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)
"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...
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…
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:
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:
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
Karabakh, displacement, property rights
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
When Biden said "the US is back", evidently he meant "back at its old tricks":
"The United States 🇺🇲 objected to the outcome of the #TC5 Transitional Committee meeting on #LossAndDamage. [...]
The United States further demanded that financial contributions from developed countries to the Loss and Damage Fund be voluntary, thereby removing any mandatory obligation for these nations to provide assistance to developing countries.
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 !
"Austerity — public spending cuts to reduce government debt — is associated with severe economic costs through lowering GDP, employment, private investment, and wages.
But the effects of public spending cuts on extreme party' vote shares have been badly-understood. This is now starting to change.
In a recent study, three academics, Ricardo Duque Gabriel, Mathias Klein and Ana Sofia Pessoa, have been able to convincingly show that austerity measures have been a significant driver of political extremism across Europe."
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.
Not sure what this account will be about, mostly boosting things I find interesting.