Amanda Whatley @mandaroza@qoto.org

Just before Liftoff. This #greatblueheron realizes nobody’s catching anything on this foggy morning in #FultonTexas last Wednesday.

There is a fascist coup underway in Brazil. As @mrdenmore says, "Can we please move past this absurd and ridiculous notion that this isn’t an international authoritarian movement following the same playbook, towards the same ends, and funded/organized by the same people?" It's important everywhere, but in Brazil, the fate of the Amazon hangs in the balance. Clawing back up the slope to climate stability becomes Hercuean.

Fun fact: One reason why people guilty of seditious conspiracy are supposed to be imprisoned for up to 20 years under Title 18 of US law, rather than being invited to CPAC parties and Tucker Carlson's nightly tribute to Putin, is so that precisely this doesn't keep happening. #USpol #politics

In the future AI technology will play video games for us. You'll say "Computer, play Doom" and a message will pop up saying "You have won Doom." This will free up valuable time for doing more work

Pleased :-) my paper on two stray hippo bones from the Waveney Valley (East Anglia, UK) has been accepted for publication @ Geological Society of Norfolk, with a review of local fossil vertebrate localities.
#Pleistocene #geology #palaeontology #Norfolk #Suffolk #hippopotamus

It's launch time! 🚀

Re: Toot is now available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Re: Toot turns Mastodon posts into images that are suitable for quote posts with attribution to the original author and an alt text.

Get the app here 👇

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/re-toot/id1661697436

Finally some good news out of the UK. The Tories have formally abandoned their plan to privatise (destroy) Channel Four. Hundreds of small production companies will be breathing a sigh of relief.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/05/channel-4-privatisation-plans-formally-abandoned

#Channel4

Just found this incredible bit of squeezebox playing on a 14 year old YouTube clip (with only one sided audio) ... a French box player playing an Irish set of tunes. No shoulder straps ... I think the instrument is made by Eric Martin. What amazing touch and feel!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPx-CfHnayI

"Some people with long COVID are trying to push through the pain and keep their jobs. But some find that they don’t have as much stamina as they used to or they need to take more frequent breaks. To an outside observer, that might seem like laziness."

How to help educators with #LongCovid — Do's and Don'ts https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/how-to-help-educators-with-long-covid-dos-and-donts/2022/12

#SchoolsAreSuperspreaders #Covid #LongCovidKids #RSV #Flu #Education @novid

I need the Mastodon equivalent of TweetDeck. Please tell me such a thing exists!

This is an incredible story of activist lawyers fighting Exxon to prevent Guyana from being the next site of oil development

https://www.wired.com/story/the-quest-to-defuse-carbon-bomb-guyana/

#ClimateCrisis

#VIDEO: #Zelensky thanks United States for their support of #Ukraine

#breakingnews #news #unitedstates #russia #ukrainerussia #politics #biden #whitehouse #cnn #worldnews #congress #volodymyrzelensky

@purplepadma @fkamiah17 I'm sorry it's something you're subjected to, but please note there is a block option as part of the report process.

If they're messaging you, they're messaging others.

If you don't mind hitting the report button, we will be more than happy to respond to it.

Over the past week we've seen a noticeable uptick in men joining, following dozens of accounts presenting as women, and then messaging them directly.

Some appear to be real people, some are fake accounts with stolen identities.

Either way, this is stalking and harassing behaviour, and we have zero tolerance for it.

For those affected by accounts we fail to catch, please report them. We _will_ take action, and you'll help keep the community safe and welcoming for all.

Diolch.

#MastoMods

have we gotten to the point yet where the youth don’t know why all the video websites have tube in their name? I feel like we probably have.

The Washington Post and NYT response to the
platform arbitrarily banning its reporters shows how
liberal institutions really struggle when dealing with
the far right.

They quietly negotiated behind the scenes to keep
their reporters on there, essentially leaving independ-
ent journalists and the intercept's journalists out in
the cold. This is before we even get to the targeted
purge of anti-fascist accounts that has gone largely
ignored by the mainstream press.

This meant that Musk was able to silence large
amounts of his critics while weakening the hand of
the liberal outlets. It has set the stage for a periodic
cycle of purges now.

| also want to be very clear here, this is a critique of
the editorial boards of these institutions and not the
journalists who were banned for covering Musk.

The only way to win that interaction is to go nuclear
and impose as many costs on Musk as possible
through a coordinated response on the front pages
of the major outlets with something like a blacked
out front page with the faces of the journalists below
a with a big with the headline

"MUSK BREAKS HIS WORD; KILLS FREE SPEECH, PURGES JOURNALISTS" etc.

Anything short of that means you're applying
pressure when you are in a weaker position to do so.
This is difficult for liberal institutions because of their
belief in civility politics, pretense of impartiality and
defacto trust for other institutions.

#twitterdammerung

*Reposted due to accidental deletion when trying to edit a typo

So I have joined Mastdon. Same handle obviously. And I will be seeing how to cross post to and from Twitter. It will be, as the fashionable term goes, a journey!

The Arctic Report Card is a reminder that what happens in the Arctic affects the rest of the world.

An Arctic reshaped by human activity will have impacts in the lower latitudes.
#Arctic #ClimateChange #NOAA #NSIDC
@AlaskaWx @TheConversationUS https://www.arctictoday.com/the-arctic-report-card-is-a-reminder-that-what-happens-in-the-arctic-affects-the-rest-of-the-world/