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RCSEdLibraryandArchive

Hello world! 👋 We are the Library & Archive at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Founded in 1505 as the Incorporation of Surgeons & Barbers of Edinburgh, we are the oldest medical institution in continual existence in the world. And our library and archive collections are even older than we are!! 📚
#histmed #medhist #library #archive #Edinburgh #scotland #history #books

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scott barolo

Me, writing work emails after reading #JaneAusten:

“My dear Dr. Dashwood—
I trust that you and your graduate students remain in good health. Praise for your latest article is on everyone’s lips. I have not the smallest wish to vex you, but circumstances compel me to trouble you for a meeting. There is not a moment to be lost. I flatter myself that you will endeavour to fill out this Whenisgood poll before Michaelmas.
Until then I remain,
Your humble servant— S.” 🪶

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Imunitas

Today's Guardian edition resonating with me on many a level.

theguardian.com/money/2022/nov

If you were born in Europe or North America in the late 80's or in the 90's, it is unfortunately reasonable to assume the only way you own your house today is if a) you inherited it/capital transfer from your family or b) you payed way too much for a house because 1) there weren't enough of them (because boomers and generation Xers were already confortably resting by their fireplaces?) and 2) nobody cared due to interest rates being so low for so long.

A generation or two ago, by your mid-twenties you were probably already on "the ladder".

What happened to "council homes" and similar policies?

And how is this affecting our generation? Anxiety year-on-year due to housing (and financial) insecurity, resulting in curtailment of family and life plans.

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Imunitas

"The number of border walls, about 10 at the cold war’s end, is now 74 and climbing, with the past decade as the high point of wall-building."
"the unravelling of globalisation won’t pitch us backward into the 19th century, but into a future full of unprecedented hazards."

theguardian.com/world/2022/nov

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Tam

Did you know that if you capitalize each word in a multi-word hashtag, #ScreenReaders can read them as words, but if you leave them lowercase, they can't? Well, now you know! So, for #accessibility, please capitalize words when there's more than one in a hashtag.

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Clive Thompson

I built this tool a year ago but I feel like Mastodon folks would like it

The "Weird Old Book Finder"

Type in a search query, and it'll find one randomly-chosen public-domain book that matches the query -- and present it for immediate reading: weird-old-book-finder.glitch.m

Why only one book? To prevent the paradox of choice! Just *start readin'*

Can't promise every book will be weird, but most are

A longer essay on how/why I developed it: debugger.medium.com/a-search-e

This was a search for "mastodon"

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mwschmeer

Did you know that the scientific academic journal Nature publishes one-page SciFi short stories that you can read for free? Yup. There's an archive of free stories going back to 1999 (although stories published between 2001 and 2004 are missing).

Here's a link: nature.com/nature/articles?typ

Enjoy.

#SciFi #reading

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Parlicoot

In France, all large parking areas will now have to be covered over by solar panels.
What a fabulous idea.

electrek.co/2022/11/08/france-

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Graham Cluley

Mastodon: What you need to know for your security and privacy

If you’re leaving Twitter for Mastodon, here are some things you should know.

grahamcluley.com/mastodon-what

Please reblog/boost if you think this would help folks you know who are new to Mastodon. (Likes are appreciated, but won't help spread the advice)

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Chris Stokel-Walker

Twitter failing 

Late to the party for my own story, but in case you missed it, here’s how one engineer within Twitter told me the platform is going to break. What do you think?
technologyreview.com/2022/11/0

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Mike Masnick ✅

This page has some really useful links and tools for Mastodon users. Tonight I'm trying out Tooty. Another web client for Mastodon. github.com/tleb/awesome-mastod

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Jeffrey Lieber

The glory here...is the quiet. The lack of every single organization trying to fit our heads with conclusions before they happen, with disastrous possibilities and disinformation. The silence is breathtaking.

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Kishau Rogers

Seems that federated social networks like Mastodon offer an opportunity for people to curate & nurture micro-communities vs. optimizing to “be social” with the masses. It’s certainly a different mindset than other major social networks, where collecting followers, likes & other forms of engagement are promoted. If there’s a #Twexit, I anticipate growing pains as many will naturally assume that <this new thing> should work like <that other thing>

Still learning. #WomenInTech #BlackMastodon

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Imunitas

Also, I have just now realized that I wrote a huge wall of text!
1) Sorry for the babbling.
2) I did not notice before because on my browser the writing box only shows 4 lines at a time! Does anyone know how to make it bigger?

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Imunitas

Trying to see how much different is from the birdsite in terms of interaction, replies and mutual benefit in deeper relations and communication. Thought I would share something and see how it goes from there.

So...
One thing that has been on my mind the past few days, witnessing the great , is the role, or rather, the impact of social media in the current day and age.

I would be very interested in your thought re: these 2 possibly opposing points of view.

1) Social media allows a degree of connection, of communication, that arguably represents a paradigm change of the level of the wheel, agriculture (and the way it allowed for bigger and sustained settlements), writing, the printing press and the internal combustion engine.
We have expanded beyond our villages into these virtual settlements of virtually limitless size.

Now, can this expansion be limitless? To the point of an interconnected consciousness of 7 billion people?

Or rather, is there a critical point of no-return beyond which more social interaction is counterproductive? (certainly the sort of "social" interaction online would be the weakest link in social interactions"?)

2) As you become more and more connected with so many others, is there a point where you stop benefiting and rather just lose yourself?
Ie, achievements are only rewarding if there is some degree of uniqueness to them. Is there a law of diminishing returns whereby knowing more people who have done something reduces your reward from it?

TLDR; What is individuality and the place of the self in the social media age? Interested in your thoughts and your help elaborating on this question.

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Guillem Leon

I have encountered more image descriptions on Mastodon in 24 hours than I have in Twitter in a couple of years. Seriously. I'm not exaggerating.
As a blind person, this means a lot to me. If you read this and you describe your images, thank you so, so, so much on behalf of all of us. If you don't, now you know you'll be helping random Internet strangers make sense of your posts by typing in a few more words than usual.

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Imunitas

New user here. Had been considering the change for a while, took the plunge with the rest of the refugees of the . Lurked for a few days before posting.

I mostly used the birdsite for learning, was something I think worked rather well.

That said... By comparing with my (admittedly small, but fresh) home feed here at , during these past few days I have come to realize just how much the birdsite's algorithms were keeping me within rather limited boundaries, even if my tastes and interests have always been the same. has been giving me less noise and more content.

I am hopeful that this new experience might expand my cultural horizons through all of your wonderful collective and collaborative input and feedback!

Thank you to the creators and team behind and to the maintainers of this server @freemo !

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Cory Doctorow

The End of the Road to Serfdom doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of

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Victor Venema

It is great to see the growth of (academic) Mastodon. Not just for us, to have more people to talk to and smaller niche topics to geek out about.

But also because Twitter, Facebook and colleagues do enormous damage to society. And should go down. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20

They give us a wrong view of what humans are.

'Twitter: “Why are people so horrible to each other?”

Mastodon: “Wow! There are so many interesting people in the world! I want to know more of them.”'
mastodon.social/@Sheril/109293

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bioRxiv

Challenges in screening for de novo noncoding variants contributing to genetically complex phenotypes biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/20

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