

a (much) better flat map

Topology tells you a sphere can't be perfectly flatted - and that's a problem with 2d world maps.  Now Richard Gott,  Dave Goldberg  and Robert Vanderbei have used a new mathematical technique that turns the sphere into a two sided flat map with adjustments made to the features on both sides.  Here's a descrption.

a tip of the hat to Greg

And the paper is on the arXiv

 

 

Flat Maps that improve on the Winkel Tripel

J. Richard Gott III1, David M. Goldberg2, and Robert J. Vanderbei3 1. Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
2. Department of Physics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
3. Department of Operations Research, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

 

ABSTRACT
Goldberg & Gott (2008) developed six error measures to rate flat map projections on their verisimilitude to the sphere: Isotropy, Area, Flexion, Skewness, Distances, and Boundary Cuts. The first two depend on the metric of the projection, the next two on its first derivatives. By these criteria, the Winkel Tripel (used by National Geographic for world maps) was the best scoring of all the known projections with a sum of squares of the six errors of 4.563, normalized relative to the Equirectangular in each error term. We present here a useful Gott-Wagner variant with a slightly better error score of only 4.497. We also present a radically new class of flat double-sided maps (like phonograph records) which have correct topology and vastly improved error scores: 0.881 for the azimuthal equidistant version. We believe it is the most accurate flat map of Earth yet. We also show maps of other solar system objects and sky maps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ultrafast fashion

pure.mindless.comsumpion

snip

...

Erin Cullison, the U.S. public-relations rep for PrettyLittleThing, a fast-fashion brand founded in 2012, watched the girls give up and walk away. She sighed. Although the West Hollywood showroom closely resembles a store, it is not, in fact, a store. It is not open to the public; the clothes on the racks don’t have price tags. “People try to give us cash, but we’re not even set up to take money,” Cullison told me. Instead, the clientele is made up of the brand’s influencer partners—thousands of them—who can make an appointment to visit the showroom every couple of weeks and “get gifted.” They try on the latest styles and take advantage of various “photo moments”: lounging on the plush pink couch, posing on the pink staircase, peeking out of the London phone booth repainted—yes—pink. They can snack on a pink-frosted cupcake, and (provided they’re 21 or older) drink a glass of rosé at the store’s pink bar, before heading home with several items of free clothing.

...

 

redefining territories

What if regions were drawn so the closest capital city determines a region... 

 

 

 

a hands-free shoe

Nike designed this hands-free shoe after a teenager with cerebral palsy asked for athletic shoes for disabled people.

 

swiss cat ladders

Outdoor cats are a bad idea, but there are some curious designs here - maybe inspiration for some indoor structures?

 

 

carpenter to the rich

Working in a curious niche of the 0.1 percent. (via The New Yorker)

 

 

a disturbing mcmansion

taking  tacky to a new level

a tip of the hat to Anne-Helen

 

on the winchester mystery house

They rarely build them like that 

A bit different from other brief accounts I've come across.

a tip of the hat to Anne-Helen

 

 

80 years ago