New photo of one of our most abundant local ants, the acrobat ant Crematogaster laeviuscula.
The Democratic Republic of #Congo is still coming to terms with the deadliest natural disaster in its recent history. Two weeks ago, torrential rains triggered floods and devastating landslides in a remote mountainous part of South Kivu province, destroying villages and farms, and killing more than 400 people. Local authorities report a staggering 5,000 people are still missing.
Kudos to #California.
What is your state doing to identify and avoid the #textbooks revised to ingratiate #Florida extremists?
A lot of communities have very old infrastructure (sewer, water mains, stormwater) that is beyond its useful life. Communities have not been keeping up with the required maintenance.
This problem is not going away.
""Who's going to be next?" she asked. "We have old infrastructure!"
St. Louis Park has 160 miles of water main, almost all made from cast iron meant to last 100 years — similar to many other suburbs its age.
Some may last longer, but some may corrode earlier, and the city is trying to get ahead of possible damage."
I’ve always considered the sweet potato in Polynesia to be the “smoking gun” when it came to Pre-Columbian contact between the Americas and the “Old World”.
Now, genetic evidence appears to back up this theory. The article below concludes:
“[We] find strong genetic evidence for pre-Columbian human trans-Pacific voyaging contact (at the turn of the twelfth century), contemporaneous with the Polynesian voyages of discovery in the remote eastern Pacific.“
A truly amazing and exhaustively cited act of investigative journalism by the phenomenal @zinnia
It turns out that virtually ALL of the sham "science" behind the anti-trans movement can be traced directly back to a very small number of purely ideologically driven "doctors" citing one another over and over again to try to give the impression that standard evidence based trans healthcare is controversial.
It's basically the scientific equivalent of writing a blog with nothing more than your own opinions, your friend writes an article citing your blog, another friend writes an article citing both of you, and then showing up in front of public health boards saying "see, here's 3 articles showing how I'm right!"
In any normal and reasonable political environment, these quacks would be laughed out of the room with such flimsy "evidence". Yet because the far right has captured statehouses across the country, they're laundering this junk science into "real" science.
Specific molecular machinery involved in circadian regulation and highjacked by SARSCov2 infection has already been found. BMAL1, a protein that interacts with CLOCK to synchronize the circadian rhythm, regulates the entry of the virus into the cell. #COVID19 #LongC
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004221011123
Texas AG's investigation into trans care is based on illegal release of kids' medical records: report - Raw Story - Celebrating 19 Years of Independent Journalism
Ahead of an injunction hearing at the Fulton County Superior Court today, The Xylom's @alexip718 fact-checked some of the "environmental stewardship" claims the City of Atlanta and the Atlanta Police Foundation made with regard to the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, more widely known to its opponents as "Cop City".
https://www.thexylom.com/post/fact-checking-the-city-of-atlanta-s-claims-on-cop-city
New work just dropped in MIT Sloan Management Review. We surveyed American office workers and found men were more likely to report that their organizations reward employees for supporting one another, even though women reported supporting colleagues more often. Want to guess the biggest correlate of job satisfaction? We call for an equitable return on social investment.
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-unequal-rewards-of-peer-support-at-work/
On Monday, I published an op-ed in @Wired on @FTC regulation of automated hiring.
https://www.wired.com/story/unfair-automated-hiring-systems-are-everywhere-ftc/
America seems to sleepwalking into a 1930s Germany inspired fascist dystopia with barely a whimper….
Houston's only lesbian bar denied insurance for hosting drag
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/houston-pearl-bar-drag-texas-18100109.php
With Apple’s Advanced Data Protection enabled, your backups and many other files will get the benefit of end-to-end #encryption, better securing them against government requests, rogue Apple employees, or potential data leaks. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/how-enable-advanced-data-protection-ios-and-why-you-should
To save #news from #BigTech, we need to:
- Unrig the ad markets
- Abolish the #AppTax
- Kill #SurveillanceAds
- Make social media #EndToEnd
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech
Gun extremists at the school bus stop. The ugly face of American exceptionalism.
This epitomizes the urgent threat to democratic society: Self-stylized paramilitaries who view themselves as noble patriots - when they are actually assaulting the foundations of the democratic system by spreading fear of fascistic violence.
Some thoughts in the thread below: https://mastodon.social/@tzimmer_history/110395646923565597
If we priced externalities into the cost of fossil fuels, it’s not a profitable business.
The cleanup costs in California will be triple the industry’s projected profits, and that doesn’t even include cleaning up CO₂ and CH₄ from the atmosphere.
https://www.propublica.org/article/cost-of-california-oil-cleanup-exceeds-industry-profits
“These laws in these states make them less desirable locations for OB-GYNs to work,” she said. “Women’s health care will ultimately suffer, and the people who will pay the price are the patients in these states.”
Retired Analytical Chemist
League of Women Voters -voting methods, election security
Board Member Colorado Citizens for Science