superqwert

That is certainly the implication :-

"Environmental website ecopassenger.org calculates that Greta’s train journey to Davos, Switzerland, emitted just 44 kilograms of CO2, compared to an expected 262 kilograms had gone by plane."

They are trying to suggest that she chose this trip, because it is environmentally better, but actually irrespective of her choice, there was most likely a total of emmission of 306kg of CO2.

There could certainly a benefit, if the aim is to just fund transport that is more efficient and less pollutant. However, as mentioned earlier, it is unclear how the calculation is made and whether it is actually true when considering the wider requirements for the services - e.g. maintenance.

Additionally, her environmental impact would only really be true if her flight was cancelled as a result of her taking the train. Is there evidence that this happened?

It is not exactly clear whether passenger flights are less environmentally friendly than various other options. Driving for long distances can be worse for the environment than flying commercially[0]. The article claims that Greta saved energy by travelling by train, but it is unclear how the method of calculation (ecopassenger.org) works, whether it considers that rail and road infrastructure requires far more energy and fuel for maintenance than the air and runway does and even the data entry is flawed, since you cannot change the load of plane and train separately, even though it is clear that flight operators often overbook planes, while trains often run with pretty low loads.

[0] http://www.umtri.umich.edu/our-results/publications/making-d...

"Goddamn right journalists should be above the law!" - so the Monarchy should not be above the law (Magna Carta), but journalists should?

The last people I would want to have additional privileges are journalists, who often love to create spin or ruin people's lives for a story.

I've tried to cancel a credit card and told I needed to withdraw all money first (I had +£5). I withdrew it, and asked them to cancel it again. They started processing, but by the time they had got anywhere, I'd acquired interest (1p) and they refused to cancel the card.

nice!

In fact, it seems for 53 that none of the lineStrings match the stopPointSequence lat/lons

but then... why would my query have matched your query in the cases of 389 and 631?!

Interesting! I wonder why the Line strings blob differs... Maybe it doesn't represent bus stops at all, but points at which the route changes for the purpose of drawing?

I think I've found the issue with the 11m distance - the 11m distance is:

[-0.126102, 51.502769] to [-0.126018, 51.502714]

What is happening is that the TfL sequence API is starting the bus route sequence on one side of the road of Parliament Street, before turning it around at the corner with Whitehall Place. The bus stops on either side of the road are very close together. Other maps/sequences elsewhere start the sequence at the end of Parliament Street, meaning the short distance is avoided.

The numbers on 389 and 631 agree with my post linked above to 3SF... Rerunning my previous query on 53 gets me:

min: 11.176937891670061

lq: 69.77607205565486

med: 147.79705350080133

avg: 219.3995096050874

uq: 291.84606245281907

max: 1121.239174918762

I wonder where you got your csv data from exactly? I found a csv (https://tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/stop-sequences-e...) that is labelled "The example feeds below are not updated and for demonstration purposes only".

For my query I called the route sequence API directly:

https://api.tfl.gov.uk/line/53/Route/Sequence/inbound

Using TfL open API

-----------------------------

389 inbound:

min: 24.14811016418819

lq: 63.13737031546762

med: 117.45915732519208

avg: 159.1719773263877

uq: 188.0955557392336

max: 845.60445291754

389 outbound:

min: 27.01945592261999

lq: 41.34298814984834

med: 117.00503319935248

avg: 146.97253048021068

uq: 167.28703169991314

max: 809.8962084249061

631 inbound:

min: 7.0860750640801

lq: 27.685480182275676

med: 104.91095883281287

avg: 128.12981380619047

uq: 218.11267557818746

max: 363.41330216008436

631 outbound:

min: 7.636546343123111

lq: 45.34651661429212

med: 105.97332735159804

avg: 135.50969372368004

uq: 203.01187569586028

max: 363.41330216008436

thanks for the link - very interesting!

Transport for London has the open tfl API - I'm gathering data from there

I haven't got the precise details yet - I've analysed about 20 bus routes so far and they have an average distance between stops of 128.4m. But till I scale up the analysis to all bus routes, I cannot say for certain that it is the London average.

I wonder how long the seeds will take to germinate. I have some seeds of a hardier and more common bamboo Chusquea culeou, which have been stratified in a variety of ways and put in moist soil for over half a year now - none have germinated yet. After getting worried, I've done some research and it turns out that many types of bamboo can spend years dormant in the ground, before suddenly shooting up and growing at incredible speeds.

Redux pretty much is CQRS + event sourcing, as applied using functional paradigms.

A while ago I built a system that would use a React CQRS plugin and provide optimistic concurrency - allowing really fast UIs at the expense of users having to deal with failed commands if a breaking error occurs:

https://github.com/MichalPaszkiewicz/cqrs-external-confirm

Again, even this has variations - Einstein's method of arriving at SR and GR differed entirely from the way experimental physicists arrived at QM

Of course, any number of subsets of the theory being disproved could falsify the super-set theory. But if there are two super-set theories, and you cannot falsify one over the other, then those collections are not falsifiable.

Some philosophers argue that all the subsets of evolution - genetics, mutations, natural selection could still support permanence of species with local changes. Until you can create an entirely new species in a laboratory without direct gene editing, there cannot be positive proof for evolution - but till that is done, there is no negative test that would disprove that evolution is the consequence of all its component hypotheses.

Personally, I don't see any reason to doubt evolution, considering it is neat and beautiful. But at the same time, I can see that it hasn't been built via the same scientific method seen in physics.

Have you actually read the article?

"Some philosophers and scientists have argued that there is no scientific method; they include physicist Lee Smolin and philosopher Paul Feyerabend (in his Against Method)"

And even the previous paragraphs are not complete either. It says there:

"Scientists then test hypotheses by conducting experiments or studies. A scientific hypothesis must be falsifiable"

Which is not necessarily true - for example, many arguments against the theory of evolution question whether it is a falsifiable theory (which is not saying that it is not true, but if there is no way to falsify it, how can it be said it is a scientific theory?). Many fields within Biology also have no predictive, but only descriptive power.

Scientists who stick to a rigorous scientific method, such as seen in physics would have to reject most other branches of science. For a realist to accept scientific results in multiple fields, they have to use some philosophical reasons to accept the differing methods as valid ways of exploring reality.

Which scientific method?

Scientific methods differ a lot between the sciences - especially between the physical and special sciences, for example.

Something I've found to be exceptionally good at helping with reading (I've been reading ~50 books a year for the past 5 years, on top of a full time job and family) is to use Goodreads - it gives you those short term endorphins when you can mark a book as read and can help it compete with all the other offerings of the world that reward you more hormonally.

Alternatively, if you don't want to use the tool, I would recommend getting a nice notepad to write in some short book reviews, which will give you your endorphins as you fill the book up more. And you get the additional benefit of being able to look back through your notes to see what you thought of various books and how your thought x time ago.

What does this mean: "Sometimes we need to acknowledge that our brain can cause us to do things we don't want to"?

Surely you mean "sometimes we do things we don't want to be doing"? Blaming it on your mind is rather strange. Your mind is part of you.

Server error

I would agree on position 1, but there are many different possibilities it were not true, such as if you were living in a simulation.

My point 2 was not supposed to mean that current theory was wrong as much as there (most likely will) be a more accurate better theory that will replace current ones. No-one disputes that (non-Microsoft) cell phones work. The problem lies on the philosophical side - Newtonian mechanics caused a big problem in that it was quite strongly suggestive of determinism. But more underlying theories, such as QM make the situation more difficult and complex. Assuming the current or fashionable theory of the time is correct is very likely to lead to a temporary or fashionable philosophy.

Position 3 - Science is an empirical study of reality - it cannot in any way explain why it is not some other reality, for example. If it is governed by logic/maths, unless every mathematical construct has physical existence (which is a rather weird and unrealistic idea), you cannot explain why this mathematical construct has existence and another does not. You may argue that other studies may be pointless, but you definitely cannot claim analytically and for certain that science can ever explain everything - so this is the point at which you are bringing in an unreasonable faith in this case. And science without study of philosophical implications is rather shallow and cannot give a reasonable mind satisfaction (not that philosophy is satisfying).

Google:

faith /feɪθ/Submit noun 1. complete trust or confidence in someone or something. "this restores one's faith in politicians"

So you may reconsider whether you are using a different definition of "faith" to the one you were reading

I think you may have a different understanding of "faith in science" than brobdingnagians. It could mean anything, such as:

1. A belief that the scientific method will definitely approach reality (a realist/pragmatist claim)

2. A belief that the current consensus is right - (but it could be disclaimed)

3. A belief that science will explain everything, so one could discard other studies, such as philosophy or theology.

Each of these positions can be disputed and may be wrong (especially since they were not acquired by the scientific method, but arrived at by philosophical thought), so to some extent you need some "faith" to accept these statements to be true.

I live in London and have a 1 hour commute by tube. I read even if I have to stand in a sweaty, crowded space. It helps with distracting me from the horrors of the journey.

It also means I get ~10 hours reading done a week, which has come to ~50 books/year for the last few years.

I read mostly non-fiction and usually they are textbooks on varied subjects (often not related to work). I feel this has vastly improved my understanding of the world and has meant I can talk to people about many various subjects, ones I would know almost nothing about otherwise.

The author has explained the problem with eventual consistency and the CAP theorem, but he is trying to blame the problem at least partly on CQRS/ES - the problem will exist independently of what pattern you use if your system is distributed.

CQRS/ES is a pattern and doesn't need to be shoe-horned into every solution.

I work at Transport for London and we have a CQRS/ES system for managing the data driven design data. It is synchronous and is incredibly useful for ensuring it has both strong business logic and a fast readable side, while providing auditing for free.

We still have problems with EC and CAP, and they are not due to CQRS/ES. Make the system distributed and you will have to handle all the new scenarios. Those are the trade-offs.

Technical concepts for writing code:

--------------------------------------

Clean Code (Robert Cecil Martin)

The Art of Unit Testing (Roy Osherove)

Head First Design Patterns (Elisabeth Freeman, Kathy Sierra)

Martin Fowler's blog: https://martinfowler.com/

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How to gather requirements and write business-readable code:

--------------------------------------

Domain-driven design (Eric J. Evans)

Implementing Domain-Driven Design (Vaughn Vernon)

Patterns, Principles, and Practices of Domain-Driven Design (Scott Millett)

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Remaining agile and managing your work according to your clients' needs:

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The art of doing twice the work in half the time (Jeff Sutherland)

The Mythical Man Month (Fred Brooks)