Catfood Earth 3.45 is now available to download. Catfood Earth for Android 1.60 is available on Google Play and will update automatically if you have it installed.
I only just released 3.44 with some timezone updates but in the past week the location I had been using for global cloud cover abruptly shut down. If you like up to date clouds you'll want to install the new versions as soon as possible. With this update I'm building a cloud image every three hours and serving through this blog (and thankfully CloudFlare) so any further changes should not require a code release.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Humpback Whales in Monterey Bay #photo#whales Photos of Humpback Whales in Monterey Bay from a whale watching boat trip.)
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, February 19, 2022.
Conway's Game of Life, for 1,830 generations, starting from a random pattern. Instead of showing the live cells this animation focuses on death - each dead cell gets a little bit greener with each generation. You can just about make out a few static patterns in the darkness and the lines cruising through are left behind by gliders. Mostly though you're watching the horrible loss of life caused by cellular social isolation.
Catfood Earth 3.44 is available to download. This version updates the timezone database to 2018i, moves to a new source for timezone mapping an fixes a bug in the volcanoes layer.
Youth turnout for elections is famously dismal. In 2016 less than half of 18-29 year-olds voted, compared to over two thirds as you get to 45 and older (US Census). The impact is an incentive to cater to the old - trying to make America great again (like you remember from when you were young) vs doing something about climate change or house prices.
One fix is compulsory voting, like in Australia. I'm not sure I want to force people without an opinion to vote though.
What if we just weighted votes by the total size of the demographic group?
I took the demographic breakdown of 2016 voters from the US Census Bureau and multiplied these by the age breakdown from CNN exit polls. This gave Clinton a lead of just under a million votes - somewhat lower than the actual result. This is likely a polling error in the exit poll, but it's a reasonable baseline with Clinton beating Trump in the popular vote by 48% to 47%.
To age weight the result I just applied the exit poll percentages to the total population in each age bracket - i.e. what would have happened if everyone in each age group voted the same way as their peers. This obviously increases the size of the electorate so absolute numbers are less interesting. Clinton now beats Trump 48% to 46%, possibly enough to reverse the electoral college outcome (I haven't attempted this projection state by state).
Making up for poor turnout is an interesting adjustment, but what about life expectancy? All of those baby boomers have plenty of free time to vote but are not going to be around to die of obscure tropical diseases in the Minnesotan jungle. So I also weighted each population segment by life expectancy (18-29 year-olds are going to be around for another 55 years, 65+ more like 7). Clinton now has a majority instead of a plurality - she beats Trump 50% to 42%.
All three models are shown in terms of total votes counted in the chart above.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Age and Life Expectancy Weighted Voting #politics#politicalreform What if we solved the youth turnout problem by weighting election results by demographics, or to be completely fair by life expectancy as well.)
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, February 19, 2022.
Shot from the Marin headlands, the Golden Gate Overlook and near Fort Point. I used an RX10 IV with an ND3.0 filter. Raw images were captured every four seconds with a one second exposure time. Edited with LRTimelapse and scored with Filmstro Pro.
I was expecting a pretty sunny day but ended up with regular showers and some pretty wild swings between sunshine and cold soggy overcast weather. I think the occasional raindrop and the mood swings work quite well, although the wind caused a bit of wobble on the long zoom onto the deck of the bridge.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Golden Gate Bridge Timelapse #timelapse#ggb#video Time lapse of the Golden Gate Bridge shot from the Marin headlands, the Golden Gate Overlook and Fort Point in San Francisco, CA.)
Shadow Captain (Revenger, #2) by Alastair Reynolds
5/5
Excellent sequel to 2016's Revenger. If you tried to sell this series to me - runaway sisters become fearsome space pirates while trying to figure out various mysteries about the rise and fall of a far future civilization and some truly funky currency - I'd put them someone pretty far down my to do list. But in Alastair Reynolds' hands it's a space opera masterpiece. Can't wait for the next installment.
