@diana180.bsky.social
Editor of complicated things. Dr of languagey things. Previously: HY, TaY, UoS (UCS), QMUL, UoR, Bloomberg, Dublin Worldcon press. I make you smarter. Myös suomeksi.
Be the beavers you wish to see in the world.
Ada Palmer@adapalmer.bsky.social · 23h agoBeavers are on the payroll in Colorado. 10 years ago, Brian Sullivan, head of Colorado Parks & Wildlife’s Wetlands for Wildlife grants program, saw 1 or 2 grant applications for beaver-related projects each year. Now about half the projects he processes involve them buff.ly/H2UtOf0 #ShareGoodNewsToo
And yet, there's discourse about how the massive death toll of Black Death made the surviving peasants more valuable and able to extract benefits from their feudal lords. Then I look at how we're back to treating all the "essential workers" like shit and shake my damn head.
& our more recent Black Death research shows that peasant empowerment only happened in very limited areas where policy enabled it; elsewhere elites used the disruption 2 strip workers’ rights more, creating the 1st debtors’ prisons. But only the outdated “mass death => wealth” version gets quoted 🤨😔
This effect gets spread, not just by how falsely we depict disasters in movies & games (as apocalypses) but also how we falsely teach the Fall of Rome and Black Death too, as apocalypses rather than disruptions followed by the real outcome of disaster: general quality of life ending up worse.
Do not confuse Earl Spencer's memoir 'Swan Song' with the 1930s John Galsworthy novel of the same name. One is about an upper-class family riven by feuds, whose leading male character treated his wife with appalling cruelty some decades earlier. The other was serialised by the BBC in the 1960s
An airplane crossing the crescent Moon Tuesday night. With no depth reference in a single frame, the plane can look like it is flying toward the Moon or away from it, even though it is simply passing in front of it. I love that tiny bit of visual ambiguity.
One of the most important things I learned in college is that it’s better to turn in a partially completed assignment consisting of solid high-quality work, than to try to bullshit your way to completion. Half-finished beats half-assed any day of the week.
It's been over 20 years since I was in school, but I am still firm in my "no homework" stance. Kids are also training to be semi-pro athletes and musicians and/or have PT shit jobs that don't care about their academic health. Homework teaches poor boundaries and that success means no social life.
Like it or not education is structured around employment, which is why I think education can’t be reformed while our relationship with work remains the way it is now.
“Students told us the temptation was greatest when they feared they would miss a deadline,” the report reads. IMO the underlying issue here is the labor practices these students are being fed into as they near adulthood. Learning is not about volume of output, but do these students understand that?
Futurism@futurism.com · 18h agoIt's a disaster in the making.
makes sense but how am I (F, short by the way) supposed to change the batteries in the ceiling smoke detectors without a ladder when they start beeping (real question, what is the solution)
Blahblahellis@blahblahellis.bsky.social · yesterdayAdd ladders to your list - I’ve worked in a hospital emergency room and every shift at least five guys would come in after falling off ladders. The trauma surgeons all agreed every man should have their ladders taken away after they turn 40.
PT sessions had me practice walking backwards. When you start to fall backwards, the muscles remember walking backwards. My PT had a more detailed explanation, but it’s saved me from a couple of falls. I use a walker, but I was standing still. My feet took over, & I took 2 steps back.
Martial arts experience is one of the things that drastically slows dementia and memory issues in old age as well. It also increases the ability to quickly react appropriately to a trip or loss of balance.
I’ve worked at a major manufacturer and took the required safety training despite being an office drone. I learned something surprisingly helpful: maintain three points of contact. One hand, both feet, or the reverse. This has actually saved my clumsy ass from staircase doom
After 30+ years in EMS I can confirm. Throw rugs = broken hips in the elderly
Nope, that's accurate. I started making myself reach for the handrails when I turned 40 so it would be muscle memory when I got older, and it's already saved my ass a couple of times when I've slipped on the stairs.
All Our Yesterdays@allouryesterdays.bsky.social · yesterday@scalzi.com - for reasons I can't explain, my brain remembers you urging people to use handrails, because stairs are a technology actively trying to kill you. If I've misremembered this, sorry.
a well done pie is like a great painting in that just staring at it makes you a better person
Daniel Bolnick@danielbolnick.bsky.social · 17h agoIn New England pie was traditionally a breakfast food. This is a tradition I can support. So I used the last of our locally self-picked blueberries to make this
If you’re avoiding activism because you’re afraid people in your life won’t like you anymore when you speak out for social justice, I have some terrible news about the people in your life.
And every day there is more Fresh AI Hell. What's worse than polluting the information ecosystem with synthetic text dressed up to look like news? Dressing it up further as the work of fake Indigenous journalists: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
‘Very harmful’: website uses AI to generate northern Indigenous news ‘correspondents’ | CBC News
The website WE NEWS has three northern Indigenous 'AI correspondents.' Their profiles say they are 'a member of Yukon First Nation,' 'of Dene heritage,' and 'an Inuk raised in the North.' Experts in t...
cbc.ca
Now up, my newest for @rollingstone.com: Private equity firms bought up all the big rock publishing. Now they're going after the indie labels. www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...
Private Equity's Next Target Is Indie Music
For years, private equity firms have snatched up the catalogues of music's biggest names. Now they're after independent labels.
rollingstone.com
A few weekends ago I went to Miami and attended 9 open houses in extremely high-risk flood areas to see what agents are telling prospective buyers about them. Here is my journey
The open houses at the edge of disaster
What are buyers being told about climate risk in Miami? I posed as one to find out.
heated.world
Last year, astrophotgrapher Adam Block pointed a 24" telescope for a very long time at this. And he took a colour H-alpha image of the bow shock around the pulsar! 🤯 This is EXTREMELY NEAT work and I think the first / only colour image of the J0437 bow shock. www.aapod2.com/blog/pulsar-...
“For the tech bros to remain dominant, their story has to change. So, Silicon Valley’s best storytellers no longer want our capitulation to their technology’s inevitability. They want us to panic, instead of seriously deliberating at the polls, in community meetings and in Congress.”
Opinion | A.I. Is a Threat, but Not in the Way You Think
The threats from A.I. are real — and they’re ones we know how to deal with.
nytimes.com
Been playing with some data (yes, I'm obsessive) and while I don't have information on fences specifically, I do have this: 1. Real cost of new single-family home construction grew 79% since 1998
Just redid my go bags (plural—there's a system!) and made a little slideshow about it for Insta. GRWM for emergency preparedness 🧵
Dude is obsessed with renaming things that aren’t his to rename.
This whole thing reminds me so much of when the Minneapolis newspaper used to have a gossip columnist. Mpls doesn’t really have celebrities or socialites, though, so the way her column worked is that she would deem someone to be a local celebrity and then shred them in the paper.
Imani Gandy@angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 14h agoIf you were to tell John Q. Normie about Hasan Piker being a twitch streamer, they would be like what’s a twitch
