Notices by petersuber (petersuber@fediscience.org)

"Following the controlled demolition of Al-Israa University, Israeli army footage of which was widely shared on social media, every single higher education institution in #Gaza is believed to have either been destroyed or severely damaged since the invasion began."
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/academia-gaza-has-been-destroyed-israeli-educide
(#paywalled)

#Academia #Universities
@academicchatter

It turns out that toxic coal-mine drainage can be made into beautiful oil-paint pigments.
https://www.vox.com/climate/2023/12/11/23992695/cop28-climate-refuge-how-to-detox-coal-country-appalachia-mining

This won't become a cheerful English idiom. ("Turning coal culm into color"?) But it's a good example of how a life-threatening problem can persist until we find a way to churn it into commodities.

#DiamondRough #LemonsLemonade #SilverLining #StrawGold

Congratulations to the _Journal of Neuroscience_ for shifting to #OpenPeerReview.
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/43/48/8074

From #Oxfam:
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-emit-much-planet-heating-pollution-two-thirds-humanity

"The richest 1% of the world’s population produced as much carbon pollution in 2019 [as] the five billion people who made up the poorest two-thirds…

The richest 1%…were responsible for…more than all car and road transport emissions. The richest 10% accounted for half (50%) of emissions…

Every year, the emissions of the richest 1% cancel out the carbon savings coming from nearly one million wind turbines."

#Climate #ClimateCrisis

"Facing pressure from right-wing ideologues, #Scholastic is facilitating the exclusion of #books that feature people of color and/or #LGBTQ characters. Scholastic has grouped many of these titles in a collection called "Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice" [& given] school officials…the option to exclude the entire set…Scholastic has…given schools a "bigot button" to exclude these books and mollify intolerant pressure groups."
https://popular.info/p/scholastics-bigot-button

#Censorship #Publishers

From Sergiy Sylantyev: "I continued my scientific work even when I was in the trenches [in #Ukraine]. I performed some editorial corrections to my paper submitted to Cell Death & Disease when we were under mortar shelling. I had a strong feeling that…in case I die here, I need to get this paper published. We had some Internet connection, which I used to discuss edits with my co-authors. In some ways, it was like any distanced information exchange between scientists."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03044-z

Ronald Reagan appointed an #evangelical #Christian named James Watt to head the #Interior department, which is a major player in US environmental policy. Watt didn't think it was important to protect the #environment because "I do not know how many future generations we can count on until the Lord returns."
https://newrepublic.com/article/173705/good-riddance-architect-gops-environmental-culture-wars

I'm old enough to remember this well. It was a stellar example of public harm caused by private delusion, tolerated and applauded by millions.

#USPolitics

#DonaldKnuth on #ChatGPT.
https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/chatGPT20.txt

Among other good points:

"I find it fascinating that novelists galore have written for decades abt scenarios that might occur after a 'singularity' in which superintelligent machines exist. But as far as I know, not a single novelist has realized that such a singularity would almost surely be preceded by a world in which machines are 0.01% intelligent (say) & in which millions of real people would be able to interact w/ them freely."

#AI #LLM

I'm very glad to see farmers win the right to repair their tractors. It's a win for consumers against bogus #IP objections from manufacturers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64206913

#RightToRepair, #RightToTinker

Excellent background from @doctorow.
https://doctorow.medium.com/john-deeres-repair-fake-out-79da4978f4c1

"#Deere abuses copyright law to force farmers to pay for official repairs — even when the farmer does the repair. That’s possible thanks to a practice called VIN locking, in which engine parts come with #DRM that prevents the tractor from recognizing them until they pay hundreds of dollars for a John Deere technician to come to their farm and type an unlock code into the tractor’s console."

Plus: The win is not as good as it looks.

Update. In rural America, right-to-repair laws are the leading edge of a pushback against growing corporate power.
https://theconversation.com/in-rural-america-right-to-repair-laws-are-the-leading-edge-of-a-pushback-against-growing-corporate-power-199372

"Under the agreement, John #Deere promises to give farmers and independent repair shops access to manuals, diagnostics and parts. But there’s a catch – the agreement isn’t legally binding, and, as part of the deal, the influential #FarmBureau promised not to support any federal or state #RightToRepair legislation."

#patents

Update. Turns out that John #Deere has been using open code under the #GPL w/o living up to the license. The Software Freedom Conservancy (@conservancy) is calling on it to comply — which would greatly enhance #farmers' #RightToRepair.
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/mar/16/john-deere-gpl-violations/

"We…publicly call on John Deere to immediately resolve all of its outstanding GPL violations…by providing complete source code…that the GPL & other copyleft licenses require, to the farmers & others who are entitled to it."

#OpenSource

"Environmental groups claim the [London] #ScienceMuseum has lost its ability to honestly discuss the true impact of the oil and gas sector on the #environment because of gagging clauses it has signed with big businesses… #Shell…tried to influence the presentation of a #climate change programme it was sponsoring at the Science Museum."
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/feb/16/science-museum-sponsorship-deal-with-oil-firm-included-gag-clause

If you've been waiting for full-text #search on #Mastodon, please go to #TootFinder and sign in. The more the merrier.
https://www.tootfinder.ch/

Thanks to @buercher for building it.

It's opt-in, not opt-out. It respects Mastodon culture and doesn't index accounts that don't sign in.

That means the index might be small if we don't spread the word.

#mastotips #feditips