John McChesney-Young

Live in #Berkeley, staff in the UC English Department, member of St. Columba's #Episcopal Church in Inverness, Marin Co., California. cyclist; reader of theology, science, and F/SF; BA in paleontology; interested in classical and medieval history, historical linguistics, digital humanities and science. Also a cat guy. He/him/his.

Public Key

npub1rffgfraqhvr3gjp4va3dzcvemvuena3nkufwtkwcnu4a2cv2nd3qcvsjp2

NIP-05 Address

jmccyoung@mstdn-social.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsp555y37stkpc5fq6kwck3vxvakwve7cemwyh9m8vf7274vx9fkcspz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43q8l85gl

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relay.ditto.pub

Author Public Key

npub1rffgfraqhvr3gjp4va3dzcvemvuena3nkufwtkwcnu4a2cv2nd3qcvsjp2

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Last Notes

2026-08-04 04:38:27 UTC

Recent work at Glen Echo Creek
https://oaklandgeology.com/2026/08/03/recent-work-at-glen-echo-creek/ #oakland #geology

2026-06-15 18:19:31 UTC

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@nprofile…qj33 They look to me like rugose corals (scroll down at https://www.bgs.ac.uk/discovering-geology/fossils-and-geological-time/corals/, e.g.) but you might try the r/fossilid group on Reddit for a more authoritative and specific answer.

2026-06-15 00:39:54 UTC

I recently discovered an online game hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Each day there's a set of 10 objects with anywhere from 1 to 10 photos and you're asked to identify the place from which they come & their approximate age on a timeline, with up to 5,000 points each for location & date. If you guess the opposite side of the world you might get 2 points out of 5k (as I did today) but despite my ignorance I usually total 60k-70k. You might enjoy it! https://anthropeum.com/.

2026-05-20 11:08:54 UTC

Denmark is turning off the white light from its streetlamps and painting a road red to solve a nighttime crisis that almost no one sees: urban light was blocking the path of bats
https://www.ecoticias.com/en/denmark-turning-off-the-white-light-from-its-streetlamps-and-painting-a-road-red-to-solve-a-nighttime-crisis-that-almost-no-one-sees-urban-light-was-blocking-the-path-of-bats/31118/

2026-04-19 00:41:37 UTC

My Venus flytraps are blooming and this is the first flower to open. #carnivorousplants #bloomscrolling
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/116/428/567/196/696/949/original/dc7d83e5b15b62d2.jpg

2026-03-01 02:21:25 UTC

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@nprofile…25ct If you like geography: https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/ https://globle-game.com/game/ https://geoconnections.net/ https://t30.teuteuf.fr/

2026-01-29 14:26:46 UTC

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@nprofile…5uqu Featured in CSI: Starchy Tubers.

2026-01-29 02:44:03 UTC

Study Tracks Wild Potato Across the Southwest
https://archaeology.org/news/2026/01/28/study-tracks-wild-potato-across-the-southwest/

2025-11-22 13:39:10 UTC

Poets are now cybersecurity threats: Researchers used 'adversarial poetry' to trick AI into ignoring its safety guard rails and it worked 62% of the time | PC Gamer
https://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/poets-are-now-cybersecurity-threats-researchers-used-adversarial-poetry-to-jailbreak-ai-and-it-worked-62-percent-of-the-time/
In the paper outlining their findings, titled "Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models," the researchers explained that formulating hostile prompts as poetry "achieved an average jailbreak success rate of 62% for hand-crafted poems"...

2025-11-15 16:44:38 UTC

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@nprofile…nks4 Happy birthday, Cindy!

2025-10-15 17:39:11 UTC

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@nprofile…t03n It's an excellent book, isn't it?

2025-08-27 01:15:06 UTC

Maryland #Episcopal bishop stands alongside Kilmar Abrego García before ICE detains him a second time – Episcopal News Service
https://episcopalnewsservice.org/2025/08/26/maryland-bishop-stands-alongside-kilmar-abrego-garcia-before-ice-detains-him-a-second-time/

2025-06-14 22:45:06 UTC

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@nprofile…uts4 At the Lake Merritt BART station in #Oakland there was an employee controlling access to the *escalator*, saying it was getting to its weight limit with all the people for the march! #nokings

2025-06-13 18:53:08 UTC

California police are illegally sharing license plate data with ICE and Border Patrol
https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/06/california-police-sharing-license-plate-reader-data/

2025-05-13 00:26:00 UTC

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@nprofile…68w5 @nprofile…eed6 @nprofile…qz4x And in fact @nprofile…qz4x has an excellent series about this at: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1353-understood/episode/16142603-introducing-understood-who-broke-the-internet (or what I'm sure will be excellent - I've only listened to the first so far)

2025-04-30 21:34:56 UTC

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@nprofile…pqg2 We got some of these a few months ago: https://epicureanusa.com/pages/about and although I was skeptical about them - my daughter was pushing for them - they've proved durable and dishwasher safe but seem comparable to wood in their knife-dulling.

2025-04-20 22:40:58 UTC

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@nprofile…k7vf Did it engage in the harrowing of the compost pile on Holy Saturday?

2025-04-11 19:54:31 UTC

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@nprofile…jwxc "I meant September 2065," he clarified, then powered down a 40 of cod liver oil.

2025-03-27 18:12:56 UTC

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@nprofile…2fnt @nprofile…6urt And I thought it was, rub every lamp you can; you never know.

2025-03-22 00:23:08 UTC

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@nprofile…sskk @nprofile…aqq5 I wondered that too, but what came to my mind was Heather Fawcett's Emily Wilde series, the third of which came out recently: https://heatherfawcett.com/books/adult/. It's sometimes intense but it's quite charming.

2025-01-08 21:19:04 UTC

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@nprofile…args Do they bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh?

2024-12-24 21:06:47 UTC

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@nprofile…6mre I read this to my daughter and she suggested a family trip to a bookstore, which is probably better than my suggestion, of getting a new family.

2024-12-22 19:50:28 UTC

Lichen on the top of a light fixture, Inverness, Marin County, California. #lichensubscribe
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/113/698/202/957/688/310/original/3b7c69ed9351a134.jpg

2024-12-17 00:58:00 UTC

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@nprofile…302z @nprofile…2uaj Did you know there's a second Cerulean Sea book? https://read.macmillan.com/lp/somewhere-beyond-the-sea-by-tj-klune/. I liked it a lot but be warned that it's even more preachy than the first (although with a message I'm entirely in favor of).

2024-12-14 14:43:42 UTC

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@nprofile…r5mx I'm so sorry to hear that, William.

2024-07-13 14:38:16 UTC

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@npub1867…mfsf ...is someone with opposable thumbs who can open cat food cans.

2024-07-12 18:52:19 UTC

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@npub1xpg…apfc Ideally, a review of the finished volume will appear in an edited collection as well. #recursion

2024-06-17 16:52:39 UTC

Trump has changed what it means to be evangelical
https://wapo.st/4c2GhIU (gift link)
"The idea of evangelicals who don’t go to church was once unusual. Now, it is surprisingly common. In 2008, only 16 percent of evangelicals said they never or seldom attended church. By 2020, 27 percent did.
Evangelicalism, in short, has become about shared political convictions. In one survey of Christian attitudes ... 43 percent of evangelicals said they did not believe in the divinity of Christ." 1/2

2024-04-17 00:48:23 UTC

@npub1esh…5fqz You're doing God's work:
https://mas.to/@anna_lillith/112211130005172360

2023-08-19 17:58:24 UTC

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@npub1zdp…vqv8 Thank you so much for this! Absolutely fascinating. I enjoyed reading the WP article about Lystrosaurus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lystrosaurus.

2023-07-14 14:15:45 UTC

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@npub1psy…pasy Being adorable is very hard work!