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 An observation on how #Mastodon is growing 👀 Over the past month, multiple journalists from top outlets have contacted me related to content I’ve shared. While this was not uncommon on #Twitter when I was active there, it’s relatively new for me in the #fediverse. I suspect this suggests professional news outlets are becoming more comfortable here & posts have increasing impact. Good. In the U.S., recent annual estimates of bird deaths due to: Cats = 2.4 billion bird deaths Collisions from building glass = 600 million bird deaths Land wind turbines = <200,000 bird deaths Some politicians claim wind turbines “kill all the birds.” But… they’re not really worried about birds. Rather, they prefer we stick with oil & gas over renewable #energy. https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-killing-fields-for-birds/ #climatechange
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@Sheril The same lies here in #Germany. No windmills back in the 70ies, when I started with #birding as hobby. Three breeding pairs of #WhiteTailedEagle in the state of #SchleswigHolstein, where I lived. Now more than 120 pairs. The same with other large birds, #Osprey, #RedKite, #BlackKite, #Spoonbill, #WhiteStork, #GreyHeron well increasing. #GreatEgret and #LittleEgret as new breeding species. The same tendency in #Denmark. Lots of large windmills now, great birds increasing.  @Sheril Very interesting. I suspect the causes may differ by country - even so, I'm surprised changes in agriculture is not in the list here for the US as, here in the UK, it's by far the biggest reason. Perhaps, it's due to the sheer size of the US (unless they made a mistake). I'm preparing a public talk & just popped my #Mastodon handle on the first slide. It's a good look & I hope to see more of these logos at conferences & events.
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  Verification on #Twitter was sought after because it conveyed status. Now a blue check is meaningless or even suggests that those paying for it have fallen for a scam. The Verge explains: “The basic truth of cool, as anyone can tell you, is that trying to be cool is not cool, and paying to be cool is for suckers.” https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/4/23668722/elon-musk-twitter-blue-checkmark-verified
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  @Sheril The Blue Check was always a terrible feature. I explain why here: https://blog.atomicpoet.org/YdJMHV8ASc2E_loByi0vRQ# Stressed #plants ‘cry’ — and some animals can probably hear them Fascinating new research using microphones captured ultrasonic crackles from plants that are water-deprived or injured. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00890-9 #nature #science
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@Sheril Sounds like an episode of Tales of the Unexpected from the early 80s. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0717507/ @Sheril You know what else makes the same sounds? Rivers, rain, and waves: literally anywhere that air bubbles form in water and collapse. If you want more clickbait, however, then you may rightly claim that stressing a river by trying to divert the water, causes it to make *more* sounds. Which must be significant, right? 🙄  @Sheril This is a physical response to dehydration manifesting as popping air bubbles. A 'cry' can only be considered as such if other plants have a mechanism to receive it and act on it. AFAIK plants do not have any audio receptors. My knees crack when I stand up. Is that a cry? Once upon a time, ~40M years ago, there was a species of penguin that was 6'8" (2m) tall & 250 lbs (115kg) called Palaeeudyptes klekowskii, also known as the ‘mega penguin’ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25990-extinct-mega-penguin-was-tallest-and-heaviest-ever/ #science #history #nature #SharedPlanet
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@Sheril Wow, I didn’t know that, thanks for sharing. I think there are so many lovely names of Penguin that I’ve heard from decades of Attenborougj shows; Mega-Penguin feels a bit on the lazy-side, more like a brand extension than a suitable name. They could have at least named it after a famous mythological giant.  Published in 2016, this brilliant comic by artist Joe Dater somehow feels even more timely in 2023. #art
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 I'm just going to put #ChatGPT and #ChatGPTSearches against this because this is the future of searching things on the Web with the confident BS generator machine.  "i will cook & eat the next person who calls me shy, i am the next-gen T. Rex...:" PS-- great photo!!! @Sheril We saw one in a creek bed in Northern Queensland near Daintree. Major life highlight. @Sheril I'll never forget seeing a chick once in The Daintree. It looked like a giant duckling with dinosaur feet 🐤
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@Sheril
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Brewing and the sale of beer pre-dated the invention of signs and flags. Brewsters sold their excess beer, but it would go bad quickly, so it wasn’t always available. Simply posting a stick or post outside, or attached above the door, was a way of saying you had something “for sale” right now. Decorating the stick was a way of showing what you had for sale, and in some regions, a bundle of barley stalks tied to the pole meant you had beer available. It resembled a broom. hmmmm…. “We've arranged a society based on #science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. This combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces.” - Carl Sagan, in his last interview to Charlie Rose https://charlierose.com/videos/9094
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@Sheril Thank you for sharing this. It made me watch the video, then read Sagan‘s Wikipedia page, from there on to some awe inspiring Voyager photos and finally to this beautiful Planetary Radio podcast episode with his partner: https://overcast.fm/+vWjKW0pgg This week, the world’s human #population is expected to reach 8B. About 109B people have lived and died. Each grain of sand represents 10M. Spectacular #data visualization of human life on Earth by Max Roser #science
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 @Sheril that's amazing—I was wondering about this distribution just the other day. Like, assuming life's better now than before people could talk and reliably harvest food, are we lucky to born at this time instead of in the time before agriculture or language? Looking at this, people before agriculture were just super unlucky: the chance to be born today (or in a wealthier, more comfortable future) seems to be much higher. @Sheril curious about the origins of this visual model! Curiously I can no longer change my name on #Twitter. I had temporarily switched it to this #Mastodon handle so folks would find me here during the #TwitterMigration. Now when I try to change it back to my full name & hit save, a little blue rectangle pops up that says "Deny." It seems odd choices are being made over at the bird site. I guess this one's okay - if it serves to send more people here.
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Spare a thought for the Australian comedians from @chaser who where playing music chairs with their name when the music stopped on this gem: @Sheril From what I've heard, verification went as well as all its critics expected and said it would, and so that's probably Twitter's way of dealing with the inevitable and very much pointed-out problems. But yeah if your Mastodon name is now your Twitter name that just means more people over here, so win. As a woman with a blue check & Jewish name on #Twitter, the network stopped being fun long ago. I had reasons to stay, but in recent years, people or bots who disagreed with my posts increasingly responded with sexism, antisemitism, disturbing Holocaust imagery & creepy DMs. Say what you will about free speech, but the toxic environment there discourages a diversity of voices & ideas. Is #Mastodon better? So far, there’s no question it is for me. I hope it stays that way. #TwitterMigration
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It is absolutely better if you're on the main servers (or ones with good moderation policies), but we have to work to keep it good here too. Welcome and hope it's comfy here for you x @Sheril @Sheril Uhg, a day after Elon's takeover "National Justice Party" and "No White Guilt" folks just started crawling out of the woodwork. They weren't flaunting their usual dogwhistles either -- their posts were full on fasc. (twitter did end up suspending most of the accounts I reported, but it did take a bit longer than normal) In recent years, we became too comfortable letting #Twitter define journalism & media. Algorithms often dictated the narratives we collectively paid attention to. Absurd trends were covered by news outlets & ballooned into major stories while we missed so much real substance. And the quick takes of uninformed politicians & bad actors were forced upon anyone participating in the network. It was bad for democracy. The #Mastodon model makes me hopeful we can do better. #twittermigration
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@Sheril Some years ago I watched a documentary about how the goverment of West Germany went to the Soviet Union to negotiate about the last german WWII soldiers in soviet captivity. There was a story about one frustrated german politician who ran out of the room and said "The negotiations are canceled!". That wasn't published in the news back then because he went back very quickly, but I don't want to think about how this would play out in today's world. @Sheril truth has been spoken! Been trying to figure out how to best engage with news content here. Learning to use CW feature more. After 1 week on #Mastodon, the biggest difference I notice compared to #Twitter is the way each network makes me feel. Twitter: Mastodon: I sense being here is changing my perspective of social media. #TwitterMigration
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@Sheril I had this as my pinned tweet for awhile: Commenting on how initial #UserBase can have a dramatic impact on the experience on a #socialNetwork, but that it is also very hard to predict future trends. I think #Twitter normalized anonymous harassment. I haven't encountered it on Mastodon yet but I don't think Mastodon would be immune if it became a large target. After a couple of days on #Mastodon I’m very impressed & excited to be part of this growing community! #mastodonmigration My only humble suggestion is that it needs more #tardigrades aka "water bears." Tardigrades have survived every mass #extinction on Earth since they evolved about a 1/2 billion years ago. There are ~1,300 known species. And millions of years from now, they won’t even notice we’re gone.
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Gregory's Server
@Sheril your posts are always interesting, good to know jornalist are paying attention
@Sheril The Fediverse is most definitely improving and X is getting worse
@Sheril maybe you cam mention them so we can follow.