tingilinde

scientific papers for kids

Kids do the reviewing for understandability.

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Frontiers for Young Minds believes that the best way to make cutting-edge science discoveries available to younger audiences is to enable young people and scientists to work together to create articles that are both accurate and exciting.
That is why distinguished scientists are invited to write about their cutting-edge discoveries in a language that is accessible for young readers, and it is then up to the kids themselves – with the help of a science mentor – to provide feedback and explain to the authors how to best improve the articles before publication.

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This is difficult to make work and exciting..  I don't know how good they are and it seems like there's a mismatch in suggested grade level, but the basic idea is good - very similar to the Flame Challenge. 

 

 

 

santos in action

Can you spell Ponzi? He seems to define honesty for his party.

a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

what time is it on the moon?

Not exactly an easy problem.

I'm guessing this will appeal to Steve

 

yet another remarkable fossil

This time a very pristine find at the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

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Borealopelta markmitchelli found its way back into the sunlight in 2017, millions of years after it had died. This armored dinosaur is so magnificently preserved that we can see what it looked like in life. Almost the entire animal—the skin, the armor that coats its skin, the spikes along its side, most of its body and feet, even its face—survived fossilization. It is, according to Dr. Donald Henderson, curator of dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, a one-in-a-billion find.

Beyond its remarkable preservation, this dinosaur is an important key to understanding aspects of Early Cretaceous ecology, and it shows how this species may have lived within its environment. Since its remains were discovered, scientists have studied its anatomy, its armor, and even what it ate in its last days, uncovering new and unexpected insight into an animal that went extinct approximately 100 million years ago.

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twitter vs ?

Must is turning Twitter into a rightwing hell-hole. So what to do?  Stay or go?  And if you leave, where?  Teri Kanefield's piece sums up my feelings about Twitter.  For what it's worth I'm using Mastodon for the time being. 

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Musk’s only “power” is the power we give him. He is not the president of the United States. He is not a world leader. He is not an elected official. He controls the Twitter code. That’s it. That’s his power.

Musk is the owner of a business. Once you enter his place of business, he makes the rules. He can cut off your microphone. It’s like frequenting a restaurant filled with Proud Boys. Yes, you can huddle with your friends and ignore them, but if the restaurant owner is a Proud Boy, anything that benefits the restaurant puts money into the pockets of extremists.

Why not go to a different restaurant?

“But Teri! We can’t lose the information war!”

If you feel that way, why not open an account on Truth Social and argue with Trump? Why not open an account on Parler and argue with them? We all had fun when Greta Thunberg landed a delightful blow on Andrew Tate. It was highly entertaining, but I am quite certain that her brilliant takedown did not convert any anti-environmentalists to her cause. Many of them, in their own bubble as always, thought Tate won that particular Twitter fight.

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there's also this little deatil

 

Mastodon

 

 

Twitter

good news on the bivalent booster

It offers good protection from the current crop of variants.

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Jackson said additional data the CDC was posting to its website on Wednesday showed that people who got the updated booster have a 13-fold reduction in the risk of death compared to people who are unvaccinated. People vaccinated with the bivalent booster had more than a two-fold reduced risk of death from Covid compared to vaccinated people who had only received monovalent vaccine.

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how to meet safely - mike osterholm

 

debt

Does America have too much?  A note by Paul Krugman

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Then came Covid, and this time the government responded very strongly, with trillions in aid to families, businesses, the unemployed and state and local governments. The result was a gratifyingly fast economic recovery — again, accompanied by a burst of inflation, but that seems to be subsiding. Of course, there was also an upward jump in debt.

So should we start trying to pay this debt down now? Leave aside the fact that, politically, it just isn’t going to happen, would it even be a good idea economically?

The answer depends in large part on whether the Fed would be able to offset the depressing effects of fiscal austerity on demand. Right now that wouldn’t be a problem, since the Fed is raising rates to fight inflation; all it would need to do is slow or reverse these rate hikes. But what will the economic environment look like in, say, two or three years?

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myths about taxing the rich

A fine piece by Robert Reich.

a tip of the hat to Greg

reality strikes

The age of free money is over.

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Eighteen months ago, the online used car retailer Carvana had such great prospects that it was worth $80 billion. Now it is valued at less than $1.5 billion, a 98 percent plunge, and is struggling to survive.

Many other tech companies are also seeing their fortunes reverse and their dreams dim. They are shedding employees, cutting back, watching their financial valuations shrivel — even as the larger economy chugs along with a low unemployment rate and a 3.2 percent annualized growth rate in the third quarter.

One largely unacknowledged explanation: An unprecedented era of rock-bottom interest rates has abruptly ended. Money is no longer virtually free.

For over a decade, investors desperate for returns sent their money to Silicon Valley, which pumped it into a wide range of start-ups that might not have received a nod in less heady times. Extreme valuations made it easy to issue stock or take on loans to expand aggressively or to offer sweet deals to potential customers that quickly boosted market share.

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