DecaturNature

Nature lover in Decatur, GA, USA. Interested in the sciences, science education, and events around Decatur and Atlanta. Also interested in Mastodon and similar platforms.

Boosts are FYI, not endorsements. I aggressively boost Atlanta-focused news and announcements.

#Atlanta #Georgia #Decatur #Nature #Science #DecaturGA #GeorgiaUSA #GA #DeKalbGA

Profile picture is a jewelweed flower found in a local nature preserve. Header picture is a photo of Saturn from NASA.

Location: Decatur, GA, USA

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npub1qu3usny9twz8cdxppv0pyxn26cpgy7kgkh7thszqf77j4eqlzr0qxcnk4m

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decaturnature_at_theatl.social@momostr.pink

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nprofile1qqsqwg7gfjz4hpruxnqsk8sjrf4dvq5z0tyttl9mcpqyl0f2us03phspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsds0zm2

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relay.damus.io

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npub1qu3usny9twz8cdxppv0pyxn26cpgy7kgkh7thszqf77j4eqlzr0qxcnk4m

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Last Notes

2026-10-22 00:18:44 UTC

Every so often, I'm struck by how weird it is to live in a county where the largest tourist attraction is a park dedicated to some of the worst Americans in history.
#DekalbGA #stonemountain

2026-10-21 00:25:06 UTC

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It's a Toshiba, several years old. I did connect it at first, and only later decided I wasn't comfortable with it being connected. Still, I think it was able to connect to antenna and coaxial cables and HDMI out of the box without any software setup. I don't have cable, if that matters.

2026-10-21 00:22:42 UTC

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ok. I just read the story and see that they are using 'dumb' to mean 'jail break'

2026-10-21 00:20:16 UTC

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Um. I just didn't connect mine to the internet (I run streaming through an old laptop, which I trust more)

2026-10-20 00:17:30 UTC

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I'm guessing they require a lot of maintenance, at least to collect the fruit before it rots on the sidewalk. But I may try leaving a note at that house to ask if they are willing to talk about it.

2026-10-20 00:03:59 UTC

I think I saw a fully loaded persimmon tree on my commute today. Unfortunately was in a rush and did not have a chance to take a second look. I'm exiited to see it again tomorrow! I did not know they could grow here, and I am looking for a tree for my front yard.
#Atlanta #trees

2026-10-12 12:06:22 UTC

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NPR just published a story illustrating how police are using remote-controlled weapons. In their example, it's a flying drone with a flash grenade. This looks like an appropriate and valuable use of these weapons. However, I would not want police to place more lethal weapons on the drone, nor to store a large stockpile of such weapons.
https://www.npr.org/2026/10/12/nx-s1-5888604/police-chinese-drones-bans-costs

2026-10-12 02:00:43 UTC

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I would put serious limits on the use of remote-controlled weapons as well.

2026-10-12 01:58:25 UTC

It's great to see an elected official take action to keep our communities free of autonomous weapons.
"I have introduced the H.A.L.T Act, or Human Authority over Lethal Technology Act. The legislation prevents the city from purchasing or accepting weaponized autonomous systems, weaponized drones and most weaponized remotely operated machines. It prohibits city employees, contractors, and those acting on the city’s behalf from deploying them."
ATLANTA COUNCILMEMBER LILIANA BAKHTIARI
https://www.decaturish.com/news/east_lake/opinion-humanity-must-remain-at-the-core-of-public-safety-in-atlanta/article_b9be764e-3c18-4a8d-bf82-8be5ad55be43.html
#atlanta #security #AI #weapons #policing

2026-10-12 01:25:53 UTC

Sometimes I consider getting more informed about the drama in my broader community, then I realize that most of it is happening on Facebook or Instagram (occasionally X), and I have to say "guess not!" I'll just pay attention to the people I actually know.
(I cannot even see what people are saying on those platforms)

2026-10-11 22:33:35 UTC

Wondering what happened to the Forkiverse server? The hosts describe their decision to shut it down on one of their podcasts.
Short story - it was always a bit of lark, so they did not want to deal with the hassle of containing Russian government bots.
https://www.searchengine.show/vladimir-putins-forkiverse
#fediverse #hosting #forkiverse #trustandsafety

2026-10-11 01:33:17 UTC

RE: https://theatl.social/@DecaturNature/117260760705113019
I've finished "the man in the high castle" (book), and learned that it really has nothing to do with parallel universes. Unlike the TV adaptation (and the Space Between Worlds), it does not use parallel universes as a way to explore 'what could have been' for the characters.
If you're interested, [@ellecordova](https://threads.net/@ellecordova/ ) recently did a 'book club' discussion on the book.
https://www.youtube.com/live/nXW0C0Zdjm0?si=lXmXWC2oh9BvWONi
#note143q…nlgs

2026-10-09 02:25:13 UTC

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The 'bad incentive' I was thinking of was having a disincentive to fully and permanently resolve whatever problem the patient has, instead keeping them lingering indefinitely.
It may not really matter. But I expect that the stickiness of the Dr./patient relationship is different if it's a subscription (and a phone app) vs having to go to the office and pay per visit (or having the option to see multiple Dr.). For example, I wonder if the app would be more likely to say "you need a prescription" because it is designed to keep the patient coming back, vs. a Dr. who might point the patient to OTC remedies (if they are appropriate) and be happy to have them treated and make space for the next patient.

2026-10-08 02:28:03 UTC

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more broadly, I have a few questions/suspicions:
1. if this medical treatment is so simple and low risk, why can't we self-medicate?
2. Do doctors diagnose these conditions based on photos/videos, or would they expect to see someone in person to provide a proper diagnosis? If not, then the 'human oversight' doesn't seem to be worth much if it's just looking at the photos.
3. Is the subscription model going to produce bad incentives for the company?
4. Can they show that this triage system increases access to dermatologists (like they claim it will)?
I could imagine incorporating this system into a care procedure, as a triage step. If you need to wait two months to see a dermatologist anyway, maybe starting this treatment immediately will help speed up the whole process, regardless of the illness (sometimes treatment is part of diagnosis). Maybe patients will require fewer visits to the doctors to get their acne under control. Maybe it could flag cases that look very bad so that doctor's could prioritize those patients on a cancellation list. But here, it sounds like the company wants to replace doctors.

2026-10-08 02:20:16 UTC

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I pulled up one of the research publications they list of their website. It looks like they had at least some variation in their training data, but my expectation is still they did the bare minimum to make a splash and satisfy some auditor (who may have an agenda of promoting AI tools).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02728-3

2026-10-01 00:04:35 UTC

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I'm more afraid of "a scanner darkly" or plain old manmade Armageddon

2026-09-30 23:55:39 UTC

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I grew up on those movies (and much more). They are fantasies. People have been seeking impossible goals all throughout history. The people running AI companies know nothing about cognition or biology (or history), or what the actual limits of intelligence are. They just know that they've come up with a story that convinces people to give them money.
@npub17xf…dzht

2026-09-30 00:40:39 UTC

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But they generate a solution that appears 'good enough' for the moment, allowing the manager to claim a win and move on, leaving the mess for someone else to clean up later.

2026-09-30 00:39:33 UTC

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I suspect that the benefit comes more from the perception of 'superintelligence' than from the actual capabilities.
For instance, I don't think that they can make up for poorly organized bureaucracy. From what I've seen in software development, they tend to find unnecessarily complex solutions to each problem, and then pile complexity on top of complexity.

2026-09-30 00:34:01 UTC

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Kinda. But I don't think a responsible person could say that we've specified it to do anything other than generate plausible text (or more generally, to imitate patterns in the training media). The prompts or other instructions are little more than nudges that cause the output to shift somewhat in a certain direction. The chatbots do not understand the instructions, they just find words that tend to follow those instructions in the training data.
There are tricks to getting responses that are more in line with what you want, but at the end the responses need to be filtered, either through a person who will apply human judgement before passing it on, or a deterministic software system that will limit the possible outputs. Otherwise, the bot will eventually go off on it's own random walk.

2026-09-30 00:20:21 UTC

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Yeah, maybe they are true believers. But I think if they actually tried to implement anything, they'd see that this software is unreliable. Their 'agents' are little better than wind-up toys.
Don't get me wrong. It's impressive software and I think there are many uses, but from what I've seen, it needs to be contained to be useful. Not because it would take over otherwise, but because it would drive off a cliff if you let it have the metaphorical wheel.

2026-09-29 22:23:29 UTC

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"the plan" with "ai" seems to be to cut services and then blame the user when things don't work. "You didn't phrase the question the right way", as if there is a correct way to prompt a stochastic parrot.

2026-09-28 23:49:44 UTC

"A new data dashboard released by a staff labor union shows the [CDC] has lost one-third of its workers since last spring,"
https://www.wabe.org/more-than-a-year-of-cdc-workforce-cuts-detailed-in-new-data-dashboard/
#Atlanta #publichealth #USA #news

2026-09-27 02:26:35 UTC

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It looks like Temporary Protected Status for Ukrainians is set to expire on October 19 -- just three weeks away.
https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/temporary-protected-status/TPS-Ukraine

2026-09-27 02:26:24 UTC

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According to the UNHCR, about 9.6 million Ukrainians have been driven from their homes by the conflict -- that's almost 1/4 of the population (3.7 million internally displaced, 5.9 million refugees). Over 230,000 have come to the USA.
https://www.unrefugees.org/emergencies/ukraine/
If you are able to donate to help them, the UNHCR is taking donations, as is the International Rescue Committee, and I know reliable people who are organizing the Ukraine Trust Chain.
https://www.ukrainetrustchain.org/

2026-09-27 02:25:47 UTC

I saw a woman with a child at the store this afternoon. I think they were Ukrainian refugees. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but also don't want to ignore what's going on. She was on a video call, speaking what I think is Ukrainian, and I caught a glimpse of the phone - I saw a tired looking man in a dark room (it would have been about 10PM in Ukraine).
I know that many Ukrainian women have taken their children out of the country for safety while the men remained to deal with the invasion. I've met one of these families in my neighborhood.
1/3
#georgia #atlanta #slavaUkraini #decaturga

2026-09-26 02:54:31 UTC

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I saw an amazing mushroom up in Cloudland Canyon recently (bigger than my hand).
#FungiFriday #Georgia
https://o1.theatl.social/media_attachments/files/117/335/075/384/733/942/original/147c1567558db071.jpg

2026-09-19 17:08:00 UTC

One thing that bugs me about the "AI" discourse (especially the hacking incidents) is that they talk about 'models' and 'agents' instead of 'computers' - as if software can run without hardware. It seems both to diffuse responsibility, obscure what is actually happening, and feed into the 'general intelligence' mythology that is premised on the nonsense of disembodied thought.

2026-09-15 21:57:58 UTC

Voter registration deadline is Oct 5
https://www.wabe.org/georgias-voter-registration-deadline-is-approaching-here-are-five-things-you-need-to-know/
#Georgia

2026-09-12 23:53:32 UTC

Just finished "The Space Between Worlds", a parallel-universe story by Micaiah Johnson. It's got good world building with an interesting character in an interesting situation. Only downside is that the storytelling was a bit choppy near the end -- rushing to wrap up subplots simultaneously with the main plot and also being a bit blunt about some metaphors (but thankfully waiting until the end).
I think I'm going to pull "the man in the high castle" off the bookshelf for my next read. I enjoyed the TV series, though I didn't like how the parallel universe theme culminated at the end. A commonality between the two stories is their use of parallel universes as a way to explore characters more deeply and the idea of "what could have been".
The only other parallel universe story I can think of right now is "all the myriad ways" by Larry Niven, though I don't recall him using it to explore characters, instead it was an exploration of free will and responsibility.
#books #scifi

2026-08-29 15:45:14 UTC

Good interview with Meredith Whittaker, the President of Signal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYVeyhxLF7s&list=TLPQMjkwODIwMjYhl9KxTlBPiw

2026-08-06 01:44:03 UTC

Cultural chauvinists are parasites, who ignore the wisdom of their claimed traditions and inhibit its further growth.
“Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes angry.”
"Bad men who prosper are unbearable"
― Euripides
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/interview-james-romm-since-youre-mortal-life-lessons/id1852618120?i=1000778868206
#philosophy

2026-07-19 17:45:22 UTC

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true. I see no mention of philanthropic giving in his Wikipedia bio, nor on their list of "Giving Pledge" signatories.

2026-07-19 16:33:57 UTC

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sounds like he's trying to revive the idea of "Noblesse oblige", which has been pretty thoroughly trashed throughout my lifetime.

2026-07-14 02:37:19 UTC

West-nile virus has been detected in Atlanta mosquitos. News says that cases are increasing early this year across the country (according to CDC but I cannot find source). My recollection is that it normally gets detected in mosquitos around here in late summer. Maybe all this rain has increased mosquito populations.
https://www.cbsnews.com/atlanta/news/west-nile-virus-detected-in-atlantas-grant-park-as-cdc-warns-of-unusually-early-mosquito-season/
#disease #publichealth #Atlanta #Georgia

2026-07-03 16:16:37 UTC

Transcendentalism is one of the first philosophical currents that emerged in the United States. They emphasized moral individualism, which led them to embrace sexual equality and even socialism -- in contrast to the self-aggrandizement and self-indulgence that passes as 'individualism' these days. Many also supported the European revolutions of 1848 and the abolition of slavery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism
#usa250 #philosophy #history

2026-06-10 02:25:44 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.world/@paninid/116723104016694656
Go read about Gordon Wood and what he wrote. Also consider how he died - killed by a car while crossing a supermarket parking lot. It's an infuriatingly needless, but all too common cause of death in America.
#america250 #mortality #cars #safety
#note10wp…rhdd

2026-05-14 01:45:19 UTC

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I see a lot of folk who want market access (finance, social media) and others who maybe hope they can get patents enforced in China (Illumina, maybe Nvidia)

2026-04-12 12:16:39 UTC

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You've got more details on the topic than Wikipedia does.
I'm kinda grossed out by the aristocratic framing of the original post, and I wonder who this appeals to. I've seen well-off family members sell their homes and spend their final years comfortably in assisted living. I've seen others jump from rental to rental as their resources dwindled. I've also visited low-end nursing homes, where you can smell urine in every hallway. It's sick to declare that McMahon would be shamed by housing that is better than the vast majority of us will get.

2026-04-04 18:43:01 UTC

If you think it's obvious that people will reject leaders who bring ruin upon them, let me tell you about Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis.

2026-03-22 19:57:48 UTC

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when was the last time the US restored a monarchy? The closest thing may be supporting the 1953 coup in Iran. We were also involved in liberating several European monarchies from German occupation in the world wars.

2026-02-20 02:51:58 UTC

I've finally had it with Google Maps. They've been picking random stores as 'landmarks' during navigation, and I missed a turn because of it yesterday. These 'landmarks' are clearly being chosen as advertisements (half the time they are small smoke shops that are not visible from the road).
If it weren't bad enough that they're ruining the navigation feature, they do it for the sake of pushing addictive products (possibly to a person trying to break the addiction).
I'm going with Magic Earth for now.
https://www.magicearth.com/
#degoogle #google #maps #navigation #driving #tech

2026-01-13 23:47:02 UTC

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That looks interesting. Maybe I'll give them a shot. Do you grow them from seed?

2025-10-28 16:24:09 UTC

#labor #teens
https://o1.theatl.social/media_attachments/files/115/452/690/063/318/305/original/875e3cfdf14750e8.png

2025-10-27 02:20:13 UTC

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There may be some 'name inflation' going on here -- where hotels are using words that connote palaces. A web search for ballrooms in Atlanta showed some that were really swanky -- like on the upper floors of skyscrapers with a view of the city. The ones I've been in have had no windows ... that may be a dividing line between ballrooms for the holi poli and those for the elite. Not only do you have this interior space for your event, but you also control the surrounding space enough that you don't have to worry about gawkers.

2025-10-27 01:31:38 UTC

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a few were in hotels, so kinda like these photos in the Ritz-Carlton downtown:
https://www.partyslate.com/venues/the-ritz-carlton-atlanta
Or at the Fox
https://www.foxtheatre.org/explore-spaces-at-the-fox
Basically big rooms with a bunch of tables set up, some mix of carpet and dancefloor, and maybe a dais
They tended to have extensive catering, unlike say at the VFW hall

2025-10-27 00:51:38 UTC

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a couple wedding receptions, IIRC

2025-10-13 20:37:35 UTC

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So the plan is to win an election by deceiving the people about the consequences of their vote. Seems familiar. Will they claim a mandate afterwards?

2025-10-07 11:41:07 UTC

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to be clear, this is the opinion of the acting director, not official cdc recommendations (the vaccine schedule). it sounds like it would be a few years before these vaccines are even available, assuming that anyone wants to make that investment. I wonder if the separate vaccines are being used in any other countries.

2025-10-05 01:12:21 UTC

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That's really destroying the trust between the email user and the email administrator... which maybe is the point. If my email administrator sent out emails under my name, I think I'd have to stop sending emails from my account anymore, and conduct all business by phone and paper. Or maybe from some anonymous service account used by a group of people.
It would be hard to get work done quickly, but that's probably what the administration wants for the Department of Education.

2025-10-04 01:47:04 UTC

Listening to Defiance Ohio, Petty Problems
https://archive.org/details/DefianceOhioTheGreatDepression/01Defiance_OhioPetty_Problems.mp3
#music #punk #folk #war #philosophy

2025-10-02 20:09:52 UTC

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I hate this narrative that they are shrinking government . They are not and never have. They are just shifting what it does to emphasize their own preferences.

2025-09-30 11:05:24 UTC

Can anyone point me to some good essays on the consequences of replacing public spaces with corporate-owned spaces, such as the replacement of main street shops with shopping malls and supermarkets?
#urbanism #freespeech #publicgood

2025-09-20 18:27:58 UTC

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Isolation seems to be the point. International relations will be limited to the elite... 'people-to-people' relationships must be too woke for some.
https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/people-people-program

2025-09-20 16:20:05 UTC

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Scientists are also concerned about how this would effectively ban international scientists from taking academic postdoc research positions in the US.
https://mastodon.world/@davidho/115232909349476685

2025-09-14 19:14:48 UTC

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"Tides of History" podcast had an interesting episode addressing "What is Collapse?"-- about the Bronze Age collapse (interview with Guy Middleton).
https://wondery.com/shows/tides-of-history/episode/5629-what-is-collapse-interview-with-professor-guy-middleton/

2025-09-07 23:57:41 UTC

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bunch of control freaks

2025-09-07 02:11:56 UTC

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https://o1.theatl.social/media_attachments/files/115/160/584/933/537/723/original/7ff52b706176c702.png

2025-09-06 00:02:57 UTC

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"see, it's funny because they are afraid of us!"
"why don't those people like me? They must be horrible people if they don't like me"
(paraphrasing)

2025-09-05 23:54:02 UTC

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apparently it's funny to scare fishermen away from their work.

2025-09-01 20:07:39 UTC

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They way things are right now, I rarely get to watch a movie but drink plenty of coffee... but I still gave up on coffee for the poll because it's easier to think of NEVER having coffee than never watching a movie.

2025-08-30 19:18:45 UTC

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I'd love to see how the purpose of trips change... and am wondering what the long term trend is. Will it be a a one-time drop as some number of people are turned off by cost and uncertainty. Or will it continue to grow each year - as students stop enrolling in college, as business people stop building relationships, and as tourists stop telling their friends about their great visits.

2025-08-30 19:16:31 UTC

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I wanted to know what regions of the USA would be most affected (I can guess), but the International Trade Administration's website is broken.
https://www.trade.gov/us-states-cities-visited-overseas-travelers
https://o1.theatl.social/media_attachments/files/115/119/316/212/848/219/original/82c5fe1f7ed8028e.png

2025-08-29 18:21:11 UTC

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That's just my own paraphrasing. Sorry that wasn't clear. These politicians clearly use "bias" differently than scientists do.. They seem to use it to mean "reflecting the opinions of the general population", though they really just mean "reflecting the opinions of my cronies".

2025-08-29 10:43:25 UTC

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I think by bias they mean "demonstrable effects on symptoms while ignoring wild speculation and new age mysticism regardless of the profit opportunities"

2025-08-28 01:57:21 UTC

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It sounds like that tweet was sent out before her formal termination notice was sent (and before she heard anything from the President). Tweets have no legal weight; this administration has repeatedly made claims by tweet that they did not follow through on (from Musk's 5-things demands, to Kennedy's covid-vaccine announcements). The question is first, who authorized this tweet, and do they have authority to fire her (sounds like it may need to be the President, but it seems like he's willing to support this move); the second is whether that person will follow through once they face pushback from other power centers (like the Senate).

2025-08-27 23:59:35 UTC

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There's also rumors (form a lawyer on X) that Monarez has not been fired nor resigned -- this is apparently all based on a statement from the HHS X account.

2025-08-27 23:57:22 UTC

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Three of the senior career staff have resigned.
https://www.statnews.com/2025/08/27/cdc-director-susan-monarez-ousted/

2025-08-27 06:50:38 UTC

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Yeah, I'd say stagflation is the immediate concern with how the administration is throwing a wrench into the economy. Hyperinflation is a long term concern that depends on an alignment of failures: loss of trust in economic statistics (like inflation), low short-term interest rates as permanent policy, flight of capital from US due to above and arbitrary targeting of individual companies, rising long-term interest rates making the Federal debt unsustainable, and then deliberate inflation to make the debt manageable. Maybe the government could just directly confiscate a portion of the debt to avoid inflation...but that's bad too. In this scenario, there's probably a financial crisis thrown in on top of all that.

2025-08-27 01:40:10 UTC

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hyperinflation, here we come.
https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/global-research/currencies/de-dollarization

2025-08-26 23:30:12 UTC

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The quote is from the executive order telling police to target flag burners for any charges they can think of.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/prosecuting-burning-of-the-american-flag/
Flag abuse is rampant - either from those trying to co-opt the symbol, or those who are just neglectful/careless (like putting it on a car antenna, where it gets shredded). But I do wonder how the EO applies to destruction of those modified flags. At the end of the day, he's just telling cops to target people who they dislike...so there's no real rule to examine.

2025-08-26 22:10:19 UTC

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By his own standards, flying the Confederate flag is much worse than desecrating the USA's flag.
"Desecrating it is uniquely offensive and provocative. It is a statement of contempt, hostility, and violence against our Nation — the clearest possible expression of opposition to the political union that preserves our rights, liberty, and security. Burning this representation of America may incite violence and riot. American Flag burning is also used by groups of foreign nationals as a calculated act to intimidate and threaten violence against Americans because of their nationality and place of birth."

2025-08-25 00:41:27 UTC

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Did you ever hear the album "songs in the key of X" -- it has some really interesting songs on there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_in_the_Key_of_X:_Music_from_and_Inspired_by_the_X-Files

2025-08-24 17:09:22 UTC

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History Daily is a good podcast. The segments are pretty short, and cover all types of events, while still being well researched (with some story-telling embellishments).

2025-08-24 12:51:45 UTC

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This attitude of "America as a brand" is a country where our past is buried and citizens are pushed to the sidelines, only given any attention when the elite feel they can get something of value from us. This is the vision of Madison Avenue con-men and the modern Robber Barons of Silicon Valley.
4/4

2025-08-24 12:51:36 UTC

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This contrasts with the Chinese Communist Party, which continues to suppress discussions of the Cultural Revolution or the Tienanmen Square Massacre. In the interest of 'harmony', the CCP denies Chairman Mao's role orchestrating the violence of the Cultural Revolution as a means of silencing critics (with rhetoric reminiscent of 'drain the swamp').
https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/the-world-today/2023-02/review-cultural-revolution-still-haunts-china
https://www.historydaily.com/the-murder-of-vice-principal-bian-zhongyun/
3/4

2025-08-24 12:51:23 UTC

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Throughout my life, America has been relatively good about looking directly at the injustices of the past, even when committed by leaders who we generally respect.
For instance Theodore Roosevelt unjustly gave an entire army company a dishonorable discharge without any evidence of wrongdoing. This decision was revoked 60 years later:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownsville_affair
https://www.historydaily.com/the-brownsville-affair-1/
2/4

2025-08-24 12:51:06 UTC

Sunday ethics:
Honorable people question power. They demand that powerful people justify their actions. They study history to understand how powerful people in the past have contributed to injustices, in the hope to illuminate and avoid modern injustices. People who easily acquiesce to power are a danger to their own community. People who refuse to study our past burden us all when they insist on being heard.
This thread was inspired by:
https://mstdn.social/@dalfen/115058339641842773
@npub17xf…dzht
#ethics #honor #honesty #history #politics #usa #marketing #citizenship #philosophy
1/4
https://o1.theatl.social/media_attachments/files/115/083/805/252/696/382/original/2f1e0560134679b1.png

2025-08-22 02:56:56 UTC

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He says the Smithsonian "has nothing about success"? It sounds like he has never visited the Air and Space museum, which is entirely an monument to success. It even has a "futures in space" exhibit! (despite his claim that it has "nothing about the Future" -- though this is new, so maybe a response to his complaints).
It's a shame that he's trying to ruin these museums and create conflict in the streets. I was hoping to take my kids to them soon.
I've long been confused by people who complain that media are 'too negative', because that's not my experience. It just shows me that they are paying attention to the wrong media, or maybe focused too much on the past, or their own narrow interests. I tend to read a good deal of science and technology news, which tends to be optimistic by nature. But any rigorous news source (like the Economist) avoids that 'negative trap' because they trust that their readers want routine updates and don't need charged emotions as motivation to read.

2025-08-22 02:35:45 UTC

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Thanks for posting on this. I'm not aware of any Trump comments, but haven't really checked after the first few days.
The lack of comment on this event makes a stark contrast with the attempted assassination in PA last summer. I wrote up some notes comparing the two attacks...
Comparison of the CDC attack in GA and the Trump assassination attempt in PA:
- Both shooters used an AR-15. PA fired 8 rounds in 4 seconds. GA fired 200-500 rounds in 40 minutes or so, using multiple guns.
- Both shooters got guns from their father: PA bought it, GA stole it.
- Each killed one person: An on-duty police officer in GA; an off-duty firefighter in PA. Others were injured in PA.
- Both were hopeless young men from a hopeless culture that places faith in lies and seeks meaning in violence.
The media has treated the events radically differently. The PA attack became mythology, the GA attack became just another sad event in a long series of sad events.

2025-08-21 01:27:55 UTC

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Some interesting context: "The Philadelphia Fed report found that about a third of all property investors misrepresent their status as owner-occupants. It found that doing so allowed them to obtain lower interest rates and higher loan-to-value ratios."
In other words, a substantial fraction of wealthy people are frauds.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-found-over-22-000-185047604.html

2025-08-21 01:21:54 UTC

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Even if true. it sounds no worse than what Turmp was convicted of in New York... which had no punishment (neither legal nor career-wise)

2025-08-17 15:45:37 UTC

If anyone is interested in down-to-earth philosophical discussions (focused more on everyday ethics for regular people rather than abstract debates), please see the new Lemmy community I made for this purpose:
https://yall.theatl.social/c/philosophy_of_life
#philosophy #stoicism #ethics

2025-08-14 22:07:37 UTC

I'm enjoying Verissismus, the graphic biography of Marcus Aurelius.
https://donaldrobertson.name/verissimus/
#books #philosophy #graphicnovels #stoicism

2025-08-11 13:23:49 UTC

A fundraiser has been established to support the family of Officer David Rose, who was killed in the line of duty while responding to Friday's attack on the CDC.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/7xahr9-officer-roses-official-gofundme
Officer Rose spoke at his Police Academy graduation. A recording is at this link:
https://youtu.be/IN-LUt803kg?si=otukfiqEzPr8vKi1&t=2336
Several local news outlets have identified this GoFundme as the preferred donation site of the Rose family.
#atlanta #cdc #police #dekalkbga

2025-08-10 00:07:17 UTC

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One big difference is that the Internet rolled out organically, over a couple decades, and was supported by the people who understood it, both as designers and users. Conversely, genAI is being pushed all at once by a few companies, who are misrepresenting the technology and its applications, while objections are coming from many people who know what's going on. A better comparison is not "the internet", but the 1990s dot-com boom, which did leave us with some important companies and services, but also a lot of silliness.

2025-07-20 23:21:16 UTC

My garden had some more surprises today -- three leafhoppers, all from species I don't think I've noticed before. The biggest looks like a "blue and gold" leafhopper, but I can't find a good candidate for the other two. The blue and gold one even glittered a bit.
https://bugguide.net/node/view/917498
https://naturalhistory.museumwales.ac.uk/sharpshooters/recordlist.php?-skip=0&-max=100&-sortfieldone=Taxon&-sortorderone=ascend
#gardening #insects #leafhopper #nature
https://o1.theatl.social/media_attachments/files/114/887/807/148/686/162/original/955afa8446537322.jpg
https://o1.theatl.social/media_attachments/files/114/887/807/247/773/069/original/ea51f5ecbb6e7987.jpg
https://o1.theatl.social/media_attachments/files/114/887/807/322/542/112/original/a3dec1dfdc3f9e00.jpg

2025-07-06 01:38:06 UTC

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I just picked up a few classics from the library. Will watch "once upon a time in the west" when I get a chance. I hope I don't have trouble with it.

2025-07-04 19:29:33 UTC

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To continue on that topic with the Stoics:
“It is equally faulty to trust everyone and to trust no one. Yet the former fault is, I should say, the more ingenuous, the latter the more safe.”
– Seneca the Younger

2025-07-04 15:04:21 UTC

The idea that "Every complex ecosystem has parasites" has stuck in my head since I read a now-classic essay about it some 20 years ago. I dug up the essay, and re-discovered that it's from Cory Doctorow @npub1fdr…lvhs
He revisited the idea in a recent blog post:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/24/hermit-kingdom/#simpler-times
It's got some good thoughts to keep in mind as we think about the direction of our country on this #independenceday
#philosophy #society #complexity

2025-07-04 13:11:49 UTC

In the morning, I listen to a Stoic meditation about wisely choosing associates who will encourage your own virtue.
In the evening, I go grocery shopping and notice that the store is laid out to direct traffic to the wine display and the shopping carts are decorated with junk food advertisements.
#philosophy #stoicism #shopping

2025-06-27 21:14:03 UTC

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What do you mean by "class system"? I could interpret it a few ways:
1. mirroring socio-economic class hierarchy from broader society (e.g. reflecting professional, educational, and consumer status)
2. creating a specifically 'social media' class hierarchy. This could be based on engagement, resource/server control, or audience size (which will often connect to general socio-economic class)
3. simply having some sort of group structure
Or something else?

2025-06-07 02:57:03 UTC

I can't emphasize enough the excellence of the "Tides of History" podcast by Patrick Wyman. It's been running for 8 years now and never gets old. The series alternates between methodical, systematic surveys of broad historical themes and lively interviews with historians, anthropologists, archeologists, and paleontologists. In both forms, his enthusiasm, pacing, and knowledge reliably digs up interesting insights about the human past.
https://wondery.com/shows/tides-of-history/
#history #podcast #education

2025-04-23 01:26:11 UTC

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We have ways to perform this kind of study, and it's not "throw everything you know into a pot and go mining for patterns".
As we've discussed before, other people are doing proper studies.
https://theatl.social/@DecaturNature/114128509814045353

2025-03-08 12:20:49 UTC

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It'll be interesting to see how they investigate that. It's not something where a single study - no matter how big -- can give conclusive results. I don't think that even the CDC has the resources to properly investigate such a large question on their own (large as in having many potentially relevant variables, starting with the large number of vaccines to investigate).
For many vaccines, there won't be a good unvaccinated control group. Then there's also the consideration that people with autism are probably more likely to die from vaccine-preventable diseases:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9724198/#sec4

2025-03-06 23:06:15 UTC

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A stunt that does not make meaningful progress towards the end goal. The end goal is frivolous if not unwise. But these could make novelty pets for those who like mice.

2024-12-08 12:52:54 UTC

So John Grisham writes legal thrillers for kids and am impressed at how it raises important social issues in a kid-accessible way. "The Abduction" deals with parental neglect and abduction. "The Activist" is centered on the construction of a bypass road and describes several social problems such as poor planning turning the previous bypass into an unusable stroad, the link between property speculation and government corruption, the tension between 'progress' and 'conservation' (and who defines these values), and the use of money to silence critics.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/309931/theodore-boone-the-activist-by-john-grisham/
#urbanism #carDependency #conservation #farmlife #strongtowns #smalltown #ethics

2024-10-29 11:46:55 UTC

Rideshare2Vote is proving rides to the polls in GA, TX, and a 17 other states. It's staffed by volunteers and offers wheelchair vans too.
https://rideshare2voteaware.org/request-a-ride/
Rides are also available from Lyft and the New Georgia Project (who pays for lyft and Uber rides, I think)
https://newgeorgiaproject.org/rides/
https://www.lyft.com/blog/posts/where-are-we-going-on-november-5th-lyft-offers-discounted-rideshare
#voting #disability #Georgia #Atlanta

2024-10-15 00:29:07 UTC

I found this decorated caterpillar on my tomato plant today. I'm guessing those are wasp eggs? Need to do some research...
#caterpillar #insects #parasites #tomato #gardening #DecaturGA #nature
https://o1.theatl.social/media_attachments/files/113/308/596/257/386/493/original/d102b1cdf5488d2e.jpg

2024-10-08 02:08:09 UTC

Shelter offer in MS:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DA1k5QrMEFz/
#Milton #evacuation #Florida
https://o1.theatl.social/media_attachments/files/113/269/355/215/142/362/original/ebfe33b3d1234553.jpg