Notices by Michael Porter (michaelporter@ottawa.place)

@markarayner I feel like the “enter“ key should be one of these:

@georgetakei “Okay, now that we have that out of the way…”

Just heard a reference to this E. O. Wilson quote on Jon Stewart's podcast (https://overcast.fm/+ABIv5SBB5XI):

“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”

Yup. Our godlike tech is manipulating those Paleolithic emotions, and our medieval institutions are not capable of doing anything about it...

#CanPoli #OnPoli #USpol

@dairpo @c_9 “We’re so committed to quality education, we’ll check for a pulse first, before hiring someone!”

Just so this doesn’t get misinterpreted, I’m a retired teacher who believes that the current situation is untenable, and we are not putting anywhere *near* the resources in to ensure that we get quality teacher candidates, and that we can continue to look after their welfare after they are hired. Teaching was a tough job before the pandemic - Back then, the attrition rate for new teachers was something like 30% in the first five years. I have no idea what it is now.

We need to take care of teachers so they can take care of our kids.

Cameron, I hope your husband has a good experience, gets a permanent position soon, and experiences the same joy and challenges that I did in the classroom. I wouldn’t have wanted to do anything else.

Just watched the J.J. Abrams reboot Star Trek (2009)… again. What a ridiculous movie 😄
Okay, it's entertainment, so we’ll ignore the *many* wild science errors. I have two simple questions:

Who designed a bridge that shines bright lights in everyone's eyes? Operating that ship would be like driving at night on a crowded highway, with everyone's taillights converted to high-beam headlights.

When they show Spock preparing a sample of red matter to collapse the supernova that is “threatening the galaxy” (but for some reason he's only concerned with saving one particular planet), he only takes a tiny droplet, around one 5 *millionth* of the total volume that he's carrying (by my crude estimate, calculations available on request 😉).
What was he going to do with the other 5 million doses?!

#StarTrek #BadSciFi #LensFlare

Hey Tooters - If you are linking to YouTube videos, don’t use the “Share” function in YouTube to generate the link. Copy and paste the URL from your address bar.

Using the “Share” function generates a generic preview in Mastodon, whereas cutting and pasting the actual URL gives a nice preview for the video, including the title.

The preview for my image below might be cropped in your browser, click to see the comparison.

#Communication #Mastodon #YouTube

@thomasfuchs Is “rude and nasty” a dogwhistle for “uppity”? 🙄

So I’m watching the documentary “Apollo 11” from 2019, and they have a scene that includes the date, July 20, 1969, and a full Moon with some wispy clouds going by, suggesting the view is from the Earth.

Back in my Twitter days, I made note of a radio program hosted by Brian Eno and Brian Cox, with a bunch of Moon tunes and memories of the event. Brian Eno remembers looking at the full Moon that night.

Except…
#BadAstronomy #Astronomy #Apollo11

@sand Whoa there, sandman… That would cost money!
Far better to have melting teachers and students sticking to *everything*

@morph @LibrarianRA You need the turtleneck to protect your skin from staining by the “heavy alloy” metal…

I’m seeing this graphic making the rounds withouth attribution - many versions have the info at the bottom cut off. The creator is alienyrox2 on reddit (https://www.reddit.com/user/alienyrox2/).

https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/ic1g5o/colors_of_aurora_oc/

#Aurora #CreditYourSources #AltText

@MayhamMonday @ned @McRocker @AnthonyJK @blogdiva @DukeDuke Then you are WAY overdue!

@internic @arstechnica Are you sure you haven’t muted them or something? I’m seeing a bunch of posts.

@peterdrake @internic @arstechnica @freemo Two dozen posts on May 7 alone, 12 on May 6, a handful on previous days. Try going directly to their web page to see.

@thomasfuchs That’s an amazing pic. I love how modern tech has raised our standards - that picture is at least as good as, if not better than, the ones I used to gaze at in my old astro books from the 70s and 80s.

@VeroniqueB99 @BrentToderian All of those conditions are a result of decades of car-focussed planning. It’s circular to say we can’t move away from car infrastructure because of all the car infrastructure. Even the high temperatures that are more frequent are a result of our abuse of fossil fuels.

We need to shift focus. Active transport like bikes is one solution, but mass transit should be another. That would take care of too-hot days, and people unable to cycle, etc. You can always dress for the cold 😊

Folks, the alt-text efforts seem to be diminishing. I see a lot of stuff that I'd like to boost, but I've now been properly trained to expect alt-text on pictures (good, descriptive stuff that stands in for the image).

I'm not being pushy, just trying to be considerate of the Mastodon community that has trouble with images. I tend to unfollow accounts that post images without alt text - Not as a punitive thing, but to reduce my temptation to boost them.

@darnell Next, they’re going to ban Kevin Bacon

@thomasfuchs Also good for looking at the Sun if there are larger sunspots visible… There’s a nice one visible currently.

@darnell @violetmadder @randahl What they *would* do and what they *should* do are two separate things. I think they’ve done exactly what people expected, possibly a little heavier on the war crimes.

But there’s no point in trying to answer the “should” question, given the long history of mutual antipathy and aggression in the region. The Israeli gov’t should’t be committing genocidal acts. Hamas shouldn’t have attacked civilians. Israel shouldn’t have created an apartheid state. Arab TV shouldn’t broadcast hate speech towards Jews. And so on, back through the decades.

Wouldn’t it be nice if people could just get along.