Andy Lowry @AndyLowry@qoto.org

When I was on the birdplace I had over 3,000 followers. I would rather have 30 here.

_The Internet Archive is now on Mastodon!_

The Internet Archive has recently set up its own Mastodon server– a federated/decentralized open source social media package– that has garnered lots of attention lately. We use it in ways that we use twitter now (we are not leaving twitter):• @internetarchive for events, announcements, and fun things• Staff accounts (e.g. my account @brewsterkahle) for, well, […]

https://blog.archive.org/2022/11/13/we-have-added-a-mastodon-server/

Feel like I have been refreshing the "US HOUSE ELECTIONS RESULTS" page on the NYT website for days now, and almost nothing ever changes

🚨 BIG DATA RELEASE 🚨 We are beyond excited to announce the release of our Brain Wide Map of neural activity during decision making! It consists of 547 Neuropixel recordings of 32784 neurons across 194 regions of the mouse brain 🐭🧠

All these recordings were performed in a distributed fashion in 12 different labs, spanning Europe and the US 🌎 Rigorous standardization of methods and materials allowed us to pool the data from these labs together into a single gigantic dataset 🐙

Mice are performing our standardized perceptual decision-making task in which they have to position a stimulus in the center of a screen to receive reward. The dataset contains the stimuli and decisions, but also videos from three angles and DeepLabCut pose information. We're even releasing all the raw ephys data!

We know, it's a lot. At your own pace you can read all the details about the experimental setup, the task, processing of the data, and much more in the technical paper which accompanies this data release: https://figshare.com/articles/preprint/Data_release_-_Brainwide_map_-_Q4_2022/21400815

To explore the data at your leisure, visit our visualization website where you can scroll through different recording sessions, look at neural activity during example trials, and see trial-based activity of single neurons: https://viz.internationalbrainlab.org

Do you have itchy fingers to run your models on this humongous dataset? We totally get it! Here you can find how to download the data using our API so you can fire up those computing clusters: https://int-brain-lab.github.io/iblenv/notebooks_external/data_release_brainwidemap.html

This was a collective effort of our stellar team, who all put in so much work to make this monumental achievement possible. Our collaboration consists of 22 PIs, 37 researchers, and 11 staff members who all worked tirelessly to bring these data to you, the community 👏🍾

Grótta lighthouse at low tide. #iceland #lighthouse #photography #longexposure #sea #shore #misty #blackandwhite #bwphotography #rocks #building #tower

Arctic Tern. #iceland #photography #animal #bird #blackandwhite #bwphotography #closeup

_In this era of Food Insecurity, it's almost criminal that 13% of good fresh food is wasted!_

This farmer says he reluctantly throws away enough cauliflower to feed a province | CBC Radio

An estimated 13 per cent of fruits and vegetables grown in Canada go unharvested or are discarded, according to a federal government report. Many farmers say they can't afford to harvest, box and transport wasted produce to food-insecure Canadians for free.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/checkup/cauliflower-farm-canada-surplus-food-waste-food-insecure-1.6644601

If you think that your toots require a Content Warning, they almost certainly don’t.

My family are so thoughtful

Fascinating world of ancient #glass: an amazing #Roman glass garland bowl, that represents a peak of Roman glassmaker’s skill at producing vessels. Very few ancient vessels were made of large sections or bands of different colored glass, and this is the only known example that combines the technique with millefiori (mosaik glass) decoration. Dating late 1st century BC.

Photo: Metropolitan Museum

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/245787

I very recently learned that the term “boycott” comes from someone’s actual name: Charles Boycott. Boycott was an English land agent who tried, in 1880, to collect unpayable rents from Irish peasants on behalf of an English aristocrat landlord. When he failed to collect the rents, he tried evicting the tenants. The Irish Land League responded with a campaign to ignore Boycott’s orders and isolate him socially and economically.

They not only ignored his eviction orders and threw manure at his process servers, but refused to deliver his mail or sell him food.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Boycott

It was pretty effective—the British government eventually had to deploy a thousand soldiers (naturally, because the state works for the propertied class and none more than the 19th century British state) at a cost of some £10,000 to harvest £500 worth of crops. Boycott had to be evacuated by the soldiers, who even had to drive him out, as no locals would agree to drive his carriage out of the region.

Imagine being cancelled so hard that your name becomes permanently associated with getting cancelled.

A 900-year-old church still standing in Wicklow, Ireland.

Photo by Bob Grim

Two Towers. #iceland #reykjanes #sky #desertlandscape #towers #mountain #blackandwhite #bwphotography #photography

Jimi Hendrix playing with the 101st Airbourne while stationed in Fort Campbell, Kentucky in 1962

No one's going to like this prediction/suggestion but... If I were a brand, I'd set up a Mastodon presence *not* for marketing (no ads, no algorithms; nobody wants to befriend brands) but only for customer service, as rel="me" allows for certain verification (as @leo beat--and I mean beat--into my head on TWiG). The aim is only to deal with customer complaints before they blow up, as they still will, even without Twitter. Without Twitter, brands are deaf and that will hurt.

This:

No, national media, vote counting in Arizona isn't 'messy,' no matter what Kari Lake says https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/media/2022/11/12/fox-news-wrong-again-arizona-election-vote-counting-not-messy/10674314002/ via @azcentral@twitter.com