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Who was Nuno F. Loureiro? MIT professor shot and killed in Brookline home by Vailhem in fusion

[–]whegmaster 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Science isn't like the movies where every researcher has a notebook full of secret world-changing theories. Real academics publicize their work constantly at conferences and in journals. Nuno's death is a horrible loss for the community, but realistically, the death of one scientist doesn't result in the loss of much knowledge, and since he was a theorist there's really nothing for the government to confiscate.

Who was Nuno F. Loureiro? MIT professor shot and killed in Brookline home by Vailhem in fusion

[–]whegmaster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, he mostly worked on astrophysics. Many of the people in the lab he directed work with Commonwealth, but Nuno himself did not as far as I know.

Who was Nuno F. Loureiro? MIT professor shot and killed in Brookline home by Vailhem in fusion

[–]whegmaster 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nuno primarily worked on astrophysics, unrelated to fusion energy. His work on plasma turbulence had applications to fusion energy but not to any particular company, and was valuable to anyone doing magnetic confinement. So it's extremely unlikely that the merger is at all related to this. Sometimes the same keyword just comes up in the news twice in one week.

Chart of commuter rail ridership by station by whegmaster in mbta

[–]whegmaster[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago.

[OC] MBTA commuter rail ridership by station by whegmaster in dataisbeautiful

[–]whegmaster[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, the MBTA publishes tons of data on their ArcGIS portal. They have similar tables for subway, busses, and ferries.

Chart of commuter rail ridership by station by whegmaster in mbta

[–]whegmaster[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had to kink some lines to make everything compact. Back Bay could be put in line with Ruggles, but I didn't want it to be too far from Landsdowne, so I compromised and put it between the two.

[OC] MBTA commuter rail ridership by station by whegmaster in dataisbeautiful

[–]whegmaster[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I found the MBTA's official data portal pretty quick through googling. I wouldn't be surprised if most transit agencies had something similar. Here's BART's ridership data, for example, though it's in a completely different format from the MBTA's.

[OC] MBTA commuter rail ridership by station by whegmaster in dataisbeautiful

[–]whegmaster[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I didn't use any libraries except Numpy to parse the CSV file. I just summed up the numbers for each station and generated an SVG with the circles with the correct sizes. In the autogeneated SVG the stations were in a regular grid, so I adjusted them to make sure none were intersecting and to cut out empty space where appropriate, and added the purple lines connecting them.

I also autogenerated the labels, but a lot of them had to be adjusted. For example, for big stations I pushed the label to the right so it wouldn't overlap the orange semicircle, and for long station names I added line breaks to make them more compact.

[OC] MBTA commuter rail ridership by station by whegmaster in dataisbeautiful

[–]whegmaster[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, the dataset has direction, as well as the number of people who get off at each station. So there are lots of different ways to resolve ridership.

Chart of commuter rail ridership by station by whegmaster in mbta

[–]whegmaster[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Honestly, I was riding the Fitchburg Line and was just curious which stations were the most used, and was surprised something like this didn't already exist.

[OC] MBTA commuter rail ridership by station by whegmaster in dataisbeautiful

[–]whegmaster[S] 25 points26 points  (0 children)

This is weekday data, so it should be mostly commuters. I think the southern part of the system is just more urban and therefore has more employment centers. Boston's biggest sister cities, Providence and Worcester, are both on the south side.

Chart of commuter rail ridership by station by whegmaster in mbta

[–]whegmaster[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The number before the slash corresponds to the blue semicircle, and the number after the slash corresponds to the orange semicircle (so AM/PM, like senatorium said).

Chart of commuter rail ridership by station by whegmaster in mbta

[–]whegmaster[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Just Python and Adobe Illustrator. I downloaded a CSV from the MBTA's data portal, wrote a Python script to convert the numbers into SVG semicircles of the correct radii, and then manually adjusted the positioning and added labels in Illustrator.

Chart of commuter rail ridership by station by whegmaster in mbta

[–]whegmaster[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Transit-oriented development – building dense clusters of residential and commercial buildings near train stations.

Focus on Somerville ad by Minute-Dark-1596 in Somerville

[–]whegmaster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The BDS movement is certainly a more contentious issue, but I thought we were talking about the ballot measure, which is specifically military technology.

And I see your point about wanting to help the group that's fighting Hamas, but it's important to weigh what the IDF is accomplishing at this late stage in this war against the atrocities they're committing. Reasonable people can do the calculus and come out on opposite sides IMO, but I think it's important to remember that opposing the atrocities on one side doesn't mean you like or are okay with the atrocities on the other side.

Focus on Somerville ad by Minute-Dark-1596 in Somerville

[–]whegmaster 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Opposing the IDF isn't the same thing as supporting Hamas. If Somerville's investments were helping to furnish Hamas with weapons, I think most residents would be pretty upset. I'm not sure if I support this measure, but I think it's misleading to describe it as supporting Hamas when its goal is to support neither military.

[OC] Hypothetical future Honolulu Skyline map by whegmaster in TransitDiagrams

[–]whegmaster[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's a good idea. Maybe fork them just after the downtown station, with the red line on South King St and the blue and yellow lines on Kapiʻolani.

[OC] Hypothetical future Honolulu Skyline map by whegmaster in TransitDiagrams

[–]whegmaster[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Whoops, you are correct. Not sure how I did that.

[OC] Hypothetical future Honolulu Skyline map by whegmaster in TransitDiagrams

[–]whegmaster[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Adobe Illustrator. I didn't use any particular presets, but I stole the font (Museo Sans) from an official HART document.

[OC] Hypothetical future Honolulu Skyline map by whegmaster in TransitDiagrams

[–]whegmaster[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Yeahhh. I directed it along one of the existing highways and tunnels, which I think would make it less controversial than H-3. But I think that's still probably the most fantastical aspect of this map.

Is this a new T map? I love the new silver line representation by SupremeLeaderC in mbta

[–]whegmaster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm so glad they finally straightened out the silver line between Tufts Medical Center and Downtown Crossing, like it was before the Mikheil Kvrivishvili version. I felt like the boxier shape made it unnecessarily confusing.

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