Mastodawn

Talon 1d ago

Did you know that Microsoft just turns Copilot writing assist on for webpages in Microsoft Edge?
So like, if you type in edit boxes, it just... gets sent to Microsoft? Straight up?
And this is enabled by default?
So first, what the actual hell? Second, why is nobody talking about this? How the hell is right now the first time I find out about this?

sjvn 2d ago

This is what a human hand looks like under a microscope.

Freeguru 14h ago

Detail of The Red Apple, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

#photography #streetphotography #abstractphotography #rotterdam
#architecturephotography

Alison Phipps አሊሰን 🧡12h ago

Our Statement in support of Francesca Albanese

We call upon academic institutions, governments & civil society actors around the world to publicly repudiate these unjustified sanctions & to uphold the independence & legitimacy of the UN human rights system.

https://tinyurl.com/hfbzmamh

Dr. Divya 🍉 offline 12h ago

It shouldn’t matter that H is a sweet dad, or my friend, or has two toddler girls, or is witnessing escalating massacres in his area. We should give our free, unconditional support to all Palestinians, including men.

Give / find his individual link here: https://chuffed.org/project/hope-giving-circle

Keep Hope Alive: a Gaza Giving Circle

We are a team of volunteers in the US and UK, led by two sisters passionate about helping our friends on the ground keep their families and neighbors alive with food, water, & shelter. We saw that their campaigns are extremely stagnant and wanted to find a way to direct steady help to them. We distribute your contributions equally every week for sustainable support.

Chuffed

essjax 1d ago

I needed to do a word count on a PDF the other day (my work is so exciting).
It opened in Adobe Acrobat, and its AI thing popped up, wanting to help.
I had planned to copy paste the text into a 'word count' website, but this AI was asking what I needed, so I asked.
646 Words, it told me.
Fam, there were 512 words in that document. It wasn't even *close*.
How did we break computers so badly that they can't even count anymore 😢

Mr and Mrs Trellis 22h ago

Today, there is an average of 37 tonnes of road per inhabitant of the planet. The weight of the road network alone accounts for a third of all construction worldwide, and has grown exponentially in the 20th century. There is 10 times more bitumen, in mass, than there are living animals...

https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/how-much-does-your-road-weigh

How much does your road weigh?

The ways roads are used, with ever larger and heavier vehicles, have dramatic consequences on the environment – and electric cars are not the answer

The Architectural Review

Sin Vega 2d ago

"AI data centre" is the anti-library of alexandria, empty of value and burning everything else down

Nina Willburger 11h ago

The impressive Holzgerlingen stela is the largest known pre-Roman Iron Age stone statue in central Europe, standing 230 cm tall. This double-faced, anthropomorphic figure—dating to the 4th century BC—features a horn-like headdress interpreted a so-called leaf crown, and is likely a representation of a deity

📷 Landesmuseum Württemberg

#archaeology

Stephen Heard 4d ago

Me, pontificating at #CSEE2025. I think what I said (or close enough) is "If there's any coherent thread through my research career (and there really isn't), it's wondering why there are so darned many species of insects in the world".

Chuckling Duck 4d ago

@StephenBHeard I think it's mainly because that kind of awesomeness has to be spread over many species otherwise the other animals get jealous

Stephen Heard 3d ago

@friesen5000 I like this explanation!

Stijn De Baerdemacker 2d ago

@StephenBHeard I’m curious to what the answer to this question would be.

Stephen Heard 1d ago

@cortogantese Nobody has any idea! Or rather, we have lots of ideas but we don't know which are right.

I think one piece is that it seems to be very easy for insects to evolve host- or diet-specialist races from a generalist beginning. But there are probably more things... there have to be, we have something like 3-30 million insect species (but we don't know how many!)

Stijn De Baerdemacker 1d ago

@StephenBHeard fascinating! Are there any metrics known that can measure a “distance” between species?

Stephen Heard 1d ago

@cortogantese What do you mean by "distance"? Ecological, phylogenetic, functional? (Ecologists obsess over all of those)