Ellis Crawford @EllisCrawford@qoto.org

Interesting fact of the day: The same effect that cuased light in a prism to split up into different colors is what ultimately caused the first transatlantic telegraphic wire in 1858 to fail.

Morse code is transmitted as on-off signals, effectively square waves. Square waves are in fact made up of many different frequencies. Like in a prism different frequencies move at different speeds through a wire. Therefore as the on-off pulses traveled through the transatlantic telegraph wire the signal spread out like it does in a prism and ultimately the pulses would overlap and be indistinguishable.

The effect was so extreme that it took a message of only 98 words (the first message sent) over 67 minutes to send one way and a whopping 16 hours to confirm the message.

Whitehouse, a doctor with little mathematical understanding, thought he could solve the problem by increasing voltage, which we now know was a futile effort. He increased the voltage to the point he managed to short out the cable entirely and made it useless. However Lord Kelvin had already warned of the problem as was ignored and he came up with the law of squares to describe the problem which later was refined to give us the telegraphers equation. The telegraphers equation is still used today to model feedlines in radio transmitters and receivers.

#Science #STEM #Physics #History @Science #QOTOJournal

I'm going to try to post more puzzles (one of my favorite parts of twitter and not quite here yet)

Hi, my name is Mike Agg. I joined Twitter as 'gammidgy' in 2010, as a way to promote the monthly sci-comm event I was running back then in a pub in Reading.

My personal experience of Twitter was great, but if we only care about our own experiences then I think we are failing as social beings. I don't want to be part of a network that thinks bullying must be tolerated as the price of free speech, or that accessibility is unimportant.

I'm skeptical that good content moderation is even possible on a global platform, and I'm interested to see if Mastodon's federated model works better.

I'm a big science nerd. I love history, architecture, cinema and the outdoors. I enjoy walking in the hills and I occasionally make things from wood. #introduction

Here’s an idea: let’s call people “people” on the fediverse instead of “users” whenever we can.

Compare:

“There are 42 users on this instance.”

vs

“There are 42 people on this instance.”

Which acknowledges our humanity more?

Language matters. We don’t need to perpetuate mainstream technology’s othering/colonial framing of “us” – designers/developers/other “clever folks” – and “them” – the users (usually one step removed from “dumb user” and usually the ones who get used).

#peopleNotUsers

Can anyone help anon?

In January, I'll be a head teacher. Any tips on what I can do to get ready between now and then?

The move Twitter -> Mastodon reminds me of the move Matlab -> Python. I like Matlab, but Python makes more sense. So, I just signed up to pay a small monthly amount to Mastodon (info at https://mastodon.social/about). Not super clear if the funds go to my "instance" (mastodon.social) or to Mastodon in general (if such a thing exists?), because this fediverse thing is, hmm, complicated. But it seems worth it. As someone else nicely put it, I'd rather be the customer than the product.

I see quite a lot of #Science posts expressing concern if The Public will follow their #TwitterMigration over on here.

Here's the thing: they don't even have to. Every #Mastodon account has an #RSS feed. For example, here's mine:
https://mstdn.social/@rysiek.rss

Every hashtag has an RSS feed as well (as seen from a given instance), for example:
https://mstdn.social/tags/Science.rss

Your audiences can follow you without ever setting up an account on fedi, with any RSS reader.

#introduction

Hey there! 👋

I'm Joleen, a data science consultant and freelance technical writer.

I write content on
🤓 #datascience
👩‍💻 #machinelearning
🐍 #python
and soon... #julialang

Learn → Write → Grow

You can find out more on my website 👇
https://statisticallyrelevant.com/

Still not sure what to be doing with this platform. I have built such a great group of folk that I follow on that other platform, over 14 years or so, and the discussion is still lively over there.
How do I go about building the same kind of thing here?
#new #education #physics

Lmao!

I don't think Mastodon or the fediverse has ever received this much attention before. It's a great opportunity for people to finally see that social media can be done differently, that it can be a protocol not under control of any single company.

Hello Mastodon! (/#ScienceMastodon?)

After a day of acclimatisation and boosting other people's toots, here's my #introduction 👋

I am a 2nd year PhD student in Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, working on issues related to the replication crisis. I've also been doing metaresearch at the QUEST center in Berlin since 2019. So basically, you can find me doing metascience or meta-metascience 😅

I'm also involved in the 'activism' side of things, with @ReproducibiliTeaGlobal

Are you using Mastodon through a computer?

Do you wish there was a multi-column TweetDeck-style interface?

There is! It's called the "advanced web interface" and you can activate it any time you want. It lets you add many specialised columns, subscribe to hashtags and all kinds of stuff suited to large wide displays.

Log into the website, go to Preferences > Enable Advanced Web Interface, tick the box and click "Save Changes".

(To restore the default single column interface, do the same thing but untick the box instead.)

This used to be the default interface on Mastodon, and very old articles about the platform will have screenshots of the multicolumn interface.

#MastoTips #Mastodon #TweetDeck #FediTips #Interface

One thing I realised almost immediately after joining #Mastodon is the real extent of the toxicity allowed on the other site where I’ve had to limit replies on all my posts & I’ve blocked over 1k handles. The company we keep says a lot about us & I’ve seen the changes in me, esp when I’ve been harassed, demeaned, insulted. I don’t retaliate or swear but the number of times I almost did speaks volumes about the actual site that allows & even condones this kind of behaviour.
#TwitterMigration

#feditip: add .rss to the end of most pages you see on a Mastodon server to get an RSS feed for your RSS reader.

Level 2: go about your day without internet, then in the evening settle down at your Computer Desk with a nice cup of tea to RSS-digest the day's shitposts.

Level 3: Aggregates your RSS feeds into epub format. Load the output onto your 2000's e-ink e-reader via USB cable. Sit in an overstuffed armchair with a nearby lamp, say aloud "Ah, yes, today's internet" and sip your port.

Academics should list their https://orcid.org ID as one of their links in their profiles. Maybe at some point an official way to link and authenticate them will be established.