climate change direct action
Have you heard about Greta Thurnberg and #FridaysForFuture ?
I struggle with the feeling like I am not doing enough to personally limit emissions, but I believe those personal limits are only drops in a bucket. While it is worthwhile to directly influence emissions through habits, it's also just a small part of a whole. Humans are more than just emissions machines. We're social creatures that span the globe so we should organize like it.
An outstanding comic looking at what came *before* Stonewall, including Cooper's Do-Nuts in LA, 1959; Dewey's in Philadelphia, 1965; and Gene Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco, 1966.
MTG turing machine, lol
Never have I had to reference the halting problem and Scryfall (former magiccards.info) to understand a preprint.
From the discussion: the set up with a legacy legal deck
"Once everything is set up, Steely Resolve is cast, and then Karn Liberated and Capsize are used to exile all setup permanents and all cards from Bob’s hand, eventually exiling Capsize and Karn Liberated themselves. Now no player has any remaining choices except to let the Turing machine execute."
😂
free use GFP
Via the birbsite RT of @MicrobeWorld by @microbe_man
https://schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2019/05/the-story-of-free-use-gfp-fugfp.html
Stories like this help demonstrate that it is possible to win support for free culture practices in capitalism. I am inspired by the willingness to dive into the patent and then engage the industry partner with an alternative scientific plan.
A radical re-imagining of our "innovation" economy is still the end goal, but battles can be fought to liberate intellectual resources for unfettered reuse!
Browsing toots, cell feature reconstruction
Browsing toots and investigated this one a bit further:
https://mastodon.social/@openscience/102009798021604179
Beautiful resource but elsewhere on the site they have a super cool tool to predict cell features with just a transmitted light image
https://github.com/AllenCellModeling/pytorch_fnet
"Labels" using machine learning! I feel like there must be some DIY person who can make a TL-Z-stack. I wonder what the limitations of this method are? Guess I better read the paper... or just add it to the stack...
Film recommendation: thoughts on US pol, activist academic, political expression
I knew very little (if any) of the story covered by the 2012 film: Free Angela and All Political Prisoners. It's a very inspiring story which demonstrates the "power of the people". I am astounded by the bravery and resolve that Dr. Davis exemplified in her fight against exercises of power used to suppress and intimidate radical political thought. It makes me think of my role in supporting high profile resistance.
amateur chemistry on youtube
It has been amazing to watch this guys research process over the past years . I'm inspired by the dedication to the project which contributes to scientific advancement.The impact is facinating as its format broadens the potential audience and its concerns are tied to a social environment which is not academic research. Those who watched as it developed did not have to pass an entrance exam, they only had to be interested in the subject. Wow.
going to see some scholars speak from the field I left: feels
At an upcoming event the speakers are scientists who I have read a fair but of their work. I haven't thought much about them in a while and I feel I'm moving forward with a different part of my life now. At one point I had deep technical/philosophical Qs I wanted their opinions on. I thoguht knowing where their ideas came from would help me plan where I would try to drive my own ideas. Now, I'm unsure how their thoughts lie in my life.
Lab skills: 1/2-night beginners #classes in #NYC
Heya! I'm helping out with a community lab called Biotech without Borders. Part of this help will be teaching adult #science classes there to further the mission to "enable the #hands-on #practice of #biotechnology by communities, groups and countries hitherto underrepresented in the #biotech landscape"
I'm gonna start with two 1-night classes
On gel #electrophoresis:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lab-skills-night-how-to-cut-and-measure-dna-tickets-55879592365?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
On #spectrophotometry:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lab-skills-night-learn-spectrophotometry-tickets-55879673608?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
Holy crap y'all Streisand is an impressive piece of #FLOSS. https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand - If you're running Linux or Mac and can follow instructions *at all* then you can have a VPN set up in 20 minutes that you own and control, using any #cloud provider you like. Great for #privacy and also for evading annoying restrictions like JetBlue blocking everything other than ports 80/443 :) (Gonna tell me I can't SSH? Really? I think not :)
Quit using Mendeley people!
They started encrypting your database so you cannot easily move it over to other tools any more.
See:
https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/mendeley_import
That link also helps you saving your data before it's too late.
(Elsevier are a bunch of crooks, blocking interoperability one-way and not the other. Almost as bad as Google blocking uBlock for your safety...)
Open Plant, DIY bio
Oh man here's a long due update about the Open Plant project I has started to work on at Genspace: I moved to Biotech without Borders (BwoB) because I wanted a more flexible space near my home. I ordered a bunch of reagents, but then I realized that BwoB doesn't have heat and the incubator only cools. So a few weeks later and I revised the code to used the millis() timer and 2 relays (OLED display needs more memory). Still fixing up the documentation: https://github.com/danwchan/openplant_incubator
film recommendations x3
Love Witch (2016) a visually beautiful story. It made me laugh but it also challenged me to empathize and made me consider some nuances of power.
Mind the Gap (2018) a powerfully intimate story of family and America through the lens of skateboarders and domestic abuse. I felt lucky to have heard this true story.
The Cakemaker (2017) a complicated story of love + loss told with little judgement. I was sad that these characters did not have better outlets for their grief.
I released a new version of my Firefox extension that will forcefully redirect you away from privacy erosive services to better alternatives. It started as a joke, but I end up actually using it.
When I want to look up a place, I instinctively and mechanically start typing "maps.googl...". This extension will instead take me to OpenStreetMaps. It will also functionally translate Google Search links to DuckDuckGo and Google Translate links to Deepl.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/resist-the-internet/
at 168 now... when/if we reach we can reach out to more chemists and start contacting ACS editors and officials... but I need your help reaching this... please spread the petition for more Open Citations: https://www.change.org/p/asking-the-american-chemical-society-to-join-the-initiative-for-open-citations
@quokka I always thought your username had a familiar ring to and after an animalogic video I think I know why! What a cute mammal to align yourself with.