Dr Keith Walker @SteelFolk@qoto.org
Steel industry metallurgical specialist.
Joined Nov 2022
Dr Keith Walker
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For those who might not know, following a week after the Russia-Ukraine wheat embargo, there are even bigger and ominous signs hinting at global food insecurity and the catastrophic agricultural crises coming our way.
India last week banned export on all non-basmati rice varieties.
I repeat: EXPORT BAN ON ALL non-basmati RICE varieties.
[Aside, export of basmati variety will continue, the demand for which is relatively small in India when compared to the nearly 15 major varieties of rice (it's home to at least a 1000 varieties) consumed by very large populations everyday(these are the ones which are now banned). Basmati is a "festive" and only occasionally consumed variety in India. It is largely exported to the richer nations, many of whom think it is the only variety of rice from India.]
Why is India banning rice now?
Answer: global warming.
What’s happening in the India (and South Asia at large) should both terrify you and wake you up
Here’s more (facts? trivia? bothersome news? how the world actually works?).
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#GlobalWarming #PoliticalEconomy #ClimateChange #FoodSecurity #RiceBan #India #SouthAsia #SubContinent #Agriculture #Food #AgriculturalCrises #Inequality #EcologicalCrises
Dr Keith Walker
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Seems a good time to introduce/remind folks of the Barbie Liberation Organization from early 1980s that hacked the media by switching out the computer chips between Barbie and GI Joe dolls, so that Barbie got to say Vengeance is Mine, while GI Joe dolls said stuff like Math is Hard
Dr Keith Walker
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Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the Music Industry Waged War on the Cassette Tape During the 1980s, and Punk Bands Fought Back | Open Culture
@sciencebase Bit disappointed that the Ys don't make a frightening shape when It scrunches into a particular position. Bit like the moth which makes a red leaf vein does with its markings.
Dr Keith Walker
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To the President of the #CanaryIslands, the EU and governments everywhere:
We’re calling on you to reject the plan to build the world's first industrial octopus farm in #Spain and #BanOctopusFarming in the #EU and around the world, including its #import and #financing. Octopuses are intelligent, sentient and fascinating #animals. Let’s avoid creating more animal suffering for unsustainable and short-term human profit.
Dr Keith Walker
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Important sets:
ℂ the complex numbers
ℕ the natural numbers
ℚ the rational numbers
ℝ the real numbers
𝕏 the set of fascists wannabes
ℤ the integers
@sciencebase Do you know what the markings on a Silver Y are for, if anything?
Dr Keith Walker
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@sciencebase The crossed hammers from The Wall artwork spring to mind as well, but I couldn't find an example which I could put here (all were some funny file types).
Dr Keith Walker
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In 2000, Elon Musk tried to rebrand PayPal as X.com, but was forced out by the board and replaced as CEO by Peter Thiel.
Now he’s doing the same to Twitter, but is surrounded by sycophants who can’t tell him it’s a bad idea.
Read more: https://www.disconnect.blog/p/elon-musk-wants-to-relive-his-start
Dr Keith Walker
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🏳️🌈🖖🏽
Ron DeSantis is spending time defending the benefits of slavery and investigating Bud Light instead of fixing the home insurance crisis and highest inflation in the country in his state of Florida.
Dr Keith Walker
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An inspiring story about rediscovering the pioneering work of Eunice Foote on the solar heating of #CO2, before anyone else! Being a woman and hence not admitted into science, she had to send an alibi male colleague to present her findings at a conference. Yet, she published the first paper on the topic.
#climatescience #historyofscience
@quietmarc And 'The Economy' when it suits them but in fact the same applies.
Dr Keith Walker
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It's not "The climate is changing"
It's "We are changing the climate with our actions."
Media use the active voice when talking about climate change challenge.
@sciencebase My arse! Next to him is Mr Haslam who was a French spy whom the girls found a bit creepy. He smoked Gitannes and his room smelt like The Metro.
@sciencebase Anyway, since I found it, Mr Watson in 1974 top left. His Super8 film of wasp grubs coming out of a live Small White larva seems to have been lost.
Dr Keith Walker
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There is a striking difference between land- and ocean-based #CDR.
Ocean CDR ideas like adding #alkalinity or artificial upwelling imply unprecedented intervention into ocean commons, with unknown impacts on ecosystems. #Monitoring, not to mention regulating, would be practicably challenging, because ocean waters move.
Land carbon cycle is already managed by agriculture, urbanization etc. Land CDR would be a mean of already ongoing carbon rebalancing.
@sciencebase Trying to learn more about this. They are not very bloody simple, are they? I wish I'd done an O level in Biology - I have to look up every other word.
@sciencebase I gather that bees have simple eyes so that they know where the Sun is without having to gawp at it and that they are so good that it matters not if it's cloudy. Just as well, or we might not get any in the UK.
Dr Keith Walker
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We don’t get to hear a lot about marine heat waves and how they affect ecosystem function.
Right now, as tourists enjoy the bathing season, the Mediterranean Sea is on its way to reaching highest temperature ever recorded.
#marineheatwaves #climatechange
Steel industry metallurgical specialist.
Joined Nov 2022
