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Brown Thumb Having Scientist

@chillyhibiscus.bsky.social

I'm just a scientist, looking at a plant, begging it to thrive. Follow for figure skating opinions and thoughts on politics and science and occasional cute cat and plant pics.

2947 Posts344 Follower262 Folgt
ProPublica@propublica.org · 3d ago

Hey, ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson here. I’m taking over the account to tell you about my new story. For months, I posed as a problem gambler on DraftKings to test the company's "responsible gaming" safeguards. Spoiler alert: They made me a VIP — and I lost $10K. Here's how it all went down. 🧵

Selfie taken by ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson, a man wearing a backwards baseball cap and an orange T-shirt.
c0nc0rdance@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 3d ago

Bless the memory of Stanislav Yevgrafovich, the Man Who Saved the World. At a moment when it mattered, he chose humanity.

Ed Maibach@maibached.bsky.social · 3d ago

Happy Stanislav Petrov Day He passed in 2017. As Encyclopedia Britannica puts it, “He is survived by his two children, two grandchildren, and the entire human race.” If you don't know his story, please take 3 minutes now to learn it. @gchalliance.bsky.social @docsforclimate.bsky.social

Kathryn Tewson@kathryntewson.bsky.social · 5d ago

The "never could, frankly" in the question about using a map is mindblowing. This dude is 12 years older than I am! Did he spend his entire life from 1980 to Mapquest standing by the side of the road going 👉👈🥺?

Matt Ford@mford.bsky.social · 5d ago

Ezra Klein asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about AI making kids worse at math and reading. Huang’s reply: “Does it matter?” Then he said he doesn’t know his own address or phone number. “We’re going to lose some fine intellectual dexterity.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/o...

So the message of this research out of China, where you were seeing a lot of kids using A.I. to help them, was that when they were using the A.I., they were getting things done faster. But it turned out that the skills they were learning were not holding, that their actual personal performance, at least in the way we traditionally measure it, was degrading. What do you think when you hear that? The last part — I completely agree. Try to get a kid to do long division right now. The multiplication table is starting to be forgotten. Doing square roots, my goodness. Basic math is being forgotten. Does it matter? That’s my question for you. Yeah. I don’t think it does. I don’t think it does. But there must be some set of skills that matter. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But maybe not those. We’re going to discover new ones. Just maybe not those. There are a lot of skills that don’t matter. My first confession, I actually don’t know my address.
flyingrodent@flyingrodent.bsky.social · 5d ago

Ten years of relentlessly hateful, comically elitist anti-democratic politics across the white people world, helpfully summarised. The wrong people are talking, the wrong people are deciding and it’s harming the careers of important people who actually matter. Smithers! Release the hounds

The incident fits a broader pattern in the discourse around 'free speech' and 'cancel culture': whatever comes from the top down is freedom; whatever comes from the bottom up is bullying and censorship. When Macklemore is dropped at the behest of the billionaire stadium owner Robert Kraft, it's an exercise of the freedom of businesses to 'demonstrate their values' by deciding whom to platform. But when Ed Sheeran's fans decide not to buy tickets to his performances, or even demand refunds, it's bullying, mob behaviour. Since most people are not billionaires and do not own stadiums, they can exercise meaningful power only collectively. The collective exercise of power must therefore be demonised.
En Buen Ora@enbuenora.bsky.social · 5d ago

This is a fantastic brief essay in how news media & pundits turn upside down who is who is being punished for speaking freely--in the case of Kraft, Macklemore, & Sheeran--when rich elites want things to go one way, but unruly peasant masses refuse to go along. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/se...

Tim Price@timprice.bsky.social · 6d ago

You joined "grand vizier chat (secret)" You: dark rumors from aboard You: abroad* fuck Sssnakecharmer: mf said aboard WhispersintheChapel: ahoy matey lol PonderMyOrb changed the group name to "rumors from aboard"

Taniel@taniel.bsky.social · 7d ago

A post that’s so eye-opening because this is exactly what liberals will say is GOP distraction tactics, almost as a parody— and here it really is what Gaetz is saying unironically as his GOP message.

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Josh V@bruiserchgo.bsky.social · 7d ago

This summarizes well how we got here. Decades of failure to enforce antitrust have created the 900 lb gorillas (and probably more than a couple billionaires) that are either too big too fail or big enough to effectively bully and/or bribe their way into getting what they want.

Newsom might believe he "saved jobs in California," but that's simply not going to be the real-world outcome. The real world outcome is going to be mass layoffs, higher prices, shittier film and television, and a mass media apparatus under the even greater direct control of authoritarian-allied oligarchs. That's the fun thing about antitrust reform: if you actually enforce antitrust law (which the U.S. government doesn't do because it's too corrupt to function), you get markets stocked with a more diverse array of small and mid-sized companies that lack the scale to threaten government oversight and accountability.
c0nc0rdance@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 7d ago

A normal adult Monarch butterfly lives about 2-6 WEEKS, but in the Fall, there's a generation that must last 8-9 MONTHS to make the migration. These near-immortal😉butterflies make the difficult journey to Mexico & it will take =FIVE GENERATIONS= to return to the northern end of their range.

c0nc0rdance@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · last yr.

It's Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) migration season in Texas. At least 90% of all southward migration passes through Texas, either along the coast, or through central Texas. They'll overwinter in Mexico, then return. Let's talk about the utter weirdness of generational migration.