Scimmia @Scimmia@qoto.org
A question from the woods: I’m always fascinated by oak galls, those strange, lightweight spheres that appear on oak trees. The trees are manipulated by wasps to make them; the galls become wasp nurseries, supplying the larvae with food. Until now, I’ve only seen lone galls, but today I saw a whole tree covered with them like Christmas ornaments. And then I saw a few more trees in the same state. I’m wondering if there’s some weird “Last of Us” signal triggering them to appear en masse?
On #scienceTwitter, my favourite thing were reading and, on rare occasions, writing "paper/preprint threads". From the researchers I followed and through the #Twitter algorithm, this became my most important source for new #research.
While people start to do the same on #Mastodon, I have the feeling that I miss important work bc no algorithm "saves" it for me if I don't watch my timeline constantly.
Two simple solutions would be: a commonly accepted hashtag that everybody uses when writing "paper threads" or a [...] @ a.gup.pe group with a similar adaptation rate.
#Question 1: is there already a mechanism for this that I missed?
#Question 2: What hashtag or group name?
I saw #TootPrint before. Maybe #PaperInAToot? #PaperInAPost? #PaperInAThread? #PaperPost? #MastoPrint?
Suggestions and boosts, please, we need reach for this! 🤓
#TwitterMigration #Science #Scientist @phdstudents @academicchatter @neuroscience @cognition
What a tragedy that this good man, who has devoted his life to public service, who has made mistakes and learned from them, and who still expresses a profound understand of America’s public-health problems, should remain a target of vitriol from the worst among us. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04432-7
The National Park Service created a dramatic visual record of the #MaunaLoa eruption. Lava is now creeping toward Saddle Road at 200 ft per hour (60 m/h).
Listen with sound on! You'll hear chunks of aʻā lava clinking as they cool and tumble. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/25d6cb862c3645ff913915274b413516 #Volcano
Elon's take over of Twitter has set a lot of things into motion in the digital world 
Tumblr and now also Flickr are thinking about intergrating ActivityPub so it will be able to connect to the Fediverse! 
A lot of lay offs in the mainstream social media but the Fediverse is only growing!
The world is waking up 
Social media can be fun but also privacy friendly at the same time, you got the proof now!❤️
No billioaires needed ✅
Two miles away sandbar with several white pelicans. River is low below the dam.
It strikes me as a good idea to block instances whose formative purpose is patently to troll, harass, etc, whole groups of people (e.g. white supremacist platforms). It strikes me as an equally *bad* idea to block entire instances on the basis of the bad behavior of one member, or even of a few, of the purpose of the instancen is not to condone such behavior. It is, after all, extremely easy to block a person. Or to take the more serious step of having an admin block their posts from showing up.
since a lot of folks are becoming newly interested in escaping corporate silos and moving to community-based services, are you aware of @matrix?
Matrix is to Slack and Discord, what Mastodon is to Twitter: a decentralized, federated network based on open standards/specs. It also supports full end-to-end encryption, just like Signal, so you can exchange messages privately!
If you find the fediverse interesting/inspiring, I recommend giving matrix a whirl. The quickest way to get started is to head over to https://app.element.io/ and make a (free!) account (although you can also join any number of other home servers, or host your own--they all talk to each other!).
If you _do_ end up checking it out, please do say hi! I'm @zkat:zkat.tech over there. I also manage a "space" (a group of channels, kinda like a Discord server) that you can join by clicking here: https://matrix.to/#/!tKdDSgQTxQzcOuTXqV:matrix.org?via=zkat.tech&via=matrix.org&via=envs.net
I hope this sparks your interest! I'd love to see you over there, too!
Seriously though, fedi was *built* by furries, trans and queer folk, disabled neurodivergent people.
This is *the reason* the culture here is what it is. Why CWs are a thing. Why image descriptions are a thing. Why privacy matters here. Why moderation tools not only exist, but are usable — and used.
If you had joined and asked yourself "wow, how come this place is so chill and kinda… nice?" — that's thanks to all the nice people from communities some people call "weird".
So #KeepFediWeird.
Morning folks, time for my first Mastodon thread (!)
Ahead of the #midterms tomorrow, I want to talk about the tragic politicisation of science in the US.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the Republicans became the anti-science party, but the process probably began in the 1980s, when the Christian right first emerged as a major force in conservative American politics.
Since then, the journey has been smooth and swift, and there is now a stunning partisan divide on confidence in science 😥
Hi everyone, I am new here and learning the platform. By way of background, I am a chemical biologist and glycoscientist on the Stanford Chemistry faculty. Known for creating a field called #bioorthogonal chemistry (for which I shared the 2022 NP) and launching biotech companies with new therapeutic and diagnostic platforms, mostly rooted in glycobiology. Passionate about interdisciplinary science, diversity equity and inclusion in STEM, peanut butter, gyms and 70s funk.
Since we are all in #mastodon now do you know where the term comes from? The molar teeth of mastodons had breast-like surfaces, to break down their plant diet. Μαστός (breast) + οδούς (tooth) = Mastodon, in Greek
"Even if academic Twitter ends up largely moving to Mastodon, the big question is whether the general public will move there, too, allowing scientists to communicate with more than just each other. “When I tweet, I’m talking to my neighbor and the person in the grocery store and the teenager who is thinking about studying science in college,” Fiesler says. “That’s the beauty of scientists on social media.”
https://www.science.org/content/article/musk-reshapes-twitter-academics-ponder-taking-flight
#TIL, For those in #stem or #research or #academia, https://qoto.org is the best option for finding an anchor in the #fediverse; @freemo has created an ecosystem where one can maintain codes, talk about work and life, and discuss -- a library and a water cooler all in one place.
Just amazing.
And instead of 500 characters, you can post stuff over 65K characters, plus add images and in markdown.
This is good, crazy good if you ask me!
