You contemplate your find. All actions could apply to blue or yellow minerals, with drastically different consequences.
>
> Lick YELLOW mineral
Your tongue darts out, touching angular calcite crystals.
It tastes like nothing.
You lick more vigorously, appreciating the harsh geometric texture but picking up exactly zero flavour. It’s like sucking on a pearl, but with more interesting texture.
>
> Lick BLUE mineral
The cavansite dissolves slightly on your tongue with a faint hint metallic tang.
You know the hydrated calcium vanadium silicate is dangerous in large doses, but with vanadium common in everything from black pepper to dill, a quick lick is fine.
>
> Dribble acid
Knowing excessively licking cavansite may eventually lead to a green tongue and vanadium poisoning, you desist & bust out mild hydrochloric acid.
The blue cavansite does nothing.
The yellow calcite bubbles merrily as CaCO3 reacts to release carbon dioxide.
>
> Praise
“You are just the best combo of calcium-rich minerals I’ve seen!” you tell the calcite-cavansite confidently. “No one stores decently large ions as stylishly as you!”
“You’re the jaunty hat of minerals, you continue. “All those who deny you’re gems are FOOLS!”
>
> Pet
You run your fingers down the minerals, unable to resist gentle testing pushes and scrapes among the affectionate pets.
Both are harder than your nails, although the fan of cavansite needles feels brittle under your questing nudges.
>
> Take
You take the slightly-damp and much adored sample, tucking it carefully away until you can think of the best place to display it.
“Not every candy-rock is a deadly trickster,” you say smugly, “...even if it tasted blah.”
I’m reading a lot of well-intentioned articles that make it clear how many scicomm peeps have no idea disaster risk reduction is a deep field with a lot of research into effective communication.
ProTip: Using fear & shame as motivation backfires when applied to public health.
I can’t write this article (or even thread!) right now as I’m under medical orders to drop my stress levels (ahahahahasob), but...
If you’re writing well-intentioned pieces trying to influence pandemic behaviour, please take some cues from disaster sociology research. It exists!
Fundamental premise:
Vanishingly few people make active choices they believe will endanger themselves or the people they love.
If they’re making “bad” choices, it’s a fundamentally different risk perception. Until you understand how & why, your argument will miss its audience.
Even if you don’t pay much attention to ground-based astronomy, you know this telescope from pop culture & movies. It’s somewhere special. nature.com/articles/d4158…
This article from just before the closing announcement is fantastic for the context of why Arecibo is so unique: space.com/arecibo-observ…
I just...
I know we’ve got a lot going on, especially with the mass casualty event scheduled shortly after US Thanksgiving.
But take some time to read the Arecibo tributes as they come out. They won’t be cheerful. But they’ll be heartfelt.
But technically landslide are fluid-like, not fluids.
Why?
Because they’re a mixed mess of materials that act differently when moving than when still. You can’t just sample a tree trunk, some peat, and water to figure out the rheologic properties (how it flows).