Ambulocetus @ambulocetus@social.cleverlibre.org

Question for @tessa_murray @birds @BirdsAsGaeilge @birdstown @BirdPerHour

Does anyone know of an online library of bird songs and calls where the sounds are free to re-use (CC By or public domain)?

(Yes, i know about /xeno-canto.org — it's great for listening, but almost eveything is restrictively licensed. They have only nine recordings of Uk birds that are CC By or PD.)

Please boost to anyone you know who is into birds!

We're excited to announce our first in-person hackathon! We will be running the event from November 14th-17th in Amsterdam. To find out how to apply follow this link:
https://www.bellingcat.com/bellingcats-first-in-person-hackathon/

So many shady orgs cynically presenting child abuse as an "online problem" & peddling expanded surveillance as the solution while counting on the unpleasant emotional weight of the topic to distract us frm demanding evidence re claims that surveillance helps kids (there's none).

For those who read physical books, where do you get them?
If you have another source, please leave a comment with your choice.

Please boost for demographics?
#AmReading #Bookstodon #Books

Did you know you can freeze whole tomatoes? There was bumper crop of them in my part of the world and baskets of them are super cheap.
I rinse them off, dry them, then wrap them up in small bundles of 1 to 4 and pop them in the #freezer. They're great for adding to those winter stews and curries that ask for only 1 or 2 #tomatoes. And you don't have to open a whole can just to use part of it, or buy those pricey cardboard tomatoes in the winter.

#kitchen #cooking #food

If the GOP shuts down the government, that means 1.3 million servicemembers will go without pay. This after a Republican senator, Tommy Tuberville, has single-handedly put a hold on all top-level military promotions and appointments because he disagrees with the Pentagon’s policy of reimbursing travel expenses for members who must seek abortions out of state. Remind me again why the GOP thinks it’s pro-military.

Today is Stanislav Petrov Day. It's a day when I take some time to reflect on the importance of questioning technology. Because that is what Stanislav Petrov did when he averted nuclear war on September 26 in 1983.

"We can't wait anymore."
"7 minutes until the first warhead is in the observation zone."
"We won't have time to retaliate. You have to make a decision!"
"You see it?"
"Could be."
"No. That's not heat from a missile."
"Damn!"
"Let's keep looking."
"THE COMPUTER CAN'T BE WRONG!"
"I don't understand it."
"Damn it! They have to confirm this damn attack."
"All thirty levels of security levels confirms the attack!"
"Infrared devices verify heat from all five launched missiles!"
"What are we going to do?"

Stanislav Petrov: "Nothing. I don't trust the computer. We'll wait."

This dialogue is from a re-enactment in the documentary The Man Who Saved the World.

Last year I wrote about three learnings I take away from his story.

1. Embrace multiple perspectives.
Petrov was educated as an engineer rather than a military man. He knew the unpredictability of machine output.

2. Look for multiple confirmation points.
To confirm our beliefs we should expect many different variables to line up and tell us the same story. If one or more variables are saying something different, we need to pursue those anomalies to understand why. If the idea of a faulty system lines up with all other variables, that makes it more likely.

3. Reward exposure of faulty systems.
If we keep praising our tools for their excellence and efficiency it's hard to later accept their defects. When shortcomings are found, this needs to be communicated just as clearly and widely as successes.  Maintaining an illusion of perfect, neutral and flawless systems will keep people from questioning the systems when the systems need to be questioned.

https://axbom.com/lessons-from-stanislav-petrov/

I do wonder how many people are staying on Twitter due to follower count alone. Having had an account for over a decade, I'd have previously estimated about 20% of my followers were dead accounts. Based on now leaving and making new accounts on other platforms, my estimate is closer to 90%.

As a blogger I've always known only like 1% of people who retweet/like a post actually clicked the link and read the article, but I assumed that was just a social media thing. Having experimented with basically every other platform, I learned it's more likely that a significant number of Twitter engagements are fake, and those that aren't don't really care enough to read your work, they'll just give you a retweet/like for appearances.

Very grateful to get to play even a small part in this important case brought by PEN America, challenging politically motivated library book removals in Escambia County, FL. Gautam Hans of Cornell Law School and I co-wrote this amicus on behalf of several great first amendment scholars. We also had a big lift from local counsel Schullman Fugate PLLC in Tampa.

https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:97eb3308-4861-3e8e-95e6-790d3c179cdf