Even here in Europe where there are genuine left wing parties, where there’s proportional representation, where we have mistly functional education, labour class people are voting for folks who blame poor people and immigrants for everything that goes wrong. I think part of the blame is with tabloid style media and social media magnifying formerly fringe opinion. Just saying that having a real alternative for the populist right, might not be enough.

One of the things I read about that, is that people tend to take an “average position” between all the opinions they hear. It used to be that the opinions you’d hear would be based on serious media, and your close circles. But much of the media has gone to shit, and social media amplify crazy people because it’s good for engagement. So you end up hearing about the crazy position of lore as much as about the rational one. And that does influence a lot of people.

Glad you already learned this is probably nonsense. The wrong reasoning is very similar to much thought about overpopulation. The amount of people that makes for a place to be overpopulated is a function of how societies work and the technologies they have at hand. One extra issue there is that improvements in technology usually lead to population growth, so much progress gets cancelled out.

You know when we first started seeing growing populations and development of agriculture? When the climate started an exceptionally long stable period. Guess what’s going put of the window now? Planting for draught because that’s the “new normal” won’t get you far if the next year happens to be the wettest on record. Let alone that stronger storms than ever seen before aren’t exactly great for harvests either. And that’s just agriculture. Climate related disasters can wipe out key infrastructure, with unexpected consequences down the line (e.g. no car production because of a certain specific part of almost all cars comes from that one specific place). And then there’s the refugee problem on top of all that.

Yeah, the centre. But many places like this are half dead at the core, with car centered suburbs around it and shops in big malls along the roads. The difference with Spain is stark, where the old centres are usually still the actual heart of the village.

There’s millions of Venezuelans in Colombia, Ecuador and further South. But their options there are for more limited than in the US.

The bobiverse is quite enjoyable if you’re looking for some light, good natured space fun. The story is pretty original.

Didn’t he basically campaign with this?

There’s another free OSM based app that does have some traffic data, it’s called Magic Earth. Not open source though, as their business model is to sell adapted versions.

What does the size of the country have to do with it? Which good big and bad small countries are you talking about?

I think EveryDoor requires some relatively deep understanding of OSM before actually being a useful tool. So edits like this should be rare with that tool. Many of the edits like this are from when MapsMe was very popular and suddenly introduced editing, without enough nuance in the process. Bad edits do happen everywhere, you need a good balance between people who data curation and newbies making beginner mistakes. In some places, there’s a lack of experienced people maintaining the data.

Are you just talking about the US? In the EU, the sale of fully electric cars has actually gone down (as a % of market share), mostly to the gain of hybrids. See for example https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2024/0829/1467243-european-car-sales/

Isn’t it as much about showing up to vote than about changing minds who to vote for?

Women are not even more dangerous than that they have to be

Eh sure, though only number 20 in the world when it comes to national legislation. But when it comes to quality of life or even life expectancy, the US could do so much better given its wealth. Mostly I’m just trying to point out the automatic patriotism you see so often in Americans, even the progressive ones.

More women as state leaders you say? So we might finally see female leaders in countries like India, Argentina, the UK, Pakistan, France, Turkey, Bangladesh, Ukraine or Germany if only the US would be the shining example to the world?! I’m sorry, but when it comes to social progress, the best the US can hope for is finally catching up. Any option to be exemplary was definitely gone by maybe the 1970s

In some places there are government basemaps available as well. These can be extremely accurate, up to centimeter precision. Of course they can be outdated or have mistakes too, and not all are as precise. So it’s hard to answer the question without knowing the location. Always vest to consult with local mappers about things like this.

I don’t see them…

Basically all countries that started having some economic growth since 1950 will have this spike effect. The countries that were already rich had a slow population transition, the other ones a fast one. The short version of that story is that in the latter child mortality went down slowly, and in the the former it was a quick proces. People take some time to adapt to this new reality, which means that for a shirt period of time 10 of 10 children will grow up to have kids of their own. After a while, the amount of children goes down to 2 or less, and growth stops. In Europe, this lade population multiply by two or three, in North Africa for example it can be up to times five or more. And in modern societies, this kind of growth tends to concentrate in cities.

As someone who lives under representative representation, I totally agree that FPTP should go. But being against that system doesn’t have to ve a leftist strategy. I think everyone who does not feel represent by the two big parties can get behind a change there. Pushing that idea across the spectrum could be helpful. It might even be an idea to start an alliance party with as only program point an overdue constitutional reform. You wouldn’t need other policies: simply reform & hold new elections as soon as possible afterwards