mastodon 4.7.3🧑🎓 An urban geographer and a post-doctoral researcher from the University of #Helsinki working at @digigeolab@mastodon.online
💭 Interested in urban #diversity, #segregation, #multilingualism, human #mobility, spatial analysis, and big data.
🖥️ I combine #urban #geography, #linguistics, #GIS #geospatial #spatial, and #MachineLearning methods.
🛠️ I mainly use #linux, #python and #foss tools.
🌟 I like #BarefootShoes, #discgolf, #longboarding, #BadMovies, and #metal
🗨️ English, Finnish, Swedish, German
This is making the rounds on Finnish social media.
A large association for Finnish construction companies, #Rakennusteollisuus, decided that they needed an English version of their website but apparently they didn't want to pay an actual #translator so just used some free #LLM with hilarious results.
They've fixed it now, but for a short while there was some comedy gold to be found.
P.s. I didn't find these, I've no idea who did.
Hooray!
A Finnish citizen petition to lower the VAT of repair services passed the threshold of 50 000 votes meaning the petition will be taken to the parliament for discussion and hopefully the VAT is lowered as a result, as more affordable repair services (clothing, shoes, electronics, bicycles etc) not only support local businesses but also #sustainability and #circulareconomy!
Maybe you or somebody you know has a #Windows10 computer, which works perfectly fine, but will lose support on October 14 because it cannot be updated to Windows 11 for hardware support reasons.
Please, do not turn the computer into unnecessary e-waste but keep using it and give it a new life by installing #Linux on it. There are plenty of advantages in doing so, the biggest one being it's waaaayyy cheaper.
For more, see:
https://endof10.org/
Yay, the @digigeolab@mastodon.online annual #Vappu celebrations are on the way at #Kumpula campus, and students are keeping the atmosphere up outside.
Vappu is a public holiday celebrated on the eve of first of May and on #MayDay, traditionally celebrating labour and workers, but now more also student life. It is a massive thing in #Finland.
Sometimes in #PeerReview you get very difficult reviewer comments on weaknesses in your work.
In my current manuscript, the main input data was considered inaccurate, and using novel high-detail input data was suggested instead. I feared implementing the comments as they fundamentally changed the MS analysis and I feared it would kill my manuscript.
To my surprise, I got very similar results with the new data, and a free robustness check on top! Hooray!
I switched my bicycle's gear wire. Even with a YouTube tutorial video I had no idea what I was doing, but I managed, and it switches gears much better now. Hooray!
I still don't know what I did.
Wow! #Hungary takes a step towards Europe, and looks like the party defeating Orban will do so in such a way, they can potentially reverse a lot of previously made decisions, and secure a healthier and more free democracy. Gratulálok!
And more generally, Putin loses his inside man in the EU, very likely unlocking the big EU sanctions and loan package for Ukraine. Let's see if some implicated Fidesz members suddenly get a new address in Moscow.
Hooray, our Nature Communications paper lead by @miladmzdh@mastodon.social got finally accepted! 🎉 It is a fantastic work, and I am happy to have played a small part in it.
Stay tuned for some posts about it in the near future 😉
What an editorial process that journal has! After being accepted by peer-reviewers, the MS had to undergo several editorial revisions answering to multiple comments from at least two editors, constituting essentially another peer review. Yikes.
Happening all across Europe, not just in Austria. Plenty of academics from the US, but also Canada eyeing for opportunities in Europe, or the very least, with European funders/collaborators. Our @digigeolab@mastodon.online also just got a visiting researcher from the University of Washington for these reasons.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/10/academics-austria-safe-haven
I love the feeling of opening a manuscript draft in the morning and being overwhelmed by the amount of work to be done on the text, and then leaving in the afternoon with so much done that I am confident I can submit this in the next few weeks.
I've been listening to ambient stuff in the background to block out the noise of an open office situation, and it works nicely.
I decided to put on some metal on for a change, and I instantly remembered why I actually like to listen to this type of music. Immediately started head banging, air drumming, and I am grinning from ear to ear like a weirdo.
Blasting my #DrumAndBass playlist at work on the eve of #Vappu is not necessarily the best for productivity, but it does set the party atmosphere nicely.
It is a good thing to end the working day with a successful article submission.
I have been a happy user of #Manjaro since 2019, and I recently learned this project is on the brink due to some internal conflicts. AFAIK, all development has ceased currently and I might be on a dead-in-the-water distro
I will follow how this develops, but to prepare a potential hop to another distro, I've been looking at #CachyOS as it is very similar to Manjaro, but I am a bit worried of ending up in a similar situation, so #Fedora is a strong contender in my books.
Why is it always the article submission portal that causes the most frustrating delays in getting a manuscript submitted?
All kinds of random hoops to jump through and detective work to figure out how to link figures to their correct place in the submission portal system.
"Your paper, your way", bah! Bah, I say!
It is nice to be excited about a book I have to read for work.
This one is about #LinguisticLandscapes in the city of #Turku in Finland.
I am cleaning our attic storage, and found some mysterious things.
First, a brief case full of magnetic tapes of some bands albums and several sheets of paper cataloguing the bands, their albums etc. Potentially somebody could be interested in this?
Second, old Christmas ornaments, old rugs.
Third, a bird nest behind some old piles of planks and doors.
My favourite things to teach in #Geography and #GIS is how timely and relevant the field is.
Case in point:
On today's lecture about network analysis, we discussed how travel time analyses can be fudged to make one mode of transit appear better/worse than it is, and how this could also be unintentional. The vitality and attractiveness of the #Helsinki urban centre is under constant public debate in the media from this perspective.
Yeah, and there is the #PageRank thing as well.
This is exactly what stakeholders from East and North #Finland who attended our workshop earlier this year raised as a potential pathway to bring more investment into the region, which is struggling with shrinking population and investments.
A company from #PohjoisKarjala specialised in forestry machinery started creating products related to defense as demand for their main business slowed down, and as a result they just secured one of their biggest orders yet.
Check out our new publication with @miladmzdh@mastodon.social and Olle Järv out now in Urbaria Summaries.
Our results suggest that #COVID19 and #Brexit have changed established student flow structures to and from Finland, providing potential opportunities for #Finnish regions, which can use the information to inform regional planning and strategies, and to mitigate brain drain dynamics.
📜 The publication: https://www.helsinki.fi/assets/drupal/2026-01/Summary%20V%C3%A4is%C3%A4nen%20et%20al.pdf
#Suomi #Finland #Region #Aluekehitys #Maakunta #Geography #GIS #Maantiede
Hooray! New and shiny #QGIS is out to improve the free and open source #geospatial goodness around the globe.
Maybe I am not just very good at this, but holy guacamole is it difficult to write a Python script to automatically download a set of open-access article PDFs using their DOIs.
I am using Unpaywall to fetch the PDF links to open-access articles and user agents to reduce bad responses, but still from the 50 articles I needed to download, I got five.
I guess the rest is just manual clicking and saving. Then again, I understand that publishers do not want big tech to pilfer their libraries.
So https://bikemaps.org/ has now been translated to #Finnish thanks to my wonderful colleagues at @digigeolab@mastodon.online
So all you wonderful #bicycle riders in #Finland or cities like #Helsinki or #Oulu and elsewhere who want to make city officials more aware of troublesome places for biking, this is the map tool for you!
Our work at @digigeolab@mastodon.online using #BigData in #NatureRecreation and #Conservation research is quite extensive, and we have collaborated with #Metsähallitus on this research extensively over the last ten years.
We decided to turn our findings and understanding into policy recommendations on using such data to get useful information (only in Finnish). Please check it out here: https://helda.helsinki.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/f8f62c15-8ed1-4844-917e-6091675e32a4/content
#Luonto #Kansallispuisto #Politiikka #Luonnonsuojelu #Nature #Recreation #Conservation
@mkj@social.mkj.earth Yup, it sure is!