Cladocera @daphsci@qoto.org

Every few months, I find myself recommending basically everyone read this one article about the protactile deafblind language. But particularly relevant to mastodon users (AND people working on automated image captioning) is its great discussion of what makes good alt text.

Don't add excess detail! It may make you look like a True Ally, but you're not helping blind people. https://audio.mcsweeneys.net/transcripts/against_access.html

@daphsci @SciCommDennis @jason_ritt
Cosmos! Me too. I'll never forget how he described 4D.

Sagan is a great demonstration of the nuances - he inspired so many of us, but he was also a controversial figure, accused of grandstanding and going too far beyond his expertise:

https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/carl-sagan-and-the-rise-of-the-celebrity-scientist/

https://news.northeastern.edu/2019/04/18/lisa-feldman-barretts-new-book-supported-by-a-guggenheim-fellowship-corrects-pervasive-neuroscience-myths/

Old man sitting on bench next to a dog
Another old man sits down and asks, "Does your dog bite?"
"No," says the first man.
The second man tries to pet the dog and is bit
"You said your dog doesn't bite"
"Yes," says the first man, "but this is not my dog."

every paragraph in this paper is blowing my mind https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(22)00236-4 even as someone who already believed in the infinite variety of language, there are just so many deeply researched counterexamples to basically anything you think is universal (especially if you're using english as your basis for "universal")

#MNastodon I sure do know a lot of people either moving to the Twin Cities or planning on doing so this year all of sudden. So I guess we’re no longer super scary? 😏

#MNastodon Gonna make a local
observation as I pack up our perfectly serviceable artificial tree purchased at the Lake Street Kmart: that store and the Super Value employed a ton of local people and enabled a whole neighborhood to get things they needed without extra commuting/buying from the Zon. Watching certain segments of hipster circles celebrate the demise of businesses that filled those needs hits all of my working class buttons. Placement? Terrible. Existence? Useful.

When you see someone like Elon Musk embracing the far right, it's not because the far right has any kind of coherent political or intellectual worldview he agrees with. It's because the far right is the last bastion of shitty people - they will accept anyone regardless of their personal behavior.

The far right have no standards for behavior, identity or beliefs - you only need to share the raw desire to dominate others. The far right welcomes all manner of abusers, thieves, grifters, and scoundrels.

Logically therefore if you're an abuser, thief, grifter or a scoundrel you will eventually find that the only friends you have left are far right extremists.

@daphsci Yeah, a corner lot is a lot more work for sure! It's frustrating because for the homeowner-clears-the-sidewalk custom to work, everybody needs to do it to a certain level of service.

Our neighborhood's pretty good but, generally, it's walk-in-the-street season here. And getting to the street over the mounds is a challenge. Always has been but we're having a particularly good old-fashioned winter. #Minneapolis

Sure, I'm the "end o' story" guy in the movie "Fargo" out here chipping away at the driveway, but it doesn't take that much more effort to clear a sidewalk full-width than it does a goat path.

The block-end plow windrows are terrible and are made worse by those temporary bollard bump-outs the city has put up everywhere. #Minneapolis

I was driving to Bloomington the other day when I noticed the City of Richfield has Bobcats.

"The man from Minneapolis threw down his shovel and picked up his pen."

Jennifer Brooks on the snowy 'mergency facing walkers and rollers in the Mill City.

The long road to clear sidewalks in Minneapolis
https://www.startribune.com/the-long-road-to-clear-sidewalks/600241576/

Bison in Badlands National Park, South Dakota, USA.

#photography #LandscapePhotography #bison #winter #NaturePhotography #SouthDakota #PhotoOfTheDay