tobychev @tobychev@qoto.org

EVERYONE: We gotta save salmon

US ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS: Ok we'll build a giant fish vacuum

TRIBES: Why not just open up the dams

ARMY CORPS: We have to save the power companies!

POWER COMPANIES: No, you really don't

ARMY CORPS: FISH VACUUM

CONGRESS: Maybe u should look into shutting down the dams

ARMY CORPS: Our FISH VACUUM only costs $1.9 BILLION AND DOESN'T WORK LET'S GOOOOO

TRIBES: “Killing salmon to lose money deserves a deeper analysis.” (actual quote)

https://www.propublica.org/article/willamette-river-salmon-dams-usace?utm_source=comms&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=comms

In @thecontinent this weekend.

« "When I went to Africa, it seemed like no one was paying attention. It was like: ‘We can do whatever we want.’"

These are the words of an American military drone operator – someone who, at the press of a button, can decide whether Africans live or die.

A devastating new investigation details how one particular drone strike killed a Somali mother and her four-year-old daughter. The United States military investigated itself and exonerated itself. Because in Africa, you can do whatever you want. »

#TheContinent #Somalia

https://mas.to/@thecontinent/111430566639579861

Reposting with alt text because I can't not boost memes about this.

"The hegemony that algorithmic culture is in the process of achieving doesn’t depend on what algorithms “really” do, but on the ways we come to tolerate their deployment — what sorts of stories we come to tell ourselves about algorithms to domesticate them or disavow them, to make their threat to our autonomy seem manageable."

https://robhorning.substack.com/p/two-riders-were-approaching

What do #Climate activists need from #ClimateScience?
A brave choice to invite the Danish green student movement to the #NCKF symposium - but actually quite moving to see how much science they use. (They may be the only people in the world to have read the #IPCC reports from start to finish...

#denGronneUngdomsBevægelse
#DenGrønneUngdomsBevægelse

#ClimateActivists

Ireland, CERN and Science

And lo! it came to pass that Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Simon Harris TD has today secured Government approval to submit Ireland’s formal application to join the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) as an Associate Member. I have posted about this before, for example here. Currently Ireland is in the anomalous position of not having any form of association agreement with CERN; the…

http://telescoper.blog/2023/11/15/ireland-cern-and-science/

Svenska Freds och Palestinagrupperna är verkligen helt fel ute. Att bara demonstrera för sin åsikt är ett hot mot demokratin. Vill de utnyttja sin sanna yttandefrihet ska de fredligt registrera sig på en kurs, fredligt trakassera föreläsaren och sina kursare, fredligt posta sina trakasserier på hatbloggar och videokanaler och fredligt syssla med nazism och förföljelse på fritiden. Så funkar demokratin. Iallafall på svenska högskolor.

Svenska Freds ba: "Stoppa Chalmers vapensamarbete med israeliska företaget Elbit Systems för svenska universitet ska inte stötta eller uppmuntra brott mot folkrätten"

Chalmers ba: "Hold my beer"

Tack för tipset @pettter

Här är blixtaktion från Svenska Freds:

https://www.svenskafreds.se/engagera-dig/blixtaktion-chalmers-samarbete-vapenforetag/

Och här är Chalmers trista censurbudskap:

https://www.chalmers.se/aktuellt/rektor-kommenterar/inga-politiska-manifestationer-pa-chalmers-campus/

This chart from the recent Carbon Brief analysis is wild.

Is shows the massive increase in solar built in China in 2023, which effectively means that next year, the worlds largest carbon emitter will peak next year and likely start reducing emissions every year going forward, as ever more clean generation displaces fossil energy.

Really worth a read:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-emissions-set-to-fall-in-2024-after-record-growth-in-clean-energy/

Life or Debt: The Stranglehold of Neocolonialism and Africa’s Search for Alternatives

https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-63-african-debt-crisis/

Through their new programmes, the Structural Adjustment Facility (1986), and then the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (1987), the IMF put a singular recipe on the table: privatise the economy, including the state sector; commodify areas of human life that had up to that…

"More journalists have reportedly been killed over a four week period than in any conflict in at least three decades. More United Nations aid workers have been killed than in any comparable period in the history of our organisation." https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/nov/06/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-jordan-airdrops-medical-supplies-gaza-blinken-turkey-push-contain-conflict?page=with:block-654920118f0832f412179e1c

As I read this account of how Turkish Cypriots made an inventory of the properties and belongings of the Greek Cypriots who had to flee back in 1974, I can't but think of present day #Karabakh. I am still unaware about relevant measures being taken or planned in the area https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.9783/9780812297133/html

Every new LLM start-up needs detailed discussions of water & energy use in their public facing documents, & all public sector discussion of these systems must require said.

I want everything we're doing to be interconnected efforts, because the problems also are. Demonstrate we've LEARNED something

The GOP has introduced a bill to EXPEL Palestinians from the United States. I cannot read such things without remembering what happened to my own family after Pearl Harbor. After we and 120,000 other Japanese Americans were incarcerated in prison camps for years, without charge or trial, my own mother was very nearly expelled to Japan because of racial prejudice and hatred. Only the brave actions of a civil rights attorney saved her from being sent away. #NeverAgain

🌌 The Royal #Astronomical Society announced that all journals will be #OpenAccess from 📆 January 2024. All articles from the very first volumes published in 📆 1827 to the latest articles, will be free to read in their entirety. https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/royal-astronomical-society-announces-all-journals-publish-open-access-2024

#Astronomy #RAS #MNRAS

Update on my
https://mastodon.social/@franco_vazza/111351476029307841
it has been peer-reviewed 😄 and some of the numbers I gave were based on outdated references and my wrong estimate of current uncertainties in photon diffusion in the Sun.
This means that the actual best escape time of photons from the Sun is on the lower limit of my quoted values (~180,000 years).

A more updated reference for this is https://arxiv.org/abs/1402.5482, suggested by @RauscherThomas 🙏

Tooting outside of own comfort zone is a good way to learn!

All right, I've just learned that it was my #Fediversary yesterday and I have a new paper out on arxiv today, so let's celebrate all that with an #astrodon 🧵 on magnetized accretion, and it's surprising connections with turbulence in ... pipes !

https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.00034

At a fascinating Santa Fe Institute meeting on Accelerating Science. Chiara Franzoni gave a fascinating talk about what it takes to fund high risk science, and it left me thinking.

When we evaluate grant proposals for an NSF or NIH panel, several panel members evaluate each proposal — and this sets up the classic sort of preference aggregation problem that is the bread and butter of public choice theory.

Yet we typically ignore the preference aggregation issue.