Guess the City

Confirmation that it is indeed not Montpellier might be helpful here. I kind of got it into my head last night that it might be an unrepresentative area of Paris but that's even bigger

I thought ILXors were good at this, but no, Benjamin Kuo is the guy who's good at this

Unable to locate Mr. Compean through the photo’s metadata — he had disabled his cellphone’s location settings — the authorities disseminated it on social media, where it eventually landed on the radar of the Twitter user @ai6yrham, according to Sgt. John Gilbert, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman.

The user, whose Twitter bio identifies him as a ham radio operator named Ben, responded to the Sheriff’s Department call for assistance on Tuesday morning with a thread that included satellite images and predicted the missing hiker’s coordinates. He wrote in a post that he had made sure to forward his predictions to the authorities.

Later that afternoon, Mr. Compean was located by rescuers, safe with no known injuries, in Angeles National Forest.

“I think, at least for our team, we haven’t had anything exactly like this,” Sergeant Gilbert said of the user’s assistance.

In an interview with KNBC-TV in Los Angeles, the Twitter user, whom the station identified as Benjamin Kuo, said he leaned on the scenery captured in Mr. Compean’s photo to help him deduce the hiker’s location.

“I’ve got a very weird hobby, which is I love taking a look at photos and figuring out where they’re taken,” Mr. Kuo told the station.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/us/missing-hiker-found.html

"he had disabled his cellphone’s location settings"

he effectively had a gps device on him and instead he sent a photo of some rocks?

He disabled his cellphone's GPS because he was hiking in the Bobcat Fire burn area and he was trying to avoid a $1000 fire. Every hiker in the San Gabriels is aware of which areas are closed off and the soot on the guy's legs in the original photo was a tip-off that he was in a restricted area.
https://www.dailynews.com/2021/04/17/missing-hiker-found-in-bobcat-fire-burn-area-is-investigated/amp/

Early in the pandemic, I was in a Zoom class that Kuo taught to help folks get their amateur radio. Solid dude - cool to see him get the kudos.

that last cherry blossom pic is indeed montpellier, well done or something !

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6118854,3.8656341,3a,75y,82.92h,70.96t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sSVpwW1ffD4I5DDyoKEb49Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

Ha wow, kudos on finding the spot Jibe, I'd stopped looking

Is that a sliver of a gothic arch I see on the far right?

― nickn, donderdag 15 april 2021 18:39

nickn was actually halfway there, that was the big clue, I guess: a section of the 18th century aqueduct

https://www.google.nl/maps/@43.6118532,3.8656526,3a,60y,105.72h,93.42t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sZTewZhSE1Hp6k4OhpA26Zw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

"the Saint-Clément Aqueduct is nicknamed Les Arceaux for its double row of Roman-inspired arches"

Ha wow, kudos on finding the spot Jibe, I'd stopped looking

― ignore the blue line (or something), lundi 19 avril 2021 13:48 (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

got lucky googling through quite a few variations of fleuriste + **ama until i found it

hah I was looking for "Ouama" or something like that - so off the mark as usual

the shop is called "Chuma" and it doesn't sell flowers, but decorations.

so all my searching Google Maps for "[city in southern France] + fleuriste" was not time well spent then

xp

...or maybe I just did it wrong!

could be your search was too restrictive with the quotemarks and +, i just googled fleuriste chuma and it popped up

Is that a sliver of a gothic arch I see on the far right?

― nickn, donderdag 15 april 2021 18:39

nickn was actually halfway there, that was the big clue, I guess: a section of the 18th century aqueduct

nickn was almost all the way there, especially once Montpellier was mentioned it just needed to be poked over the line. There was too much out there already to give any more!

pretty sure i googled 'montpellier arch' and i didn't see any photos of the aqueduct - now i know what i'm looking for i see one or two. should've made good on my promise upthread and used yandex, there's loads on there.

cherry blossom playing a hard game now, no longer enough just to name the city, they want the exact spot! I looked around the Arc de Triomphe in Montpellier but when I realised it wasnt that I kind of gave up on it

cherry blossom playing a hard game now, no longer enough just to name the city, they want the exact spot!

Has anyone made any progress on identifying the two men? My gut is telling me they're not locals, but not getting much of a reading on how far they've traveled in from

what is the skinny guy stooping over to inspect?

Just assumed it was wine cos they're French

he might have spotted a bottle of blue nun in there

They’re both named “Claude”.

Claude au Trent

https://i.postimg.cc/8z20ZFwh/f.png

monday

Looks to me a lot like a building in a New England college with the framed picture a painting of the early buildings of said college

Looked briefly for views of 18th century Harvard but don't see a match for that set of buildings

what, we’re doing Guess the Room now?

I think we're playing Guess the Fifth Word of the Fourty-Second Page of the Grey Book on the Table now

Yeah, ngl, you're taking the piss cherry blossom.

fireplace reminds me of bern

Des Moines?

There's a gavel on the table and the view outside the window REALLY looks like a college campus, that's all I got

Yeah, the gavel makes me think political building, and the painting looks like an 18th century state capitol, with the sparse landscape suggesting a younger state.

the painting looks a lot like the iowa old state capitol and that has a streetview inside but i can't find that room.

(in iowa city)

TIL that Iowa City was Iowa's capital before Des Moines.

no slam dunk but is it Appomatox Court House, VA?

not the same office, but details match. Old Capitol, Iowa City:

https://i.postimg.cc/mDxxhzRc/download.png

Yep https://www.google.com/maps/@41.661148,-91.5360813,3a,75y,92.74h,75.17t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAF1QipNzuFqrGewv9a_oFgkt7fSl2-YoZjInp5qQkYvP!2e10!3e11!7i5376!8i2688?hl=en&authuser=0

nice

and btw the Old Capitol is in the middle of the University of Iowa campus so I correctly read the through-the-window view

Great team effort. Narrowing down to Iowa so quickly was impressive

Another one

https://i.postimg.cc/sg9Tp0Mw/Screenshot-20210420-102533-Maps.jpg

yeesh. it's gotta be the us. are acres of car wreckage a thing anywhere else?

maybe in Russia

yeah it feels more like eastern europe or russia, the cars look too small for it to be in the us

The hipped roofs and the one-line power pole say eastern europe to me too.

is it a junkyard full of Yugos?

I know, I know it's serious

it's a junkyard full of no-gos haha

It feels a fairly high latitude

The cars seem to have a more matte type look rather than glossy. I'm not good at that but if so does that say they've been there a long time? not sure how that helps tho