Brian Beach has moved @bwbeach@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.

Three articles published yesterday in #Science, Science Advances & Nature 🤔

Women remain underrepresented among faculty in nearly all academic fields https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adi2205

Toxic workplaces are the main reason women leave academic jobs https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03251-8

Women faculty feel ‘pushed’ from academia by poor workplace climate
https://www.science.org/content/article/women-faculty-feel-pushed-academia-poor-workplace-climate

Happy Repair Day to those who celebrate! #right2repair #fight2repair

Time to update my satellite pollution talk for this weekend.

There are 500 more Starlink satellites today than when I gave this talk in July.

4,924 Starlinks in orbit now (56% of the total 8,728 active satellites in orbit).

Just your periodic reminder that one company owned by one pretty awful dude effectively controls outer space now.

I definitely need to explain this better to people who aren’t American, because it’s reading like a callous joke - and it’s really completely honest and serious dark humor. Let me explain what happens when I rate a person down for unsafe rideshare driving in America:

They’re probably immediately banned from driving for the service, and they’re not paid for the (lengthy in my case) ride or tip, so no money that evening, and they now need to find a new job. In this economy.

Most people in America live paycheck to paycheck. Now no money is coming for them or their family that day. They have no safety net of savings.

Most rideshare drivers don’t have the most basic protections as employees they general American workers do. They may not qualify for unemployment quickly or at all. Either way they aren’t getting any food, shelter, or money immediately. They own or lease expensive cars, too.

If you don’t get food or rent assistance through those convoluted and hard to qualify for assistance programs, you’re pretty much dependent on charities with resources that week that do or do not deem you and your family godly enough to help. Unhoused people are all over in most US cities because there just are not enough resources or eligibility.

That’s the math empathetic Americans do every time we choose how to rate or tip service workers. Especially gig workers at unscrupulous companies. It’s legitimately- “ha ha… I could die, but this driver has little kids who need to eat and I don’t… ha… ha…”

I hope that explains.

The most effective document to come to a decision is quite different from the most effective document to record a decision.

Whenever we discuss a paper in my distributed systems class, I randomly split people into six groups and they spread out around the building to talk, while I walk from group to group. The groups are different every time. But so far, every time, I'm able to find five groups, while the sixth group goes off somewhere and I can't find or communicate with them until they eventually wander back to the classroom five minutes late.

I feel this is rather appropriate for a distributed systems course.

The news has an "event bias," which blinds us to positive, but long-term, trends. Our world has changed profoundly in ways that most of us don't realize. Here are ten charts that can help us better understand our world: https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/how-to-understand-our-world-in-10

@kimu So many people probably think "biking isn't for me." The image put out there is of the cyclist -- nothing wrong at all with being that super serious road rider. But you don't have to be that. I got into riding in 2011, taking a cruiser type bike, an Electra Townie, on 300 mile tours. I wore cargo shorts, t-shirts. Now have a big Surly Troll and a new Globe Haul electric. It's just too much fun. The only problem: rotten drivers.

This video camera study showed that less than 5% of people on bikes break traffic laws while riding, yet 66% of people do so when driving. And if you REALLY want even MORE bike-riders to obey laws, build more protected bike infrastructure. Via @CarltonReid
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/05/10/cyclists-break-far-fewer-road-rules-than-motorists-finds-new-video-study/

Tomorrow I'm presenting a paper at #CSCW2023 about chilling effects, copyright and transformative works. It's in part about how imbalances of power in this type of content moderation can adversely impact good faith creators. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610095

The “E-Bike Effect:” Those who bought e-bikes increased their average daily bicycle use from 2.1km (1.3 miles) to 9.2km (5.7 miles), a 340% increase. The e-bike share of all their transportation increased dramatically too; from 17% to 49%. Via @Treehugger
https://www.treehugger.com/e-bikers-ride-much-farther-and-more-frequently-than-regula-bikers-5076231

La siguiente foto está proporcionada por la cámara policromática de la nave SDCOVR botsin.space/@dscovr_epic

Está centrada sobre Peru a las 16:53 del sábado 14 de octubre.

La mancha oscura es la sombra que proyecta la luna; así es como se ve un eclipse desde fuera de la tierra.
#eclipse #earth

This sucks. If you have a connected car, anything made recently, and you're remotely interested in #privacy you're going to want to read this.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/06/mozilla_vehicle_data_privacy/

Or keep that older, disconnected car running for as long as you can? It's immeasurably sad that after spending a fortune on a car, you're still somehow the product and being monetized. And, of course, my kids will almost certainly never know anything different. They've been born into connected cars and this privacy nightmare.

From Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness:
"How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of it, or a profession... Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope."