Dr Keith Walker @SteelFolk@qoto.org

Why is it that on every single hike I take I encounter so many large old trees having been felled.

When will people understand that they don't grow as fast as one chops them down.

In some cases there may be valid reasons; but often, as far as I can tell, the reason is mainly "potential risk to passing traffic", interpreted as "reduce risk to zero" - a sterile worldview. The damage to the quality of our landscapes is immense.

Imagine if all the collective money spent of “self driving cars” had been spent on public transport.

As in, not cars - which are ultimately bad solutions for most of the world - but punctual and pervasive clean-energy public trams, trains, and buses.

It’d have cost less and been far more useful for far more people. Including non-drivers. And actually be here. Today. Working.

Howard Beckett: There are EU nations refusing to partner with Israel’s genocide and vow to continue funding UNRWA:

Ireland 🇮🇪
Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
Belgium 🇧🇪
Luxembourg 🇱🇺
Norway 🇳🇴
Slovenia 🇸🇮 doubled funding
Portugal 🇵🇹 donating an extra €1ml
Spain 🇪🇸 trebled funding to €50ml.

Celebrate them
@palestine

"To stand on German soil as the son of Holocaust survivors and call for a ceasefire – and to then be labelled as antisemitic is not only outrageous, it is also literally putting Jewish lives in danger," Abraham told the Guardian. “I don’t know what Germany is trying to do with us,” he added. “If this is Germany’s way of dealing with its guilt over the Holocaust, they are emptying it of all meaning.”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/feb/27/israeli-director-receives-death-threats-after-officials-call-berlinale-antisemitic

VOILA

"We do not need tech billionaires to write open letters about the existential threat of AI. Rather, ordinary people need the ability to exert control over their own public spaces, homes, and workplaces, and this includes having a say in technological “upgrades.”

Much of this is clearly also in the Con playback for the UK, such as demonising lawyers and judges. Well worth a listen

Opening Arguments | Project 2025 Is Terrifying on Podbean https://www.podbean.com/ea/dir-prevk-1d72a6b7

German physicist and Nobel laureate in physics (1943) Otto Stern was born #OTD in 1888.

His contributions to physics included the Stern-Gerlach experiment , the measurement of atomic magnetic moments, the development of the molecular-beam technique, the discovery of the anomalous magnetic moment of the proton, and the demonstration of the wave nature of atoms and molecules. He was the second most nominated person for a Nobel Prize, with 82 nominations in the years 1925–1945.

#science #physics

We’ve started laying a cone down when the #cat is under the rug so we don’t step on him 😂 🚧🐈

How the ‘will of the people’ is warping our politics

The phrase is used by ministers to evade proper scrutiny. Just look at their rhetoric on Rwanda.

By me, at Prospect

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/64874/how-the-will-of-the-people-is-still-warping-our-politics

"Will you free my Palestine"
Sticker spotted in Brunswick, Victoria

Scottish physicist C.T.R. Wilson was born #OTD in 1869. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the cloud chamber. The inspiration for his prize-winning work came in the mountains of Scotland, where he served as a meteorological observer. He decided to try to reproduce cloud formation in the laboratory. In 1895 he produced his 1st cloud chamber, which supersaturates the air by expanding and cooling it. He realized that the device’s potential went far beyond understanding weather.

Israel claims there is not a policy to forcibly expel Palestinians in Gaza, but direct testimonies from people arriving in Rafah reveal there is a ethnic cleansing campaign taking place around Gaza City.

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/01/testimonies-describe-forced-displacement-campaign-in-northern-gaza/?utm_content=buffer179f8&utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon&utm_campaign=buffer

#Palestine #Israel #Gaza
@palestine @israel

Big recommendations for a sustainable circular economy of plastics in this new Nature article:
*50% reduction in plastic demand
*complete phase out of fossil fuel based plastics
*95% recycling rate of plastics
*use of renewable energy

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06939-z

As the sun rises we're getting a clearer image of what Israel bombed last night in Rafah.

Tents. Tents full of people and crops.

Airliners filled with flowers zip around the globe every day. Chrysanthemums from Colombia dash to Japan; roses from Kenya end up in Britain; carnations from Ecuador jet to Russia. Nearly all imported cut flowers go through the same emissions-intensive journey — climate-controlled greenhouses, refrigerated trucks and a long, chilled flight. Fresh flowers are a $34 billion global industry with a massive carbon footprint

https://archive.ph/wip/accV8

#pollution #ecology #environment #climate

"Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer."

Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787), Preface, A vii

~Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804)

#books #literature #philosophy

Untold History of AI: Invisible Women Programmed America's First Electronic Computer The “human computers” who operated ENIAC have received little credit.

By OSCAR SCHWARTZ via @ieeespectrum

https://spectrum.ieee.org/untold-history-of-ai-invisible-woman-programmed-americas-first-electronic-computer

There is an interesting series of 6 articles on "Untold History of AI":

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/AI-history

#science #computer #womeninscience

"Any AI system is defined by its reliance on the use of data from the past to make decisions about the future.

"But the government signaled it is concerned that the technology’s use by insurers is allowing them to bend the future to their own benefit."

via @STAT
https://www.statnews.com/2024/02/07/government-warns-medicare-advantage-insurers-not-to-deny-care-based-on-ai/

#AI #health #healthcare #medicine #MA #Medicare #insurance #healthinsurance

Hey uh. So I'm kinda stuck in a place where I've closed myself off some, don't have a support group or family as such.

How do you ... make something like that? Like, I don't even have someone I trust to call if I need a ride home.

I'd... especially like some advice from people who've tried to make it in cultures that aren't theirs. I don't have a culture, I got brought up between three different countries and none of them are "mine" and none really accept me as "theirs". Some times that's fine, other times, especially when it combines with other aspects of identity that are also deemed a problem (ADHD, trauma, gender identity, sexuality), it's the worst thing in the world and so, so isolating.

Boosts are appreciated. I'm not good at reaching out, so every bit helps.