Big math news! It’s been thirty years since mathematicians last found a convex pentagon that could “tile the plane.” The latest discovery (by Jennifer McLoud-Mann, Casey Mann, and David Von Derau) was published earlier this month. Full story.
“If Elon Musk has his way, the effects on Twitter of his buying up the social media platform will end up being the least of our problems. To get a sense of how bad this could get, it’s instructive to look at the parallels between Musk’s Twitter acquisition and the creation of Fox News. When Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch started Fox News in the late 1990s, they envisioned the channel as a counterbalance to the rest of the supposedly liberal media, a cudgel to deploy against the news media to get coverage for manufactured controversies and right-wing misinformation. Musk views Twitter in much the same way that Murdoch and Ailes saw Fox at its inception. To Musk, social media companies haven’t just gone too far in addressing extremism, bigotry, and disinformation – they shouldn’t be addressing these issues at all. Musk’s vision of Twitter isn’t simply as a platform free from constraints, but as an instrument to counterbalance the “woke” social networks. As Twitter’s new owner, Musk will open the floodgates of hate and lies by undoing a host of very basic protections against harassment, abuse, and disinformation. There is a reason why banned users—ranging from Roger Stone and Marjorie Taylor Greene to QAnon and Infowars conspiracy theorists to white supremacists—are all celebrating this acquisition and gleefully anticipating the restoration of their accounts.”
The second this purchase is finalized, every fascist in the world will be handed a megaphone so loud and unaccountable, they will use it to drown out every voice that isn’t their own.
This is a DISASTER for marginalized people, and a deadly weapon for autocrats.
he’s gonna reinstate trump’s account just in time for the real push of his 2024 election campaign. watch. just. fucking watch.
What did the decorator crab say after molting? “I’m beside myself!”
Thanks to Aquarist Kelsey and the rest of the cheer squad for capturing this crustacean sensation!
Crabs and other crustaceans have an exoskeleton—like full-body shoes they operate from within. As they grow larger, the selfie-shoes get smaller. Eventually, they need to make some new kicks out of themshellves.
A molting crab will use a specialized organ to pull valuable building blocks out of their current carapace—this is why crab molts on the beach are so brittle! The crabs then back out of the old exoskeleton, emerging as a “soft shell crab”!
The crab then inflates its flexible new outerwear by pumping itself full of water. The new carapace hardens over time, a size or two too big for its current resident, giving the crab a little more time to dwell on its next full-body makeover!
