Barbara 🇺🇦 @babs_at_masto@qoto.org

Wildlife crossing built over the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff National Park.

Combined with fencing to keep the animals off the road, these structures have reduced animal-vehicle collisions in the area by more than 80%—and by more than 96% for elk and deer alone.

Jack Smith Cites Trump Execution Remark on Milley in New Filing

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-mark-milley-attack-gag-order-jack-smith-1234836105/

#TrumpExecutionRemark #MarkMilleyAttack #JackSmithFiling #MilleyGagOrder #PoliticsNews #RollingStone #Politics #News

This is possibly the funniest social insect study of all time. To keep them from eating all the food, female wasps stuff male wasps head-first into empty cells and threaten to sting them if they try to escape.

#Wasps

https://www.nature.com/articles/38931

A former physics teacher says America could lose its technological edge if it doesn’t do a better job of teaching quantum information science

https://theconversation.com/quantum-information-science-is-rarely-taught-in-high-school-heres-why-that-matters-210112
#education #science #stem #physics

And the #OSIRISREX samples are on the ground. Here's our story about why that's important and what happens next: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02954-2

We made a robot and landed it on a rock hurtling through space, took samples of that rock, and just this morning, landed the samples safely back on Earth. Scientists will study them for decades. Who knows what they'll learn, about the history of the solar system and the universe. All without endangering human crew or spending the resources needed to support them.

Congratulations to the OSIRIS-REx team and everyone at NASA who has to hear people complain that we don't do amazing things anymore.

4/ IOW…

“Special counsel #JackSmith seeks 'narrowly tailored' gag order against Trump, citing 'disparaging and inflammatory attacks'
The court filing accuses Trump of engaging in a campaign of disinformation.” https://abcnews.go.com/US/special-counsel-seeks-narrowly-tailored-gag-order-trump/story?id=103197976

Does no one in the U.S. government have anything to say about one rogue private citizen knee-capping a war effort on which we have so far spent $75 billion?

Ukraine is not mincing words.

#Musk #Ukraine

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-ukraine-zelenskyy-starlink-access-crimea-russia-invasion-2023-9 https://news.yahoo.com/zelenskyy-advisor-slams-elon-musk-151459281.html

We passed 20,000 followers in this week on #mastodon!

In less than a year, we've accumulated 29% of the followers we got in 9 years of regular posting on the #birdsite, and we get far, far more engagement with our content here.

Thank you.

We will continue to post regularly here because we have found it is a community that values our kind of thoughtful journalism, written by experts for the public.

If you know folks who haven't discovered us yet, we'd really appreciate a boost #Newstodon

Drought-tolerant succulent plants as an alternative crop under future global warming scenarios in sub-Saharan Africa (OA)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcbb.13095

As the climate crisis intensifies, drought-tolerant succulent plants offer a potential solution in semiarid regions. The plants could yield economic and environmental benefits through derived bioproducts & bioenergy. Cultivating these plants in Africa could pave way for sustainable alternative bioeconomies. 🌵

#Botany #BotanyAI

Also, a #FollowFriday #Newstodon shoutout to some other great nonprofit news organizations on Mastodon:
@TexasObserver
@ProPublica @thexylom
@themarkup@mastodon.thema
rkup.org
@thetyee
@gbhnews @insideclimatenews
@mongabay
@damemagazine

And our sister sites around the globe: @TheConversationUK @TheConversationAfrica @theconversationau @TheConversationClimate
@theconversationes

Elon Musk secretly used control of his Starlink network to cripple a Ukrainian military operation while it was under way, in defiance of American foreign policy.

He is an oligarch working against U.S. interests, benefitting his fellow oligarchs in Russia. His biographer seems to think this is just Musk being Musk, quirky and idiosyncratic.

#Musk #Ukraine

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/07/politics/elon-musk-biography-walter-isaacson-ukraine-starlink

We're gearing up for our annual celebration on October 11 & 12! This year, we'll be highlighting how students & scholars all over the world use the Archive’s petabytes of data to inform their own research.

🌐 Join us in-person & online! https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/07/celebrate-with-the-internet-archive-on-october-11th-12th/

Just a few decades ago, mass shootings were essentially unknown in the US, limited to infighting among organized crime or the rare spectacular incident, such as Charles Whitman’s use of the clock tower at the University of Texas to murder 15 people.

In 2021, there were 686 made shootings in the US—incidents in which four or more people are injured or killed by a shooter. In 2023, there have been about 480 so far, with five months left to go.

4/

Via @NPR: More small airports are being cut off from the air travel network. This is why

"During COVID the airlines took $55 billion worth of money from the government for a variety of loans and PPP and all the rest of it. And as soon as COVID's gone, they start pulling out of markets like mine. I mean, they're literally abandoning rural America."

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/04/1197337454/more-small-airports-are-being-cut-off-from-the-air-travel-network-this-is-why

Know her name: Caroline Herschel (1750-1848) made contributions to #astronomy that are still important to the field today.

And she’s just one in a long line of female astronomers who did not receive the credit they were due and whose work was used to justify prizes for male scientists instead.

#astronomy #womeninstem @histodons #womenshistory
https://theconversation.com/caroline-herschel-was-the-first-female-astronomer-but-she-still-lacks-name-recognition-two-centuries-later-210768

Just when I thought Canada couldn't get any more Canada: there's a hockey stick in this beaver dam.

Shimmering water intrigued scientists at a spot off the coast of California in 2018, where they made a staggering discovery: Far below the surface, an estimated 20,000 deep-sea octopuses had gathered, the largest congregation of the cephalopods ever found. Smithsonian Magazine explains why: https://flip.it/HkALvb
#Science #Animals #SeaLife #MarineLife #Octopus

Trump’s federal criminal trial for efforts to overturn the 2020 election has been scheduled by Judge Chutkan for March 4, 2024.

This is tremendously important for our democracy.