Crossword Man @crosswordman@social.cleverlibre.org

Please store your kittens correctly or they get all crumpled. #toebeans

Close up of a dried poppy seed-head with poppy seeds awaiting dispersal. #naturephotography #blackandwhite

The beauty of Keltic Lodge in Cape Breton #NovaScotia is only eclipsed by the beauty of the blue sky & clouds of a summer day! #CapeBreton #WAYCTV #tourism #VisitNovaScotia #hotel #sky https://fineartamerica.com/featured/keltic-lodge-karen-cook.html

This is a problem for short fiction submissions and it's not just going to go away. The link goes into details, but this is a graph of submission bans since 2019. Plagiarism and bot-written spam.
http://neil-clarke.com/a-concerning-trend/

Hey, folks. Big layoffs at DigitalOcean today, and my team and I were hit. In fact, so was my adjacent team, and a good chunk of my department. I don't have much reach here on Mastodon yet, but if anybody wants to discuss opportunities for a technical editor / writer / manager of same, I'm up for it.

This is how they arrive on Earth.

Stephen Wolfram breaks down chatgpt, and it’s amazing https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/

The word ESQUIVALIENCE appears in the New Oxford American Dictionary with the definition "the wilful avoidance of one's official responsibilities". It is an entirely made up word, designed as a copyright trap, so that anyone copying the dictionary's contents will be found out.

I have so many reservations about electric vehicles #ev:

1. Low-temperature performance degredation
2. Grid capacity/resiliency
3. Environmental cost of used batteries
4. Environmental cost of electricity production

While I'm excited about the future, I think my next car will be gas or hybrid.

#hype

'Two of Us' is all done - just need to frame it up! 🎸

#TheBeatles #JohnLennon #PaulMcCartney #MastoArt #Clay

Don't put your winter clothes away! A Sudden Stratospheric Warming event is brewing right now above the Arctic.
https://www.axios.com/2023/02/10/sudden-stratospheric-warming-event-polar-vortex

By disrupting the polar vortex and displacing cold air into parts of Europe and N. America, SSWs can influence our weather for weeks.

There are uncertainties about their factual impacts or the link to climate change.
Yet, it is fascinating that our prediction systems, based on models and meteorological data can forecast these complex extreme weather phenomena.

Gus's mobile shop.
Isle of Harris.
#OuterHebrides

Abandoned school on the High Plains of Montana. It looks like this school closed in the 1980s.

#photography #nikon #raw #raw_community #raw_landscape #raw_abandoned #raw_usa #raw_usa_ #pictas #pictas_art #podium #podium__landscape #nikon #landscape #abandoned #winter #montana #HighPlains

Volunteers with Treelink Stirling have been out and about in the Abbey Craig Woods supporting Stirling Council to thin out some of the dense sycamore understory to benefit broader biodiversity. Getting involved in woodland management is a great way to meet others, gain skills and have a positive impact on our environment. Join us at our spring gathering in Stirling on 4th March 2023 if you’d like to learn more more at www.treelinkstirling.org #biodiversity #volunteer #trees #woodland #community

In #JapaneseFolklore maneki-neko (beckoning cat) is believed to protect and bring good luck. The origin of this waving cat is the story of a traveller who was walking home at night & saw a cat waving at him in the dark. On approaching the cat a bolt of lightning hit the ground where he'd been standing. Filled with gratitude for the cat who saved his life, the traveller built a statue & temple in its honour, starting the tradition of the lucky cat.
#folklore #DailyFolklore #cats
🎨Gotokuji Temple

This is why I am not going to resume writing my #WIP right now: sugaring.

For those unfamiliar it is the act of making maple syrup. Which requires paying attention to the weather; at the right time drilling holes in the trees and tapping the, ah, spigots and hanging the buckets and emptying the buckets and boiling down the sap 40 gallons to make one gallon of syrup.

But February thinks it’s March so today I tapped 20 trees the earliest ever.

#writingcommunity #vermont #maplesyrup #notwriting

found on the Thames foreshore this morning: a beautiful bone die with crisp carved dot-in-circle pips, typical of dice of the Roman period, 100-200 AD. #mudlarking

For #ThickTrunkTuesday, here is a mossy tree I found on Saturday while hiking near the top of Devil’s Rest in the Columbia River Gorge.

#PNW #Oregon #Photography #Hiking #Walking #Nature #Outdoors #Mosstodon

Psst, @NASAEarth, you're the best! We've discovered 5,250 exoplanets and not a single one is exactly like Earth, with all your delicious oxygen. Happy #ValentinesDay!💙🌎
#NASAExoplanets

Say hi to my first “search engine.”