Given the ongoing #coup in the #UnitedStates and the ensuing increased security and privacy issues, I am refusing to actively contribute to the usage of the #Microsoft #email service of the #UniversityOfAmsterdam (18 Feb 2025: see update below).
I am archiving my incoming email to my own server, which is based in the #Netherlands and I only respond from my own email address (like this link).
Yes, it’s largely symbolic, but at this point, when it comes to forms of resistance, we can’t be picky.
In this post I share three tips that have helped me find great people on Mastodon.
In contrast to your regular corporate Big Tech social media, the Fediverse is not packed with algorithms that build your world for you. You have to do it yourself.
To be sure, this has advantages. For example, your digital world will be a more active product of who you are and what you like, rather than what some algorithm thinks you like, on the basis of some superficial reading of who you are. Also, it prevents a few popular accounts from getting even more popular, which helps to spread and share the community’s attention more equally.
When our governments insist with all their propaganda tools that speaking out against Israel is antisemitic - conflating antizionism with antisemitism - we can’t be surprised that some angry teens in Amsterdam - furious about an ongoing genocide - make the same (stupid and dangerous) mistake.
Fighting the latter, implies fighting the former.
“We only have to internalize the externalities”.1 That’s what “environmental economists” say. For example by imposing a tax on the production/consumption that damages the environment, or by requiring producers/consumers to buy tradable emission rights.
But there are some fundamental issues in their way of thinking:
This blog post first appeared in February 2024 on the website of OpenTech(AUC).
Normally, when you feel you’re getting the short end of a stick, for example when the supermarket sells you expensive mushy cauliflowers, or when the organization you volunteer at treats you disrespectfully, you go and find what you need somewhere else.
This ability to “defect” to an alternative when you feel you’re not getting a good deal, is an important “power” that helps you get reasonable deals.1
Our little apartment in Medellín is on the 7th floor. But that doesn’t prevent nature from doing its thing.
The food chain starts with a banana. We cut it up and put it on a wooden feeder. So far, we have been visited by Guacharacas (see video), Mieleros, Bichofues, Candelarias, Azulejos, Verdulejos, Mayos and today even a Carpintero.
No matter how hard these birds try to scrape the last piece of banana from the feeder, there is always something left. But it doesn’t go to waste! Because, believe it or not, ants find their way up to the seventh floor. And they feast on what is left of the banana.
(To go straight to the customizable online version of the new graph, click here. But note that 1. it doesn’t work that well on a phone, and 2. it is running on my own server, so it might be a bit slow. For the non-interactive, default image, see below.)
(A small discussion can be found underneath this Lemmy post).
For some years now, I have seen this graph go around on social media. I think it’s a powerful image, because it shows us so clearly that it is happening in our lifetime and under our watch.
I was today years old when I learned why the nitrogen fixing nodules on the roots of legumes tend to be red when you open them. It has to do with the Great Oxidation Event, which happened around 2.5 billion years ago, and is directly connected to the reason why our blood is red.
(This article also exists in Spanish: link)
Nitrogen is naturally scarce. It might make up the bulk of what we call “air”, but this nitrogen exists as N2, and most organisms have no clue what to do with that. “Most organisms”, because there are a few bacteria that have evolved the capacity to capture nitrogen from the atmosphere, and turn it into molecules that are biologically useful, like NH3.
If you like to go down a Python rabbit hole with me, to explore some of the basic dynamics of the greenhouse effect, Please continue. If not, get out while you still can!
Ok, so this page of Kump et al.’s “The Earth System” (third edition, 2010) briefly presents a simple model of the greenhouse effect: the “greenhouse effect of a one-layer atmosphere”.
It basically shows (with interesting, but ultimately, unnecessarily complex equations) that if…