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I got 5000 points for one question because the thing plonked me down two towns over and I got it right within 14 meters 
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Jul 1, 2014 00:08
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:A game in which you try to guess where in the world you are by being plunked into a google street view: https://geoguessr.com/  I saw picturesque mountains in the distance, and some small farms and a lot of sheep. It was sunny outside, and the small but well-paved road gently wound through the countryside. I guessed New Zeeland. It was Norway.
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Jul 1, 2014 00:15
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Geoguessr taught me that regardless of culture, geopolitics, or any other variable: dirt roads surrounded by endless featureless fields look identical all over the world. Also that being a Streetview photographer might be the most dull job on the planet.
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Jul 1, 2014 00:44
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Kalos posted:Geoguessr taught me that regardless of culture, geopolitics, or any other variable: dirt roads surrounded by endless featureless fields look identical all over the world. Also that being a Streetview photographer might be the most dull job on the planet. You basically have to go off of car shapes, license plate styles and approximately how Soviet-looking any power lines or factories seem.
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Jul 1, 2014 01:00
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:You basically have to go off of car shapes, license plate styles and approximately how Soviet-looking any power lines or factories seem.
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Jul 1, 2014 01:10
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:You basically have to go off of car shapes, license plate styles and approximately how Soviet-looking any power lines or factories seem. My top tip for Geoguessr would be to learn which countries drive on the left side of the road. Austrialia, South Africa and the American southwest can all look pretty similar in places, but as soon as you see another car you can at least tell if you're in a commonwealth country or not. Another good thing to learn is which languages use which extra letters, to help you differentiate, say, Denmark and Germany from the road signs. Learning state flags of large countries like the US, Australia and Canada is also very helpful if you get plonked down in a suburb or small town. My general strategy went: 1) Travel down the road until you can determine what country you are in from road signs 2) Find a nearby major road with an official number 3) Meticulously scan the entire map of that country looking for the road that has that number, bearing in mind that minor major roads may not show up on medium zoom levels 4) Work backwards from that road to find your original location. I realised I had to stop Geoguessing when I spent an entire goddamn hour driving the Great Northern Highway of Western Australia, just so I could get max points for an Australian Outback round.
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Jul 1, 2014 01:16
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I went by topography, plant life, car and license plate styles/what side of the road people were driving on, and the color/shape of the markings on the roads. Worked pretty well for getting the general regions right.
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Jul 1, 2014 01:53
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:You basically have to go off of car shapes, license plate styles and approximately how Soviet-looking any power lines or factories seem. That's really useful when all the locations I had had no power lines, no man-made structures, no automobiles, and only dirt roads. Also no mountains and very few trees.
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Jul 1, 2014 01:59
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Jerry Cotton posted:That's really useful when all the locations I had had no power lines, no man-made structures, no automobiles, and only dirt roads. Also no mountains and very few trees. See when that happened for my round I just hit the middle of Australia. I was right.
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Jul 1, 2014 02:03
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wdarkk posted:See when that happened for my round I just hit the middle of Australia. I was right. I picked the middle of Africa once because it was a loving desert and it was in Missouri. (Also I guess the middle of Africa doesn't have a desert?) (e: It doesn't )
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Jul 1, 2014 02:05
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Kalos posted:Geoguessr taught me that regardless of culture, geopolitics, or any other variable: dirt roads surrounded by endless featureless fields look identical all over the world. Also that being a Streetview photographer might be the most dull job on the planet. I found a tractless, semi-arid flat wasteland that extended as far as the eye can see. I advanced down the road until I found the gate to a ranch with a single star symbol. I guessed Amarillo TX, and was within 100 miles of the target.
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Jul 1, 2014 02:08
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I haven't played GeoGuessr in a long time, I guess I could give it another... God loving drat this game. This is literally the middle of a field somewhere. Not even a road to move along. e: I figured it was South Africa or the American Rockies. Guessed South Africa. It was El Salvador. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Jul 1, 2014 |
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Jul 1, 2014 02:10
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:I haven't played GeoGuessr in a long time, I guess I could give it another...
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Jul 1, 2014 02:13
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GeoGuessr is kinda boring if you allow yourself to move on the map. That just makes it about effort, having the free time to find a road sign or whatever. If you challenge someone with the rule that you're only allowed to turn the camera in the spot you get dropped at, it's way more about your wits.
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Jul 1, 2014 02:14
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Ras Het posted:GeoGuessr is kinda boring if you allow yourself to move on the map. That just makes it about effort, having the free time to find a road sign or whatever. If you challenge someone with the rule that you're only allowed to turn the camera in the spot you get dropped at, it's way more about your wits. That's how I did it 
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Jul 1, 2014 02:20
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Ras Het posted:GeoGuessr is kinda boring if you allow yourself to move on the map. That just makes it about effort, having the free time to find a road sign or whatever. If you challenge someone with the rule that you're only allowed to turn the camera in the spot you get dropped at, it's way more about your wits. But if you find yourself in the middle of a field full of scrub brush, unless you're a botanist, you're pretty much hosed.
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Jul 1, 2014 02:40
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Ras Het posted:GeoGuessr is kinda boring if you allow yourself to move on the map. That just makes it about effort, having the free time to find a road sign or whatever. If you challenge someone with the rule that you're only allowed to turn the camera in the spot you get dropped at, it's way more about your wits. I move to try and get closer to other cars already visible, but that's it.
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Jul 1, 2014 02:40
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PittTheElder posted:But if you find yourself in the middle of a field full of scrub brush, unless you're a botanist, you're pretty much hosed. I got plunked down in the middle of a snow coved apocalypse landscape I guessed Greenland somewhere It was Manitoba, Canada  only 54 points.It looked approximately like this. 
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Jul 1, 2014 02:49
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I did pretty well on this game, except for when I was dropped on some gravel road in the middle of nowhere. I actually got the latitude right, but guessed Tanzania instead of Peru.
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Jul 1, 2014 02:49
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I successfully guessed Newfoundland solely because it looked like the dreariest place I had ever seen.
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Jul 1, 2014 02:52
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Jerry Cotton posted:I picked the middle of Africa once because it was a loving desert and it was in Missouri. (Also I guess the middle of Africa doesn't have a desert?) There's not a desert in the middle of Missouri either. Are you sure you know what they look like?
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Jul 1, 2014 02:54
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If the houses look slightly more solid than a hut but are extremely boring it's always the USA. e: Basically every house in rural US looks like an SA mod built it.
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Jul 1, 2014 02:54
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Basil Hayden posted:There's not a desert in the middle of Missouri either. Are you sure you know what they look like? Well let's say wasteland then.
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Jul 1, 2014 02:55
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Jerry Cotton posted:If the houses look slightly more solid than a hut but are extremely boring it's always the USA. I'm not sure if it's exaggerated by selective reporting or not, but I seem to notice that whenever some major weather disaster such as a hurricane or tornado or massive forest fire hits the US, most of the houses seem to be made out of wood panelling and drywall with viturally no bricks at all. Now I know that American cities themselves aren't built like that, but is that sort of construction normal for your big suburbs?
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Jul 1, 2014 03:09
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Reveilled posted:I'm not sure if it's exaggerated by selective reporting or not, but I seem to notice that whenever some major weather disaster such as a hurricane or tornado or massive forest fire hits the US, most of the houses seem to be made out of wood panelling and drywall with viturally no bricks at all. Now I know that American cities themselves aren't built like that, but is that sort of construction normal for your big suburbs? Yes, wood frame construction is the standard, including even some of the smaller residential buildings in cities.
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Jul 1, 2014 03:12
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OddObserver posted:Yes, wood frame construction is the standard, including even some of the smaller residential buildings in cities. I know this will sound snarky, but it's an honest question: do American kids get told the story of the Three Little Pigs?
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Jul 1, 2014 03:16
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Reveilled posted:I'm not sure if it's exaggerated by selective reporting or not, but I seem to notice that whenever some major weather disaster such as a hurricane or tornado or massive forest fire hits the US, most of the houses seem to be made out of wood panelling and drywall with viturally no bricks at all. Now I know that American cities themselves aren't built like that, but is that sort of construction normal for your big suburbs? Tornadoes and floods and hurricanes can wreck bricks both directly and indirectly-- even if a tornado doesn't hit a house directly, the things it can throw around might be able to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E45JLnggmX8 Imagine one of those hitting a brick house. And then, of course, if a brick house is damaged at all, then those bricks become part of the flying debris and gently caress that, who wants that poo poo flying in the air. I've been uncomfortably near a tornado before and I can only be thankful that the main thing that got picked up and thrown around was fiberglass insulation.
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Jul 1, 2014 03:16
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Reveilled posted:I'm not sure if it's exaggerated by selective reporting or not, but I seem to notice that whenever some major weather disaster such as a hurricane or tornado or massive forest fire hits the US, most of the houses seem to be made out of wood panelling and drywall with viturally no bricks at all. Now I know that American cities themselves aren't built like that, but is that sort of construction normal for your big suburbs? I don't think the lack of brickwork is the problem. A wood-clad house with a wooden frame is probably really good at resisting winds. A wooden frame with some plastic or aluminium siding hanging from it: much less so.
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Jul 1, 2014 03:18
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Reveilled posted:I know this will sound snarky, but it's an honest question: do American kids get told the story of the Three Little Pigs? There's a reason why the trope "Force of Nature" is about just surviving an event, not resisting it. Wood is actually better in certain circumstances because it can bend (you may know the story the Oak and the Reeds).
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Jul 1, 2014 03:19
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Reveilled posted:I know this will sound snarky, but it's an honest question: do American kids get told the story of the Three Little Pigs? Not sure; I didn't grow up here since that early an age, but the method is very economical for single-family homes, which there is a huge number of in the country, and they are sturdy enough in non-disaster circumstances. Fire safety is probably the bigger issue.
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Jul 1, 2014 03:25
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Reveilled posted:I know this will sound snarky, but it's an honest question: do American kids get told the story of the Three Little Pigs? Wood construction isn't necessarily any weaker than brick. It's a whole lot better in earthquakes since it can bend. If a tornado hits you're house it's hosed no matter what you built it out of, unless it's literally like a fallout shelter concrete bunker.
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Jul 1, 2014 03:25
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Reveilled posted:I'm not sure if it's exaggerated by selective reporting or not, but I seem to notice that whenever some major weather disaster such as a hurricane or tornado or massive forest fire hits the US, most of the houses seem to be made out of wood panelling and drywall with viturally no bricks at all. Now I know that American cities themselves aren't built like that, but is that sort of construction normal for your big suburbs? My house, made of timbers, got hit by an F1 and the only damage was some missing roof tiles. The house down the street was made of brick and was leveled. The difference? Mine was built by people who give a poo poo 100 years ago and the brick one was made 10 years ago by a bunch of idiots.
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Jul 1, 2014 03:26
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computer parts posted:There's a reason why the trope "Force of Nature" is about just surviving an event, not resisting it. Like I said, I did not intend the question in a snarky way, I was more wondering if the fact that the story doesn't hold true in America affects whether it gets told, or if it is told in a different way. I mean, the message I take away from the story of the Three Little Pigs is "Never live in a house not made of bricks", which works fine for where I live, where literally every house is made of bricks, a hurricane is a once-in-a-lifetime event, and some houses in the city have been there over 500 years. Whereas "brick houses make you immune to wind" might not be the best advice in a place where the wind picks up cars once a year.
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Jul 1, 2014 03:28
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Reveilled posted:I know this will sound snarky, but it's an honest question: do American kids get told the story of the Three Little Pigs? Indeed we do. Some of us at least. Aside from the fact that bricks don't exactly help in a tornado, as mentioned above, there's also the fact that wood is widely available and usually cheaper than masonry. Wood construction is also safer in earthquake prone areas, as it has much more flex to it, making it less quick to fall apart and crush you. Even if a wood-frame house, say, collapses off it's foundations in an earthquake, there's a good chance the upper floors will stay relatively intact. A brick building doing the same would just turn into a pile of bricks though. Rah! fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Jul 1, 2014 |
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Jul 1, 2014 03:30
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Reveilled posted:Like I said, I did not intend the question in a snarky way, I was more wondering if the fact that the story doesn't hold true in America affects whether it gets told, or if it is told in a different way. I mean, the message I take away from the story of the Three Little Pigs is "Never live in a house not made of bricks", which works fine for where I live, where literally every house is made of bricks, a hurricane is a once-in-a-lifetime event, and some houses in the city have been there over 500 years. I was never taught that you were supposed to take that story literally.  I think the intended moral of the version I heard as a kid was something like "don't be a lazy poo poo".
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Jul 1, 2014 03:34
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Yeah, the moral I always learned was "put some thought into what you do, and prepare for problems you are likely to face"
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Jul 1, 2014 03:37
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Reveilled posted:Like I said, I did not intend the question in a snarky way, I was more wondering if the fact that the story doesn't hold true in America affects whether it gets told, or if it is told in a different way. I mean, the message I take away from the story of the Three Little Pigs is "Never live in a house not made of bricks", which works fine for where I live, where literally every house is made of bricks, a hurricane is a once-in-a-lifetime event, and some houses in the city have been there over 500 years. There's no need for a house built like a bomb shelter if you're not expecting to face hurricanes, tornadoes, or bombing raids anytime soon. Parts of the country are disaster prone, like New Orleans and hurricanes, the great plains and tornadoes, and the West Coast and earthquakes, but beyond that there's no real reason not to build cheap houses as long as they are safe. Those areas have some pretty good disaster stories though, and people continue building lovely houses in those areas despite logic dictating it is a bad idea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1906_San_Francisco_earthquake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Jul 1, 2014 |
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Jul 1, 2014 04:03
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Ofaloaf posted:Tornadoes and floods and hurricanes can wreck bricks both directly and indirectly-- even if a tornado doesn't hit a house directly, the things it can throw around might be able to:
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Jul 1, 2014 04:13
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Basil Hayden posted:I was never taught that you were supposed to take that story literally. Well, it's true that even here we don't sit our kids down and tell them the fairy tale of the Three Little Pigs and the Local Authority's Planning Permission Board*, but the story definitely reinforces from a young age that the only safe house is a brick house. It's not entirely uncommon here to hear flippant comments passed after a major weather event in the US that Americans are dumb for building their houses out of sticks, ill-informed though the comment may be. I'd assume that the fairy tale has a part to play in that, given that it's the metaphor I often hear people reach for when they want to do the "dumb americans" thing on this topic in particular. -- *For some reason in an insomnia-feulled haze I have written this at 4am: The Three Little Pigs and the Local Authority's Planning Permission Board The First Little Pig was a Roma who lived in a caravan along with some other Roma Pigs. The Pig bought a plot of land and built a small park in which people could park their caravans, and did not apply for planning permission as at the time the land was considered mixed use, which meant that the buildings on the site could exist unchallenged, as had been the case for all previous owners of the property in the decades before. Thirty years later in a rising tide of anti-Roma racism, despite the First Little Pig owning the site and maintaining it properly, the council decided to reclassify the land as Green Belt, inflicting a much higher standard on the building rules on the land, directly impacting on many families who had lived their entire lives with their homes on that land. Desperate to avoid eviction, the First Little Pig applied for retroactive planning permission on the grounds that the camp had been there for decades since an era where planning permission was extremely loosely enforced and previous legal complaints had established the rights of some of the families to use the land for residence. However, the Local Authority's Planning Permission Board came along and blew the caravans down because they refused to grant retroactive planning permission to a Roma Pig. The Second Little Pig was not a Roma, he had a house and wished to build a small extension to his property to accomodate his aging grandmother, who would not be able to use the stairs to go to the toilet. He was a conciencious citizen who endeavored to do everything according to the rules laid down by the elected people of the Council. However, due to the paperwork involved in approving such a request, the Local Authority's Planning Permission Board came along and blew the paperwork back in the Second Little Pig's face, refusing his request, leaving him only with the options of sending his grandmother to a home for the elderly, or paying a lawyer to appeal the case and spend years battling the Local Authority's Planning Permission Board in the courts. Being unable to afford the legal fees, the Second Pig, too, was defeated by the Local Authority's Planning Permission Board. The Third Little Pig was not a Roma or a private citizen, but was the owner of a local property development firm. He wished to make additional money from the land he owned, but it was primarily made up of small semi-detached properties designed for medium-sized families. Wishing to maximise his revenue, he began the process of splitting up the properties, adding additional entrances and blocking off internal staircases to convert these properties into ersatz flats with upper and lower individual properties. However, the Third Little Pig knew of the troubles of the First and Second Little Pigs, and hatched a plan to defeat the Local Authority's Planning Permission Board. He did not apply for planning permission because he knew if he did so his request would be rejected. Instead he simply went ahead and did the work, and eventually people complained. When the Local Authority's Planning Permission Board came along and threatened to blow down his houses, he applied for retroactive planning permission, as the First Little Pig did. However, because the Third Little Pig was not a Roma Pig, he received retroactive planning permission, as 90% of all non-Roma pigs' applications get approved provided they are received retroactively, and he received the go-ahead to keep the adjustments to his properties, much to the consternation of his neighbours. And so the Third Little Pig lived happily ever after, while the First Little Pig was made homeless and the Second Little Pig had to send his grandmother to a care home as he could not provide the care she needed in his own home.
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Jul 1, 2014 04:18
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate Disco > politically-loaded building codes
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Jul 1, 2014 04:36
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