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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • The point is that GMT isn’t changing, the region is switching to an entirely different time zone, BST (British Summer Time). If your time is based on GMT, it won’t change due to British daylight saving time because GMT never changes.

    For a similar example, in the part of the US that uses Mountain Time, states observe MST (Mountain Standard Time) in the winter, and most switch to MDT (Mountain Daylight Time) in the summer. However, Arizona doesn’t observe daylight saving time, so they remain on MST. MST always stays the same (GMT-7), the time is only changing because the states are observing a different time zone. The same happens with GMT and BST, it’s just harder to see because you can’t pick out areas that remain on GMT all year.




  • Surely it can’t just be number present. It must be some proportion.

    Looking through the comments, it looks like it’s per 1000 Internet users.

    My question was mostly rhetorical, really, to make the point that without units listed on the map it becomes almost entirely useless. Sure, it gives some idea of proportion. I can tell that the US has more GitHub users in a certain group than Canada does in that same group, but it’s lacking a lot of context. What group (Internet users, per capita, etc.)? 11.5 out of how many (out of 100 would be significant, out of 10000 not so much).

    It shouldn’t be necessary for people to have to search through the comments to find this context. What if I want to share the map? Am I expected to caption it myself when I share it?

    Sorry to kind of go off, I know it’s not really that significant. But it’s such an easy thing to include units with your data, and I feel like it’s necessary to emphasize its importance in this community while it’s still young and developing.



  • I’d be willing to bet that for most Americans the main barrier to commuting by bike is the threat of cars and lack of bicycle infrastructure as a whole.

    I ride my bike to class often, and when I do it’s great. Well-maintained trails and frequent bike racks make it very convenient. My college is good with bicycle infrastructure, and I happen to be lucky that there are good trails between my apartment and campus. A faster ride would be nice, but I don’t see it making me bike more often. It wouldn’t affect the things that prevent me from biking on the days that I don’t: weather, time of day, or how I feel physically.

    Despite how much I bike to class, I’ve never biked to the grocery store, restaurants, or any other place that’s not on campus. This is because I’d have to ride on busy roads without bike lanes. Once you get closer to the center of the city, there are bike lanes, but they’re just painted. Actual separated bike lanes basically don’t exist in the US, which means that cyclists are still at risk of getting hit by cars even when bike lanes are present. A faster bike wouldn’t fix this. Investment in infrastructure would.

    I do understand the appeal of eBikes and I recognize them as a viable alternative to cars. But I only think people will make the switch if they live somewhere that’s already got the necessary infrastructure to make their commute safe and efficient. This is not even close to the majority of Americans. If we want people to move away from cars and toward bikes, we need to think of infrastructure first and the bikes themselves second.