#it's for organization and community not for science

[deposedefenddeny]

A former co-worker of Luigi Mangione at the Stanford pre-collegiate studies program and a former student remembered Mangione as caring and outgoing when they met him, then a head counselor of the program, in 2019. A University spokesperson previously confirmed to The Daily that Mangione was employed as a head counselor for Stanford’s Pre-Collegiate Studies Program between May and September of 2019. The Daily also reviewed a Stanford Pre-College Studies spreadsheet that listed Mangione as living in the Kappa Alpha (KA) house that year. The program offers academic courses to high school students from around the world, both on Stanford’s campus and online. Mangione’s LinkedIn profile states that he “designed lesson plans and taught artificial intelligence to gifted high school students” and “led a 7-member residential staff” as an employee. A former student of the program who lived in KA with Mangione told The Daily they had a positive relationship. “[Mangione] was just a very good summer camp counselor,” he said. “He was very easygoing. Everyone, as far as I could tell, got along with him. He was funny, a very chill guy.” The former student, who requested anonymity due to concerns about online harassment, estimated that around 50 people lived in KA that summer, including students and staff. The former student said that during a hike for the program, he had a two hour conversation with him about computer science and early career advice. “He took the time to do that, to really talk to me as I was starting to think about what I wanted to study in college,” the former student said. “The way that I felt was, this is a guy who just inherently cares about others.” Summarizing his relationship with Mangione, the former student said he was “our cool counselor who was in a frat that we would have conversations with.” A former program staff member who worked in the Enchanted Broccoli Forest (EBF) house that summer shared a similar impression of Mangione with The Daily. “He was very friendly, very outgoing. The other staff members liked him. The high school kids liked him.” The former staff member requested anonymity because of concerns about online harassment. After rereading old staff group chats from 2019, the former staff member observed that Mangione was “always the one organizing staff volleyball games.” He added that Mangione organized a trip to Big Sur among the counselors and was “one of the community builders within the group.” For both the former staff member and student, the announcement that Mangione was a person of interest in the shooting came as a shock. “Of all the people I’ve known in my life, he would not have been in my top 10,000 guesses,” the former staff member said. “It feels like a fever dream,” the former student said.

Stanford Daily on Jan 7, 4:02 a.m. ET

[knxfesck]

What do you think gay men are attracted to in men that they can’t be attracted to in women?

It can’t be anything about femininity or masculinity obviously. That’s both sexist, and cultural so can’t be what drives men-only attraction.

It can’t be anything about stated identity because someone could lie just as easily as they could tell the truth in such a statement, and it makes no sense because homosexuality and heterosexuality exists in other species with no stated identities. It’s not like other animals without gender are all pan.

Saying idk it’s the vibes or some indescribable trait men have that women can’t but “I can’t explain” is a nonanswer.

Soooooooo what is it? Or do you think any sexuality but bi/pan is just cultural performance or an identity rather than an inborn orientation?

- [ ]

I think all sexuality is fluid and cultural obviously but I genuinely don't know how or why you expected me to answer this. Do you think I'm the top gayness scientist or something

[wachinyeya]

[cognitivejustice]

"The industrial model of agriculture production begins to look less viable’

In agriculture, growing only one crop – monoculture – has tended to encourage increased output by lowering overall costs. But these so-called economies of scale have brought with them environmental threats resulting from intensive production.

Now, single-crop farming is increasingly an economic risk for producers themselves. In the EU, one in 10 farms followed ecological practices in 2021 – almost double the share a decade earlier. This shows that growing numbers of European farmers are doing their part to preserve biodiversity. 

Greater biodiversity can reduce business risks from droughts because a mix of crops diversifies water needs, according to Professor Christoph Scherber, head of the Centre for Biodiversity Monitoring at the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change in Germany. He said crop variation can also lead to general increases in agricultural output.

‘It is important to show that agriculture can support biodiversity but also to acknowledge that biodiversity itself can bring higher production to farming,’ said Scherber, who coordinates BioMonitor4CAP.

[youare-number6]

Style Tuning - Muted Tones

This style is similar to the Purple Chaos but i has muted tones.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Biocentrism

Deep ecology, or biocentrism, is the belief that nature does not exist to serve humans. Rather, humans are part of nature, one species among many. All species have a right to exist for their own sake, regardless of their usefulness to humans. And biodiversity is a value in itself, essential for the flourishing of both human and nonhuman life.

These principles, I believe, are not just another political theory. Biocentrism is a law of nature, that exists independently of whether humans recognize it or not. It doesn’t matter whether we view the world in a human centered way. Nature still operates in a biocentric way. And the failure of modern society to acknowledge this — as we attempt to subordinate all of nature to human use — has led us to the brink of collapse of the earth’s life support systems.

Biocentrism is not a new theory, and it wasn’t invented by Dave Foreman or Arnie Naas. It is ancient native wisdom, expressed in such sayings as “The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth.” But in the context of today’s industrial society, biocentrism is profoundly revolutionary, challenging the system to its core.

[noncompliantcyborg]

trick or treat! mayhaps featuring cephalopods?

trick AND treat: This is a little paralarval giant pacific octopus I photographed back in 2021 named Hilda Doolittle (or maybe Emily Dickinson but I'm pretty sure its Hilda).

Though you can't see them, the outer surface of Hilda's body is covered in countless little chitinous tufts called Kölliker's organs, that she can puff out and retract. Eventually, she'd lose these little tufts before reaching adulthood. While scientists aren't yet certain of their purpose, Kölliker's organs have a huge impact on the surface area of paralarval octopus and may be used to leverage drag for more adept movement while the octopus is small. They estimate surface area is 2/3 greater when all Kölliker's organs are puffed out versus retracted.

[wayti-blog]

"In the murky African riverbeds, eyesight is rendered virtually useless. To navigate their surroundings, some electric fish have evolved a shocking adaptation that challenges our perceptions of sensory intelligence and teamwork in the animal kingdom. Scientists at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute recently learned that a species of weakly electric fish (Gnathonemus petersii), also known as the elephantnose fish, shares sensory information within its group almost instantaneously. One fish in the river can instantly tell what lies a far distance in front of it by using the electric field generated by its peers further out.

It’s a remarkable and never-before-seen collective sensing that parallels the collaborative systems used in human-engineered technologies such as sonar and radar."

"Electric brains"

“Think of these external signals as electric images of the objects that nearby electric fish automatically produce and beam to nearby fish at the speed of light,” said Dr. Pedraja. “Our work suggests that three fish in a group would each receive three different “electrical views” of the same scene at virtually the same time,”(...)."

continue reading

[fivepercentgodsandearths]

We don't teach Flat Earth within the Five Percent Nation/Nation of Gods and Earths!

[spotaus]

Ec-4o!Sci ♡ (Bio-Engineer who somehow maintains a Lab in the apocalypse)

[raffaellopalandri]

Book of the Day – The Age of Sustainable Development

Today’s Book of the Day is The Age of Sustainable Development, written by Jeffrey D. Sachs in 2015 and published by Columbia University Pres. Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world-renowned economics professor, author, educator, and global leader in sustainable economic development. The Age of Sustainable Development, by Jeffrey D. Sachs I chose this book because I often mention it when I present the…

[spock-adoodledoo]

oh my god i just finished the dark forest finally. 7/10 i suppose, i went through the first half or so of the book being really annoyed by luo ji but also enjoying the chapters where he shows up because unfortunately he was entertaining. still don't understand the imaginary girlfriend thing, it just feels like he needs someone to protect from the world which like ??? ok sure i guess, it just rubs me the wrong way personally. for the second half and especially the end i became luo ji's number one defender it's fine. for the rest, holy crap—the droplet, the microcosm of the universe on those runaway ships, the wallfacer project, luo ji drawing from rey diaz's plan, the attitude of the world towards him, the entire theory... wow

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

Blog post: Can Solarpunk have Visions of Organized Religion?

Excerpt:

"I’m sure you’ve heard someone say that there’s not much religion in science fiction’s visions of our future. Generally, it’s a lament, but as an atheist who was raised entirely without religion and lost an entire quadrant of her family in concentrations camps, I’m okay with that. To me, religion is the root of quite a lot of evil done by people to other people and to the world around us. Also, why would anyone want to belong to a group that tells you what to believe and how to behave? Here’s to a future where we just try to be kind, compassionate, helpful, and just to each other while aiming to tread lightly upon the Earth, and to a future where we find awe in the amazing world around us.

Wouldn’t this also be the solarpunk way? It is a fairly anarchistic endeavor, not much for following papal edicts or any other orders from the higher ranks of organized religions. Yet, I bet for a lot of people, including solarpunks, life outside of an organized religion would feel rudderless or lacking. I may be allergic to religion, but I can see that many people need and even enjoy the spiritual, supportive, social, and/or communal aspects of religion."

Click through to read more!

[wachinyeya]

How one neighborhood in Colombia is tackling climate change at the community level https://one.npr.org/i/1228839451:1228839452

In Colombia's second-largest city, rainy season floods and dry season fires are now a fact of life. As reporter Jorge Valencia found, local residents are grappling with those and other effects of climate change by taking matters into their own hands.

[youare-number6]

Style Tuning - Muted Tones - Pt 2

..

[dailyanarchistposts]

Biocentrism Contradicts Communism

As you can probably tell, my background in revolutionary theory comes from Marxism, which I consider to be a brilliant critique of capitalism. But as to what should be implemented in capitalism’s place, I don’t think Marxism has shown us the answer. One of the reasons for this, I believe, is that communism, socialism, and all other left ideologies that I know of speak only about redistributing the spoils of raping the earth more evenly among classes of humans. They do not even address the relationship of the society to the earth, Or rather, they assume that it will stay the same as it is under capitalism — that of a gluttonous consumer. And that the purpose of the revolution is to find a more efficient and egalitarian way to produce and distribute consumer goods.

This total disregard of nature as a life force, rather than just a source of raw materials, allowed Marxist states to rush to industrialize without even the most meager environmental safeguards. This has resulted in such noted disasters as the meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the oil spill in the Arctic Ocean, and the ongoing liquidation of the fragile forests of Siberia. It has left parts of Russia and Eastern Europe with such a toxic legacy that vast areas are now uninhabitable. Marx stated that the primary contradiction in industrial society is the contradiction between capital and labor. I believe these disasters show that there is an equally important contradiction between industrial society and the earth.

But even though socialism has so far failed to take ecology into account, I do not think it is beyond reform, as is capitalism. One of the principles of socialism is “production for use, not for profit.” Therefore, the imbalance is not as built in under socialism as it is under capitalism, and I could envision a form of socialism that would not destroy the earth. But it would be unlike Marx’s industrial model .

Ecological socialism, among other things, would have to deal with the issue of centralism. The Marxist idea of a huge body politic relating to some central planning authority presupposes (1) authoritarianism of some sort; and (2) the use of mass production technologies that are inherently destructive to the earth and corrosive to the human spirit. Ecological socialism would mean organizing human societies in a manner that is compatible with the way that nature is organized. And I believe the natural order of the earth is bioregionalism, not statism.

Modern industrial society robs us of community with each other and community with the earth. This creates a great longing inside us, which we are taught to fill with consumer goods. But consumer goods, beyond those needed for basic comfort and survival, are not really what we crave. So our appetite is insatiable, and we turn to more and more efficient and dehumanizing methods of production to make more and more goods that do not satisfy us. If workers really had control of the factories (and I say this as a former factory worker), they would start by smashing the machines and finding a more humane way to decide what we need and how to produce it. So to the credo “production for use, not for profit,” ecological socialism would add, “production for need, not for greed.”