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 it’s doable even if you’re snowed under with survival work or in too much pain to concentrate for longer periods.
It’s multiply-checked by more than one person, so don’t 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 don’t 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/
A member of my tiny painting club is a Digimon fan, so it's giving me an excuse to delve into a whole new series of Creatures and Little Guys. I really like the planty ones, so I picked Palomon to start!
i’m not Jewish but now i’m also captivated by the concept of a menorah borealis, and I didn’t see anyone else drawing it. Hope you like it & hope everyone who celebrates has a lovely Hanukkah. <3
edit: now with the correct number of branches for a Hanukkah menorah.
[ID originally by @accessible-tumbling: Art of the northern lights, which is shown as lighting up the entire sky in colors of green, cyan, yellow, and orange, drawn in the shape of a 9-branched menorah, with the outermost branches mostly obscured. The background is a purple, starry sky, and along the bottom are the black silhouettes of trees and the ground. End ID.]
tweet transcript in alt text. image ID: a clip-art picture of a hanukkiah with nine burning candles, standing amongst gelt pieces. above it in cursive font are the words "Happle Hanukkah." end ID
So sometimes I draw characters as cartoon mice for no reason, sometimes I'm watching a stream while that happens, here's @invisoguy and Barry as mice (based on their avatars)
dailybridgerton
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
tangentwithtanner
origamiaround
jbbartram-illu
germansingergirl
snowghoul
areudirty
