A Collection of Oddities:

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

It’s multiply-checked by more than one person, so don’t worry about fucking it up because your concentration is fucked. Your input is valuable but not the only input.

I find Zooniverse very good, and it does Citizen Historian work too - I spent time digitising concentration camp records because a) families still don’t know what happened to some of their loved ones b) this makes the records available for historians without travelling to archives in person, which I can testify is *invaluable* for disabled historians and helps cut the need for overseas travel to do vital historical work.

(Thanks to everyone who left these in the notes! If you know more, put them in the notes, and I might add them! And ty @enbycrip for the fantastic addition that covered a bunch of details I didn't get to)

Apps/Websites

eBird (birds

Merlin (birds)

citizenscience.gov (big project database, US-based)

iNaturalist (nature)

MapSwipe (collaboration between several Red Cross organizations and Doctors Without Borders, update vital geospatial data) Smithsonian archives (transcriptions, many subjects)

Cornell Bird Lab (birds)

FoldIt (folding proteins)

Fathomverse (sea animals)

Project Monarch (butterflies)

In person

Bioblitz (nature) Species watch (species) Audobon Society (birds)

Also:

This stuff makes a huge difference.

Also, if you want to make the biggest impact on these sites, release any material with the more permissive licenses, like CC-BY. If you add a NC or ND clause, for instance, your photos cannot be included on Wikipedia or bplant or a number of other educational sites, because those license restrictions are incompatible with combining with copyleft material.

So, hey. You. Stop doomscrolling. Take a deep breathe. And if you want, try doing some citizen science or citizen history instead

I'm also going to especially promote MapSwipe, for those who want to do something tangible to help people now.

From their website:

Data Everywhere

It is not saying you should distract yourself from what's going on right now.

It's saying that if you are feeling despair, you will feel and do better if you channel that into something to help.

I especially want to highlight MapSwipe again.

Help make maps accurate so people in war zones, disaster zones, and remote locations can get medical attention, rescue, and hope - by making sure the disaster response and aid workers have good maps!!

More info about MapSwipe and the work they do on their website, and also here.

The kid was picked up by an ambulance 30 minutes later.

Now as an adult working in security I get SO MANY folks- upper-middle aged mostly- coming to me to 'rat out' people they think are faking it.

I was once sent into a bathroom because a client demanded that the "fucker won't get out, so good drag them out"- I was NEVER going to do that, so I did a wellness check instead. You know who it was? A person recently released from the hospital after a car accident. They had a hole in their skull and major hearing loss. They couldn't answer the owner because they couldn't HEAR the owner.

Another time about a homeless man who got around town by kicking the ground from his wheelchair. "You know he doesn't actually need that thing, his legs work fine, it's just for pity points"- Oh, so he's not paralyzed, his wheelchair is performative? Funny story Dale, I actually know that guy, he was backed over by a truck and has chronic pain from his shattered pelvis. But sure, let's make him stand up and walk everywhere so nobody feels too bad for him and tries to help him or something.

"She doesn't need that scooter, I've seen her get out of it."

"Look how fat he is, because he just rides around and refuses to get up."

"She doesn't really need that cane- she comes here without it all the time"

it is important to me that the first meeting between simon and the hail mary crew is a bad one

First (this one) - Next

close ups \/

HAPPY TADC WEEKEND!!

Think about it throughout PHM Ryland never talks about having a family he mentions having a girlfriend once in the book all we really know about her is that they moved in together briefly and that she had a lot of stuff.

Let’s say after Ken and Barbie break up. Ken decides to go out on his own and stumbles upon the real world. There he learns about science and becomes completely invested in that pathway. He either eventually figures out how to become a human or he stays a doll which could explain why he was the only one to survive his hyper sleep (and so he can live with rocky longer)

It could explain why he so heavily believes in non water based life so much because he WAS a non water based life form. Water doesn’t exist in Barbieland it’s all plastic.

Furthermore this could explain why he decided to become a teacher being a doll previously it’s only reasonable to assume he’d enjoy kid’s presence the same way Barbie does.

He also loves the beach and we all know that Ken’s previous job was beach

In the Barbie movie the CEO of Mattel states “we’re not worried about Ken…. Ever.” Meaning that it’s likely they wouldn’t care at all if a Ken left Barbieland and perused an education became a scientist and eventually a school teacher.

All this to say imagine Simon and Grace getting into some kind of fight where Simon is like

“You have no idea what it’s like to live your life forced to be a cog in the system. Knowing that what you want doesn’t matter, nobody caring about who you are not even your name matters”etc. etc.

and the entire time Grace is having PTSD flashbacks of this:

And then responds with:

"Wow Rock you live like this? Junk all over the floor and parts everywhere? Very messy."

Stills below the cut lol

When You Look at Dr. Grace