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I think this era will someday be known as the golden age of ephemeral art and humor.

There's a lake in Ontario that has unusual chemistry that leaves a year-by-year sedimentary record of what's happening: pollen, ash, carbon dioxide levels, plutonium from nuclear tests, etc.

It's not news that humans have effected the Earth, but this article (gift link below) paints a clear picture.

wapo.st/3Nl4OxA

I went to a party today and someone brought cutting edge cookies.

Spent my birthday weekend in Þórsmörk, the forest of Thor. I am still sorting through the pictures, but here is one of my favourites from the first evening!

🎂🏔️🏕️

#Iceland #Hiking #Camping

One of our most popular cartoons of all time is the "Who can work in science" pie chart. We felt that it was long overdue a small update. Happy #PrideMonth everyone #LGBTQ

By they way, if you haven't discovered it yet, the hash tag #bloomscrolling can be very refreshing and lovely.

If you hear people casually referring to bribery accusations against Biden as though they are credible (if not outright proven), send them this free link to disabuse them of that. wapo.st/3oZkX3A

Life is especially good today. Living in the Eastern time zone, and working for a company in the Pacific time zone means having time in the morning to read and think before everybody else gets on Slack.

The weather is perfect today in Indiana for reading outside at the co-working space.

Greetings, Mastodon! My name is Liz Landau and I love learning about space and science. I make podcasts and videos at NASA and write about other areas of science for newspapers and magazines. In my spare time, I play board games and write songs about space.

Be the person that both Mr. Rogers and George Carlin would be proud of.

Amid all of the bad news and strife today, the NY Times had this good news about kids biking to school.

It's a shame we don't have better cycling infrastructure that makes it safe for kids to just bike to school. This is a step in the right direction, though: biking together, with adults to help deal with cars on the road.

(This is a "gift" link that goes around the paywall.)

nytimes.com/2023/06/06/nyregio

@breadandcircuses

Since this article mentions "Anthropocene" I thought it would be a good time to boost this piece again to clarify were the real blame lies:

news.climate.columbia.edu/2022

"To date, researchers have mentioned the Anthropocene Epoch as the latest geological period in more than 1,300 scientific papers. While the scientific community has been debating over which year the Anthropocene Epoch began, several Indigenous and Black scholars have shot back against the term.

"The problem, some scholars say, is that the term assumes the climate crisis is caused by universal human nature, rather than the actions of a minority of colonialists, capitalists, and patriarchs. And the implication that the Earth was stable until around 1950, when the ‘Anthropocene’ supposedly began, denies the history of people who have been exploited by those systems for centuries.

"Indigenous scholars have further addressed how the term stands for colonialist ideologies that sever the deep ties and interconnections between humans, plants, animals, and the soil.

“Instead of treating the Earth like a precious entity that gives us life, Western colonial legacies operate within a paradigm that assumes they can extract its natural resources as much as they want, and the Earth will regenerate itself,” said Hadeel Assali, a lecturer and postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Science and Society, a Columbia Climate School affiliate."

#capitalism #colonialism #biodiversity #ClimateCrisis

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected in 2019 on a pledge to put “the state in a smartphone.” Today, many citizens are using the same app to track Russian troops, seek evacuation assistance — even file their taxes. Axios has more on Diia.
axios.com/2023/05/26/ukraine-d
#Ukraine #Zelensky #Apps #CyberSecurity

Neither the code nor the bill has any comments conveying the intention behind the change. That would be unacceptable at work.

One problem here is probably goals that aren't aligned, and the authors know that. It may be intentional that the ramifications of this change are not clear to other lawmakers, or to us the citizens who will be affected. Is this clause intentionally invalidating the requirement for environmental impact reports for some well-understood case that's covered by some other statute?

(3) in subparagraph (C)—
(A) by inserting ‘‘consistent with the provi- sions of this Act and except where compliance would be inconsistent with other statutory re- quirements,’’ before ‘‘include in every’’;

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Mixing in random cleanups with meaningful changes would not fly at work. We ask developers to make separate PRs for refactoring that doesn't change behavior, and small focused changes that do change behavior. This cleanup is part of the 99-page bill.

(I'm assuming this change comes from deprecating "insure" and preferring "ensure" to mean "make sure it happens".)

(42 U.S.C. 4332(2)) is amended—
(1) in subparagraph (A), by striking ‘‘insure’’
and inserting ‘‘ensure’’;
(2) in subparagraph (B), by striking ‘‘insure’’
and inserting ‘‘ensure’’;

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If I were presented with this as a code review at work, it would be a hard "no".

This is debt ceiling deal. The so-called "Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023". docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/2

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