Ben Taylor @VoxDei@qoto.org

Rabbit hunting. #medieval @medievodons

Ms: BL, Additional 62925 f. 57v.

Mathematics academics (or people with a PhD in a maths-y subject), I have just been told about a great toy: Mathematics Genealogy. You can type in any academic's name and find who their PhD supervisor was and who they supervised. It goes all the way back to Newton (and back even before that). Someone I met today can trace their supervisor chain all the way back to Newton himself...

https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/index.php

#maths #PhD

"One thing I don't think people realize is that in arguments about human rights, it's not about trying to persuade the other party. It's not about them at all. They've already made up their mind.

It's about persuading the audience.

If I call out my teacher on being homophobic I'm not trying to change his opinion. I'm trying to convince any closeted kids in the room that they're not the monsters he's made them out to be.

If I argue with my aunt about how racist she's being it's not because I expect her to change her mind. It's because I'm hoping to god my cousin's kids hear and learn that maybe skin color doesn't mean what she says it means.

People will try to hush you and say 'they're not going to change their minds, don't bother' but it's not about them. It was never about them."

-sepulchritude

Pls boost so I can show my wife how a toot can go round the world

(we are boarding a long haul flight and will be on the other side of the world when I turn my phone back on, so even with 0 boosts I think this will be a sound demonstration)

About 109 billion people have lived & died. Each grain of sand represents 10 million.

This stunning data visualization of human life by Max Roser was published in 2022.

Today there would be 805 green grains representing 8.05 billion people living on Earth. #science #art

Golden rays of Avalon this morning. Taken just after sunrise on Glastonbury Tor this morning.
#glastonbury #glastonburytor #somerset #sunrise #sunrisephotography #archway #golden

#StarTrek
#Clint

Japanese protected cruiser Unebi, which vanished during delivery from France in 1886 - a failure that might be related to the fact it was built with the usual happy-go-lucky attitude to stability that seems to have plagued French yards at the time.

Despite showing alarming rolling tendencies even in calm seas, Wikipedia suggests the metacentric height - loosely, how quickly it wants to come upright - was never measured. Perhaps on the basis everyone was too scared to ask...

#FailureFriday

There are lots of interesting group accounts you can follow on here, they work like this:

1. Follow the account to see discussion of the topic
2. @ the account if you want to post to the group
3. The account boosts anything @-ed to it, be careful when you @ them so that you don't spam the group (spammers tend to be reported and blocked)

More info (including how to create groups) at:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/how-to-use-groups-on-the-fediverse/

I've listed some active and friendly groups at:

➡️ https://fedi.directory/tag/fediverse-groups/

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I don't want to know what I can do to reduce my estimated 0.00000005 percent of the world's annual greenhouse gas emissions. I want to know what Big Oil is going to do to phase out the 73 percent of GHC emissions that they empower — which was 37,190,000,000 metric tons of CO2 in 2021. Of course, the fossil fuel industry would rather send me nosing into the compost in my backyard, than sniffing under the closed doors of political dealmaking that props up the hegemony of the fossil fuel economy.

"Science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think."

- Jacob Bronowski

#quotes #JacobBronowski #ImportantQuotes #LightInTheDarkness #science

Why do I love this so much....

We are fast approaching one of the simultaneously funny and frustrating times of the year.

I refer, of course, to "How many green tomatoes is my dog going to sneak into the house by hiding them in her mouth this time?"

We. find. them. everywhere. She doesn't want to eat them. No. They are her green egg babies.

#Dogs #Dogstodon #DogsofMastodon #Funny

Jews, Christians and Satanists are taking legal action to protect reproductive freedom, claiming—rightly—that abortion bans are imposition of religious beliefs by the state.

@pluralistic: “Jewish religious texts clearly state that life begins at the first breath, and that the life of a pregnant person takes precedence over the life of the fetus in their uterus.”

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/11/wilhoitism/

Detail:

The European Union has approved a new data-transfer deal with the United States, ending three years of legal limbo and rebooting the transatlantic free flow of digital information, after the EU's top court struck down two previous agreements over fears of US intelligence agencies' snooping.

The European Commission adopted a so-called adequacy decision, recognising the US as a country with sufficient protection for Europeans’ personal data sent there.

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-signs-off-on-data-transfers-deal-with-us/

#EU #Data #Privacy