ceoln @ceoln@social.cleverlibre.org

Well now, that’s a mighty strange thing 😳

A previously unknown, very extensive, low-surface nebulosity near the Andromeda galaxy, M31, seen in the [OIII] emission line at 5007Å.

Discovered by Drechsler et al. in autumn last year using a 106mm refractor, showing again that not all astronomy needs the biggest telescopes 🔭

Perhaps in the halo of M31 & linked to its stellar streams? 🧐

More below 👇

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/acaf7e

#astrodon #space #astronomy

Every time someone opposes the construction of a new bike path because "not everyone can ride a bike", show them this photo. True, not everyone can cycle, but that doesn't mean they can't use the bike path. In fact, people of all ages and abilities use it every day!

#AllAgesAndAbilities

Firefighter Cats!

They're called to duty to protect the people!

They're Firefighter Cats -- and they tend to wear the danger on their heads!

You'd think their fur would prevent this line of work, but they are only emboldened by the flames licking their whiskers!

#AI #Cats #Firefighter

#meme #memes #Legos

Very Italian

#justforlaughs #funny #meme

Stilske settlement
The settlement dates back to the 8th-10th centuries and was one of the centers of the White Croats. The city at that time was simply gigantic: the fortified area reached more than 250 hectares, and the length of ramparts and defensive walls was about 10 km. The ancient city was connected to the Dniester by an 11 km long waterway.
Where: Lviv region. https://www.volynpost.com/news/55158-unikalna-ukraina-24-kutochky-stvoreni-pryrodoyu-ta-lyudynoyu-foto

To understand our political moment, where it seems like an alarming number of people yearn for authoritarian rulers to dominate them--like Trump, Musk, or Bolsonaro--I *strongly* encourage you to read "Escape From Freedom" by Erich Fromm, which remains tragically relevant after nearly 80 years.

Given that I just had someone accuse me of looting the Fediverse's server resources because I made a toot-thread rather than a blog post, it seems as good a time as any to point out that toxic behaviour avails itself of *any* affordance.

A platform cannot be all things to all people---including the ideal that its earliest adopters fantasise about.

But more than that, while affordances matter, people are still going to be people. Anywhere.

For my birthday, I hope you'll indulge me sharing my *own* research.

One of the more insightful responses I got to my thread was something to the effect of "Quote-tweets are talking *about* the person, rather than talking *to* them." And, a lot of the time that's true. Not always, but often enough to matter, I think.

It dovetails neatly with my own framework for understanding harassment campaigns, advanced in my paper "Toward a Formal Sociology of Online Harassment." https://ht.csr-pub.eu/index.php/ht/article/view/274

God yes this so much. This post encapsulates what it's really like running a Mastodon instance.

https://rixx.de/blog/on-running-a-mastodon-instance/

The normally satirical news site @chaser has written a serious and well-thought-out article on how the last decade-plus of tech has crippled their business (and that of most other news outlets) - with an interesting twist around the role of AI for journalism (for better and worse) https://chaser.com.au/uncategorized/why-the-chaser-is-going-to-put-up-a-paywall/

Today @pinetta gave #Fedi a nice little present by opening its #python prototype repo for contributions. This may be awesome for you if you're:

▫️ a designer, photographer, artist or creator—to share your portfolio
▫️ a small business owner—to show what you offer
▫️ a teacher or educator—to collect resources or to help students produce creative assignments or portfolios
▫️ into scrapbooking, arts or crafts as a hobby or extra source of income
▫️ literally anybody

📌 Spread the word! 📣 #Pinetta

🧵

This is where I will be tracking the books I am reading this year. I would love to hear your thoughts as I post each book — no spoilers! 🙃

I have featured the #NowReading2023 hashtag on my profile. (Maybe I will figure out a more native #fedi way of doing this, but until then I will stick to this pattern)

You can also find these updates on Goodreads. Friend me there if you have an account!

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3079724-chad-kohalyk

#books #bookstodon #reading #amreading

Nintendo Game and Watch Panorama

https://nicole.express/2023/gaming-in-the-mirror-universe.html

I would love to learn about a book that changed you, gave you direction, or helped you see something differently. #books #bookstodon

I should probably #introduce / #intros myself and pin this!

Hi! I'm Kat, and I'm a queer/trans Puerto Rican!

I'm https://twitter.com/zkat__ and I'm an open source dev and wannabee artist. I really like Rust and have released several libraries for it on crates.io, some of which are a bit popular.

I used to be really into JavaScript and even spent a couple of years as the lead dev on the NPM cli (the node_modules one).

On the art side, I keep trying to get into the habit of doing both 2d and 3d art. I love Blender, and I like using CSP for 2d art stuff. I suck at both, but it's still something I want in my life.

I've been on Mastodon for a while now, also going in and out of it, but I tend to crosspost between here and Twitter just to keep this space alive during my "breaks". I also really like Matrix for decentralized chat. I'm @kat:zkat.tech over there, if you want to say hi. I also run a little community of folks who just wanna hang out with chill vibes.

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!