My membership of British Cycling has come around for renewal and I have no hesitation in telling them to get lost. The fact that they took on a major sponsorship deal with Shell (SHELL!) in October and have refused to reverse that decision is appalling. This is classic greenwashing - Shell are continuing to extract all the oil they can. Cycling should not offer shelter to the fossil fuel companies putting profit ahead of the planet.
https://bikebiz.com/a-shocking-decision-industry-reacts-as-british-cycling-signs-deal-with-shell/
Put differently: It is not possible for us to recognize and reward the people who have created the free, open tools we all use every day in any way that is even vaguely proportional to what they've given the world. That amount of money doesn't exist.
If you've ever typed ":wq", consider making a donation to the charities Bram Moolenaar supported:
https://iccf-holland.org/
https://www.vim.org/iccf/
https://www.iccf.nl/
Help spread the word:
Nominations to become a Trustee of Society of Research Software Engineering still open until 4 Aug.
Help lead the community, bring your passion and your ideas
Here’s what it’s all about: https://society-rse.org/2023-being-a-trustee/ #RSEng
@chrischirp Is it possible to get boosters of the vaccine privately since the gov has given up? And would you recommend doing that?
Covid update!
If you want an update on latest Covid data in England (increasing, from a low base), then check out this summary of my Twitter thread on a NON TWITTER platform!
@ScienceDesk @alandavies1@twitter.com (Alan Davies, comedian, actor) of #QI fame will be quite disappointed if this is true!!!
Move over, blue whales? A colossal ancient whale could be the heaviest animal ever known.
Science News reports: "Perucetus colossus may have tipped the scales at up to 340 metric tons."
Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon #OTD in 1939.
In 1954 Einstein said to his old friend, Linus Pauling, "I made one great mistake in my life—when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification—the danger that the Germans would make them ..." via @wikipedia
Something neat happens when you sort stars by color and brightness.
In this visualization of the stars in the globular cluster Omega Centauri, we can clearly see several groups of stars emerge from this sort: normal, main sequence stars; red giants; blue, horizontal branch stars; and white dwarfs. These are all stages in the lifecycle of Sun-like stars.
Download: https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/videos/35-Video
#astronomy #space #stars #hubble
I'm chronicling the development of "Software Design by Example" (a) because I want people to be interested enough to give feedback but also (b) because I want people who have something of their own to say to understand that there's no magic in creating something like this. A lesson is a user interface for knowledge; good lessons are the product of systematic design, just like good interfaces; I hope that seeing how the cake is baked will encourage others to bake cakes of their own. #sdxpy
The BBC's experiment with Mastodon is pathbreaking in English-language news -- a major organization setting up its own instance. They've really thought this through. Key language:
"We're using social.bbc as the domain, so you can be sure these accounts are genuinely from the BBC. And by linking to and from the BBC’s website, we have verified our identity on Mastodon."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2023-07-mastodon-distributed-decentralised-fediverse-activitypub
Welcome to:
@BBCRD
@BBC5Live @BBCRadio4
@BBCTaster
@Connected_Studio
@BBC_News_Labs
Haven't seen much discussion on the recent room-temperature superconductivity claims here on Mastodon (am I following the wrong people?), but before the hype hits you, here is the current state of affairs:
* Two experimental attempts to replicate the result have found nothing (https://t.co/D1gmAEOvzx, https://t.co/u5qIEv7aB7)
* One numerical result shows that the suggested material should have flat eletron bands, which are consistent with (but do not prove) superconductivity (https://t.co/2m0ojMOTLr).
Until we have independent experimental replication, any hype is premature.
(h/t @dangaristo)
Research Software Engineer | PhD Physics | Author of Super Smart Science: Nuclear Physics Made Easy | Lindy Hop + Yoga + Programming FTW