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"Thousands of tonnes of plastic are added to fertilisers, to prevent them from caking; or to delay the release of the nutrients they contain, ensuring that they seep into the soil slowly, matching the demands of the crop. Fertiliser pellets are coated with plastic films, some of which are known to be toxic, all of which disintegrate into microplastics. It is almost unbelievable that, in the 21st Century, we deliberately contaminate agricultural soils with persistent and cumulative pollutants."

additional resource material for GR from Prof. Ed Witten himself, i find his friendlier discussions/presentations of Raychaudhuri equation, singularity theorems of Penrose and Hawking, the black hole area theorem, at least in his notes i find such highly complicated theorems quite, somewhat more accesible to understand
arxiv.org/abs/1901.03928

Holy moly. Among a slew of false accusations and mischaracterizations, Taibbi just claimed that the EIP (which my team was a part of and sought to document and help counter lies about the 2020 election) played a role in labeling/throttling 21 million tweets. Repeatedly, he conflates our research to document misleading claims about the election with actions that platforms took. Either his reading comprehension is low, or he is intentionally distorting our work to push his "censorship" narrative.

Throughout her life, Mary Kenner kept on inventing. Among other things, she patented a toilet roll holder to keep the end of the roll in place, shown here. She also invented a back washer.

When her sister Mildred developed multiple sclerosis, Kenner invented an attachment for her walker so she could carry things about with her.

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Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner remains to this day the Black woman with most patents in the US. She believed anyone could become an inventor, and we're sure she'd want you to follow in her footsteps. On invention, she said, “Every person is born with a creative mind. Everyone has that ability.”

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British Columbia is soon to become the first jurisdiction in Canada to make prescription birth control free to its residents.

cbc.ca/news/canada/british-col

Think I've found the first quantitative comparative linguistic study from 1837. 19th century #lexicostatistics

From:
Brown, Nathan. 1837. Comparison of Indo-Chinese languages. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Calcutta). 6. 1023-1038.

Things are negative space.

A hammer isn't a hammer because it hits nails well. Many things hit nails well, many things do that (pipes, wrenches, rocks, tungsten cubes). What makes a hammer a hammer is that it does everything else poorly. It becomes defined by the only remaining thing it's good at.

So if you're looking for what a thing is, check the contours of what is can and can't do. Therein lies it's identity

That Ernest Shackleton, a polar explorer most well known for the Endurance Expedition, when he led his entire crew out of the Antarctic ice after their ship had been crushed, was one of the men who testified at the British inquiry into the Titanic disaster.
titanicinquiry.org/BOTInq/BOTI

Thucydides found that nations go to war for three reasons — interests, fear, and honor. Carter understood that the DPRK, facing economic collapse, famine, and isolation after the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s own lurch westward, was in desperate straits.

Just got back from the grocery store. Bought a bottle of wine and a young guy came over to check my ID. He noticed I was born in 1948.
"Orvil Wright was still alive in 1948," I informed him.
"No kidding," he said. "The popcorn guy?"

Robert Smalls: "He participated in drafting the constitution of the state in which he had been a slave."

This life of #BlackHistory forged in battle and lawmaking is so full that even a concise bullet-point list of titles and positions alone won't fit in 500 characters. See alt text for the rundown.

Visit Old Salt Blog to read more about a vast inventory of accomplishment delivered in spite of all odds.

oldsaltblog.com/2023/02/rememb

"K. Leroy Irvis became Pennsylvania’s first Black speaker of the House in 1977, and the first Black speaker in any state legislature since reconstruction. We examined how Irvis’  rise to the speaker’s rostrum, which has some striking parallels to today’s state House, could provide lawmakers with a precedent on how to chart a path forward through gridlock, disagreement and confusion."

cityandstatepa.com/personality

A recent article by Chinese researchers, has caused quite a buzz in the world. These researchers claim to have discovered a new , which is sublinear in the number of it requires. Learn more: ilphotonics.com/unravelling-th

Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !

Still working through white US history.

Q: Why are so many Black folk early adopters of tech like Uber and Amazon? Sometimes this willingness to try new tech early backfires on y'all, like the whole crypto scam. Tech companies don't always love you back. So... why so eager? Is it because of Deltron 3030 and André 3000? 🤔You're... you're going to say racism aren't you?

A: Yep! Racism. And go ahead and add Sears to that list of "technology" companies.

#BlackMastodon

The next time you see a female pilot any female pilot - remember Bessie Coleman, the first African-American/Cherokee Female Aviator.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessie_C

#blackhistory

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