When you work somewhere long enough and really get to know the machines they do start to tell you how they're feeling. You're in the room with them and just puttering around minding your own business and then Wrhhhhthhhvhhrrrhmmmmmm becomes whrrttrtttrrrerrrrhrrrrmm and you know a water system has air in it and there's probably a leak somewhere. You find it and stop the bleeding and vent the air and all the loud sounds are good loud sounds. Then you start wondering when you accidentally learned a new language.
If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...
Start helping with citizen science projects
Public participation in science is increasing, and citizen science has a central part in this. It is a contribution by the public to researc
What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!
You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases
Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.
Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.
Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.
Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.
Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.
Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.
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I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.
Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help
Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.
Yup, these are actually *really* important. And a small bit of work helps, so itâs doable even if youâre snowed under with survival work or in too much pain to concentrate for longer periods.
Itâs multiply-checked by more than one person, so donât worry about fucking it up because your concentration is fucked. Your input is valuable but not the only input.
I find Zooniverse very good, and it does Citizen Historian work too - I spent time digitising concentration camp records because a) families still donât know what happened to some of their loved ones b) this makes the records available for historians without travelling to archives in person, which I can testify is *invaluable* for disabled historians and helps cut the need for overseas travel to do vital historical work.
It unexpectedly helped me with learning how to decipher premodern handwriting too, which proved really useful in my academic stuff. You *will* pick up valuable skills doing this. Put it on your CV.
Other places you can go to do citizen science, from the notes
(Thanks to everyone who left these in the notes! If you know more, put them in the notes, and I might add them! And ty @enbycrip for the fantastic addition that covered a bunch of details I didn't get to)
MapSwipe (collaboration between several Red Cross organizations and Doctors Without Borders, update vital geospatial data)
Smithsonian archives (transcriptions, many subjects)
Cornell Bird Lab (birds)
FoldIt (folding proteins)
Fathomverse (sea animals)
Project Monarch (butterflies)
In person
Bioblitz (nature)
Species watch (species)
Audobon Society (birds)
Also:
Even if you don't have time to spend, but do have some processor cycles to spare, check out the projects available at BOINC's Compute for Science: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/
Hey guys, these projects make a HUGE difference for science. For example, I run bplant.org and iNaturalist is the #1 source of images in ID guides and articles and other educational materials I develop. The plant observations are also helpful for assessing plant ranges and how these ranges are changing with climate change. And it also helps me identify local seed sources for use in restoration plantings. Use of iNaturalist, even casual use like a random person uploading pics of plants they see growing in their yard, or a random parking lot they were in, or a random vacant lot, those observations are MAJORLY helping in (1) education (2) science (3) conservation.
This stuff makes a huge difference.
Also, if you want to make the biggest impact on these sites, release any material with the more permissive licenses, like CC-BY. If you add a NC or ND clause, for instance, your photos cannot be included on Wikipedia or bplant or a number of other educational sites, because those license restrictions are incompatible with combining with copyleft material.
I thought I'd go back and repost this because there are probably a lot of people out there who, like me, reallllyyyyyy need something to distract them right now
So, hey. You. Stop doomscrolling. Take a deep breathe. And if you want, try doing some citizen science or citizen history instead
I'm also going to especially promote MapSwipe, for those who want to do something tangible to help people now.
Volunteer from your phone. Make a difference worldwide.
From their website:
Data Everywhere
In today's technology-filled world, we have access to vast amounts of information at our fingertips. This includes geospatial data, which helps us understand places and the âwhere?â of things - a vitally important piece of successful humanitarian programs. It is important for getting from point A to point B as well as for coordination, understanding needs, tracking impact, identifying gaps, and a multitude of other concerns. For responsible use by humanitarians, this information must be assessed, refreshed, and validated as populations, infrastructure, and the surrounding environments experience the inevitable changes that occur as time, conflicts, and disasters unfold...
MapSwipe is a free open source mobile application available on iOS and Android that empowers anyone with a smartphone to make a meaningful impact contributing to global mapping efforts. MapSwipe crowdsources the review of satellite imagery to:
Hey so fun new scam just dropped! I got a call earlier today from someone spoofing the local police department's desk number, asking me if there was a reason I'd missed my jury summons this morning.
Friends, I had not received a jury summons for this month. Which I told him, at which point his previously clear diction suddenly turned into a rapid mumble, only becoming clear for scary words like 'federal' and then asking to confirm my address, at which point I hung up and decided to call the police department later.
When I called the police department the desk officer sounded so tired y'all. All I had to say was "Hey I got a call earlier saying I missed jury duty this morning?" and she immediately sighed and told me that yes it was a scam that was going around and thanked me for calling to confirm.
So this is your periodic reminder that law enforcement agencies will not call you to tell you that you're in trouble. If you need to pay a fine of some sort they will mail you a physical invoice. Anyone calling you saying they're from the police or any other law enforcement organization (up to the CIA and yes I have heard of scammers attempting to impersonate CIA agents over the phone) who then tries to get financial information from you over the phone is a scammer.
I know I actually bang on about this a weird amount, but it is my fervent hope that the information will stick in peoples' brains if they get randomly selected for the adrenaline spike lottery. Scammers use scary words to get you to panic in order to shut down your critical thinking, and if even one person's brain spits out "Tumblr user waterhobbit said the cops/CIA/federal marshalls don't call about this shit" before their bank account routing number is in the hands of assholes I will consider it a job well done.
The person in this post follows my rule of thumb that protects me from 99.9% of all phone scams, and i'd like to highlight it here
For ANY "important" call you actually think might be real, get the name of the agency or institution involved, (and here is the important part:) look up the phone number to that agency or institution on your own, and call back about it.
If you never use a phone number they give you and always look up the number on your own, they can never scam you. Here's how it looks.
"hi, i'm from your bank and your account has just been charged, just, so much money, we're worried it might be fraud."
"Thank you for letting me know, I'll call back later, goodbye"
Then i look up my bank's phone number, and call that number, and tell them i received a call about suspicious activity on my account.
If it's real, they'll help me with it, and if it's not they'll confirm it's not true. Either way, i know i'm talking to the actual bank and not a scammer.
This works for ALL phone scammers, no matter how scary or time sensitive they try to tell you it is. If it's real, something like "i'm driving right now but i'll call back in a few minutes, no thank you i already have the contact information for your agency/business" is ALWAYS an acceptable answer, at most they will want to give you some kind of a case number before you hang up. The more they resist you calling them back from a number you look up, the more likely they are to be a scam.
It's important that YOU call the number of the agency/business. Don't let them "call you back from the main number", it's possible to spoof caller IDs including government numbers.
When Everything Everywhere All at Once said âThe only thing I do know is that we have to be kind. Please, be kind, especially when we donât know whatâs going on"Â
When the Good Place said âWhy choose to be good every day when there is no guaranteed reward now or in the afterlife⊠I argue that we choose to be good because of our bonds with other people and our innate desire to treat them with dignity. Simply put, we are not in this alone.âÂ
When Jean-Paul Sartre said ââHell is other peopleâ is only one side of the coin. The other side, which no one seems to mention, is also âHeaven is each otherâ. Hell is separateness, uncommunicability, self-centeredness, lust for power, for riches, for fame. Heaven on the other hand is very simple, and very hard: caring about your fellow beings.â
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