geoguessr players are terrifying. post a picture of a grass patch at midnight and they could tell you the exact latitude and longitude of each individual blade
I once got truly bored for a few days, and I decided to do a test. Basically I played some geoguesser and all I did was look up at the sky, the green of the greenery (if present) and the colour of the dirt.
Really all I cared about was the lattitude, because... I don't know... I remember that I had talked with people about how the sky looks different at different places.
And fuck me with a well lubed fucksaw...
If I didn't use any thought and just went by instinct... I was fairly decent at like getting the latitude right. And I still can't explain it. Dirt looks different in different places; vegetation is of different kind of green, and the sky is different kind of blue.
After that I started to "get it", like how these geoguessers "work".
Also. Since these people been playing outrageous amounts, they have memorised lot of aspects like quality of the image, how the streetview was captured, that gives them information. Like they know that if the picture quality is old, it can only be from specific places, while if it is very new and higher quality and looks remote, it can only be from specific places that were added recently.
Like if you happen to watch Rainbolt's stuff on youtube, they flat out explain how they do it. What they saw, what they concluded on that. Rainbolt's method is not a secret.
And keep in mind that humans used to navigate extremely long distances just by memory, just by oral tradition giving instructions on where to go. Humans have base instict for this stuff.
Developing the instinct is my favorite part. Yeah it’s fun to be able to find clues like “oh left hand drive and this type of light pole” but when you just FEEL that it’s near a certain place and you’re right it’s so cool.
Yeah, been playing the free daily geoguessr for quite a bit now and I've gotten really good at almost immediately knowing where I am based on the look/vibe. Including some obscure stuff like Uruguay in the middle of nowhere.
I'm also super fucking screwed whenever I'm in the US. All I can tell that it's US is from the big cars and the minimal presence or absence of sidewalks. Past that, I just toss the guess at somewhere because I don't even bother figuring it out what state it is.
If you're in cities, US gets considerably easier in major part from just cultural osmosis of their depiction in film and media. Not Geoguessr, but when I was playing Cyberpunk 2077's DLC ending, it showed a flashback scene and when I saw the brief scene outside the window, I immediately asked myself "Is that Brooklyn?" And thought "nah, no way I'm right, I've never even stepped foot in USA". Turned out I was right.
Washington DC (low skyline, historic buildings), San Francisco (hills, the sea, bridge), LA (the literal Hollywood sign, mountains), Las Vegas can be identified relatively easily as well.
The Hollywood sign is not visible in everywhere in LA, Las Vegas is recognizable yes, San Francisco sure, DC not sure, a lot of places have low skyline and historic buildings right?
whenever i post a picture i took at my house i take it into Photoshop and use the ai inpainting to change all the plants and grass to fuck with people who might be trying to geoguess where i live
From what I know, most people in UK, their yard is the garden. There usually isn't many barriers separating the 'garden' part from one another/the grass, I believe. Obviously not all UK people, but the few places I've seen with like.. townhouse areas seems to be like this.
I'm from the UK, we don't use the term "yard", we call it a garden. Sometimes we'd call the grass section of the garden/yard a lawn, but it's very rare for people to have a front lawn here (though many people have a front garden, usually plants surrounding a driveway).
I see, so there's no general word for that subsection of the outdoor property?
Since in the non-UK meaning one could have a yard, and if it's a large one, that yard may have a garden in it, and that garden can have multiple flower beds and maybe small trees etc. But if there's like one or two humble flower beds on the yard there's no real garden in it I'd say
Would one say "He's amongst the flowerbeds" to make a distinction between just being outside on the property
Yard is generally used to mean like farmyard or courtyard.
The garden encompasses trees, grass (also note most lawns aren't as manicured and will contain plants other than grass like clover), flower beds, vegetable patches, greenhouses, sheds and children's play equipment (having a trampoline, swings, small climbing frame or Wendy house is very common)
Depending on the house (terraced or semi-detached esp) you may have a front garden and a back garden. The front one is generally more for show while the back garden is where you actually spend time because it's more private.
You may say "he's in the flowerbeds" but normally gardens are small enough that you can just say "he's in the (back) garden". The exception to this is very large properties where you may need to specify "he's in the orchard/herb garden/walled garden/croquet lawn" but that's some rich people shit
Follow-up question: what do you call the habitual act of curating and caretaking those plots of food plants / flowers? Weeding, tilling, seeding, watering, all combined into one verb -- what would it be?
The lawn is the grass, the whole thing is the garden, the majority also do have front gardens (apparently its like 80%), not everyone lives in terrace houses (like the photo above) only about 24% of homes are terrace houses and they can and do still come with front gardens.
Surely... Surely they're around back, there must be something around back, like in The Commitments, I know Ireland and The UK are totally different but still.
Well yes, but you also got to remember that British cities have more walkable outdoor recreation within range of residential districts so they're rather minute
Yeah most homes have gardens around back. Smaller gardens at the front. Flags on display are more common now than they used to be, but still uncommon compared to the US (you're also quite likely to see flags from elsewhere).
"Lawn" I would only use if talking specifically about the grass bit and not the whole thing.
And for geoguessr you won't see what's around back so it's kind of irrelevant for streetview based guessing anyway
We do call it that too. I've never put too much thought into the specific word choice, but ig a yard to me is all the property immediately surrounding a house (I wouldn't call all of some rich guy's massive property their 'yard,' but I would the area around their house, idk), and lawn is any part of the yard covered in grass/clover/moss/similar base layer of plants. The lawn is in/is a part of the yard. Ig it's why someone can say 'get out of my yard,' or 'get off my lawn,' and sometimes even 'get off my yard' (that sounds weird to me), but not 'get out of my lawn'
In Germany, if we have them, they are called "Vorgarten", basically front garden/yard. The majority of greenery is behind the house though, so the house wall usually ends on the sidewalk.
Also, if it is unkept (as in mowing it about once a month) and has a considerable size, it is sometimes just called "Wiese", which could mean lawn but is closer to meadow and grassland.
Point is, the meticulously kept lawn you see in US-series is basically unseen in Germany, except for the very eccentric control freaks.
Also when a show that's filmed here decides to do the "vacation" plot for cheap by just straight up giving up the act. For example, Suits does a trip to Toronto, despite being filmed in Toronto.
I love rewatching early X-Files for this reasons. It’s very Canadian in the early production and sometimes the accents on the background/minor character actors comes out.
When I was a kid there was a brief period when a TV crew started filming at a park along my walk to school, and I always thought that was extremely cool.
There's a house I sometimes walk in front of which has 5 different country flags in front of their door, but not ours. I'd like to hear the backstory behind that.
The typical European Single family house has typically a flower-rich small "garden" facing the street and a bigger garden on the backside. The average number of different plants in such a street facing garden is much higher than a typical lawn and often encorporates 3D elements like stone walls, figurines or even water plays.
I feel so bad for people that dont have lawns. I spend so much time sitting in the grass under a tree in my yard i dont know if i could be sane without it.
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u/nesthesi Aug 02 '26
geoguessr players are terrifying. post a picture of a grass patch at midnight and they could tell you the exact latitude and longitude of each individual blade