Recently I explained to a student that Arc Pro is kind of like the Disney of GIS software. It’s powerful and colorful and very well known, but if you try and do things it doesn’t like, you’re going to have a bad time.
QGIS is my daily driver. It’s so much lighter and so much less bloat, it’s just wildly more efficient. These days I pretty much use Arc for machine learning features.
> if you try and do things it doesn’t like, you’re going to have a bad time.
Also that there's the 'Esri' way of doing things, and the 'platform independent' (more-or-less) way of doing things which do not play well with 'Esri-isms'.
Esri does have some really nice enterprise components though; I haven't yet found a remotely user-friendly open-source equivalent to Workflow Manager Server or Data Interop., or an as-polished ArcGIS Portal yet, though I constantly keep a look out.
QField is getting better and better, too. I wish I knew C++ well enough to help develop it further.
For those interested, you can search through the collections of herbariums all over north America through portals such as the Consortium of Midwest Herbaria[0], in Europe through digHerb [1], and throughout the rest of the world through many other symbiota portals [2].
You can find your nearest brick and mortar herbarium globally through Index Herbariorum[3]. Though these resources are incomplete, they are pretty extensive regardless.
Also for those in the States, contact your local state University extension office. They know of local resources like this that aren't widely advertised/don't have an online presence.
>cue the other commenters telling me my experience isn’t real, or I’m misunderstanding how other people can recall stuff like getting married and or the birth of their kids when I can’t
I am much more on the hyperphantasia side of mental imagery but I am constantly astounded at how poorly visual imagery is conveyed as well as the difficulty in conveying the experience of mental imagery intuitively. Similarly it amazes me when people with mental imagery simply cant conceive that there are people without it.
I have always felt that comparing mental imagery to normal vision kind of misses the mark. For the common question people ask, where they say "imagine an apple sitting on the table of front of you" or something similar, where aphantasics simply can't conceptualize what that means, I have seen people say something similar to "Its like photo shopping an apple on top of what your eyes are seeing".
This, to me, sounds more like hallucination rather than mental imagery and I think completely misses the mark for explaining what mental imagery is like to people who don't experience it. For me at least, mental imagery is much more like having some space inside my head disconnected from the physical reality in front of me. So when someone says to 'picture an apple on the desk in front of you', what I experience is that a perfect replica to my surroundings is created in this non-physical space and in that space, there is an apple on my desk. Bare in mind, this is completely detached from what I am literally seeing with my eyes. I could picture an apple on my desk rolling off and onto the ground, and follow that path with my eyes in the physical space in front of me. Really though, I am imagining how this scenario plays out in the non-physical space in my mind, and mapping the motion data of the apple back into reality and using my eyes to see where it 'would be'.
I think what really becomes difficult in conveying mental imagery to people with aphantasia is that they completely lack the conceptualization that you can have all the qualia of a physical space represented to you without it being actually connected to your literal experiences of your surroundings and the space they take up. Like explaining color to the blind, or how some colors are warm and others are cold to a blind person, language fails to adequately transcend the difference in mental facilities. It seems much easier however to go imagine the experience of the blind as a sited person, much like a 3 dimensional creature could imagine the experience of a 2 dimensional one but not a 4 dimensional one.
Huh, so interesting. My imagination doesn't work like this. I don't need to see the apple. I can imagine where it would be, how big it would be, how it would act if I touched it (I can imagine it rolling, but without actualizing the visualization fully, etc.). But there's more like a semantic understanding that it's a mental pointer to an apple - with all the properties apples have very closely available in L1 cache. If I really try, I can pull up some mental jpegs or 3D models of apples, project them, etc., but usually that doesn't happen, I guess a 3D model doesn't get fully demand paged all the way in unless I really focus harder..? Maybe it used to and this is age?
That's interesting to me. I suppose I can think about the qualities of an apple or its location without having to render the obj and textures all in my head, but my default approach to 'imagination' is to render everything out completely in my head. Similar to how I can think without an internal monologue, but my baseline is that my thoughts tend to be constantly narrated.
Ultimately, if your interest is in contributing to scientific biodiversity data collections, I really feel inatuslist is the best tool for the average person to do this.
Similarly to programs like eBird[0] or bumble bee watch [1] (both of which are taxa specific), inatuslist contributes its data to GBIF[2]. This is a large database including records from all over the world,and is made up of both modern digital observations (like those from inat), historical observations like those kept in herbariums, as well as independently published records from smaller organised research efforts.
I work as in academia and do a fair amount of spacial modeling in relation to biodiversity data, and the data from iNaturalist as published in GBIF is essentially the best coverage I can find if we are talking about large geographies. I also do my own field work, tracking specific study sites and iNaturalist is a fantastic tool for generating species lists. Within about an hour, usually while also carrying out some other field task, me and my team of technicians can capture the wide majority of plant species at a given site, all with location data, time stamps, and usually high quality photos that allow me to verify the computer vision IDs. Then back in my office, I can open up iNaturlaist online, and look through all the data, as well as download it in a consistent format. I’ve also worked out methods that allow me to do something similar (albeit more focused) for bees.
Seek offers essentially all the same value to researchers while also streamlining the experience for users. You are able to get a quick answer, and I still get the biodiversity data generated by you, without the clunkiness that comes from the inat app(s).
Beyond scientific data, as someone who is principally a botanist, I find the accuracy of iNaturalist to be far better than things like pictureThis. So even in these cases, I still think it’s worth while for the casual user to stick with seek if you’re looking to identify mainly stationary life forms or record them for your own use.
Thank you for this really thoughtful answer. I'm going to keep using Seek because, as you say, it's streamlined for those of us who want to help researchers with data but also just want a simple answer. I have PictureThis also, but it rarely gets use.
I don’t have a real answer for you but I will say that olive oil works well for this.
I worked on a Christmas tree lot through my winters as an undergrad and olive oil always worked well. Of course then you need soap and water to remove the olive oil.
>>Coffee grounds or that mechanic paste might do pretty well also
“Magic All Natural Industrial Hand Cleaner (with walnut shells)”
Is downright the best thing I’ve ever encountered for cleaning anything on the hands. Anything sticky, greasy, non-newtonian… etc. it scrubs right off.
Person who’s worked in grimy machine shops for 30 years introduced me to it. Fast Orange is a complete & utter disgrace comparatively.
Coffee grounds are nice, but walnut grounds are far superior.
To me, HI seems more like a discussion between two friends. It works really well because of Brady's reporting background and interviewing skills. In Cortex, however, Myke has said that he started the podcast because he wanted to see how Grey worked. As such, the podcast is just kind of a continuous explanation by Grey, to Myke about the way he works and what he is doing to improve his productivity. Myke then explains what he is doing off of Grey's advice and Grey improves it.
Recently I explained to a student that Arc Pro is kind of like the Disney of GIS software. It’s powerful and colorful and very well known, but if you try and do things it doesn’t like, you’re going to have a bad time.
QGIS is my daily driver. It’s so much lighter and so much less bloat, it’s just wildly more efficient. These days I pretty much use Arc for machine learning features.
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