Once upon a time I got a CueCat to catalogue my book collection on a (probably now defunct) Web2.0 service. This was before smartphones and apps, and before I had even a laptop. At the time it felt retro-cool and really did help me speed things up in that task. At the time, I had to box up most of my books and CDs for storage, but I wanted an easy way to know in which box each thing was. I think I even had plans to use it with my CD collection next, but building the backend for turning barcodes back into a reference to a playable directory of ripped files turned out to be too much trouble. Could still be doable if you could query a Jellyfin or Plex database based on UPC codes. Now we all just yell into the void and hope the nearest "AI" hears us.
I'm not making excuses for anyone, but I've accidentally done this. On my phone and messaging app, if I read a text and leave the conversation open (not exiting the thread and the app) I won't get any further notifications from that person no matter how much they text. I'm sure it's a setting somewhere, but the setting is dumb. Like, surely I don't want a bunch of pings when I'm actively conversing with someone and looking at the app, but leaving the thread open and the screen off "should" still get a notification, even if the app is open under my lock screen.
"Boring straight lines" as you put it are also a way for the poorest land owners to describe, subdivide, buy, and sell property using simple easy to understand language, often without even the need for a surveyor or a lawyer to get involved. Curved boundary lines are a clear indicator of commercial development at the higher end of that spectrum. Ordinary folks are not going to have the necessary training to do anything to directly subdivide property described in that way without involving lawyers and surveyors.
Moreover, you often can't sell a property without ingress and egress access to some public right of way. The same rules for simplicity of geometry apply to those right of ways too. Curves are vague and require complex legalese to describe in words. It also wasn't too long ago that the precision of survey tools just did not exist to accurately describe parcels as anything but straight line distances with sometimes VERY vague information about orientation. Only more recent subdivisions (often much less than about 100 years old) include curves described with any decent level of precision. When they do describe curves on older documents it's almost always in reference to large curves along existing structures (like railroads) and the actual geometry of that curve is not fully defined.
What we see here is only tangentially related to tourism in that it is directly related to the entire business of land development, which includes everything else.
It looks like most of the minor streets are mostly parallel with or perpendicular to the major road to the north and the rest are aligned along the cardinal directions: north & south, east & west. Lots of the properties and their respective drainage and road right of ways were probably apportioned to align with whatever the most significant roadway or canal was in place at the time. I can see the being portioned off using simple legal language like you can buy the north 50 meters of the south 300 meters relative to "this road" and the east 50 meters of the west 200 meters relative to "this canal". You can accurately divide an area this way without any need to define a grid north, a proper grid coordinate system, and very basic survey tools.
I'd guess that the other streets oriented to the cardinal directions came later as survey tools and practices advanced or some other change in the way municipalities regulate. For example, in the U.S. you see most gridded streets and lots in older areas, relative to sections townships and ranges, but in new platted developments constantly curving streets are all the rage.
Whatever the cause, you are seeing the history of land development as the area develops it's customs around land development.
I suggested Plex because it syncs local copies on a per device setting so you can stream and sync pretty seamlessly. I haven't copied a file around except for making backups for nearly a decade now. It does audiobooks with saved progress inside the files too.
Selfhosting is not piracy because you're only streaming the albums you already bought and paid for. If you're not down for buying CD's or other physical media, or maybe you no longer have a disc drive, then you should be buying the lossless audio direct from the artists or via a service like Bandcamp. I just bought a few vinyls from Bandcamp and I had them to listen as to on all my devices (as lossless CD quality FLAC files) inside of a few minutes after purchase. Plex paired with plexamp on devices for ease of use. Replace with Jellyfish in a pinch. MPD might work, but you'd need to be better at networking than I am, also you'd need a steady internet connection at both ends.
Self-hosting is not piracy, it's fair use. Piracy is when a fool that only bought a license to listen instead of buying the actual media decides they want to listen on another device.
This looks like the AI slop youtube is always trying to sell me. It used to be impossibly chunky sweaters or Viking like tunics, now it's this I guess. It's always a similar kind of model, without a full face or hands, in the same pose in front of a nondescript background. I doubt this will turn out to be an actual photo of an actual product that isn't just a pattern cheaply silkscreened on to a similarly cheap linen. Fashion so fast it's marketed and sold before it actually exists.
I guess I didn't navigate the ads properly to the end of the article. Thanks for clarifying. We'll see how it pans out. I don't think Matt needs to be the forever GM for the crew to be successful. And it's nice to see Mercer get a chance to do some deeper role playing a single character instead of a handful of shallower NPCs.
he’ll be visiting the team at Critical Role as their Game Master for the next core campaign of the tabletop role-playing game, actual-play series’.
That's the actual quote from the article. It could be implying that Brandon is taking over the next campaign, but to me it sounds like he'll be visiting as an occasional GM the same way he did for events around campaign 3. That's cool, I think. The entire crew thrives on collaboration.
Trump isn't long for this world unless we do something about the zealots supporting him, then we'll be dealing with his legacy EVEN LONGER after his passing. I mean we're going to be dealing with the consequences of his terms for generations anyway, but things can always get worse if we don't course correct as soon as possible. His supporters aren't just mindless drones that will disperse once he's gone, they are the workers making the magic happen for him. A demagogue without their minions isn't the same kind of threat.
I don't want "Trump centaur stance" in my search history, please explain wtf you're talking about.