@cosmos4u@scicomm.xyz2026-06-17 16:24:53
The Date of #Eilmer of Malmesbury’s Flight: https://academic.oup.com/nq/advance-article/doi/10.1093/notesj/gjag066/8671576 (about a guy allegedly doing gliding flight experiments - and observing Halley's comet - a millennium ago) -> Did a medieval flying monk spot Halley’s comet, twice? It’s complicated: https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/06/did-a-medieval-flying-monk-spot-halleys-comet-twice-its-complicated/ - yeah, right, because the sources are ... tenuous at best.
@lpryszcz@genomic.social2026-06-17 19:51:15
Transient multidomain functional improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose #psilocybin-containing mushroom administration: a #case #report
@wraithe@mastodon.social2026-05-15 18:01:45
Also worth noting that cellular/mobile phones still provided an actual working service.
Yes there were trade-offs, but the core functions that people wanted were there.
https://beige.party/@FeloniousPunk/116573505276924676
@hex@kolektiva.social2026-05-19 07:09:57
Logistics in the technical sense (part of supply chain management) is a subset of logistics in the vernacular sense ("the handling of the details of an operation"). You can explore this second and more general sense, and thereby build an understanding of the first and more technical sense, by iteratively asking the question, "how does one make that happen" and follow questions from there.
A big part of organizing is figuring out the (vernacular) logistics (and helping others figure it out). You want to organize a seed swap? Ok. How does one make that happen? Well, you need seeds, people, a place, and perhaps a time. How does one make that happen? You can forage seeds or you can buy seeds for a garden and swap extras. How do you get people to come? Well, figure out where you want people to come from and choose an accessible place. What's the easiest thing to do? Get people from your neighborhood. How does one make that happen? Well, maybe put up flyers. How does one make that happen? Well, print them on your printer if you have one, or at a library, then go post them up. Etc.
Keep asking questions until you either find a roadblock that you can't find a way around, or you find things you can do yourself (one of those things you can do yourself is asking friends to help).
If you practice the exercise of thinking about how things happen, you can start to find things that you can do yourself. You can start to understand what exists now, and you can imagine what's possible. By thinking about logistics, you can figure out how to replace things when they collapse or are dismantled. You can also identify things that can't easily be replaced, and try to figure out alternatives.
This practice is good for figuring out how to build, but it can also be a valuable practice for figuring out how to resist. Concentration camps and ethnic cleansing also require logistics. Mass displacement means moving people. How does one do that? People are generally going to be moved in planes or buses. How does one do that? Well, people get loaded on to planes or buses in specific places. Planes and buses need fuel. Planes are fueled at their airports, which may well be the same places where people are loaded on to them. There is a fuel depo and a fuel truck that makes flying people out of a specific place possible. How does the fuel get to that fuel depo? Well, that fuel is probably also delivered by truck. Someone drives those trucks. Someone fuels those planes. Someone clears the planes for takeoff. Someone fuels those busses. Someone drives those busses. And so on.
Logistics networks can be highly complex. The more complex the operation, the more possible points of failure and more possible points where pressure can be applied, where operations can be disrupted. Ethnic cleansing is a complicated operation. The logistics of disrupting complicated things tend to be much less complicated than the logistics of the complicated things themselves.
The Right has exploited this fact for a long time. Centralized social services are logistically complex. Public infrastructure is logistically complex. By destroying these things, they can loot public resources by privatizing the infrastructure and functionality.
But the things that support the Right are even more logistically complex. Oil, cars, AI data centers, internal paramilitary, these are extremely complicated and fragile. There are numerous pressure points, all of which can respond to numerous strategies.
If we want to win, we should reduce the influence of politics over the things we care about. We should focus on building distributed mutual aid networks that don't rely on state funding and aren't subject to the whims of politicians. This is also known as "dual power." That is, creating counter-institutions outside of the dominant political system. The Right already does this in the form of churches and corporations.
As we reduce our complexity, we can then press our complexity advantage against the things for which the Right *needs* the state: the apparatus of violence needed to maintain capital and enforce the dominant order.
@Techmeme@techhub.social2026-05-15 15:35:50
A profile of AI video generation startup Runway, which is training models directly on observational data, is now valued at $5.3B, and added $40M in ARR in Q2 (Rebecca Bellan/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/15/runway-started…
@georgiamuseum@glammr.us2026-07-14 13:26:51
Following the museum’s mission of connecting through culture and curiosity, this summer has the theme “World Travelers.” Kaitlyn Loyd, the museum’s associate curator of school, youth and family programs, puts it simply: “Art can transport us.” Art Adventures transports campers to different times and places with the goal of broadening perspectives and engaging the local community in a fun, memorable way.
2/
@hikingdude@mastodon.social2026-07-14 19:37:02
Just another place we visited in the Fränkische Schweiz. We just walked along a little stream and suddenly passed through this rock-gate with all the lush green on either side.
Just beautiful.
https://www.franzgraf.de/blog/2026/caves-and-meadows-d…
@salrandolph@zirk.us2026-05-14 14:01:12
It’s a pleasure to be right, but there are advantages being wrong as well. It can be easier to let go of your own ideas, for one. A kind of freshness of curiosity and surprise for another.
I like the way Shunryu Suzuki paraphrased Dogen in describing Zen as a practice of wrong following on wrong — a lifetime of “one continuous mistake.”
@ErikUden@mastodon.de2026-06-09 07:05:54
fuck man, kane parsons is actually 20 years old? the director of a franchise i've loved watching for years, now creator of a24's top grossing movie of all time, is actually two years younger than me? my understanding of growth and self worth is limited to a faulty capitalist logic of so-called meritocracy, ignoring all privileges, advantages, or even luck, fueling an inferiority complex in which i can only justify me being less successful than him by thinking of myself as lesser, despite tha…
@hikingdude@mastodon.social2026-06-14 12:06:18
Last day of vacation! We just did a small walk to our local hill. The clouds in the south look pretty grey, while it looked nice in the north.
We have a relaxing day today, a real #silentsunday.
#hiking
