Barbara 🇺🇦 @babs_at_masto@qoto.org

Good morning to readers. Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands, but this week was the site of one of the most aggressive barrages since the invasion began last February.

On Tuesday morning at around 3 a.m., a series of loud, concussive blasts woke Georgy in the middle of the night.

Fully 294 pages into the 316-page #Durham review and then it just concedes that the predication of Cross Fire Hurricane was validly predicated because of the low standard required, as was independently confirmed by OIG, and that it could have been opened under any of several different justifications ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A new study looks back into history to assess human impacts on the habitat of Asian #elephants and finds sharp declines starting several centuries ago.

Habitat loss has increasingly driven Asian elephants, like these foraging at a garbage dump in Sri Lanka, into human areas.

⬇️🐘
https://theconversation.com/human-activities-in-asia-have-reduced-elephant-habitat-by-nearly-two-thirds-since-1700-dividing-what-remains-into-ever-smaller-patches-202920
#Science #Ecology #Conservation

A combination of renewable energy sources and clean #Hydrogen – including blue, green or turquoise – will likely be necessary to meet the world’s #energy needs in a sustainable way.

For now, though, using fossil fuels to create gray hydrogen is probably need to jumpstart the necessary hydrogen infrastructure

https://theconversation.com/what-is-hydrogen-and-can-it-really-become-a-climate-change-solution-204513

#climatesolutions #climatechange #RenewableEnergy
(via @TheConversationUS)

It's honestly astounding how Elon Musk took over a healthy, functioning, respected, and successful company, laid off most of its workforce, fundamentally changed the user experience for the worse, and completely decimated their verification system, thereby eroding any trust that anyone had in their integrity, in the span of six short months. Claiming that badges were given arbitrarily, and then taking away existing ones, just to give them to those that pay a subscription fee, or to whoever you feel like.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/20/23691831/twitter-blue-verified-celebrity-lebron-james-stephen-king

To mark the beginning of England’s nightingale season, we revisit our conversation with acclaimed folk singer, conservationist, and song collector Sam Lee, who steps into the forest each spring to sing with these beloved birds. Listen to “The Nightingale’s Song.” https://emergencemagazine.org/podcast/ Photo by Dominick Tyler. #Podcast #SingingWithNightingales

CBC bails on Twitter.

Stating the obvious, but at least she's stating it:

"Former Rep. #LizCheney said Thursday that GOP firebrand Rep. #MarjorieTaylorGreene should not have a security clearance after Greene defended the Air National Guardsman suspected of leaking a trove of classified documents."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/liz-cheney-says-greene-lose-security-clearance-defending-suspect-penta-rcna79734

PBS has not tweeted from its main Twitter handle since April 8, after Twitter labeled it "Government-funded Media", and says it has no plans to resume tweeting (Sara Fischer/Axios)

https://www.axios.com/2023/04/12/pbs-twitter-government-funded-label
http://mediagazer.com/230412/p20#a230412p20

Deepest Fish Discovered More Than 5 Miles below the Sea Surface https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/deepest-fish-discovered-more-than-5-miles-below-the-sea-surface/

The podcast that I listen to both regularly and inexplicably is the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s ‘Fish of the Week.’ If you would also like some random piscine goodness in your life, the episode on the Mexican tetra (‘the most phenotypically dichotomous fish’) is especially great, and not just because the host describes what Odysseus did to Astyanax as ‘yeeting’:

https://www.fws.gov/fish-of-the-week-podcast

5/ Michael Beschloss thread:

Tennessee legislators have just taken a crowbar against American democracy.

What is happening to our country?

What we are seeing in the Nashville legislature is an authoritarian scene worthy of the bleak history of Europe in the 1930s.

And the whole world is watching.

"We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 'legal'..." -- Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)

More....

I've been a member of the xerces society for about two years and I'm really happy with their work. They are a charitable organization focused on invertebrate conservation. If you become a member not only will you be supporting a good cause but their magazine is amazing. They also have lectures and other events you can attend.

Invertebrates are often overlooked so I'm glad they're out there.

(If anyone know of an ant conservation group lemme know~)

https://www.xerces.org/

I found this interesting estimate of the number of future deaths from global warming, something I'd always wondered about.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02323/full

They estimate (only) a billion deaths projected if we can stay under 2C of global warming (which is optimistic and would require becoming a more energy efficient society and diverting from our present path but not totally leaving civilization). Based on that scenario, they estimate that 1000 tons of emissions kills about one future person. That means the average Canadian, who burns about 20 tons per year, is killing about 1-2 people during their lives. From a slightly more positive stance, by not driving and living frugally I'm only killing about 1/4 to 1/2 of my future grandchildren, which is still pretty sad, but I'm also saving approximately one of their lives, which is pretty cool!

Of course these estimates are very inaccurate, as they say, but they're better than making random guesses and being off by orders of magnitude (such as thinking your lifestyle is only killing a tiny fraction of a person so is fine, or thinking that humans will all be wiped out by our lifestyles).

As of now, 256 wolves have been killed in Montana's controversial wolf hunt.

With snares, traps, and bait, people are killing these wolves for fun.

It's outrageous that in the 21st century, bloodlust continues to drive the wolf management policies in states like Montana, Idaho, & Wyoming.

Call on the US Interior to prioritize conservation over bloodsport by relisting wolves in the N. Rockies to protect them from this cruelty.

→ http://bit.ly/3XmkAwz

#RelistWolves #Wolf #WolvesOfMastodon

RT @AschbacherJosef: An ESA-led project processed billions of radar images over the entire Amazon basin and converted it into a data cube, finding that in a period of less than 4 years over 5.2 million hectares of forest were lost. That's about the size of Costa Rica. https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-1/Using_a_data_cube_to_monitor_forest_loss_in_the_Amazon

🐦🔗: https://n.respublicae.eu/CopernicusEU/status/1635390670197379072

So cool! A map of every neuron in an insect brain https://www.sciencenews.org/article/brain-insect-fruit-fly-detail-nerve-cell

Deeply troubling story that I think should make it clearer at the top that this about a bunch of racist, snowflake goons terrorizing a bakery and its young employees because they did a nice thing. https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2023/03/10/red-truck-bakery-protests-warrenton/