Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
#MountSaintHelens, 1980. The big boom really grabs your attention, of course. I think the first part of the video, where nothing much seems to be happening until you realize the *entire mountainside* is sliding down, is even more awesome.
Anyone who knows me knows how I love #mountains, and how purple I get talking about them. It's one of the few parts of my life where I indulge in mysticism. I love them for their permanence, their impartiality. They make no demands. They expect nothing. They *are*.
They don't hate us, they don't love us—they're not even indifferent, because indifference is a choice. I like to think they'd feel a kind of indulgent affection for the small scurrying life on their flanks, if they could. I know they don't.
But they're not immortal. They're born, they grow, they age, they die. We live on their shattered bones.
Unimaginable violence drives their life cycles, and by extension ours. Heat, pressure, collision, miles of rock folding and shattering. Bubbles of the mantle rising through the cracks, and sometimes escaping to give us the *tiniest* glimpse of the power below our feet.
#Volcanoes live fast and die young, compared to the more common kinds of orogenesis, the slow folding and slipping that builds entire ranges. They often nestle among their older, calmer cousins, unremarked until—
—well, until.
All mountains are alive, and sometimes they remind us. They will kill us if we give them the chance, with no malice at all. We have choices they don't. The danger will never stop us from giving them that chance, over and over. At least not those of us who can't stay away.
We can't change their lives, nor should we try. On the balance, I sure am glad they're here to change ours.
#Authoritarians are often very fond of #engineering, because they always want better ways to kill people. But they hate and fear #science, because the laws of #nature don't care about their #ideology at all. This is a reaction as instinctive as a rattlesnake's bite.
Never let it be said I'm above a little self-promotion. 
This may be the last short story in the Seaway Station universe for a while: I'm going to concentrate for a while on the Silmarillisaurus, the writer's bible for the universe, and then get to work on the novels.
#dinosaurs #timetravel #sciencefiction #SeawayStation
Main BSQ site: https://www.boundaryshockquarterly.com/product/30-fading-empires/
Amazon, including paperback option: https://www.amazon.com/Fading-Empires-Boundary-Shock-Quarterly-ebook/dp/B0F397V5QY
I want to write about #dinosaurs, but I keep having to write about work instead. Not that writing about dinosaurs isn't work too, but it doesn't pay the bills as reliably. Oh well. Right now I'm going to let rapid eye movement write on the inside of my eyelids. 'Night, all. 
A lot of what the regime does is driven by greed, of course. Make as much money as possible as fast as possible. But I'm increasingly convinced just as much of it is toddler-like gleeful destruction for its own sake.
The text at the end of the post is copied rather than shared, at previous poster's request, and lightly edited. Feel free to share my post, though, with commentary intact.
You know this was always their endgame. The bullshit answers #RFK Jr. and his fellow loons gave Congress were even more transparent lies than all the other confirmation hearing testimony. Everyone who voted to confirm them shares the blame, but Bill #Cassidy has earned a special place in hell.
#Bondi, #Hegseth, #Noem, and all the rest of the cabinet are all assholes, and profoundly dangerous. Justice and Homeland Security are slaying their thousands, and Defense is gearing up to slay its tens of thousands. Health and Human Services is chuckling at them and saying "amateurs."
I'm skeptical that any amount of lobbying #HHS directly, or any of its sub-departments such as #FDA, #NIH, and #CDC, will have much effect. But maybe, just maybe, calling your #Senators and #Representatives will have an effect.
Let's face it, members of #Congress will suffer a lot less from idiocy like #tariffs than the rest of us, and they're (probably) safe from roundup and #deportation. #Viruses don't care about such distinctions. Mighty and humble alike can choke to death on their own liquefying lung tissue.
#Antivaxers are not "skeptics." They're not interested in evidence. They can't be bargained with, they can't be reasoned with, and they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
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Marty Makary and Tracy Hoeg at the FDA are currently trying to set a policy that would effectively eliminate all covid vaccines. They want to require a full clinical trial every year for companies to update the covid vaccine to match the current strain, which they know is not possible.
Please contact the FDA and demand continuing access to yearly updated covid vaccines and ask for the Novavax 2025 covid vaccine to be approved.
mmakary1@jhmi.edu
ocod@fda.hhs.gov
tracybeth.hoeg@fda.hhs.gov
800-402-8010
From a thread on Bluesky: “#Scientists together - STRONG!” needs to be a thing.
Unity is beautiful.
"We've been trying to reach you about your Frosted Flakes' extended warranty."
Right-wingers hate and fear anything that even approaches objective truth. Of course Wikipedia drives them nuts.
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@dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz
@devilonger @nixCraft Trump's people are starting to make the opening moves on attacking Wikipedia and probably intending to destroy it. Recent po...
See, this is why I miss living in #Minnesota: everything is just so efficient!
Daniel Dvorkin
boosted
Daniel Dvorkin
boosted
What a commentary on the stupidity — and venality — of a critical mass of people at this point in history, that, collectively, they/we have chosen to return ALL of us to a situation in which measles will be endemic.
When the disease had been conquered by a vaccine and the willingness of a critical mass to recognize the importance of vaccinating ourselves and our children and in that way, protecting not just ourselves but the common good….
@code_witch Holy shit.
State of Colorado: "Record every ride, investigate complaints, and don't hire drivers with a history of crimes that would endanger their passengers."
Uber: "This is an outrage! We're taking our toys and going home!"
Me, a #Colorado voter: "Well ... bye."
There's a *reason* traditional taxis and various other services are so highly regulated. Cities and states are finally realizing that #Uber, #Airbnb, and the rest of these "disruptive" businesses are far from an unmixed blessing. It's about time.
Maybe not the only #alignment chart you'll ever need ... but probably the last.
A request to my friends outside the #US: can you put a hold on the "LOL #Americans are so stupid" jokes for a while?
People, we know our recent outbreak of national idiocy has the rest of the world looking on in shock. We know that in the last three months we've done damage that will take decades to repair, if we ever can, and more is coming. We know a lot of you have written us off as a hopeless case.
If you care about us at all—*any* of us, individually or collectively—please remember that nobody is more dismayed than those who are trying to hold it together on the inside. Trying to figure out some way to mitigate the damage. Trying to keep our critical patient, the body politic, alive.
When that patient dies, we die too. I trust that most people reading my words, anywhere in the world, would see that as an undesirable outcome.
Honestly I've never been fond of humor that relies on national stereotypes, directed at my country or anyone else's. Most of the time I can shrug it off. Right now it's salt in the wound.
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
