Andrew Kennard @askennard@qoto.org

Some more about me:

-Associate Professor of History
-From NJ
-Author/editor of 5 books
-Working on a book about Black women at Columbia before 1954
-Write poetry (amateur)
-Griever (lost parents 2 weeks apart in 2020)
-Aunt to 2 nieces 1 nephew (3 great nephews, 2 great nieces)
-Youngest of 6

Great piece by @ct_bergstrom et al on combatting misinformation by teaching the public how the process of science works. That it’s not a set of facts, but a dynamic process that orbits the truth, getting closer and closer. Any one paper or group might be wrong, but if many people across time and institutions, consistently see the same thing, it’s probably right.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-fight-misinformation-we-need-to-teach-that-science-is-dynamic/

Okay, using Mastodon's "advanced web interface" is giving me serious TweetDeck vibes. A very good thing.

Did you know that Wales is home to the most castles per square mile of any country in Europe?

Here’s another! Welcome to Llansteffan Castle. 👍

#landscape #landscapephotography #seascape #history #historical #castle #ruins #architecture #autumn #fall #wales #southwales #uk #britain #nature #travel #geology

@AnnFinkbeiner tricked me into producing bullets for her - https://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2022/11/02/conversation-with-science-writers-about-whatever-this-is-whether-it-matters/ on science journalism and our moronic purgatory

Time for my #introduction!

Hello, Mastodon! My name is Alan Johnson. I have a deep interest in many topics, including tech, management, business, politics, music, history, econ, education, etc. I expect I'll probably use Mastodon in a similar way as I use Twitter -- a place to put thoughts from my very scattered brain out into the world, so that I can learn from the feedback I get. Hopefully I occasionally inspire people with some of my better thoughts, too.

My current profession is running the Data department for an insurance company, and I'm more broadly interested in tech strategy.

The fact that there's even a culture of #introductions here is pretty cool, and different from Twitter.

finally, a therapist i can trust

Throwback to my first paper for my first contribution to #ScienceMastodon

We worked on the dynamics of vesicle reshaping and scission under osmotic shocks, including bursting and developing inner compartments.

Find it here: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/sm/d0sm02012e

#throwbackthursday #firstpaper #softmatter

@askennard Solidego (aka goldenrod) seed head, photographed yesterday in one of the few remaining patches of prairie near me

#introduction post! My name is Sonia Roberts (she/her) and I'm a postdoc at Northeastern University developing knitted sensors that could be used to make soft, fully knitted robots. My PhD work was on legged robots running around in the desert -- and if you've ever gone on a beach run, you know why that's hard. I have also done some science and technology policy work. I like to learn about what's going on in other fields so I try to follow a lot of academics in different areas!

@lightweight @explorergrace @pablo @weka @robert_p_king I've got a science paper somewhere that poses the same question, and then puzzles over why evolution has overlooked one possible mechanism. Many bacteria and protists scoot about in water by using ATP (the currency of cell energy) to move their flagella (hairs). It's not clear (at least not to the authors of this paper) why a stationary bacteria having its flagella moved by the water couldn't run this pathway in reverse and make itself ATP.

Great to see a #ScienceMastodon #biophysics community self-assembling! For the occasion, I learned to build my first bot for this budding community: @bioRxiv_biophys will toot #bioRxiv biophysics posts.

#introduction Hello #sciencemastodon I am a cell biologist running a research group in the UK focused on membrane traffic and cell division in human cells. I aim to post mainly about science but also music, running and cycling.

Hashtags:
#cellbiology #microscopy #imageanalysis #membranetraffic #mitosis #cytoskeleton #cancer #academia #statistics #openscience #Rstats #igorpro #datascience #raspberrypi #generativeart #music #running #cycling

CS, and AI/ML in particular, have become a weird sort of attention economy. Twitter benefited prominent scientists who could get a lot of traction by talking about their work. The prominent scientists will still have followers. Others still have a chance of being overheard.

I've been on a low-effort, low-stakes quest to find whiteboard markers that aren't disappointing. So far, the Chisel-Tip Pentel Markathon Pump Dry Erase Markers are doing well. I've been using them for over a month with no frustration. Tentative recommendation.
https://www.amazon.com/Pentel-Markathon-Marker-Assorted-MWL6SXBP4M/dp/B09K3KXTMB
#moa

this site is so weird. how do I know how many internet points I won? how do I know what to be outraged about? I feel like I could just put it down at any moment and go to bed at a reasonable hour, and then check it again tomorrow if I felt like it, in a healthy way. what the fuck

Many aspects of #climate impacts on #health are still under the public radar. For instance, #globalwarming is moving habitats of invasive #disease vectors like mosquitoes more and more northward.

In an warmer world, which seems inevitably now, chances of newly emerging of infectious diseases outbreaks will increase. This map shows the ongoing spreading of invasive Aedes mosquitoes in #europe. And yes, they settle in.

She's off to the vets tomorrow. Hoping for better looking bloods, a clean ultrasound and, all going well, spaying being done.

#mastocats #siberiancat

(not getting a better picture today, she's in a "no cameras, please" mood and blapping me for any photo attempts)

A spooky specimen from the London Natural History Museum: a fish forever entombed inside a pearl! This fish, perhaps a pearlfish, known to parasitize bivalves, tried to make a home in a pearl oyster and died. The oyster dutifully set about encasing it in nacre (mother of pearl, a form of aragonite). Natural pearls are fairly rare, and are essentially an immune response by bivalves to encase a foreign object and protect themselves from infection. #clamfacts

After a couple of days on #Mastodon I’m very impressed & excited to be part of this growing community! #mastodonmigration

My only humble suggestion is that it needs more #tardigrades aka "water bears."

Tardigrades have survived every mass #extinction on Earth since they evolved about a 1/2 billion years ago. There are ~1,300 known species. And millions of years from now, they won’t even notice we’re gone.