Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

There was a lot I was supposed to do this morning. But I learned that my county supervisors plan to approve license plate reading cameras in the county tomorrow, so I dropped everything to write this emergency comment to say HELL NO.

It's also now a Techdirt post:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/11/27/dear-marin-county-board-of-supervisors-reject-the-sheriffs-proposal-to-install-license-plate-cameras-in-the-county/

Profound boredom is the root of all innovation. This paper covers it well, but every substantive project I worked on started offline with limited technical resources and lots of time to kill (metasploit, recog, runzero): https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/social-media-may-prevent-users-from-reaping-creative-rewards-of-profound-boredom-new-research/

Offline doesn't mean no computing, just lack of boredome-drive-page-reloading. So erm, if you seeing this, drop into offline mode, find a park, and fidget until you find something all-engrossing to sink your time into.

20. Electrification of transport is far better than biofuels; for example, as Dan Lashof says this a podcast with @drvolts , it would take about 300 acres of farmland to run a petrol car on corn ethanol, vs an electric car running on about one acre of photovoltaics.

https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-going-on-with-biofuels?#details

Time to make 2023 updates to my annual “opinions about solar” thread.

If you like these, the second edition of my book, Solar Power Finance Without The Jargon, comes out very soon (just sent final proofs to publisher!)

https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/q0437#t=aboutBook

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Solar-Power-Finance-Without-Jargon-ebook/dp/B0CLGB8TD8/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1698046854&sr=8-2

#LongCOVID in Icelandic Children: A Matched Cohort Study of Nonspecific Symptoms Following #SARSCoV2 Infection

“symptoms of Long COVID in children are evident & are likely to impact the quality of life of millions of children globally.”

https://journals.lww.com/pidj/fulltext/9900/long_covid_in_icelandic_children__a_matched_cohort.651.aspx

@longcovid
#PwLC #postcovid #postcovid19 #LC #Covidlonghaulers #PostCovidSyndrome #longhaulers #PASC

@covid19 #Coronavirus
#COVIDー19 #COVID19 #COVID #COVID_19 @novid #novid #CovidIsNotOver #COVIDBrain
@auscovid19

1/

Hey folks!

Please do NOT report artists for sharing links to where the art is available to purchase!

Just DO NOT be such a jerk!

If you want artists to keep sharing their work on mastodon, this whole "absolute no commercial posts at all" attitude has to stop. There is a huge difference between a big corporate ad campaign and an individual artist posting a link to their own art shop.

#ArtForSale #art

BBC - UAE uses role as host of climate talks to try to cut oil and gas side deals. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67508331

Today is the last day of the bundle sale! $49 USD for everything. Over $100 USD discount.

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/bundle/2023/

- Uncluttered, a 21k words on import maps and TDD
- Out of the Software Crisis, an ebook on systems-thinking in dev
- The Intelligence Illusion, an ebook on the biz risks of generative models
- Yellow, an oddball audio/video series

Hey, if you happen to be somewhere where it’s night, and the Moon is up, see if you can spot the Pleiades nearby. This beautiful loose cluster of stars will be pretty washed out by the light of the nearly full Moon, but it’s interesting to compare size. I normally think of the Pleiades as a nice, tiny little object that is better viewed with binoculars, due to it’s size (plus, the view in binoculars *is* better 😊). But the Moon is actually smaller!

I used to ask my Grade 9 classes how big they thought the Moon appeared in the sky, and would get responses like the one you see below. In fact, you can cover the entire Moon with the tip of your pinky held at arms length.

Check out the piles of paper in this prof's office! Now I don't feel so bad :-).

World's largest #iceberg breaks free, heads toward #SouthernOcean
Recent satellite images reveal that the berg, weighing nearly a trillion metric tonnes, is now drifting quickly past the northern tip of the #Antarctic Peninsula, aided by strong winds and currents. At almost 4,000 square km (1,500 square miles), the Antarctic iceberg called #A23a is roughly three times the size of New York City. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/worlds-largest-iceberg-breaks-free-heads-toward-southern-ocean-2023-11-24/

#ClimateDiary I feel stupid - these fires, which have been burning for over a week now in #Brazil’s #Pantanal, the largest #wetlands on the planet, had somehow completely passed me by. The #Heatwave, #Drought and #Wildfires in Brazil are really alarming, yet seem hardly in (my) news. Is lack of coverage going to be another troubling dimension of advancing #ClimateEmergency? Or maybe always been the case. Or maybe just me missing things. Pondering all this.

https://youtu.be/cdPknwM0O6s?si=CEicwZykI99zU2eT

Let me (re)introduce myself! My name is Ionica. I am a professor of science communication in Leiden where I study and teach #SciComm.

I moved from social to mathstodon, looking for a smaller local community (and you have the best t-shirt). I did my PhD on number theory and most of the science communication I do is still related to mathematics.

My posts will be mostly in Dutch, but work-related things will be in English (hope that is okay)!

#Introduction

“This paper is a work of #ethnography, where the authors sat and studied how people in medical settings did their work interacting with computers, and denoted all sorts of workarounds they'd take to #bypass #security rules that they judge are a #hindrance to their work.”

We need more of this.

https://cohost.org/mononcqc/post/3647311-paper-you-want-my-p

Given that sharing the mobile screen on TV once worked perfectly without a hitch, having to install special apps trying to become my one-for-all dashboard, grant permissions like crazy, configure the living hell to accommodate shitty apps and agree to TOS of a surveillance capitalists wet dreams to basically pay rent for a feature I had already paid for, this is a prime example of #enshittification by #Google and #LG as explained by @pluralistic.

Yes, I use strong #encryption.

Why, no, I don't have anything to #hide.

I also #mail my #correspondence in #opaque #envelopes, rather than on the backs of #postcards.

No, I don't have anything to hide there, either.

#Normalize encryption.

There is no such thing as "#lawful #access". Encryption is #math. There is no math that the "good guys" can do but which cannot be done by the "bad guys".

Anyone who suggests different is #lying, to #spy on you.

#Fight them.

#StrongEncryption #EEE

Time to re-up this op-ed I wrote a while back. Don't think any of them are better than any of them. All of them in the TESCREAL bundle are awful.

https://www.wired.com/story/effective-altruism-artificial-intelligence-sam-bankman-fried/

If you want to talk about violence in the prison system, what we can do to reduce it, and how it is morally reprehensible for prosecutors to use that violence as a way to get Black people to confess to crimes that everyone knows that they did not commit? Then I'm with you. 👍🏿

But if you want to talk specifically about how we can keep Derek Chauvin safe? How we can keep the inhumane, brutal system for innocent Black folk, but protect him from it? Miss me with that. Talk to somebody else.

CDC Advised To Weaken Infection Protections

> Aerosol researcher Jose-Luis Jimenez added, “The Cochrane Review is scientific garbage.” He continued, “There is high-quality evidence from many angles that shows that, of course, #N95 masks are better.”

> Jimenez, was also critical that #HICPAC is “ignoring the huge body of evidence coming out of the pandemic” that most respiratory viruses have airborne transmission. “They don't mention ventilation at all. They don't address all the measures that you can do to remove the virus from room air.”

> Each expert I spoke with is also concerned about #HICPAC and the CDC’s secrecy. Jimenez said that #NIOSH experts he’s spoken with agree with him but “are basically forbidden from talking to the press.” This is because “if they talked freely about the science, it will contradict the policies of the #CDC,” he added.

https://archive.is/jkJWL

Video and Transcript:

Williams, Damien P. “Why AI Research Needs Disabled and Marginalized Perspectives,” for the R. L. Rabb Science and Society Symposium on Embedding AI in Society, hosted by NC State. February, 2021.
https://afutureworththinkingabout.com/?p=5558