“Ooooh, shiny!” you exclaim, grasping any glimmer of distraction you can while wallowing in the horror of daily news.
>
> Lick
The biotite mica tastes of nothing, although you appreciate the smooth texture.
Your sensitive tongue picks up the microscopic cliff when it bumps over the tip of one layer to another.
>
> Peel
You pick at the mica book, careful to catch your nail along an edge to not scratch the soft mineral.
You carefully peel off a single layer, marvelling are the near-transparent thin flexible sheet.
You set aside the rest of the book to focus on the sheet.
>
> Play
You goof around with the mica sheet, bouncing and flexing it between your fingers.
You shine a beam of light through the mica and delight in its polarizing effects.
“You really are the best,” you inform the mineral.
>
> Zap zap zap
You layer sheets so its birefringent properties create quarter- & half-waveplates, then zap them with linearly polarized light.
You use the quarter-wave plate to shift linear vs circular polarization. With the half-wave plate, you rotate direction.
You grin.
>
> Industrialize
You look around and realize you have a significant biotite deposit appropriate for mining.
You set up camp. “But whatever shall I do with you?” you muse, turning the original mica book over in your hands.
>
> buzz zap zap
While strongly tempted to make the world a shinier place, you restrain yourself.
“Let there be light!” you cackle, then hunker down to develop the deposit’s natural bifringence and insulating properties into a source for optics & electronics.
You pocket your original book of mica, and checking one more to ensure industrial operations are running smoothly, set out again.
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).