Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋 @bibliolater@qoto.org

I was always very enthusiastic about open source software and about building public goods on the internet.

Our World in Data is built as a non-profit, all the work we do is licensed under Creative Commons, our software is open source.

So I'm very excited to see how good Mastodon is! Let's all work together to build a great community here on this platform!

Together with a great team I am building the website OurWorldinData.org

Our goal is to make the data on the world's largest problems accessible and understandable.

You also find us here on Mastodon:
@ourworldindata

And here is my text on our mission: https://ourworldindata.org/problems-and-progress

This map shows only people. It is a beautiful illustration of where people are concentrated.

If you squint, you can see Australia and New Zealand.

Map by Alasdair Rae https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/3d-map
Third in a 🧵 of #2022TopToots

Ephemeral beauty: 19th-century self-taught photographer Wilson Alwyn Bentley (1865–1931), a Vermont farmer, was the first person to photograph a single snow crystal in 1885. ❄️ During his life-time, he photographed over 5,000 individual snowflakes, capturing the transient ❄️ ❄️ beauty of the tiny crystals.🤗❄️ [Snowflake photographs by Wilson Bentley, winter 1902]

Incendiary: #JohnToland and the birth of the #IrishEnlightenment – https://www.irishphilosophy.com/2013/09/18/incendiary-toland/

#IrishPhilosophy #Deism #Freethinking #JohnLocke

French astronomer, mathematician, Gabrielle-Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet, was born 17 December 1706
https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/a-feminist-newtonian/

Terrific column by LA Times' @hiltzikm looks with appropriate distaste at Big Publishing's campaign to ban book ownership (what it all boils down to), especially by libraries, in the e-book era. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-12-08/which-last-longer-ebooks-or-physical-books-the-answer-may-surprise-you

"Most assume writing systems get simpler. But 3,600 years of Chinese writing show it’s getting increasingly complex" -- https://theconversation.com/amp/most-assume-writing-systems-get-simpler-but-3-600-years-of-chinese-writing-show-its-getting-increasingly-complex-194732

#linguistics @linguistics

Public Service Warning

Mastodon has a very big surge of new users right now. There's no way to tell if it will be sustained, but at this early point it looks similar to Nov 18 when when Musk pulled the employee purge.

It is very challenging for system administration to accommodate so many new users. If your server starts to struggle, it is not broken and will get sorted out.

We're all in this together. It's our social network. Be patient. What we are building is amazing.

#twittermigration