For anyone interested, the kindle editions of The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin and Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Sword are on sale for $4.99 and $3.99, respectively.
Both books are the second in each series but just the kick in the pants I needed to check out The Broken Earth trilogy.
It's been ages since I've visited the hairy elephant! Just ducking in to share this charismatic little toothed mushroom, common name #earpickfungus! Notice how the stem is attached to the edge of the cap instead of the centre! Also this little mushroom is grown out of a Douglas Fir cone. What's not to love? They're so tiny they're easy to overlook. But if you slow down to start taking in the world of the small the world expands.... #mycology#mushroom#mushrooms#funghi#pilze#きのこ#wander
The Women Who Rode Miles on Horseback to Deliver Library Books
Librarians are amazing.
They were known as the “book women.” They would saddle up, usually at dawn, to pick their way along snowy hillsides and through muddy creeks with a simple goal: to deliver reading material to Kentucky’s isolated mountain communities.
The Camel Mobile Library Service lends more than 7,000 books to nomads in Kenya's impoverished North East Province, often because camels are the only means of crossing the inhospitable terrain. Many of the books are supplied by Book Aid International.
Public Books has a wonderful newsletter. This edition is all about the 220th anniversary of Haiti's independence and Haiti's influence on world politics since then: https://www.publicbooks.org/?utm_source=PUBLIC BOOKS Newsletter&utm_campaign=9e68afec90-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_01_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d048c39403-9e68afec90-181069426&mc_cid=9e68afec90&mc_eid=f8928db7e7
I guess we do #introduction posts over here? I work on the #neuroscience (am I doing those hashtags right!?) of learning and memory, specifically how we learn while we navigate space and context. To do this, I take in vivo recordings (currently calcium imaging but ephys has my heart) of freely moving rats! After that, I use computational and mathematical approaches to analyze their neural activity! I am currently a BRAIN Initiative K99/R00 postdoc at Northwestern working with John Disterhoft and Sara Solla. I was trained at MIT with Matt Wilson, where I got my PhD in biology, and my BS is from Carnegie Mellon. Welcome!
Ever since I got back from my knee injury, I have been playing some pretty good hockey (hope I didn't jinx myself). Had another solid game in the net this morning, and we pulled ahead to win, 7-5. I didn't have a chance on a couple and a few more were very frustrating, but I felt good, anticipated the play, and made some nice saves. I'm thinking of getting new goalie pads but that's like a $1,000 investment and I wonder how much longer I can keep going?
I have been doing something pretty amazing, for me at least. Not only am I getting books read and reviewed, I'm actually cutting into my ridiculously long Currently Reading list. It's down to only 6 books! I wrote 3 reviews yesterday. Unfortunately, none of them knocked me out, but hey, they can't all be grand slams. You can find my reviews here:
If you're in London and interested in my work, please join me for my inaugural professorial lecture entitled 'Architectures of Care: From Data-Driven Design to User Empathy'
7 March 2024, 7pm at UCL
All welcome!
Good news for people outside of London: there is now an option to join my inaugural professorial lecture on 'Architectures of Care: From data-driven design to user empathy' online via zoom live streaming.
#NLI buys Bonar Law collection of historic maps https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22343003/#Maps#IrishHistory Audrey Whitty, Director of the National Library of Ireland, talks to RTE about the acquisition of 19,000 maps and prints of Ireland going back to the 16th century.
@IrishStudiesQUB First question asked in the interview was my first question:
'Any connection to the early 20th c UK prime minister, who was an opponent of home rule?'
Answer given was not entirely clear, but collection is named not for the UK prime minister per se, but rather for the collector, who happens to be the prime minister's 90-year-old grandson and namesake.
[…] ISRAELISM uniquely explores how #Jewish attitudes towards #Israel are changing dramatically, with massive consequences for the region and for #Judaism itself.
[…] Zimmermann is part of a growing trend of young American Jews who are no longer satisfied with the one-sided narrative marketed to them in Jewish communities, Jewish schools, youth movements, and Birthright trips, but are starting to examine it critically, shaking off the automatic identification of #Judaism with loving Israel, and taking action against the occupation and for Palestinian rights.
[…] In debates with Palestinian students, Zimmermann recounts in the film, she felt again and again at a loss. "I remember there were Palestinian students who stood up and said: 'You cry over being silenced and marginalized, but my uncles and cousins couldn't sleep for weeks when bombs fell over their heads in #Gaza,'" she says. "I was thrown into these conversations where people used words I had never encountered: 'occupation,' 'settlements,' '#apartheid,' and 'ethnic cleansing.' I always thought I knew so much about Israel, but suddenly when they mentioned all these words, I didn't understand what they were talking about. I felt embarrassed that we couldn't respond to their claims. Do we not have any successful counterarguments besides 'double standards' and 'antisemitism'? This really troubled me."