Notices by Michael Porter (michaelporter@ottawa.place), page 2

@fzimper @zleap @petergleick The timelines change a bit, as new evidence comes to light, but I think the *routes* are generally agreed on. North America was populated between 10 000 and 20 000 years ago by folks coming across a land bridge from Asia. And, go back far enough, we originate in Africa.

The map below is from

https://geo.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Oceanography/Oceanography_101_(Miracosta)/02:_Evolution_of_Life_Through_Time/2.27:_Evolution_of_Humans_and_the_Rise_of_Modern_Civilization

@david_whitney @gemelliz Too good 😄

#AltText:
A newspaper TV listing, with apicture of Donald Trump in profile. Text below reads:

4pm, BBC One/ STV
President Trump: The Inauguration
After a long absence, The Twilight Zone returns with one of the most ambitious, expensive and controversial productions in broadcast history. Sci-fi writers have dabbled often with alternative history stories - among the most common is the "What If The Nazis Had Won The Second World War" setting - but this huge interactive virtual reality project, which will unfold on TV, in the press, and on Twitter over the next four years, sets out to build an ongoing alternative present.
The story begins in a nightmarish version of 2017 in which huge sections of the US electorate have somehow been duped into voting to make Donald Trump president.
It sounds far-fetched, and it is, but as it goes on it becomes more and more chillingly plausible. Today's feature length opener concentrates on the gaudy inauguration of President Trump, and the stirrings of protest and despair surrounding the ceremony, while pundits speculate gravely on what lies ahead. It's a flawed piece, but a disturbing glimpse of the horrors we could stumble into, if we're not careful.

All the recent news about Meta has me determined to start some serious arm-twisting with my family.

Can anyone point me to a good, non-paywalled summary of the crap they are engaging in? Something I can pass along to non-tech types?

Also, I suspect this won't have the most satisfactory answers, but what are the easy alternatives for those non-techy types?

Facebook → ?
Instagram → ?
WhatsApp → ? (Signal? The big trick with these is that you need your intended message recipient on the same platform, too, no?)

I'm going to be at a big family dinner in a few weeks... might be a good time to get the message out to the group, so they can coordinate.

Any help/advice is appreciated!

#meta #SocialMedia #LGBTQIA #DeleteFacebook #Facebook

@johncarlosbaez It sounds like the word "surface" is being used in almost a mathematical sense here, as opposed to a physical surface. Aside from the boundary you've described, is there some way that a probe (or an astronaut with a very good A/C system in their suit 😄) would notice this surface?

I've always found it interesting how gases and fluids seem to form abrupt boundaries. I'm thinking of the photosphere and chromosphere, here. In terms of solar wind and the outer reaches of the solar system, the description of the heliosphere always reminded me of the hydraulic jump that you see in the kitchen sink.

https://www.sciencealert.com/role-of-surface-tension-not-gravity-hydraulic-jump

@Nazani @dyckron Pro tip - If the driver in front of you is making shadow puppets on their ceiling, your high beams are on…

@dyckron Ah, sadly, this article confirms one thing I was afraid of–that older eyes are more sensitive to the glare.

But it ignores an exacerbating issue, that of cars that automatically lower high beams if oncoming light is detected. That feature does nothing for pedestrians - I am often blinded by high beams when I'm out on a walk with the dog at night. It's made me very tempted to take my blindingly-bright bike light with me to fight back...

The fact that so many drivers seem clueless as to how their headlights work (e.g. those with high beams on while driving in the city, or those that don't realize that daytime running lights are for the, you know, *daytime*) doesn't help, either.

@dalias @DavidM_yeg @stephanie That doesn't make sense on its surface - that a large group of people that had to complete 10 to 12 years of post-secondary education turns out to be mostly composed of creeps and scammers. On the other hand, you also have a country in which tens of millions of people voted for Trump, and he won the popular vote. Yikes.

Still, hard to accept your premise. I don't deny that there will be some in it for the money, and only that. But the vast majority? That sounds too much like other generalizations, like "Those who can't do, teach" or "Unionists are a bunch of commies" – I would encourage some evidence in support of your claim. That said, the U.S. spends twice as much on health care as anyone else, and doesn't get as good results in general, so 🤷♂️

Also, disclaimer, of sorts - I'm not American, so have no experience with the system that has developed there. The last time I was in a hospital, receiving general anesthesia, I didn't see a single bill for anything. All expenses were handled by the province, and all I had to do was show my health card, establishing that I was a resident.

Related, I've heard several times of people getting screening colonoscopies under general anesthesia in the States, which does make me wonder. Totally unnecessary, and definitely more expensive in terms of staffing, monitoring, and recovery.

@DavidM_yeg @stephanie I think I got distracted while replying, sorry. I'm not disagreeing with you, just adding some nuance. Let me clarify what I was thinking.

The thing that occurred to me is that any large group of people (in this case I'm thinking of the anesthesiologists)* will have outliers that make poor choices. So this small group, or the belief that such a group exists, is dictating the policies of Blue Cross, which in turn punishes the patients. There might be a very small number of fraudulent claims actually being made by anesthesiologists, justifying (in the minds of the insurer) the policy.

I have this blue-sky belief that if we lived in a society that didn't allow people to amass unreasonable amounts of wealth at the expense of others, less of this would happen.

I don't think I'm anywhere near the list of wealth-hoarders, but I am holding on to some money on the off chance that someone in the family gets sick, or suffers a setback, and I'll want to help them. If we had a society that just took care of people, regardless of economic standing, I wouldn't have to do this, and that money could be put to far better use.

Also, I don't think bean-counters should be given the power to determine what's medically necessary.

*Not picking on anesthesiologists, I think any large group will have its share of jerks. I used to belong to a large group, teachers, most of which are very hard-working and conscientious. But I ran into a few people that clearly picked the wrong profession.

I have determined that the object in the "risk of explosion" safety symbol does not obey conservation of area.

I will not be taking questions at this time.

#BreakfastActivities #WHMIS #GHS #LabSafety #ADHD

@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