Hello, Mastodon! I’m an astrophysicist at the University of Exeter. I work on applying astrophysical methods to understanding the ecological impacts of artificial light at night #ALAN. I’m also currently working on stellar characterisation.

As The Bad Place is becoming increasingly hostile, I’m trying to share what we're working on a little more widely, so please do follow-along if you are interested in light pollution, (astro)physics, or the life of a researcher at #Exeter. 🙂

The enforcement of copyright law is really simple.

If you were a kid who used Napster in the early 2000s to download the latest album by The Offspring or Destiny's Child, because you couldn't afford the CD, then you need to go to court! And potentially face criminal sanctions or punitive damages to the RIAA for each song you download, because you're an evil pirate! You wouldn't steal a car! Creators must be paid!

If you created educational videos on YouTube in the 2010s, and featured a video or audio clip, then even if it's fair use, and even if it's used to make a legitimate point, you're getting demonetised. That's assuming your videos don't disappear or get shadow banned or your account isn't shut entirely. Oh, and good luck finding your way through YouTube's convoluted DMCA process! All creators are equal in deserving pay, but some are more equal than others!

And if you're a corporation with a market capitalisation of US$1.5 trillion (Google/Alphabet) or US$2.3 billion (Microsoft), then you can freely use everyone's intellectual property to train your generative AI bots. Suddenly creators don't deserve to be paid a cent.

Apparently, an individual downloading a single file is like stealing a car. But a trillion-dollar corporation stealing every car is just good business.

@[email protected] @technology #technology #tech #economics #copyright #ArtificialIntelligence #capitalism #IntellectualProperty @[email protected] #law #legal #economics

Back from a spring break vacation, I resume my postings with an image of #highlatitudedust cloud coming of mud flats in the southern tip of Argentina (54S).

Also, including surface wind forecasts which suggest transport of the air mass to the Antarctica Pla. While it does not look like a lot of dust in this case, it illustrates a likely mechanism of rapid dust transport to Antarctica.

#paleoclimate #biogeochemicalcycles

Imagine how scary it would be if we couldn't explain the rise in global temperatures, sea level, frequency of heatwaves, droughts, floods, wildfires, and species extinction rates.

The fact that we know it's greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and land use change but fail to take more action is criminal.

Last night, there was a fantastic light pillar display over Fairbanks, Alaska. At times, it was the best I've ever seen. Really cool to see the pillars from car headlights from cars moving through the stationary lights.

Light pillars are an atmospheric optic effect from light reflecting off ice crystals in the air between the source and the observer. It requires still air so that the plates of the ice crystals point uniformly down. Read more about them on my website: https://www.lwpetersen.com/science/light-pillars/