#citizen-scientists

[internationaldayoflight]

Raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution by inviting citizen-scientists.

Are you a scout leader, an amateur astronomer, a schoolteacher, a night owl or a camper?

Or are you just interested in taking care of our night sky? University Library of Southern Denmark invites you to support the Citizen Science project Globe at Night. The Globe at Night project is an international citizen-science campaign that seeks to raise public awareness of the night sky and the impact of light pollution by inviting citizens to measure and submit observations of the brightness of the night sky.  Observations of the night sky from all over the world provide the possibility to carry out research about wildlife, health energy consumption and much more.

It is easy to get involved

[wachinyeya]

From water-testing polluted rivers to measuring radiation levels, ordinary people are taking environmental research into their own hands.

[breadmecoshy]

I swear, the Pale King just organized a conveyor belt for the production of minions from the void and delegated his duties to them

In my understanding, Lurien and the Collector were the two most reasonable specimens, so the King made them work. For free, of course, only out of a sense of love for its creator. And less autonomous samples became his kingsmoulds

Lurien was obviously entrusted with overseeing the City of Tears, but I think the situation is more interesting with the Collector

I think the King originally appointed him as a scientist who was supposed to study the effects and consequences of contact of living beings with the void. Is it possible to defeat the infection in this way or reduce its impact? It would be easy for him, since he himself is from the void

After all, he has his own tower with a study. But to be honest, the Tower of Love reminds me of one big room with soft walls for a madman, and it stands literally on the very edge of the city, isolated from it. I think the king initially saw that the Collector was not quite adequate, but he needed research, so he simply provided him with a tower with access to the Edge of the Kingdom so that he could catch unreasonable beetles there for research, and not cause problems in the city

The bug with the void flowing out of its eyes, in which we find the key to the tower, thinks that they have been together with someone for too long, and have become one. I think it was one of the assistants or workers in the tower who escaped when the influence of the void on the inhabitants of the tower became obviously detrimental. He locked the Collector up and took the key with him so that he could no longer "protect" everything he could reach

[notebookpapers]

honestly I don’t blame Earl Harlan for being desperate bc imagine your crush is the implied pretty-average looking guy Cecil Palmer and not only does an out-of-town-er bag him first but it’s the hottest mf imaginable. biceps just straining to escape his lab coat. like. sorry, Earl. You can’t compete with that

[specialagentartemis]

Citizen Science and Contributing To Scientific Endeavor When You're Not "A Scientist"

Comments on some of my posts about science and misinformation express frustration with scientific establishments, and want to see more accessibility and attention given to amateurs participating in the scientific process and having their scientific voices heard.

If being involved in the creation of knowledge and discovery is something important to you, that's something I strongly encourage! It's absolutely possible. Amateur researchers with a passion and an eye for detail have made some fantastic discoveries - but what is often glossed over in stories like these are the years of work, the patient dedication, and the collaboration with university researchers that often underlie such discoveries.

The search for truth and information and the passion for science is present in a lot of people who aren't official "scientists" - curiosity is natural! And if participation in scientific observation, hypothesizing, experimentation, and discovering new things about the world is important to you, there are lots of ways to go about contributing - and the new year is a great time to start.

What are you interested in?

Ecology

Observing the world around you is for everybody. Getting invested in the environment of your hometown is for everybody. And, as the Mythbusters famously said,

Some ideas for a local ecology project:

Record the temperature outside every day at the same time - at sunrise, or noon, or sunset, or midnight. Depending on where you are, the local weather recording station may be miles away or on top of a mountain - measure the temperature yourself and compare it each day to what your app says. When is it accurate? When isn't it?

Record the weather every day. How much precipitation? What time of day? What kind?

Record what animals you see every day, where, when, and how many. Or choose a specific animal, like birds, or bees on flowers, or turtles or frogs in a local pond, or whiptail lizards vs. invasive house geckos, and record the numbers you see each day.

Record when in the year you see the first, or last, of a plant or animal. When the crocuses sprout, when the buds appear on the maple trees, when you see the first clover flowers or prickly pear flowers, when the first robin comes out or the first lizards come out of hibernation.

If you have an outdoor cat or a free-roaming dog, attach a GoPro or similar small camera to its collar to see where it goes and what it does.

Identify the plants growing in your neighborhood, and check in on it regularly to keep track of how each one fares in different weather conditions, or if any animals particularly like or don't like to eat it.

Bulk order some test strips, then take a small sample of soil from a local park or water from a local waterway each weekend and test them for PH, lead, chemicals, or whatever. See if it changes over the year, or after a heavy rainfall, or during drought.

Take a photo of the same spot every day for a year.

Linguistics

The study of how people use language! Everybody uses language in some capacity.

Do you have any small children near you? Talk to them! Record how they pronounce things and what they call new (or even familiar) concepts. Look for patterns.

Ask people you know if "dog" and "blog" rhyme, or if "Alohop" is a good pun for a pineapple beer. My family gets ENDLESS amounts of mileage out of this one with each other. Ask people you know questions about how they pronounce things, or what they call things. Make maps of dialectical differences between generations, neighborhoods, etc. Track linguistic shifts in the modern world.

History

Everyone and everywhere has a history, and accurate history is pressingly relevant always.

See if you have a local historical society, library archive, or history museum that is looking for volunteers to transcribe or translate collections.

Get elbow-deep in local archives. You likely have some sort of local archive near you that has not been fully digitized. Go in with a topic you want to learn about - Black families, Jewish communities, how your hometown transferred from Indigenous hands to settler ones, women who owned their own businesses, immigration, inter-racial relationships, sports, ice harvesting, farming practices, contemporary opinions on a major world history event that now seems so inevitable, sports and people's reactions to sports - and read everything in newspapers, wills, deeds, photographs, or other available records about your topic of choice. See if you can find connections that you haven't seen anyone else talking about.

These are just some things that occur to me immediately as something that anyone can do, if you're sufficiently interested in a question and want to discover more about it. The more local your topic, the less likely anyone has a solid answer to whatever you're wondering - and the more immediately relevant to the people around you your discoveries may be!

Combining it with a New Year's Resolution can also get you more motivated to do the things you want to do. Is your resolution to get more exercise? Take a brisk walk each morning and take a picture of the same area every day for a year. Take a walk every weekend down to the lake and count the turtles and frogs you see. Is your resolution to keep a daily diary For Real This Time? If nothing else, resolve to write down the weather and precipitation each day! Do you want to volunteer more or meet new people? Look for citizen science or local history groups! Feeling like you're working toward something Real is a great motivator.

Henry David Thoreau's detailed descriptions of the nature each day around Walden Pond in the 1840s provides a valuable benchmark for modern ecologists to compare environmental and climatic changes since then on a granular level. Silly rhyming poems and idiosyncratic spellings in letters and diaries help linguists track dialectical and pronunciation changes across time. Amateur science is great and valuable! We all can have a part in understanding and paying deeper attention to the world around us, if we want to.

[spacetelescopescience]

What's in the invisible universe? How can we best observe it?

Dr. Eleni Vardoulaki of the National Observatory of Athens will explore how scientists and citizen scientists collaborate to better study and understand our universe, November 12 at 2:30 p.m. EST.

[mindblowingscience]

James Cook University researcher Matthew Connors has discovered two new praying mantis species with the help of citizen scientists. The finds have been published in Zootaxa. One of these new mantises is not just a new species but an entirely new genus—the classification level above species—and was discovered thanks to citizen scientist Glenda Walter. "We have named the new species Inimia nat—I. nat for short—as it was discovered thanks to the citizen science platform iNaturalist—also iNat for short. "It's a tribute to a new way of doing natural science. With a far greater number of people able to survey a much broader span of both time and space, citizen scientists can provide a wealth of data that would not otherwise be feasible," said Connors. He said if someone were to go outside and find three different insects, there's a good chance that at least one of them would be a new species.

Continue Reading.

[cheriboms]

doctober day 28: metallic

local old man doesnt "get" the youths, pt 1/??

[humblegrub]

something that I delight in (now that I regularly use inaturalist) is coming across flora and fauna that have no common names.

there's a thrill in discovering an overlooked or understudied organism. the world is so big and there is so much that we know so little about, even things that are in our backyard. you don't need to go somewhere exotic or to the bottom of the ocean to find creatures that are unfamiliar to the general public.

please say hello to Coccobaphes frontifer, spotted on a picnic table in Peoria, IL on 5/18/2024 :)

[bunnihearted]

life has no worth and no meaning now...

[papakhan]

I feel like a lot of people forget/don't realise that the citizens of the NCR don't have positive opinions of the Followers of the Apocalypse

[schnuffel-danny]

I absolutely love the "Danny Phantom 10 years later" videos Mr. Harman has made, especially when he draws Jack

Jack Fenton '10 year later' (presumed to be 50 years old) VS Butch Hartman at the time of creating the drawing (53 years old)

[this-should-do]

god i am obsessed eith the tonal shift between ahlf life 1 and 2 in regard to the sense of success at ur accomplisments

in 1, nothing you do ever gives u a sense of success or accomplishment, u killed people, u killed aleins but u have so much more to do. its an empty feeling, oh u killed the tentacles? cool go down the hole, dog urself deeper into this mess. oh you killed the gargantua and turned on the railway? go down deeper into the water and blood deeper into the bowels of the beast you created of the facility. you kill the nihilanth and u look up at the fireworks knoeing you are going to die, you cannot escape the explosion and the mess youve created. ur pulled from the mess and you are told you have guranteed urself a future of killing and endless battles or a battle u can never win. mothing you do matter none of it is worth anything. you are cold and alone and soaked in blood and people are only getting more scared

but in 2 the mood shifts, the smallest battles give people hope for a future. you can kill even a few soldiers and even if you do have to go deeper, the people around you cheer, if only for a moment, theyre alive and breathing and so are you. so many things yo do youre asked to do them again and again and each time these people are excited, thwyre grasping for a semblance of hope til thwir nails bleed and they cheer becuz they are alive and in the sun and watching their breath freeze as they cheer in the cold air of the mountains. the grass is green and growing and its more life than uve seen since before you moved to the middle of a desert to work in a concrete prison far from the warmth of the sun where it bakes all that it touches.

do you think gordon feels the happiness of the rebels? feels a sense of accomolishment in even the smallest thing he does? is he satisfied or fullfilled for helpjng these people? can he feel the sun warm the skin of his face and the bite of eastern european chill on his nose the way the rebels do? does he relish in that he is alive still? is he coming back? or do you think he still feels dull as he sinks deeper and deeper into the recesses of his mind and the concrete cage of balck mesa where his old life died?

[aquamarineglow]

[thegreatyin]

15,22,32,36 for the scoundrel and the scientist plus one I'd like to ask. Do they have a friend group outside of each other.

Does the Scientist hang out with other people in the University and the like, does the Scoundrel still have cards with Fiacre, the Manager, like, do they have people to hang out in general and who?

ooo! a "weird victorian freaks" collection!! my favorite

15 - How big or small is their family? Who did they live with growing up? Do they live with anyone now?

The Scoundrel probably has a decently large family, given their background*. Large enough to be overlooked and overshadowed for most of their life, but small enough to be noticed and recognized by everyone in the area. They likely stayed under their parent's wings for most of their upbringing, though they did run away the first chance they got. Currently, they exclusively live with The Scientist, and bringing up their family is only going to end with you getting chased by a very angry bat-to-be.

The Scientist on the other hand actually has family in the Neath! Well. Sort of. He's the youngest of two older brothers, one of which is still on the surface and the other of which followed him neathwards a few months after he first arrived in London. They have a slightly estranged relationship, but they're still in touch and they still get along pretty well. This enigmatic neath-bound sibling will actually be the subject of my Light Fingers playthrough when I finally get around to it

Similar to the Scoundrel, he lived with his family for most of his upbringing, though he probably moved out and had a normal adult life before The Whole Nemesis Thing Happened. His only roommate at the moment is The Scoundrel. He hates them. He can't stand them. He'd kill anyone who tried to actually seriously kill them. Their relationship is complicated.

*yes, im aware i've never explained or elaborated on this background. we stay silly around here.

-

22 - Do they sleep well at night?

The Scoundrel sleeps just swell, thank you very much. They don't have nightmares. They don't have troubles. They don't lay awake at night staring at a fig for hours. They have no idea what you're talking about. They sleep like a baby. Obviously. Blatantly. There's no other argument to be made or had. Why are you asking. Stop asking. Stop it. Pay no attention to the bat behind the curtain.

In all seriousness, they sleep surprisingly well, all things considered. It's probably mostly because they're an accomplished silverer that guards their dreams with a vengeance. God help you if you head to Parabola and decide to give them night terrors. You'll be dealing with your own for weeks if they're feeling merciful.

As for the Scientist...

Ha. Lol. Lmao even.

No. He's likely a chronic insomniac. He's the type of guy who closes his eyes and even his daydreams are the universe's most horrific god-awful nightmares. That's just the sort of world he lives in.

(The Scoundrel offers him help sometimes. He doesn't always take them up on it. But the few times he's had good dreams? It's always been due to them. Take this as you may.)

-

32 - Do they have any habits that aren't particularly self-destructive, just maybe odd?

The Scoundrel picks at their bandages when they feel nervous. Not enough to take any of them off, just enough to nick some of the gauze with their claws. They can also make like a dozen different high-pitched squeaks depending on the situation, which isn't nearly as noticable to the average Londoner, but it is cute and goofy when it happens.

The Scientist bites at his scarf. A lot. He hides his mouth behind it most of the time, but the fabric is very much worn down and he's very much kind of self-conscious about it. He doesn't even usually realize it's something he's doing, it's just... y'know. An instinct. As one has.

-

35 - Do they ever return home?

Since 36 isn't a question on the prompt list, I'll assume you mean 35. Consider it a freebie.

The Scoundrel is home. They, with full sincerity, consider the Neath to be a better and more comfortable home than they ever used to have on the surface. They wouldn't give up London for the world.

The Scientist...

Well. He doesn't really think of himself as having a home anymore. His home died when his lover did. The Neath is merely a place he happens to reside in, and he doesn't conceptualize it as anything more than that. Maybe, with enough time, he'll find a new home. For now though? He's just cynical and tired and is well-aware he's never going to get that sense of sanctuary back.

-

Bonus question - Do they socialize with literally anyone besides each other?

The Scoundrel has lots of friends! They're buddies with a good chunk of high-society, they're the darling of bohemians everywhere, they're a frequent attendee at the Dilmun Club, they like to say they're friends with their coworkers, they've got a complicated relationship with the Silverer that's been made especially awkward by their recent acquisition of an Irem destiny-

They hang out with tons of people on a daily basis. They're never truly alone. Or so they tell themself, at least. They tend to most frequently socialize with poets and socialites, though they've definitely attracted more than a few devils. I don't have any specific NPC compatriots in mind for them, but there's definitely more than a few they get along amicably with. If it's a pro-establishment person with relatively high importance in society, they're probably at minimum friendly acquaintances.

The Scientist is, unfortunately, quite the opposite. He's not a social person. Like, at all. Ever. Not even remotely. His friend group is pretty much just solely the Scoundrel, the Silverer, and his aforementioned brother currently living in the Neath. And of the three, he's really only actually friends with the Silverer. He's not exactly welcomed with open arms at the University and he's nowhere near well-connected enough to be hanging out with any other factions on more than a case-by-case basis.

Maybe in the future he'll be able to have people he can rely on that aren't "insufferable bat he's literally living with" and "mentor that randomly kidnaps him to hunt crocodiles and go dancing, not always in that order". Maybe. Hopefully. It'd do him a lot of good.

[state-of-franklin]

All the people that think Oppenheimer is a propaganda movie actually make me laugh, because it is propaganda! Just not the nationalistic/patriotism kind.

It’s literally about a guy that lives to regret his most renowned invention, who wished more than anything it wouldn’t become a weapon, and when faced with his own guilt is told to suck it up and fake a smile.

This movie is trying to get the audience to understand the plight of the scientist that feels like he invented death. He was manipulated time after time by the US military and government, and truly was used for his genius more than he “used” anyone.

It is a 3 hour movie of pain, regret, and opposition between scientific progress and moral implications of doing so.

Don’t shit on a fucking movie because you read a tumblr post about it. Do your own fucking research and maybe go see the movie before you lay such harsh judgement on it.