Biggest missed opportunity for a hilarious headline. It should be:

“California Farmer Drove His Chevy Into the Levee so the Orchard Stayed Dry”

https://www.thedrive.com/news/california-farmers-plunged-their-pickups-into-a-broken-levee-to-stop-a-flood-it-worked

Again:

#BREAKING #legal #WompWomp
Orden:

Verdict in #EJeanCarroll v. #Trump

Jury says Donald Trump must pay E. Jean Carroll:

COMPENSATORY:
Other than reputation repair program: $7.3M
Reputation repair program: $11M

PUNITIVE: $65M

TOTAL: $83.3M

The American Museum of Natural History to Close Exhibits Displaying #Native American Belongings
==

The change is in response to new federal regulations that went into effect this month following reporting by ProPublica on institutional failures to return #NativeAmerican remains and sacred objects to tribes.

#News #Museum #NYC #NewYork #Repatriation #NAGPRA

https://www.propublica.org/article/american-museum-natural-history-to-close-native-american-exhibits?utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon&utm_campaign=mastodon-post

I wanted to share a link from a recent paper lead by my lovely summer student Matthew Edmonds. It is a test of a prediction I've been working on that traditional models of community assembly give a misleading picture of biodiversity change.

https://nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecog.06987

1/2 We (re)rediscovered Manica parasitica in the Sierra Nevada. Originally, this ant species was thought to be a free-loading parasite that uses the nests and brood care of its host Manica bradleyi for its own survival.

Instead, "Manica parasitica" is tapeworm-infested Manica bradleyi.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2023.0399

#Manica #ants #insects #parasites #sierranevada

Rage at what these racists did to Claudine Gay. Couldn’t even keep a Black woman as president for one year without harassing and stalking her out. They have the most unbelievably horrific white men at the highest levels of leadership, regularly. Black women? Scrutinized to the tee if they don't fall in line.

New, from me: the campaign to remove the President of Harvard is not really about plagiarism. It is part of a broader campaign against DEI. And too many in the media have confused covering the story with participating in the campaign.
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-campaign-to-remove-the-president

A List of Predictions Made in 1924 About 2024

🧵

I'm absurdly excited to learn that 2024 = 2³+3³+4³+5³+6³+7³+8³+9³.

...and it's because:

2025 = 45², and

45=1+2+⋯+9, and

(1+⋯+𝑛)²=1³+⋯+𝑛³ !

Via https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/18tr14a/2024_2³3³4³5³6³7³8³9³/.

#math #newyear #newyear2024

This December, if there’s one tech New Year’s resolution I’d encourage you to have, it’s switching to the only remaining ethical web browser, Firefox. According to recent posts on social media, Firefox’s market share is slipping. We should not let that happen. There are two main reasons why switching is important.

1. Privacy

Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data. There’s been a lot of talk about websites tracking users using cookies, fingerprinting and other nefarious technologies that hurt your privacy. But owning the browser puts Google, Apple and Microsoft in a position where they don’t even need those tricks. We need to use browsers that are independent, and right now that means Firefox.

2. Browser engine monopoly

Wikipedia lists four browser engines as being “active”. Browser engines are the bits that take a web page’s code and display it on your screen. Ideally, they conform to the official W3C standards, and display all elements as it describes. If that’s the case, web developers can easily write sites that work on all browsers. No proprietary vendor lock-in nonsense, just glorious open standards at work.

It’s happened before

In the early 2000’s, Internet Explorer had a massive 95% market share. This meant that many sites were only developed for use with IE. They’d use experimental features that IE supported, in favor of things from the official HTML standard. This was a very bad situation, which hindered the development of the World Wide Web.

Currenty, Chrome, Safari and Edge all use variations of the closely related Webkit and Blink engines. If we want to avoid another browser engine monopoly, we need to support Firefox, and its “Gecko” engine.

Firefox is actually really good

If Firefox would be a bad browser, I would not recommend you to switch. It’s fast, has a nice user interface, and feels every bit as modern and elegant as its competition. I’ve been using it as my main browser for a couple of years now, on Linux, Windows, MacOS and Android. As a web developer, I usually have at least three browsers open, but when I go look something up on the web, I pick Firefox.

So please, help save the web by using the best browser out there. It’s an easy thing to do, and it makes a big difference.

https://roytanck.com/2023/12/23/in-2024-please-switch-to-firefox/

#Firefox #privacy

US residents: If you haven't ordered your free COVID tests through USPS in the last five or six weeks, you're eligible for four more per household. It takes about a minute to fill out the online form, and USPS delivers them to your mailbox.

Testing is a great way to keep friends, family, and coworkers safe.

https://special.usps.com/testkits

#Soil #fertility shapes #fire activity across #Mediterranean-type climate regions -by S. Paula et al #GEB https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/geb.13796

@ecology @wildfirescience

New paper out today: An "unprecedented" range map of the eastern and western #joshuatrees based on Google Maps satellite imagery for more than SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND quarter-square kilometer grid cells

Blog post rundown: https://lab.jbyoder.org/2023/12/14/new-publication-an-unprecedented-map-of-joshua-tree-populations/

And the paper: https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2023.1266892

#science #conservation #MojaveDesert

Grad Student Travel Awards available for Evolution 2024

Des bourses de voyage disponibles pour les étudiant·e·s diplômé·e·s membres de l’ASN pour la conférence de l’Évolution de 2024 :

https://www.amnat.org/announcements/ASN-Grad-Travel.html

Further support / soutiens supplémentaires :
https://www.evolutionmeetings.org/participation-support.html

A Brief History of Kids Today Are Lazy

🧵

@PCI_Archaeology @thecarpentries thank you for spreading the word about the guide 🙏

We stop interacting on X in June 2023: https://ropensci.org/blog/2023/06/14/ropensci-communication-channels-en/

Found #LeafArt & love it <3

It is so easy to believe that theory in science is just a matter of getting the math right. It makes it such a delight to re-read Otto and Rosales. Their paper higlight the key role of narratives in how we think, and hence in how we do theory. To me the paper is a breath of fresh air.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/705991?casa_token=zkadmdvkrNQAAAAA:JairnvLV4oztf2RHCDXuG33UKXGTVKHEhT3kMeDcp7hBsVQjqx0QWPgMhtgS3BtRuyTeKMAL99XJ