Which mapping app can avoid narrow roads in Europe? And which can provide walking directions that avoid dangerous neighborhoods in the U.S.?

by philg

We used Google Maps in Portugal. It made quite a few absurdly bad routing decisions. To save a theoretical minute or two it would send our Mercedes E class sedan down roads narrower than a North Carolina dentist’s driveway. We were constantly terrified that a car would appear coming the opposite direction and that we’d be forced to stop suddenly and then back up to a rare section wide enough for two cars to pass. When shown these routes, the locals said that they would never drive along those roads for transportation despite most of them having narrower cars and better driving skills than a Floridian lulled into complacency by textbook highway engineering. Below is a segment from a suggested Google Maps route for our rental car (#2 after the first E class melted down). I don’t think that our Sixt rental agreement says anything about driving up or down stairs, but the road was definitely narrower than the car:

Where was this road, you might ask? In one of my favorite towns in Portugal: Covide!

Is there a mapping app that is smarter about getting around Europe without scraping?

Related question for the U.S.: is there an app that will calculate walking directions to avoid dangerous neighborhoods? Or calculate directions and score the walk with a danger level? This tweet from a former Googler suggests that Google will never do it:

(His/her/zir/their reasoning is that sending pedestrians via a scenic route will lead to “spatial inequality” because the nicer areas tend to be richer.)

WalkSafe seems to have the crime rate information, but I’m not sure that it will provide turn-by-turn directions to a pedestrian.

Here’s a street in front of an AirBnB that we rented in Amarante, Portugal (very pleasant town!):

(The host said to navigate to a nearby parking lot and walk the rest of the way.)

I don’t have a good illustration of a crime-ridden street in Portugal because the country is one of the safest in the world and every tourist attraction seems to be in a safe area.

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Portugal Trip Diary 3

by philg

Wrapping up some of the sights of Lisbon…

We happened to be there on the evening of June 12, i.e., the night before the Festas de Santo António, patron saint of the city and of marriages. A massive parade assembles on the main avenue around 8 pm and goes until after midnight. Here is a smartphone video of one group:

It’s a respectful peaceful crowd (not “mostly peaceful”, American-style!) and if you’re 6′ tall you can get a decent view without paying for a seat in the grandstands, but you’d probably want to buy a ticket if you were serious about watching the entire event.

We hit our third botanical garden of the trip, this one right in the middle of the city: Estufa Fria. The main section is a “lath house” that enables shade-and-water-loving plants to thrive in Lisbon’s sunny dry climate. These would be great for people with big Florida back yards, though making them strong enough to get through hurricanes is likely a challenge.

After strolling through Lisbon’s monthlong book fair…

… the next stop was the Calouste Gulbenkian museum, left behind by the guy who sowed the seeds for a lot of wars by setting up what became the Arab oil industry.

After that, we went to the bullfighting ring, which wasn’t too exciting because the museum listed in Google Maps no longer exists, the ring itself can’t be seen except during bullfights, and the underground shopping mall isn’t too exciting.

Next stop: the most expensive grocery store in Portugal, which is inside the Spanish department store El Corte Inglés. One could very happily live inside this department store, which features a variety of restaurants on the top floor, many with outdoor terrace seating. I paid about $5 for a sandwich, coffee, and mineral water at the most basic of these restaurants (advertised as a “cafeteria” but you sit down and a waitress takes the order and brings the food and drink to your table).

Even when you try to waste money on groceries in Portugal, the final bill always seems to be half of what you’d expect to pay at Whole Foods back in Palm Beach County. Below are some priced items. Note that gourmet-ish coffee is about $5 for 220g (7.7 ounces).

Not everything in the store was a bargain. Here’s a 600-euro toaster:

For the Formula 1 fans, a 5000-euro Bluetooth speaker that weighs less than 10 lbs.:

I would rather have this 700-euro Sony MHC-V73D that looks like a Lost in Space robot and surely can provide much richer sound:

I checked out the specs and it looks as though this 47 lb. splash-proof (vomit-proof?) device is intended for parties and also can support karaoke.

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84-year-old Nancy Pelosi says that 81 is too old to be a government worker

by philg

“Pelosi Suggests That Biden Should Reconsider Decision to Stay in the Race” (New York Times):

Representative Nancy Pelosi, a longtime Biden ally and the former speaker, is the most senior member of his party who has so far suggested he consider dropping out.

Ms. Pelosi, 84, a longtime ally of the 81-year-old Mr. Biden and one of the most seasoned and cutthroat politicians in the House, has been more aggressive in her public comments about the president’s candidacy than other party leaders, who have publicly stated only that they remain behind him.

The 84-year-old is “seasoned” and “aggressive” (like Mindy the Crippler, our golden retriever?) while the 81-year-old is too old to work for the federal government.

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Gaza: 50,000 pregnant women in October 2023 and 50,000 babies born since October 2023

by philg

From the United Nations, October 17, 2023:

UNFPA estimates there are 540,000 women of reproductive age living in Gaza, among whom 50,000 are currently pregnant, and 5,500 are expected to deliver in the next month.

From the United Nations, July 9, 2024:

We are informed that there has been a “genocide” in Gaza and also that approximately 50,000 pregnancies from October turned into approximately 50,000 babies.

In case the above tweet disappears into a memory hole:

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New York Times investigative team digs up the truth about the world’s largest rocket

by philg

Frontiers of Journalism: “Wildlife Protections Take a Back Seat to SpaceX’s Ambitions”.

A New York Times investigation found that Elon Musk exploited federal agencies’ competing missions to achieve his goals for space travel.

The investigative team first figured out that blasting off the world’s largest rocket can be disturbing or harmful to nearby animals:

As Elon Musk’s Starship — the largest rocket ever manufactured — successfully blasted toward the sky last month, the launch was hailed as a giant leap for SpaceX and the United States’ civilian space program.

Two hours later, once conditions were deemed safe, a team from SpaceX, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a conservation group began canvassing the fragile migratory bird habitat surrounding the launch site.

The impact was obvious.

The launch had unleashed an enormous burst of mud, stones and fiery debris across the public lands encircling Mr. Musk’s $3 billion space compound. Chunks of sheet metal and insulation were strewn across the sand flats on one side of a state park. Elsewhere, a small fire had ignited, leaving a charred patch of park grasslands — remnants from the blastoff that burned 7.5 million pounds of fuel.

Most disturbing to one member of the entourage was the yellow smear on the soil in the same spot that a bird’s nest lay the day before. None of the nine nests recorded by the nonprofit Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program before the launch had survived intact.

Based on the 2000′ scale, it looks like SpaceX has trashed or burned roughly one square mile of land in Elon’s Fool’s Errand to Mars (TM). That leaves only 268,820 square miles of Texas that SpaceX hasn’t trashed or burned (more like 261,193 square miles if one counts only the land area).

(Note that the launch operations at Cape Canaveral have been tremendously beneficial to wildlife because they’ve prevented humans from developing the areas near the pads. Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge was set up in 1963 in tandem with the launch pads. If you do a tour of the Kennedy Space Center the density of birds, gators, etc. is similar to what you find in Everglades National Park. I’m confused as to how the area escaped intensive development prior to NASA’s arrival. Wikipedia provides only a bit of history.)

SpaceX did respond to the article…

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Will American college students give up alcohol, pet dogs, and skimpy clothing in order to welcome Gazans?

by philg

One common demand from the encamped righteous has been that colleges bring in more students from “Palestine” (example in Oregon; state-sponsored NPR gives us an example from New Jersey). If we look at photos from Gaza, however, we don’t see people who dress and act like American college students. Nobody is drinking alcohol. Nobody has a pet dog (“Islam forbids Muslims to keep dogs,”). Females don’t go out without being well covered in hijab and long dress (to do otherwise would be to dress like a prostitute (BBC)). Here’s an example from UNRWA (they provided 3 million medical consultations to 2.3 million Gazans during 6 months of war, which means that it is easier to get in to see a doctor in Gaza during wartime than in the U.S. during peacetime):

Lets have a look at the encampments. Here’s one at the University of Coimbra, founded in 1290:

There were about 10 protesters (out of 25,000 students total at Portugal’s oldest university) and at least two of them had pet dogs. In the photo above, a dog is not only kept as a pet, contrary to Islam, but is allowed to walk on the sacred Palestinian flag.

Here’s the encampment at Brown:

Instead of hijabs, students who appear to identify as “female” are wearing halter tops, showing cleavage, etc.

How are students from Gaza supposed to feel welcome in this debauched environment? Shouldn’t the pro-Hamas college students demand that administrations ban alcohol (including for those over 21, e.g., at faculty and alumni events), ban immodest dress, and ban dogs from their campuses?

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How does the EU stay together when France and the eastern nations have such different goals?

by philg

France, the second largest economy in the EU, has voted for central planning and to maximize low-skill immigration (the glass ceiling for female leaders that Marine Le Pen hoped to shatter was apparently made from Florida-style hurricane laminates). That’s the right of voters in a democracy (maybe we’ll see the same thing here in November), but it seems confusing that France can be part of the same political entity, with a lot of share policy, as the eastern European nations whose citizens prefer a market economy and to exclude low-skill immigrants (short of a cataclysmic war, the biggest imaginable transformational force for any country).

How can a Eurocrat in Brussels set a policy that will be accepted by both Estonia and France, for example?

From the Iranians: “During the victory rally of the left coalition in the French parliamentary elections’ second round on Sunday evening, supporters of the left coalition and social democrats held more Palestinian flags than French flags.”

As a Muslim nation (as measured by number of hours devoted to religious observance) and one with a highly centralized and powerful government, maybe France would fit better into the Arab League? Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya was in the Arab League and implemented an Arab-Islamic Socialism.

Note that Science proves that what France needs is a larger role for government in its economy and more low-skill immigration. “Scientists relieved by far-right defeat in French election” (Nature magazine):

RN had been tipped to achieve a majority after winning the first round of voting on 30 June, and scientists feared that this could spell cuts for research budgets, restrictions on immigration and the introduction of broad climate scepticism into France’s lower house of parliament, the National Assembly.

Here are immigrant Scientists learning French back in 2018 (arabnews.com):

Why do they need to learn French if English is the international language of Science? “‘At least half of Paris crime is committed by foreigners,” said Macron (Le Monde), but it is unclear if he meant PhD biologists were perpetrating crime or PhD chemists.

Related (all from France’s “greatest living writer”):

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A Buddhist garden in Portugal

by philg

The question of Where are the gardens and museums created by the Silicon Valley rich? remains open. If any of the tech elite, many of whom claim to be Buddhist or Buddhist-adjacent, want to build something delightful for the peasants, an 85-acre Buddhist garden in Portugal could be inspirational.

Bacalhôa Buddha Eden is about one hour north of Lisbon and seems to have been created relatively recently by Joe Berardo (only “getting by” by Silicon Valley standards, with a fortune of around $1 billion):

“The oriental garden with around 35 hectares of land was created as a reaction to the destruction of the Buddhas of Banyan, in which one of the greatest acts of cultural barbarity took place, erasing masterpieces of late-period Gandhara art.”

(The Banyan Buddhas were carved around 600 AD. Arabs conquered and colonized Afghanistan beginning around 700 AD. The Islamic government of Afghanistan destroyed the Banyan Buddhas in 2001.)

The garden has a nice cafe right in the middle of its hilly terrain and operates a tractor-pulled shuttle for the lazy and/or mobility-challenged.

The garden contains a good “after” statute of the tourist who spends a lot of time in Portugal’s pastelarias:

The amphitheater is surrounded by tile figures that have an interesting design in which the border tiles are cut and the stucco meets them on curve:

I would love to have this on the stucco exterior of our house. There would be a golden retriever chasing a rabbit, a golden retriever trying to climb a squirrel-containing tree, and a golden retriever leaping to catch a rubber ball.

I’m particularly envious of the garden’s stone lantern collection. These are difficult to buy in the U.S. because a small one costs $1500 and takes a year to sell. Consequently, garden stores don’t like to stock them.

The garden also has at least three ponds containing ornamental koi.

Putting this here for future inflation researchers: admission was 6 euros/adult and kids 12 and under were free. Use of the fake train was extra. Popular wine at the exit shop was 2.29 euros per bottle:

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Is this the month when Europeans stop speeding?

by philg

Loyal readers may remember my proposal to Save lives by limiting cars to 35 mph? (apply coronalogic to other situations in which human lives are at risk)

Maybe European readers can tell us if this is the month when Europeans begin to follow the Science. Back in 2022, Autoweek said “Anti-Speeding Tech Is Now Mandatory In European Union” and would apply to all new cars sold starting in July 2024:

The peasants still have some freedom, according to the article, but that could be fixed with an over-the-air software update:

The speed control function goes one step further by cutting power input from the pedal once the speed limit is reached. It’s important to note that drivers can override all four of these systems, either by acknowledging the audible or vibrating warnings or by pushing harder on the accelerator in the case of the haptic feedback or speed control function.

The same over-the-air update could impose my dream 35 mph (55 kph) limit and “save lives like a Fauci” (TM).

Separately, the speed nanny has supposedly already been in new-design cars in Europe for a year or two. Is there already statistical evidence that the hoped-for reductions in accidents/deaths have occurred? (Might be a little challenging to tease out of the data because newer cars in general might not have the same propensity to get into accidents compared to older cars (as with guns, it isn’t the driver who should be blamed, but the car).) If not, should we be skeptical about this new tech? A dramatic effect was predicted and shouldn’t be difficult to find if the prediction was true. (Though another confounder is that traffic gets worse in Europe every year and it is tough to be involved in a serious accident when you’re crawling along at 5 mph, working your way in between migrants’ tents and all of the pro-Hamas demonstrators.)

Our personal experience with the AI speed overlord wasn’t promising. Our almost-new rented Mercedes E 300de, which reliably started for two entire days (compare to 25 years for Toyota and Honda minivans), was consistently wrong when it came to determining a reasonable speed. When merging into traffic on the highway, for example, it would decide that a former limit of 50 or 60 kph applied and would issue frantic warnings about our 80-90 kph speed as we joined 120 kph traffic. It wasn’t smart enough to use front and rear cameras to see that the car was keeping up with traffic. When on scary narrow roads in little villages, the speed overlord would suggest blasting through at 90 kph. Most of the time, but not all of the time, the speed overlord’s displayed speed limit would be consistent with what Google Maps was showing. The audio warnings could be disabled by pressing and holding a mute button the steering wheel and we nearly always had to do that. The 10-year-old said “Let me get into the front seat so that I can give ‘Hey, Mercedes’ a piece of my mind.”

Related:

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What was so bad about Joe Biden’s debate performance?

by philg

After four years of celebrating Joe Biden as one of America’s smartest and sharpest residents, the New York Times watched one TV show and decided that the former Savior of our Democracy was too feeble-minded to run for reelection (but it is okay for him to be Commander in Chief of the world’s largest military for another six months?).

I was mostly peacefully sleeping in Portugal when the debate happened, but the kids asked to see some of it so we cued up a highlights reel for them this evening. Now I’m even more confused. Biden behaved exactly like the Democrats I know in Massachusetts, New York, and California. Given the slightest prompt, he expressed rage about Donald Trump supposedly having sex with a paid female 20 years ago, “lying”, or saying something outrageous. I’ve heard plenty of 20-to-65-year-old Democrats respond in exactly the same manner.

I’ve also poked around in a transcript of the debate and can’t find anything in the wider event that seems unusual. If anyone questions the wisdom of open borders in a cradle-to-grave welfare state at a gathering in Cambridge, MA, the Harvard graduates come back with a prepared script of anti-Trump talking points: sex with porn star, praised Nazis as “fine people”, is a convicted felon, is a racist, will end our democracy, etc. The talking points have no relevance to the policy question, e.g., whether the border should be open or whether the working class should be forced to pay back student loans for college graduates. Joe Biden stumbles over his words more than a 25-year-old Harvard graduate would, but he conveys the same scripted anti-Trump message.

I was, actually, more surprised by what I saw of Donald Trump in the video. I hadn’t seen a video of him since 2020, I think, and it was remarkable how little he’s changed. God loves Trump and is preserving him for some reason known only to Him/Her/Zir/Them?

One thing that I was pleased to see in the transcript was Biden repeating his prophecy of doom for the human race:

He had not done a damn thing with the environment. He – out of the Paris Peace Accord – Climate Accord, I immediately joined it, because if we reach for 1.5 degrees Celsius at any one point, well, there is no way back. The only existential threat to humanity is climate change. And he didn’t do a damn thing about it. He wants to undo all that I’ve done.

Humanity is on track to be wiped out, in other words, but there is no need for Democrats to rush into congestion pricing, no need to cut back on importing humans from low-carbon economies into our high-carbon economy, no reason to redirect almost all federal spending into solar cells and windmills, and no reason to lock Americans down to prevent CO2 emissions from unnecessary trips. (We had lockdowns to fight a virus with the potential to kill a small percentage of old/sick people, but we shouldn’t do anything significant about a situation in which 100 percent of humans might die, including the young and healthy.)

Separately, what if Donald Trump should win and our democracy actually does, therefore, end? Our local Palm Beach County library is preparing both Black and white patrons for the (horrifying) possibility:

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