Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

I adore Obed, which is also an International Dark Sky Park. I took my then-7yo there in 2019 as part of a “Three National Parks in Three Days” adventure in East Tennessee. We saw a breathtaking moonrise over the river.

In case you haven't yet had your daily dose of climate $&!*: "Reduction in sea ice in Antarctica has resulted in the deaths of an estimated 10,000 emperor penguin chicks [in 2022].

"In 2022, satellites recorded a colony of emperor penguins disappearing into the Bellingshausen Sea as the ice they were living on melted away.

"The chicks had not fully developed waterproof feathers and they most likely froze to death."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12J9uJBjHhw @BBCRD #climate #heat #Antarctica

http://smbc-comics.com/comic/sonnet-2

Incentives for academics have become increasingly perverse over the last 50 years, according to this 2017 article by Edwards and Roy

The table below neatly summarizes their key findings ⬇️

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ees.2016.0223

#academia, #metrics, #incentives

"A brief history of time" by Stephen Hawking is probably the most influential semi-popular #science book ever written in #physics, #astrophysics, #cosmology , one that brought generations of students into these fields.

Do you know of any equivalent books in other fields of science, STEM or other ? Reply ⬇️

Boosting will make everybody on #Mastodon smarter !

Source for quality N95 masks.

BTW, these folk started up in the early pandemic I think, and then added a lot of clarity to a fucked up situation. I've bought from them, twice I think, the few I've cross-checked, their prices are consistently lower. And Amazon is a criminal cesspool.

https://www.projectn95.org/

If you're going to Dragon*Con next weekend, or any con this season, I am absolutely BEGGING you to please wear a mask where- and whenever you can. Please.

While not having heroes is generally a good advice, there are some reasonable exceptions to any rule. Today is Raoul Wallenberg’s day.

Raoul was a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from a certain death in Auschwitz. How? By issuing fake “protective passports” and renting buildings to hide people. These buildings, he claimed, were extraterritorial, and protected by diplomatic immunity. Amazingly, it worked.

The price he paid was his own life.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raoul_Wallenberg

We often think of #memes as popular photos, videos, or phrases online. 

But the term “meme” was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins to describe a behavior, style or idea as a unit of culture that can spread or disappear. From social movements to religion to Grumpy Cat.

Even though most folks may not be aware of it, we’re sharing a popular concept from #science, every single day, across #socialmedia.

Material for how to study for STEM/biology university courses?

I'm looking for any and all references and tips on this topic.

I teach Intro to Neuroscience; typically to freshman/sophomores. Their experience in this class can be important for their next steps. But some students show up better prepared than others and we want to find better ways to rectify that. It's a really hard problem.

As an experiment this year, we are tacking on an optional weekly "bonus session" for any students who feel they could benefit from a bit more instruction/practice wrapping their head around what we are expecting of them (and how to achieve it). Things like: we don't just want students to memorize facts but also generalize knowledge and solve problems - but what does that look like and how do you prepare for it? I'm looking for material to develop that type of 'how to study' curriculum, including material that targets a diversity of learning styles and approaches.

#neuroscience #teaching

The #XRISM mission is ready for launch this weekend 🚀! We are looking forward to amazing high-resolution X-ray spectra of our Universe. In this great video, our brilliant colleague Francois Mernier explains what XRISM is expected to see: https://youtu.be/WebVRTusuF4

Want to know what my research is about? Follow this thread 🧵 based on a 10min talk I've drawn for a meeting.

The talk was aimed at non-specialist space science colleagues (not the general public!). The slides were built up step by step, but I'm omitting this here & showing only the final graphs, less this becomes a 34-part thread. 11 is plenty enough!

So: "Understanding Winds of Massive Stars Using High Mass X-ray Binaries"

#astrodon #XraysAreTheBestRays #SciArt #scicomm #VicisAstro
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So, full text search is now live on mastodon.social and mastodon.online.

It is "opt-in", meaning you need to check the Preferences box to enable your posts to be searchable.

Conundrum: more of my old Twitter network is on blue sky, but I like it here better.

I understand that newspapers need support through subscriptions, but I often worry about about how this makes reliable information a luxury for those with the means to afford it.

Meanwhile misinformation & disinformation is widely accessible & free. #news #journalism

The full-text search is *live* on mastodon.social but it is *opt-in only* and you have to enable it in your Privacy and Reach tab to have your posts be findable! So if you're on a server running the latest nightly like .social or .online, #CheckTheBox

There seem to be a lot of people who don't believe in progress. To help with a bit of perspective, I recommend a visit to an old cemetery. Count the dead children.

I was born in the 1950s with a condition that would have killed me in the 1930s. I grew up with leaded gasoline, coal furnaces, horrible water and air pollution, widespread poverty and ignorance, polio, tuberculosis, measles, mumps, and diphtheria.

I understand the lure of nostalgia. I belong to half a dozen "you grew up in ..." groups on Facebook. I like old pictures and old cars and airplanes.

But don't try to feed me crap about the "good old days." They were not. Especially in the American South. Most of the know-nothings clamoring to turn back the clock wouldn't survive a week without their air conditioning and their cable TV outrage channels.

We don't look at data. We don't look at falling crime rates and rising literacy rates. We experience anecdotes. Much of them are falsehoods being fed to a sedentary population by media that packages tales of murder and mayhem as "entertainment," and outrage as "news."

We don't look outside in our own neighborhoods, much less the world, where 86 out of 100 people can now read and write, and 96 out of 100 children now actually survive their first five years.

We now have opt-in search for posts we tag public! And I've opted in, though it was a bit of a journey:

>>Preferences >> Public profile >> Privacy and reach

Then scroll down to search and tick "Include public posts in search results"

14 years later and the only industry that Bitcoin has revolutionized is the ransomware industry.

I go back and forth a lot on duolingo. It's like... great for aerobics and for filling up a spare 10 minutes, but it'd be great if now and then it really made you struggle for a minute.