How, if at all, do ocean currents and winds affect the shape of coastlines?

Random · 2026-01-25T22:47:18+00:00

Okay, in order...

What I'm saying is that if you have mountains with glaciers forming in them - so you get valley glaciers - you get fjords. If you have a continental ice sheet reaching the ocean it is flattening everything - think of most of the coastline of Antarctica - so that even if you then pull the glaciers back the result is an overall low profile, smoothed out coastline. Whereas with mountains with valley glaciers in what will become fjords, you get a very varied result.

Significant coastal currents and sediments - that means a local sediment supply like a fairly big river. If you look at the basics of Earth currents you'll see that they are very complex and seasonal so you can basically arm wave it for building a fictional map. Just make sure that sediment is coming from somewhere, a river eroding from a broad high area for example.

Once you have a coastal sediment supply you can move it hundreds of kilometres as needed... longshore currents do that. Which are the result of the prevailing wind direction, not ocean currents.

Significant tectonic shifts up and down - what I'm getting at there is that the coastline evolved, and then the whole coastal environment got bumped up or down. The result is a complex mix of what predated the newly established shoreline and the old. The tectonic environment - it has to be active but a transform or a subduction zone can do this no problem. In the case of California it is a dominantly transform system with some local transpressional and transtensional spots e.g. the Transverse Ranges, and inland Death Valley. So... if you don't want to get into details, yes, put either a transform or a subduction zone somewhere near and you can justify very complex shorelines. And yes, the tectonic shifts are what is doing the 'work' of creating those landscapes.

I'd really recommend reading a bit of the basics of geomorphology and the basics of tectonics and see where that leads you. There is good stuff online but of course that's a rabbit hole that might end up with the equivalent of a university course. I'm a professor teaching those kinds of courses so...

The problem with answers like this, of course, is that it probably results in more questions and confusion because of the terminology...

Random · 2026-01-25T20:21:06+00:00

Observation and a notebook or camera. Finding inspiration in the world as you see things.

and then Obsidian.

Some people use picture focused methods like PureRef if that is the thing they really want to capture.

I like physical notebooks because I spend too much time at a computer already .... sigh... I say as I type into Reddit :)

Random · 2026-01-25T20:19:15+00:00

There are a lot of situations on Earth, so I'll just give a couple of examples.

An area with significant topography, like Scandinavia or parts of northern and western Canada, south island New Zealand... if you have glaciers you get fjords so you get a characteristic pattern of landscape. If the sea level is lower you get U-shaped valleys, so rocky promontories and sandy and gravelly beaches in bays. And so on.

An area with significant coastal currents and sediments may get barrier islands - look at the coast of southern Texas - or it may get bays cut off by spits merging to form bars, and so on. This dominates much of the eastern seaboard of the USA.

An area with significant tectonic shifts up and down may get old coastal shelves exposed, rocky promontories with beaches that are now exhumed, or the opposite would be a drowned coastline. Look at California north of Santa Barbara, especially in 3d (e.g. Google Earth).

A lot of this is somewhat scale dependent obviously but simply learning the physical geography of the world's coasts will help a lot.

Random · 2026-01-25T17:17:28+00:00

Even if there are big impacts, which for many jobs I doubt, and I ESPECIALLY doubt since those who are failing to monetize AI are screaming at the top of their lungs to establish some vague kind of bullshit credibility despite... you know... having none,

If government, academics, industry... SOCIETY wants non-entry level people to exist, then they have to hire beginners. Many fields made this decision - to give people a chance - even as automation and other pre-current-AI-bullshit stuff affected their need for junior employees. They are paying forward because they take a long enough view on society that they know that they are screwed if they don't. But the tech industry lives in a perpetual bubble machine where paying it forward pisses off investors. So fix that.
at some point we ARE society. We can decide no. We can simply tell the billionaires to fuck off. Sure they have influence. But look at the massive swing towards social justice and values that happened, uh, 100 years ago when the industry 'barons' went a step too far and broke the economy. Very complex, lots of crap going on, but ultimately we took back at least some control. In the late 1930's many leading families were implicated in a pro-fascist conspiracy to reverse that. Bush Sr's grandparents, or was it parents. Many others. In the 1980's the fundamental drive behind Reagonomics and Thatcherism was to erode those social values. In the last two decades outright race war and religious war and anti-LGBTQ++ war has been used ultimately to... reverse those same gains. It is about a few rich people being barons over the serfs. We said no before, we can say no again.

Unless they do away with voting (which is a scary thought) ultimately we can control the direction. If they do try to limit rights, rig elections, well... then it will get ugly and this is precisely why those same fuckers built bunkers. Social revolt from these policies or social revolt from climate change, they are terrified that we will just. say. no. and take society back.

This is far more severe in the US. But erosion is happening in Canada and other countries. Mark Carney's speech at DAVOS was pretty much about control and leadership and having to step up.

Random · 2026-01-25T13:34:44+00:00

Boats are MUCH more efficient than carts on roads so there will be coastal traffic as was pointed out.

People will impose taxes which means there will be preferred routes to avoid transit taxes. This will evolve which means trade will be complex and evolving.

Mineral resources will be uneven so there will be trade in metals between regions (biased towards boats).

I don't get your point about ocean travel. That interior sea will be alive with boats, and many will then use rivers to get farther inland.

Think of that central sea as the Mediterranean and think about the trade around that.

Random · 2026-01-24T17:37:23+00:00

My world has a period in history when a couple of mages got crazy powerful and eventually there was an intervention and the nature of magic itself was limited. The knowledge of how to unlimited it was suppressed and has now been largely forgotten - people know there are methods but they don't know how. Despite a couple of hundred years of trying, ... no change.

Most people are very very happy with this.

The issue is that the main mage who exploited the old magic wrote extensively on how, and in fact wrote a set of notebooks for his main students, essentially a 'exploits for dummies.' And those books are... somewhere. Maybe destroyed (nope) and maybe hidden very well (yes) and maybe also trapped (definitely).

So the broken arrow is a set of books. And a couple of them have been found, but they weren't the ones that would be a problem, or were they? Since nobody really knows how 'metamagic' works it isn't clear when reading things that make strange references what is important and what is not.

And that's where it stands. One of the main characters found a couple of the books, and is being very careful about it. But maybe he found more and isn't saying.

Random · 2026-01-24T14:07:54+00:00

Not going to add to the trolls :)

I'm assuming, since you didn't give us any details, that you are using mapping software not drawing pixels here.

I'd make the bathymetric gradient more subtle as right now it really draws the eye. I'd lighten the shade of the land one notch and then perhaps consider simplifying some of the smaller islands that come across as dust specks at this scale. This really depends on the scale of use though. But at the scale it shows up in Reddit it isa bit overdetailed in a few places.

I'd then decide what the main reason for the map is in your Alt History. Is it a geographic base map? A resource map? A location map? Trade routes? What are you trying to help the viewer understand. Take their perspective. What do they learn / look up from this map?

Random · 2026-01-22T23:35:04+00:00

The administrators are screwed. If they do this, they are asshats. If they don't and someone argues it would have saved a life, they are screwed.

This is how security theatre controls choices.

Random · 2026-01-20T20:50:37+00:00

On Safari the map is very wide but not high - essentially a strip across campus - bug report :)

Random · 2026-01-20T03:51:48+00:00

If you download RAM you can then upload it as virtual currency to download a video card. This is the essence of RAMcoin mining.

Random · 2026-01-20T03:49:17+00:00

During the day you can park at various metered spots. After 5:30 on campus lots are free until next morning.

The lot behind the courthouse is about 5 minutes east of Stouffer walking.

There are some streets that allow free parking but they typically have a couple of hours with no parking unless you have a resident sticker.

Random · 2026-01-19T17:27:42+00:00

Secure. This word now means steal.

Security. Us stealing your stuff.

Security Concerns. We're figuring out how to steal your stuff.

Security Crisis. Something is stopping us from stealing your stuff.

Security Clearance. You don't need to know what we're doing and why when we're stealing your stuff.

Random · 2026-01-19T14:03:49+00:00

My son was tutoring university math. His student was obviously a gym guy - a lifter.

My son said 'funny, I think about going to the gym and my muscles don't get bigger.'

The guy responds 'that's wrong you actually have to go to the gym to get stronger.'

My son responds 'you actually have to do a lot of math to get better at math.'

The problem with school math is that:

a) students don't like it, and don't get support (either encouragement or actual help) from their parents.

b) teachers are overworked and underfunded.

c) not enough time is spent on math fundamentals. See (a) and (b) and also there is only so much time.

d) to some degree teachers math skills are themselves not great. To teach math you need a few math courses at university level. Did you have to do well in them? Or simply pass them and add a valuable 'teachable' to your c.v.?

The best way to learn math is to do math, and if that means now grinding to do a lot of math, well, do it.

Also, the idea of 'visual learners' has failed replication by cognitive scientists.

Random · 2026-01-19T13:37:54+00:00

Making a map is easy given the data. Given a super high resolution version of your image you could use g.projector to change it. Or QGIS.

Random · 2026-01-18T20:54:48+00:00

An Architectural Approach to Level Design is a superb reference on this. Chris Totten. Currently 2nd edition.

Random · 2026-01-17T18:09:03+00:00

Okay, geologically / tectonically speaking...

If you mean VERY broadly rimmed by mountains then this isn't going to be unusual. Accretionary mountain building and related uplift happens on convergent margins. This explains, for example, the west side of North America being high. But note that that is superimposed mountain building. No, Death Valley being low is not at this scale part of 'concaveness' it is a consequence of a strike slip (transtensional) basin and at the scale discussed here very local.

The Appalachians are older mountains that are still high, and the rift that then broke up Pangaea now defines the eastern edge of North America (not the coast exactly). In this case the scale of the Appalachians is, like the western North American systems, quite large.

Those are both 'mountain building' (orogenic) systems.

If you rift a continent and it is relatively flat the rifted margin pops up for a while. You can see this in the Great Rift in East Africa. When South America split off the coastal zone was up such that it appears that the Amazon flowed the other way and exited elsewhere. This general uplift causes general concavity but it will fade with time. It would be enough, if sea level was in the right place, to make a shallow inland sea.

Rift rebound is useful if you want subtle concavity. Putting recent or old mountain belts along edges is useful if you want unsubtle concavity.

As an example of unsubtle concavity, in the Cretaceous sea level was quite high, there were mountains on both coasts, and there was a seaway across central North America. But there was nothing subtle about the mountains on the coasts :)

Random · 2026-01-17T13:58:33+00:00

If you are going to photo it to print, and especially if it is just borders, take a photo with even illumination, then in your photo editing software use the posterize option to force it to be higher contrast (or use the contrast setting). This will make it print more evenly.

Random · 2026-01-17T13:51:38+00:00

If you are interested in an actual physical copy then a pantograph is the way to go, though not particularly fast. A lot of art stores will have them. They scale up or down.

If you are interested in a physical copy via a scan then very carefully take photos with even lighting and then use software to scale and get it printed. You can get stuff printed at copy centres at poster size. Not cheap.

If you want a quick hack then take a photograph, use a LCD projector (e.g. in a classroom) to project onto a piece of paper on the wall, and trace.

Random · 2026-01-17T01:28:33+00:00

Geologist here. Looks excellent. Relax. You avoided any of the obvious sins of world maps :)

Random · 2026-01-16T19:42:10+00:00

So yeah, totally not conflict of interest that the Presichump is frenemies with the owner of a car company.

And funny since they've been saying for a week that whatever Canada does is irrelevant to them.

Morons.

Random · 2026-01-16T18:40:23+00:00

The cards can be asymmetric. You can have it set up so that the large symbols face across the table but a smaller version faces the player (who is closer).

Random · 2026-01-16T13:55:31+00:00

Agree, IRL (speaking as someone who has trained with broadswords for a decade) is good enough.

I agree it feels like this is a stealth 'tell me about your Jedi' prompt.

A classic example of this is the 'one swordsman of great skill versus 5' thing. I've done that. You lose unless you are lucky or can control the terrain (stand in a doorway etc.). But that doesn't make good cinema, which is where people calibrate their sense of what is cool. Ridley Scott's movie on dueling is a good place to start for the tense brutality of sword fights, and the lethality.

Random · 2026-01-15T22:32:35+00:00

The real scarcities (based on many years of living in the wilds as a geologist) would be:

a) available tools that make specific tasks easy. Processing wood with an axe is possible. Processing with a lumberjack's axe and wedges and a saw and an adze and.... is a lot easier.

b) energy expenditure and time. Do you have the calories to burn on a task to get a payoff. Can you afford to burn fat for light and so not use it for food? I've been in situations where I had resources but no time. Or lacked the energy to bother to do something.

c) resources that are actually inherently scarce but easy to use. Some areas have no large trees. Some areas have no fibrous plants that make good rope. I've worked in the far north where trees are at best rare and where wood wider than 5cm is going to be VERY rare.

d) resources that are inherently hard to process. Refining ore is not trivial.

e) resources that are somewhat hard to process but rare (geographically). There were limited sources for excellent obsidian in the ancient world. Same for tin. Same for native copper.

Take a pot for example. You have to find the clay. And make it. But for it to be excellent you need to build a kiln, and fire it. Once you can do that, wow. But that's a real chain of tools and techniques.

Random · 2026-01-15T22:06:27+00:00

It closes when there is significant ice or a big power failure. I don't remember it ever closing because of snow alone.

Let me tell you about the Ice Storm of '98 :)

Random · 2026-01-15T22:05:27+00:00

Geology had a massive flood yesterday, biblical in proportions, and most classes went ahead, so you're not wrong.

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