Gaythia Weis @Gaythia@qoto.org

#ScienceSunday

Calling all Mastodonians!

Let's make #ScienceSunday a trending hashtag every weekend. Post anything related to science: a cool image, research article, or scientific observation. Look to the stars and skies, to nature, or even the food you cook for inspiration.

Tag your post and boost other tagged posts generously.

Here's a prize-winning image by Dr. Caleb Dawson from 2022 Nikon Small World competition. Can you guess what it is?

Answer in the image description.

@stevenjgibbons @SteamHeaterson Yes! The rocks on the west coast are broken and fractured and don’t transmit seismic waves as efficiently as the old, cold, dense rocks of the East Coast and Midwest. Therefore, shaking in the east coast is usually felt more strongly over greater distances (generally speaking). http://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/east-vs-west-coast-earthquakes

I'd like to welcome Black users to #Mastodon
Many are leaving #Twitter although they were one of its most engaged demographics, steering online culture & driving real-world social change. For more than a decade #BlackTwitter shared cultural experiences that often led to significant viral discussions. Any decline among highly engaged user segments would add pressure on Twitter business as 90% of the revenue last yr came from advertising
#BlackMastodon #BlackFediverse

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-musk-black-twitter-influencers-hate-speech-rcna59474

The reason capital-aligned right wing groups are spreading disinformation about the efficacy of things like masks, vaccines, and air filtration/ventilation in combatting COVID is that they don’t want demand for new workplace protections/regulations imposed on businesses.

“Everyone is going to get COVID and you can’t stop it” is a lie meant to absolve business of any responsibility or liability to workers.

Every elected official raises their hand and swears to “support & defend the Constitution.”

The Constitution has been threatened by one noteworthy individual.

Will his followers support him or will they adhere to their oath & defend the document that represents the ideas which makes our country unique ?

Color Me Katydid! 🧵 1/

A picture of a katydid (Amblycorypha oblongifolia) crossed my time line the other day.

Katydids, named after the sound of their chirp, can be distinguished from grasshoppers and crickets by their long back legs, very long antennae and rhomboid shaped body that is tented like the roof of a house.

A katydid looks like a walking leaf. Nearly all of them are green, but a few are bright pink or even orange and yellow. How come? Read on!

#ScienceMastodon #ScienceSunday

A Fox News Alert from my two year old.

Memo to the Fed: The underlying problem is not wage-price inflation.

It’s profit-price inflation.

Your rate hikes have resulted in needless pain for people who are already struggling to keep up with rising prices: lower-wage workers and the poor.

“.. the omission of Thomas Jefferson’s enslaved chef, James Hemings, who was the mastermind behind many of America’s favorite dishes including macaroni and cheese. His erasure is part of a theme that’s permeated written history itself.”

📝 by Joseph Lamour

#food #history #slavery
https://www.today.com/food/people/james-hemings-mac-and-cheese-enslaved-chef-thomas-jefferson-rcna58226

A paper just released by the @AtlanticCouncil and the @USIP. Proud to be a contributor.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/atlantic-council-strategy-paper-series/preparing-for-victory-a-long-haul-strategy-to-help-ukraine-win-the-war-against-russia-and-secure-the-peace/

Yoel Roth, the former Head of Trust and Safety for Twitter, [shared his thoughts](https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/29/tech/yoel-roth-twitter-elon-musk) on Musk's handling of Twitter and the reasons for his departure while speaking at a Knight Foundation conference. He largely just confirms what we all know from following the debacle, though he does demonstrate a good practice for personal and professional life-- defining clear boundaries:

"Before Musk took over Twitter, Roth wrote down several commitments to himself that would trigger the decision to quit. One limit, he said — one that was never reached — was that Roth would refuse to lie for Musk. Another limit, one that was ultimately reached and drove his decision to resign, was 'if Twitter starts being ruled by dictatorial edict rather than by a policy.'"

#Boundaries, #Safety, #SocialMedia, #Technology, #Trust, #Twitter

🆕: On Dec. 7, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Moore v. Harper. How the Court rules in this case could shape state legislatures’ power in regulating federal elections — and the checks and balances on this power — for years to come.
https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/moore-v-harper-a-dangerous-theory-has-its-day-in-court/

"In our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.”
- David Graeber

My latest: C diff is unrecognized and can be deadly: Learn To “See” C. Difficile To Protect Yourself From This Serious Infection via @forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2022/11/28/learn-to-see-c-difficile-to-protect-yourself-from-this-serious-infection/ #Cdff #PeggyLillisFund #PeggyFund xpost from Twitter

For everybody following #BlackMastodon & #BlackFriday,

We still building this young community, gonna take time and a lot of work, but I know there's still people slowly coming this way looking for connections so please Boost AND spread the word so they have an easier time find us. Just tell whoever you can, we out here!

And for people of all complexions that rock with us, we appreciate it, we encourage you to watch and listen and enjoy.

BlackFriday, we own that now!

#1

Hi everyone! Like many of us, I’m new here but I look forward to connecting! I’m a professor of Black and African Diaspora History at Rutgers University and I specialize in the 18th and 19th centuries. My newest book, Fear of a Black Republic is now available!

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been going around claiming there is "no opposition" to #KOSA. This letter should put that lie to rest. Dozens of organizations signed including the #ACLU, GLAAD, GLSEN, National Center for Transgender Equality, Black and Pink, Access Now, American Library Association, The Human Trafficking Prevention Project, Reframe Health and Justice, Woodhull Freedom Foundation, Ranking Digital Rights, #Wikimedia Foundation, #TorProject, and lots more

https://hub.jhu.edu/2022/11/17/interactive-universe-map/

Harold Fisk and the Mississippi River

Rivers meander over their course as they continuously erode and deposit sediment. Harold Fisk, a geologist and cartographer working for the US Army Corps of Engineers, mapped the meanders of the mighty Mississippi in 1944 and the results are mesmerizing. (See below) They also beautifully illustrate geology’s Law of Superposition: newer and younger sediments are deposited on top of older sediments. We see thousands of years of course changes. You can unravel the layers by eye by noting which layer cuts others.

Or you can cheat and use the map legend which has the youngest course on top, to the oldest on the bottom!

“In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year.

“Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago, next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod.

“And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen.

“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

~ Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 1883

#geology #LawOfSuperposition #GIS #EarthScience #map @geography

@conradhackett @manlius On Nov 20 there were just 1,776 instances, one week later (Nov 27-today) there are 14,428!

https://instances.social/list/old