@sarahc@mas.to
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

sarahc

@sarahc@mas.to

Feral historian, recovering journalist, editor, fiddler, native plant gardener, cat mom, lesbian. (Very) minor goddess.

Oh, and I'm crazy for volcanoes.

My posts/boosts are all over the place. I boost A LOT.

Don't want to see my boosts?

https://justmytoots.com/@sarahc@mas.to

#Politics #History #Journalism #TechWriting #IrishTrad #Fiddle #Concertina #Botany #Geology #Maps #Astronomy #Corvids #CatsOfMastodon #ShinyThings #PortlandOregon
#nobot #nosearch

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

sarahc, to Futurology
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

The crows continue to gain on us.

' The researchers say that the birds' counting skills are like those of human toddlers, who often count based upon vocalizations of numbers rather than using numbers themselves. '

#crows #corvids #intelligence #counting

https://www.livescience.com/animals/birds/crows-can-count-out-loud-startling-study-reveals

sarahc, to Minnesota
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

To this day, the 1862 hangings of 38 Dakota men in Mankato, Minnesota is still the largest public execution in US history.

I talked to descendants of the hanged Dakota men for a news feature I produced back in the 1990s. The memories carried in the Dakota oral traditions were so vivid that these people spoke of the executions as though they had happened days ago, not in the 19th century.

#USDakotaWar #PrairieIslandDakota #Minnesota #repatriation #NativeAmericans

https://ictnews.org/news/noose-used-in-dakota-38-execution-to-be-returned

sarahc, to Florida
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

' According to speaker notes accompanying one slide, teachers were told that "Christianity challenged the notion that religion should be subservient to the goals of the state ..." That slide quotes the Bible to assert that "[c]ivil government must be respected, but the state is not God." Teachers were told the same principle is embedded in the Declaration of Independence. '

https://popular.info/p/exclusive-florida-educators-trained?post_id=145041917&triedRedirect=true

sarahc, to Cats
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

The feral Stripy Cat is laying on top of her house, hoping for some sunshine. It appears that sunbathing season has officially started.

sarahc, to gardening
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

Possibly the looniest native columbine there is: Golden columbine (Aquilegia chrysantha). Those ridiculously long spurs make the flowers look like little spaceships.

This columbine is found in the US southwest from Arizona to Texas, as well as in northwestern Mexico. While the Pacific Northwest has its own native yellow columbine (A. flavescens), its flowers are nowhere near as spectacular.

#botany #gardening #NativePlants #columbines

sarahc, to random
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

' “Historically, people always, always don’t take it [authoritarian rhetoric] seriously.... " Perhaps they don’t realize that Trump is deploying the exact same tropes — against migrants, judges, gender nonconforming people, universities, the media, “Marxists” — now being used by autocrats in Russia, India and Hungary. “If you look at what Trump is saying … everywhere in the world the authoritarians are saying that.” '

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/24/trump-fascist-rhetoric-reich-policy/

sarahc, to Signal
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

A verybinterestin conversation with Meredith Whittaker, the head of Signal, the well known encrypted messaging app.

' I don’t think we can have a conversation about disinformation without having a conversation about the role of massive homogenous platforms that have cannibalized our media ecosystem and our information ecosystem in service of profit and growth for a handful of companies [TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X and YouTube]. '

#Signal #AI #SocialMedia

https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/24/signals-meredith-whittaker-on-the-telegram-security-clash-and-the-edge-lords-at-openai/

sarahc, to Astronomy
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

' “There will be science that can’t be done. There will be science that’s significantly more expensive to do. There will be things that we miss.” '

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/02/science/hubble-spacex-starlink.html

sarahc, to humanrights
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

Israel's treatment of Palestinian prisoners in this camp is torture. There is no excuse.

' [This] rare testimony from Israelis working at the facility sheds further light on Israel’s conduct as it wages war in Gaza, with fresh allegations of mistreatment. It also casts more doubt on the Israeli government’s repeated assertions that it acts in accordance with accepted international practices and law. '

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/10/middleeast/israel-sde-teiman-detention-whistleblowers-intl-cmd?trk=feed_main-feed-card_feed-article-content

inquiline, to random
@inquiline@union.place avatar

I've only seen aurora once, in downtown Minneapolis ca. 1994? It was so amazing that it was visible in such a light-polluted space. Hope to see it again before I die (but tonight is not that night, super cloudy plus unfavorable latitude)

sarahc,
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

@inquiline I saw that display, too. I lived in Powderhorn and the aurora was clearly visible through the lights of downtown Minneapolis. A friend and I drove around 30 miles north and the lights covered more than half the sky.

sarahc, to random
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

I'm really enjoying all the photos on Mastodon!

A favor, though: Can you include the location where you took the pic? If you're in North America, town/city and state/province would be great.

sarahc, to Cats
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

Mastodon just doesn't see enough tailless cats on , sez Rua, and he's just the Manx who can fix that problem.

sarahc, to internet
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

Despite what many people think, most of the world's internet traffic goes through undersea cables, not satellites. A little-known industry exists to lay new cables and, more importantly, fix existing cables when they break. This story introduces the people and the aging ships that keep the internet from collapsing.

https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea-deep-repair-ships

sarahc, to Cats
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

Luna does the Downward Cat pose for .

sarahc, to random
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

' The story of COVID normalization is ultimately a story of breaking solidarity. We went from embracing a social model of public health that prioritized the safety of vulnerable people as the greatest priority, to one that explicitly denies them safety and promotes harming them. In essence, public health itself, the concept of collectively combatting disease for the collective benefit of all, is what we’ve lost. '

#covid #PublicHealth #antivaxxers #eugenics

https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/liberals-joined-conservatives-to

sarahc, to ethelcain
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

Public library staff in an Alabama town have locked up the library and walked off their jobs after the library's director was fired. The director had refused to remove 113 books with LGBTQ+ content from circulation after being ordered to do so by a library board dominated by right-wing Christian fundamentalists.

https://bookriot.com/librarians-lock-autauga-prattville-public-library-in-protest-after-director-fired-by-board/

sarahc, to oregon
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

Oregon's has plagued for years by big-money attempts to buy state and local government elections. Since 2007, more than 20 people and entities have given individual campaign donations of $1 million or more.

A new law puts strict limits on political contributions and dark money. Unfortunately it won't take effect until 2027, leaving several more elections in which corporations and the wealthy can do as they like.

1/2

#Oregon #elections #CampaignContributions

https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2024/04/gov-tina-kotek-signs-historic-campaign-finance-bill.html

sarahc, to baltimore
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

' “We know what these folks really want to say when they say DEI mayor,” he told The Banner. “Whether it is DEI or clown. They really want to say the ‘n’ word. But there is nothing they can do and say to me that is worse than the treatment of my ancestors. I am proud of who I am and where I come from.” '

#DEI #racism #Baltimore #BrandonScott #BridgeCollapse

https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/politics-power/national-politics/brandon-scott-dei-mayor-racist-C3MWO3BVX5FJZM5MENNLC2X2BI/

sarahc, to random
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

' Elected officials, strategists, historians and sociologists say the lasting effects of the pandemic are visible today in the debates over inflation, education, public health, college debt, crime and trust in American democracy itself. The lingering trauma from that time ... is contributing to a sense of national malaise ... a kind of pandemic hangover that appears to be hurting Mr. Biden and helping Mr. Trump in their presidential rematch. '

#covid #USElections

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/24/us/politics/pandemic-politics-malaise.html

sarahc, to oregon
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

The plant in the first photo may not look like much, but it's very special. It's tall western penstemon (Penstemon hesperius), which only grows in about a half dozen locations in the Portland, #Oregon/Vancouver, #^Washington area -- and nowhere else in the world. This pestemon was thought to have gone extinct in the late 20th century, but it's turned out to be surprisingly tough. Even so, P hesperius is on the federal endangered species list.

#botany #NativePlants #EndangeredSpecies

1/n

sarahc, to Cats
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

After a morning filled with wreaking havoc around the house, Luna has finally run out of steam.

sarahc, to aitools
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

' ProPublica reviewed thousands of pages of emails and memos by U.S. officials, letters to foreign ministries, correspondence from industry groups and academic research [and] interviewed health experts and government leaders in nearly two dozen countries ...

[Our] reporting shows the U.S. government repeatedly used its muscle to advance the interests of multinational baby formula companies ... '

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-america-waged-global-campaign-against-baby-formula-regulation-thailand

sarahc, to worldwithoutus
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

Over the past decade or so, researchers have found genetic evidence for contact between people in eastern Polynesia and those in coastal Peru and Colombia. Now archeologists studying the oldest settlement on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) have found physical evidence that islanders traveled to South America at least once and returned with food crops not known in Polynesia.

https://phys.org/news/2024-03-material-obsidian-blades-rapa-nui.html

sarahc, to Cats
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

Every housecat has a primordial pouch on its belly (and so do most big cats), but nobody really knows what this pouch is for.

#cats #anatomy #evolution #PrimordialPouch

https://www.inverse.com/science/primordial-cat-pouch-science

sarahc, to art
@sarahc@mas.to avatar

A well-deserved honor for Susan Hudson, an excellent Navajo quilt artist.

https://www.daily-times.com/story/news/local/navajo-nation/2024/03/04/san-juan-countys-susan-hudson-uses-quilts-to-chronicle-navajo-history/72789101007/

You can find out more about Hudson's quilting in this piece from the PBS 'Crafting in America' series:
https://www.craftinamerica.org/artist/susan-hudson/

#art #quilting #Navajo #NativeAmerican #SusanHudson

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • anitta
  • thenastyranch
  • rosin
  • GTA5RPClips
  • osvaldo12
  • love
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • khanakhh
  • everett
  • kavyap
  • mdbf
  • DreamBathrooms
  • ngwrru68w68
  • megavids
  • magazineikmin
  • InstantRegret
  • normalnudes
  • tacticalgear
  • cubers
  • ethstaker
  • modclub
  • cisconetworking
  • Durango
  • provamag3
  • tester
  • Leos
  • JUstTest
  • All magazines
    •