Ask why till you understand

The first published study about climate change (that I am aware of-- feel free to point out if there's an older one) is an 1896 paper by Svante Arrhenius. He pointed out the link between the greenhouse effect and changes in atmospheric CO2.

Plate tectonics, which the geoscience community now recognizes as near indisputable, was a fringe theory until about the 1960s.

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is contradicting accepted historical knowledge and oral history that Innu have lived in Labrador for thousands of years. In response, the Innu Nation, which represents Innu in the two First Nations communities of Natuashish and Sheshatshiu, has cancelled a much-anticipated cultural exhibit that was set to open at the Labrador Interpretation Centre in North West River on June 21, National Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Innu Nation Cultural Guardian Jodie Ashini, a lead organizer of the planned public display, says she was instructed by executives of The Rooms provincial museum and archives to change the historical timeline and artifact details slated for presentation as part of the Innu Pakassiun exhibit. Ashini says Innu and staff from the Labrador Interpretation Centre were unpacking artifacts on Tuesday, June 16 when she was asked to join a call with executives from The Rooms, a crown corporation which operates as a museum, art gallery and archives in St. John’s and runs satellite museums in other parts of the province, including the Labrador Interpretation Centre. “We developed an Innu timeline to go with the exhibit and they told us that we can’t use it, that it’s not what the province believes is archeologically correct,” Ashini recalls. Ashini says she was told the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador believes Innu were not present in Labrador prior to the 1700s and had only been on the land for 300 years. All the stone tools found on traditional Innu sites weren’t allowed to be labelled as related to Innu, Ashini says, adding she was told the new timeline is accepted by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and could not be changed. “We were just really taken aback and heartbroken,” she says. “This is their stance — that it’s not allowed to be presented, and they really said, ‘You can show whatever you want in your own building on your own land, but not in ours’ — and that was their words.” Ashini says this was going to be the first ever Innu-led exhibit, and that the staff at The Rooms and Labrador Interpretation Centre worked incredibly hard to help Innu hold consultations and prepare the exhibit.

So this is a thing that is happening here in Newfoundland.

The provincial government has decided, contrary to both oral history and archaeological evidence, that the Innu people have only been in Labrador for a few hundred years.

"She says the province said the changing tools over thousands of years are evidence they belonged to different Indigenous groups. Ashini says Innu tools evolved and changed over time as her ancestors learned new methods and refined their technologies."

This is their evidence. Changes to stone tools over time, as though that is not a thing that happens kind of everywhere.

Clearly these were made by different cultures.

So why is the province doing this? Well, not to don my tin foil hat here, but there is a lot of potential wealth in Labrador, of the resource extraction kind. By undermining the Innu's claim to the land, the provincial government might be trying to do an end run around Indigenous consultation and rights. How can they claim a historic connection to the land when they've been here for less time than Europeans? Which given this is the same government that is merrily approving oil and gas development while ignoring the very real effects of climate change, is entirely possible.

Anyway, time to write some more emails.

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.

I love these two so much

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

Generative AI being used to do things like develop exhibits, create marketing materials, etc.: bad. Do not want. I will not go to that museum.

AI used to do a first pass at deciphering old documents, the checked by a human : yes, more please.

AI trained on all the written text on the internet to then burp statistical sentences: stop, no one needs it.

AI used to follow and map the nervous cells of the eye of mouse and then trained by players maping it's mistake and then used to get a better understanding or our nervous system: yes, all the yesses.

In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.

Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.

What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.

The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.

[Verse 1] Are you going to live your life wondering Standing in the back, looking around? Are you going to waste your time thinking How you've grown up or how you missed out? Th-th-th-th-things are never going to be the way you want Where's it going to get you acting serious? Th-th-th-th-things are never going to be quite what you want Even at 25, you got to start sometime

It has to be a book I've read before. The most frequent and efficient ones are by far the Murderbot Diaries. Kevin R. Free has just the right voice and I know the books by heart, I can take them in stride in any spot and know where we are.

Pilots and other transportation workers have absurd hours of service requirements that start your rest period as “the moment you shut the vehicle down” and can be as short as 9 hours in some cases.

Railroad workers have to be available on-call 6 days a week and be ready within two hours notice. They don’t get sick time.

Retail workers have to keep a veneer of politeness against any and all abuse or they can be fired.

Truck drivers get paid by mileage and rarely see pay for shipper or receiver delays.