Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

Today is the autumn equinox in the northern hemisphere, so here's a look at the chemical cause of the yellows, oranges and reds in the fall foliage we'll be seeing shortly! https://wp.me/p4aPLT-sn

This was one of the first images I posted when I joined Mastodon last year and it seems appropriate for today's Autumn Equinox.

My husband headed up #StenburyDown on the #IsleofWight to photograph the fog rolling in at sunset.
The sheep have a fabulous view up there.

#LandscapePhotography

2/ It’s not enough to have ideals. If you’re serious, you have to work to achieve them.

Not everyone needs to quit their job and become a full-time politico. But I’m really tired of getting lectured that I’m not leftist enough by people that proudly don’t even vote.

Born in 1910, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin perfected X-ray crystallography, a type of imaging using X-rays to determine a molecule’s three-dimensional structure.

She determined the structures of insulin, penicillin & vitamin B12, leading to tremendous advances in medicine.

Hodgkin was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. She also advocated for world peace, campaigning against both the Vietnam War & nuclear weapons. https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/dorothy-hodgkin #HistoryRemix #science #history

https://www.seti.org/osiris-rex-deliver-bennus-parcel-sunday
In 2016, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft embarked on a mission to the asteroid Bennu to collect a sample from the asteroid’s surface and return it to Earth. Now, in the early hours of September 24, the retrieval team will await the much-anticipated capsule in Utah’s desert. SETI Institute meteor astronomer Dr. Peter Jenniskens will join other NASA scientists and amateur astronomers in North-East Nevada to witness the return home.

#science #scicomm #osirisrex #bennu

NFDI Consortia with Mastodon accounts 🐘 :

BERD@NFDI: @BERD_NFDI
DataPLANT: @nfdi4plants
FAIRagro: @FAIRagro
GHGA: @ghga
KonsortSWD: @konsortswd
NFDI4Culture: @nfdi4culture
NFDI4DataScience: @NFDI4DS
NFDI4Earth: @nfdi4earth
NFDI4Health: @nfdi4health
NFDI4Immuno: @nfdi4immuno
NFDI4Ing: @nfdi4ing
NFDI4Microbiota: @NFDI4Microbiota
NFDIxCS: @nfdixcs
PUNCH4NFDI: @punch4nfdi
Text+: @Textplus

"In Germany, headlines such as “African conflicts on our soil” or “What is THAT doing on our streets” invoke racist imaginaries of unruly and violent Black migrants and currently monopolize public discourse on the Eritrean diaspora...In Israel, such narratives are already being translated into concrete plans for political action in migration policy: Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has...shared a plan to deport all African asylum seekers from the country."

https://africasacountry.com/2023/09/beyond-the-headlines

Apple's reported friendliness toward "right to repair" and environmental laws is a sham, and a scam. The company has one goal only: make more money, which means selling more devices.

Read this from @pluralistic -- and reconsider your devotion to one of the planet's greediest operations. https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

I had a thought about the soul when I was out on my walk this morning and now I have some serious questions for #Christians.

There seem to be a lot of contradictions floating around in descriptions of what a soul is, who/what has one, when they get it, and why abortion is bad. I don't mean this as ridicule - this is a challenge to those who would force religious-based policy on the general population to offer a strong justification for their doctrine.

To keep it simple, this is directed *only* at those who believe all human beings have a soul.

• *What* is a soul? I have my own idea, and I looked at Wikipedia to get another perspective, now I'm coming to you for your interpretation. A decent definition is essential before considering the following questions.

• If a soul is instilled at conception, do identical twins share a soul? Or does God stick two in there, because he already knows the fertilized egg will become twins?

• Does God put a soul into every fertilized egg, including those that will only last for a few cell divisions before miscarriage? Do frozen embryos have a soul? (A *lot* of IVF clinics in states where abortion has been criminalized are really interested in knowing the legal view on this)

(I’m going for edge-case scenarios, as the regular situation of a person being conceived and then born without complications seems pretty clear-cut... for now)

A few hashtags for the discussion: #Religion #Soul #Abortion #ProLife #ProChoice

In the Press right now:

"All Those NFTs Are Officially Worthless" → https://kotaku.com/nft-meaning-scam-crypto-marketplace-price-bored-ape-1850860661

"Your NFTs Are Actually — Finally — Totally Worthless" → https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/nfts-worthless-researchers-find-1234828767/

Me:

Turns out I like Mastodon #FullTextSearch even more than I thought I would. And I knew EXACTLY what was coming.

But it is another thing entirely to experience it in the wild. And I suspect it will get better the more opts ins join the party and as 4.2 rolls out.

https://indieweb.social/tags/FullTextSearch

Back to school 2023 means all kinds of #AIhype about using AI in the classroom or instead of the classroom.

Join us tomorrow (noon Pacific) for our next episode of Mystery AI Hype Theater where @alex and I are joined by Haley Lepp to take it apart:

https://twitch.tv/dair_institute

You gotta understand that professional titles are vital to state for minoritised groups. Basically an ethnic minority woman feels she needs to state her title and/or qualifications to be taken as seriously as a white man. It’s not showing off. It’s a necessity for doing the work.
#science
#academia

@nisreen The number of times in my life where some dude who doesn’t understand what I do, mansplains by starting with “well Miss…”, and literally nothing feels better in that moment than being able to say “It’s Doctor, actually.” 🤣

The US News and World Report just released their annual College Rankings — and you should ignore them.

A reminder that last year their "Chief Data Strategist" somehow admitted in public that every year they screw around with the ranking algorithm until it gives results they like.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-news-college-rankings-yale-law-fe24f0b2

I was shelving picture #books at the #library and saw one by Cory Doctorow who is awesome but I had no idea he wrote for kids🙆🏻‍♀️
Looked like a fun, kinda #Halloween book
so I put it face out where parental units could find it easily 😉😏
#subversive #Librarians @pluralistic 🤩

Scientists Working in Antarctica Unwittingly Started to Develop a New Accent. “Antarctica has no native population or permanent residents, but it does have a transitory community of scientists and support staff who live there for part of the year on a rotational basis.” https://www.openculture.com/2023/09/scientists-working-in-antarctica-unknowingly-started-to-develop-a-new-accent.html