Michael Porter @MichaelPorter@qoto.org

I hold the philosophical position that if two things are indistinguishable, their difference is irrelevant.

"What if we live in a simulation?" -- irrelevant
"What if you couldn't tell the difference between taking to a computer and a real person?" -- irrelevant

But more precisely, it's begging the question to say "imagine something was indistinguishable, now how would you treat it differently???"

A new meta-analysis of "light pollution effect on human health, focusing on the main human pathologies and the types of polluting lights" finds that "the increase in exposure to artificial light triggers mainly sleep and mood disorders, with light from electronic devices and artificial night the main source of pollution."

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09291016.2022.2151763

Look at these beautiful images of Saturn’s moon #Titan as seen by #JWST!

Titan is a really bizarre world. It’s the only moon in the Solar System with a dense atmosphere. Its surface is covered in rivers, lakes, and seas that are made of hydrocarbons like methane and ethane.

In these infrared views, we can see through the hazy atmosphere to pick out surface features, but also see clouds in the northern hemisphere.

Read more: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/early-highlights/webb-keck-telescopes-team-up-to-track-clouds-on-saturns-moon-titan

#astronomy #astrodon #SolarSystem

It's getting crowded up there...

"Spatial density of #LEO space environment based upon actual tracked objects, clearly showing COSMOS 1408 debris band (lower left to upper right)."

From a 2022 AMOS conference paper by Oltrogge, Alfano and Hall: https://amostech.com/TechnicalPapers/2022/Poster/Oltrogge.pdf

#SpaceDebris

The brightness night sky, alive with its own natural light, is often dominated by artificial skyglow. While there are quantitative ways of measuring the brightness of the night sky, subjective estimates of sky quality have their own particular value. Read more about one such approach called the "Bortle Scale".

https://www.darkskyconsulting.com/blog/understanding-the-bortle-scale

@atomicpoet it's not the programmers fault. They had no choice. I was one of them.

In the early naughties we tried developing systems that connected on other ports and spoke different protocols.

But our corporate users could not use them. They were on networks locked down by paranoid security engineers.

Only port 80 was allowed. Or port 443.

So we had to rewire it to fit where corporate security firewalls allowed.

And thus, paranoid security engineers forced everyone to make everything look like web traffic. Which of course makes the whole system less secure.

"Tech workers need unions, just look at Twitter."

Great stuff from my #TradeUnion.

https://prospect.org.uk/news/tech-workers-need-unions-just-look-at-twitter

#JoinAUnion

I cringe with every die-uh-spora that should've been a die-ASP-ora.

#microPeeve

Thinking about the time the tour guide at Independence Hall in Philadelphia told us that no country in history had been more effective at freeing itself from a monarchy than the USA, and my French boyfriend spent the rest of the tour just muttering "I don't see any guillotines" under his breath

Every time my kids tell me about the 8 planets, I am generationally obligated to say "when I was your age there were 9 planets."

Really didn't know I'd spend my entire adult life being gaslit by thermostats

So, dear #chemistry #chemiverse, I have created a group called @chemistry. If you tag the account in your toot it should auto boost the toot, to see those boosted toots in your timeline, follow the group. Hope that makes sense.

@scottsantens just because something works or is good, people won't necessarily do it.

it's been proven for decades now that schools starting later lets students learn better but hardly anywhere does it

Alberta as a new sovereign. Uh oh.

Here's why the executive coup in Alberta is a threat to democracy and why Danielle Smith is counting on populist Western grievance politics to win her the 2023 election.

https://davidmoscrop.substack.com/p/the-new-sovereign-of-alberta

I’m so confused. Santa has always been Asian. I met him in the internment camps, and he was definitely Japanese.

Waxing Moon 60.3%

Yep, it's a bit cloudy here.

#moon #moonhour #waxinggibbous