I wonder how Caspian Sea levels looks on a graph over a longer time span (haven't found one quickly).

In 1970s there was a project to connect rivers Pechora and Kama [1] to redirect water flow and increase levels of the Caspian Sea which were declining at that time. The project was abandoned but the Caspian sea levels started to increase in late 70s and 80s even without geoengineering.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pechora%E2%80%93Kama_Canal

Is that the dam from metro exodus?

A big issue here too is the image stitching; aerial images are registered for big tile maps based in part on feature analysis of the edges and that just never works right for images of the ocean (mostly you have waves, and they're in different places in each image). Even if you register it perfectly the waves ensure that the edges will still have stitching artifacts. As a result the "false color" oceans that Google Maps shows just look better than actual imagery.

The "imagery" source for the oceans in Google Maps is (or at least was) GEBCO, it's a global bathymetric dataset made by registering depth sounding tracks from mostly commercial vessels. I thought maybe GEBCO didn't cover the caspian sea but it looks like it does for the last decade or so, but admittedly it seems to be data from just one survey and it's tagged as limited quality (at least in older versions of the dataset), so maybe Google ignores it.

It’s not a low-res image… because the oil rig city would still be blurry but somewhat visible, it’s a no-res image, entirely generated with no connection to reality.

Exactly so. A really good, very readable book on this and oil in general is Daniel Yergin's The Prize.

Sure - I don't doubt that Baku made some people fabulously rich, I'm more curious about "most modern billionaires", specifically "most". I'm not even convinced that most modern billionaires made their billions through petroleum, much less Baku.

thats and the Nobels are the more public ones. there's also billionaires from the astrian dynasties all over baku.

also stalin journalism career took off there.

I thought he made his fortune from TNT and then founded the Nobel prize out of guilt?

You seem to have summarised what I thought they said

That is kind of a Pierce Morgan question: "Do you condemn $X"?

Yes, I condemn $X. Does it make a difference? Buying oil and gas from Russia, which is happening anyway by laundering it through India, does not make a difference. Ukraine knew this, so it kept the Russian pipelines open and collected transit fees while brutally criticizing Germany for Nordstream!

No one in the West any longer claims that Russia blew up Nordstream. The latest WSJ article blames it on Zalushny. That is currently the mainstream version, others still believe Seymour Hersh.

Strange that the pipeline (whose existence has been a major problem to both the US and a number of EE nations) happens to blow up, after Biden delivers a little speech on it:

> If Russia invades (Ukraine) ... again, there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it

And when pressed for more information on this rather ominous statement, refused to elaborate.

Its always odd when the 'it would be a shame if anything happened to it' establishment actually burns down. Even odder when the person the German investigation claims to be responsible did the sabotage out of Poland, and then fled to Ukraine.

With no support from the authorities of either nation, of course, despite both of them having Cheshiric grins over the sabotage.

I suppose it's very fortunate that Russia bent over backwards to do Biden, Zelensky, and Poland such a favor.

I mean, it's a pretty straightforward stance to understand, if not sympathize. If you pay taxes in Russia, your efforts directly support the war in Ukraine. You can have all sorts of arguments about choice and will, but this underlying truth remains the same.

The Netherlands undertook that project for flood protection and to increase land for agriculture. You can't exactly do that on oil platforms.

> The Netherands doesn't want or isn't ready for building tall yet, for some reason.

>> Population • 9 November 2024 estimate Neutral increase 18,212,400[7] (69th) • 2011 census 16,655,799[8] • Density 520/km2 (1,346.8/sq mi) (33rd)

Compare with Singapore:

>> Density 7,804/km2 (20,212.3/sq mi) (2nd)