OMG!!!
Bird flu found in wet markets in New York City.
nbcnewyork.com/news/health/bir…
Avian flu has been spreading in animals across the country.The Associated Press (NBC New York)
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Sonnet 020 - XX
A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
bot by @davidaugust
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An exquisite depiction of nature’s rhythm and energy, the Jar (Hu) at #ClevelandMuseumofArt embodies ancient craftsmanship with its swirling patterns and symbolic dragon. How do you interpret the movement and symbolism within this earthenware masterpiece?
#ClevelandArt #ArtHistory #CulturalHeritage
clevelandart.org/art/1989.15
Instead of depicting a real landscape, the artist focused on the rhythmic forces of nature and the movement of energy, using the scrolling form as a symbol common to all changes in nature: cloud vapors, waves, and mountains alike.clevelandart.org
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Entropy distinguishes future from past. Entropy is defined as decreasing order.
Order is defined in multiple ways, at multiple scales. Matter with more lines of symmetry has greater order; periodic repetition is more orderly.
Consider an ant: The body of the ant consists of repeated patterns. Molecules of DNA & RNA, clusters of similar cells form organs.
Consider a deconstructed ant; a symmetrical array of perfectly sorted plies of elements.
Which one is more ordered?
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Martialis heureka is an ant first described in 2000 from Amazon rainforest near Manaus, Brazil. It's name means "from Mars" because it's so different from all other known ants.
This isn't just a new genus (which would be exciting enough) it's a whole new ant family and it's only been recognized in the past 30 years. This means that there are undoubtably more ants out there that define whole new morphologies of ants. #rareAnt
1/
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Biden increased transparency around the risks of chemical disaster — industry lobbyists just asked Trump’s new EPA chief Lee Zeldin to roll that back.The Lever
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So I finally turned a recent popular post here into a proper story.
Teen on Musk’s DOGE Team Graduated from ‘The Com’
Wired reported this week that a 19-year-old working for Elon Musk‘s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was given access to sensitive US government systems even though his past association with cybercrime communities should have precluded him from gaining the necessary security clearances to do so. As today’s story explores, the DOGE teen is a former denizen of ‘The Com,’ an archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels that function as a kind of distributed cybercriminal social network for facilitating instant collaboration.
krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/te…
Wired reported this week that a 19-year-old working for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was given access to sensitive US government systems even though his past association with cybercrime communities should have prec…krebsonsecurity.com
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@bezmuth yeah. this is what they did
whitehouse.gov/presidential-ac…
January 20, 2025 MEMORANDUM TO THE WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL SUBJECT: Memorandum to Resolve the Backlog of Security Clearances forThe White House
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…"
openculture.com/2025/02/carl-s…
Image by Kenneth Zirkel, via Wikimedia Commons There have been many theories of how human history works. Some, like German thinker G.W.F.OC (Openculture.com)
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This is pretty incredible. In the bowels of the UT Insect Collection we’ve found some Chagas bugs collected and identified by Carlos Chagas himself!
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Is there a dominant or distinct odor associated with these individual specimens or with open collection boxes or in the areas where the collections are stored?
Can you smell all those dead bugs?
What's it like?
Somehow, looking at these pictures, it seems to me like you might, and it might not be good...
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I'm using facebook for one more month. Facebook simply will not show you the things the people you follow post. For example, an old school friend posted a photo of a frog on his front door. Just what I want to see on social media! "look at this frog!" perfect content A++
Facebook hid it. My feed is full of other random stuff.
So, now I just click on "friends" and look individually at what everyone has posted. Much more enjoyable. If I were going to stay I'd write a script to automate this.
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Musk shields his finances as he hoards private data of millions of Americans
rawstory.com/elon-musk-financi…
#ElonMusk #DOGE #Swastikars #Gaslighter #RacistMusk #NaziMusk #PresidentMusk #TwitterIsGoingGreat #Shitter #Elno #FuckElonMusk #RhodesiaMusk #EETD #ElonPutz #BoycottTSLA #USPol
Elon Musk vowed "maximum transparency" in his government work but won't even share his financial disclosures, according to a new report.Travis Gettys (Raw Story)
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BUT at least she's blonde!
Trump’s new 'White House Faith Office' pick claimed 'demonic' forces stole 2020 election
alternet.org/trump-benen-paula…
#PaulaWhite #StopTrumpNow #TrumpDidThis #RepublicansDidThis #RepublicansOwnThis #GOPKakistocracy #GOPWeirdos #NoRepublicansEverAgain #USPol
When President Donald Trump spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning, February 6, he attacked Democrats as anti-religion — claiming, "They oppose religion, they oppose God.Alex Henderson (Alternet.org)
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Signal Flare colours is something one gets to learn as a (fmr.) firefighter.
It's the shit where everyone says "Gasmasks On! Then run as fast as you can into cover!!" kind.
Noone here wants to see a Bhopal happen!
Tesla’s sales have dropped nearly 60% in January in Germany compared to the same period last year. The same thing...Fred Lambert (Electrek)
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Die spannenden Fragen sind: Wie sahen die Verkäufe der Konkurrenz im gleichen Zeitraum aus? Welche Rolle spielt der Wunsch, beim Autokauf keinen Extremisten zu unterstützen? Und wen unterstützt man, wenn man statt eines #Tesla einen #VW oder #BYD kauft?
(Spoiler: Bei #Volkswagen profitiert unter anderem die Folterdiktatur #Katar als drittgrößter Anteilseigner, bei BYD sind es u.a. Warren Buffett, #BlackRock und der nicht gerade menschenrechtsfreundliche chinesische Staat.)
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#Mastodon and #Bluesky also appeals to two substantially different groups of people:
A Twitter alternative cannot be a true Twitter alternative if the appeal is that it’s not Twitter.
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Happy birthday to civil rights activist Rosa Parks, who was born on this day in 1913 ✊
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Par…
#RosaParks #CivilRights #OTD #OnThisDay #BlackHistory #BlackHistoryMonth
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At first, I thought Trump's new Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs could not possibly have said what was being attributed to him.
Then I found his actual tweet. It's true.
x.com/DarrenJBeattie/status/18…
"Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work."
i cant even
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Still, the Bluesky thing is a shame. Hopefully more users will realise switching to just another big company is not viable in the long run.
Signal seems more okay, it being a charity and all. Though I hope that's enough of a motivation to do right in the long run.
Well, there’s a few ways to approach the question of Bluesky.
First off, there’s no question that Bluesky has a more inviting UI/UX to people migrating away from Twitter. This can’t be helped since Bluesky is more Twitter-like than Mastodon.
But it also didn’t help that several marginalized groups, including Black folk, found a hostile environment here when they attempted to migrate in November 2022.
And while we can point at the tech here on Mastodon and say, “More decentralized!” the other fact is that Bluesky has tools to make life slightly more easier for some marginalized groups. For example, Bluesky has comment controls whereas Mastodon does not.
@bammerlaan The messenger app #Signal is not run by a non-profit organisation or a charity.
Instead the service is provided by a for-profit company: Signal Messenger LLC
signal.org/legal
wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Mess…
It is similar in structure to #Mozilla, where they also mix the non-profit and the for-profit organisations together on their websites. This confuses users in my opinion.
Accordingly #Firefox is developed by the Mozilla Corporation, not by the Mozilla Foundation.
@fosstastic @bammerlaan In both cases, I believe, the for-profit company is owned entirely by the non-profit. This structure is often in place because it lets you take donations easily as well as money for specific tasks. Donations, to be tax exempt, must not come with any specific return to the donor (the enforcement of this is, uh, somewhat variable). The Signal Corporation can, for example, provide consulting for integrating secure E2EE into other platforms and take money for this, which can go towards improving and maintaining Signal. The Signal Foundation could not. As with any corporation, the Signal LLC is accountable to its owner. The Signal Foundation is the owner and must justify that all of their activities are in pursuit of their stated objectives to maintain their non-profit status.
The problems with Mozilla have nothing to do with this structure and everything to do with the people in charge.
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Trump Taps ‘Sharpiegate’ Scientist to Lead US Weather Agency
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-04/trump-taps-sharpiegate-scientist-to-lead-us-weather-agency?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Profiles @profiles-bloomberg
The Trump administration has tapped Neil Jacobs, a scientist cited for misconduct related to the “Sharpiegate” hurricane forecasting controversy, to lead the agency that oversees US government weather predictions and climate research.Lauren Rosenthal (Bloomberg)
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52 Weeks, 52 Half Marathons,
Map updated with 05/2025
More overlap than I wished for because of private properties but still another nice brush stroke in Sintra.
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The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, groups with tremendous influence in Washington, are among the professional societies for physicians that have not directly weighed in on Kennedy’s nomination — even after last week’s confirmation hearings in which Kennedy refused to unequivocally disavow falsehoods connecting vaccines to autism.
#AMA #AAP #MedicalCowards #USPol
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A town of shining cherry blossoms overflowing with gentleness.
#photography #nature #art #写真 #日本 #japan #beautiful #beauty #landscape #scenery #ファンタジー #fantasy #oldlens #filmlike #classical #retro #healing #calm #春 #spring #桜 #cherryblossom #cherryblossoms #town #country #pink #shine #shining
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“I have never seen the level of retribution and anger expressed towards career prosecutors and staff who are basically doing their job. It is stunning, the level of retribution. What is ironic is that President Trump talked about witch hunts. What we are now experiencing is his answer to the witch hunt, which is much worse.”
-- Gene Rossi, who previously worked as a prosecutor, represented the first Oath Keeper to enter the Capitol.
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You know what’s foolish about these tariffs?
Before this ridiculousness, it was a near certainty that Pierre Poilievre was going to be Prime Minister of Canada and that the Liberals were on their way out. Now I’m not so sure.
So if Trump just left things alone for a year, he would have had a guaranteed yes-man in Canada. But now even the yes-man doesn’t want to present himself as a yes-man.
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@Christopher Really, it almost begs the question as to whether Trudeau could re-run in the Liberal Leadership Race, and in the election campaign.
(Probably not, but arguably he could go the "Look; you can trust that I won't capitulate to Trump on our sovereignty, and I can fight back with tariffs too; I just think tariffs in a Free Trade Agreement is a unwise decision.")
😂
Trump stans like Tim Pool have no bloody clue about Canada.
We’d rather burn the economy to the ground then live under the thumb of the USA. If you want to go to war, we will go to war.
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I used to work for some very wealthy Americans when I was a designer. One day, one of their trophy wives made a realization about Canadians and it was spot on. She said, I think I've realized that the difference between Canada and the US is that everyone has their price in the States, it's just a matter of finding out what it is, but you Canadians are really different. If you don't wanna do something, you just won't do it. It doesn't matter what you get offered.
I don't think she was wrong
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Richard W. Woodley ELBOWS UP 🇨🇦🌹🚴♂️📷 🗺️ reshared this.
Seems like they do not have any clue about how their own system works either.
Crap like that happens on a platform without moderators and fact checkers.
Reality:
DJT needs 2/3 votes in the Senate before he can invade another country.
There are 53 GOP Senators and 45 Dems + 2 Indi.
I hope that no more than 53 Senators would vote to invade.
Elon Musk Creates Confusion About Direct File, the IRS’ Free Tax-Prep Program
https://time.com/7212617/elon-musk-irs-direct-file-18f-taxes/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Top Stories @top-stories-time
Though the billionaire presidential adviser created confusion when he said he’d “deleted” the agency behind it, the free filing program is still available—at least for the coming tax season.Fatima Hussein and Barbara Ortutay / AP (Time)
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Edward R. Martin, Jr. is a freak and a traitor to the United States.
New top prosecutor for DC advocated for Jan. 6 rioters and echoed Trump's false 2020 election claims | AP News
apnews.com/article/justice-dep…
#StopTrumpNow #TrumpDidThis #RepublicansDidThis #RepublicansOwnThis #GOPKakistocracy #GOPWeirdos #NoRepublicansEverAgain #USPol
The top federal prosecutor for Washington is a conservative activist who promoted Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories about a stolen election, railed against the prosecution of the rioters who stormed the Capitol and represented some in court.ALANNA DURKIN RICHER (AP News)
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Bigger is better approaches in AI create an inexhaustible appetite for users’ data, leading to a rise in user data expropriation, sectioning off of the internet, and “data feudalism.”Default
Hmm... setting up ActivityPub to federate what are essentially blog posts is interesting.
Permissions issue right now that should be sorted soon, and then I can describe what's what.
cc @elzbethmrgn @futzle
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Susanna the Artist 🌻
in reply to MEActNOW • • •