tobychev @tobychev@qoto.org

Bad news also on global hunger. After decades of (modest) improvement in cutting hunger, the number and percentage of undernourished people is rising again.

Some interesting results showed that urban agriculture in Sant Feliu de Llobregat may produce ~3.500 jobs and the 50% of the fresh food consumed in the city. It may reduce 1.26ºC the urban heat island and run-off by 20 mm.

"The Musk Foundation, for instance, gave $5 million to a United Nations program that helps countries identify rural schools that need internet access. In at least two cases, those countries then became Mr. Musk’s customers, connecting their schools with his Starlink satellite service."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/us/elon-musk-charity.html

The #oil🛢️ industry has fought against government support for clean technologies for more than half a century, the Guardian can reveal, even as vast subsidies have propped up its polluting business model https://buff.ly/3IszECq #lobbying

I took a class on precision questioning which I found to be extremely valuable in understanding a topic.

I learned over time it also makes you cone across as an asshole who interrogates people especially if you’re in a leadership position.

Overall I’ve found showing signs of empathy and positive reinforcement while asking the questions you need answered helps them land better. Also explaining why you’re asking helps.

Most importantly avoid precision questioning in writing as much as possible.

"It turns out that generative AI companies don’t like it when you steal, sorry, scrape, images from them. Cue the world’s smallest violin."

In Moment of Unbelievable Irony, Midjourney Accuses Stability AI of Image Theft

https://www.themarysue.com/midjourney-accuses-stability-ai-of-image-theft/

poll: when you see this message in `git status`:

”Your branch is up to date with 'origin/main’.”

do you know that your branch may not actually be up to date with the `main` branch on the remote?

Nelson's family crossed the street where they did because it was where the bus stop was. The nearest crosswalk was a 20 min out of the way.

In the aftermath of the "accident", traffic engineers inspected the place where Nelson's child died. They decided there were not enough pedestrians to justify installing a crosswalk or a traffic light.

Meanwhile in the greater Atlanta area, a quarter of all pedestrian fatalities occurred within 100 ft of a bus stop, and over half occurred within 300 feet.

What I want cis white liberals to understand is there's a reason so many poor, trans, Black, Hispanic, Arabic, and other people are upset about politics right now, and it's not because we're "low information voters" or we just feel like being mean to your heroes. It's because yelling at someone like Trump is pointless. We hope yelling at Biden and Democrats is not.

this is one of the most violently unhinged CSB report i've ever read https://www.csb.gov/file.aspx?DocumentId=6120

#bibliotek ❤️ #spel i Noll27:s nya nummer:

@orjan :
"Om man i DiVA tittar på de uppsatser som skrivits om bibliotekariers uppfattningar om spel på bibliotek de senaste decennierna (i stor utsträckning handlar dessa om TV- och dataspel) finner man argument som både betonar egenvärde och instrumentellt värde. Det kan handla om att bibliotekens utbud måste spegla det samtida mediesamhället, spel innehåller berättelser på samma sätt som en bok men via andra medieformer."

http://www.noll27.se/2023/12/osaker-hallning-till-spelkulturen/

”När bibliotekarien Andreas Steiner plockade i ordning efter en gymnasieklass hittade han en bok av 1500-talsmystikern Paracelsus. Marginalanteckningar från en av den svenska historiens mest bisarra personer gjorde inte fyndet mindre intressant.” #bibliotek

https://magasink.se/2024/03/andreas-steiner-det-kandes-helt-osannolikt/

China: “Remove all VPNs”
Apple: “Sure thing”

China: “…and podcast apps”
Apple: “Can do boss!”

China: “…and also hand over all iCloud data for our citizens”
Apple: “I mean why wouldn’t we? Here you go!”

EU: “Allow alternate app stores, and do it fairly”
Apple: “Ahhh hell no! This is so unfair you guys are bullies! Malware! Privacy! We have standards! Unlike you we care about our users!”

Comet Pons-Brooks is currently low in the west after sunset for Northern Hemisphere viewers, not far from the Andromeda galaxy in the sky.

Here's another lovely view of the comet, taken on March 2 by Michael Jäger.

https://earthsky.org/tonight/12-p-comet-pons-brooks-outburst-millennium-falcon-bright-2024-eclipse/ #astronomy #space #science #comet

Stars are born in elaborate dances of gas and dust. Every dance is different -- creating different types of stars, different types of planets, unique environments.

These breathtaking new images capture the diversity of nature's art. They were taken using ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile.

https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2405/ #science # nature #astronomy #space

@rlmcelreath Bayesian Man comics had a brief indy run in the early 90s, but they never became fashionable because readers didn’t really care about the stories. They were just admiring his posterior.

OpenAI responds to Elon Musk’s lawsuit suing them for converting from a non-profit to a for-profit entity by sharing emails showing he knew of those plans since it was the only path to generate billions in revenue. The disagreement was he wanted to be CEO and merge it with Tesla.

https://openai.com/blog/openai-elon-musk

Recent genomic studies show that the parasitic fly Braula evolved within Drosophilidae, flies we know as the workhorses of genetics. See link.

The problem: Braula was named in 1818.

Drosophila was named in 1823.

By the rules of priority, if we organize taxa by their ancestry, then the correct family placement for *all* these flies, including everyone's precious Drosophila melanogaster, is in Braulidae, not Drosophilidae.

#Drosophila #Taxonomy #Entomology #Insects

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0274292