@richardjefferiesmuseum Do you know @Hagukh ? A must follow for all who love #lichen #lichensubscribe
#FollowFriday

@ZLabe ... for helping with #Safeguarding I recommend to follow @SafeguardingResearch and become part of the crowd.

@nora

At times I feel like Mastodon is like the old webrings in WordPress blogs in the 00s. If you find a few people you like and you use their recommendations to find others. Before long you notice you are treading down the same corridors of the internet house day after day and all of the webrings feed back to the same 60 people.

It takes effort to go find the garage or the bathroom or even a kitchen sometimes. #FollowFriday does help with that though.

Some numbers. $2,500 is left on our fundraiser. We're halfway. I'd freaking love to hit that.

But if we can't, bare-bones I need $300 for a generator rental (we are off-grid and fully self-powered. More funds and I'll do bigger solar this gear), $100 for educational decor, and I pulled $700 from my (meager) savings for poorer campers already.

$1,100 would do a LOT.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/there-u-glow-radical-educational-electronics-camp-fundraiser

Last of all, Atlas Obscura’s story about a giant almond that’s driving its way around America, and the uniquely American habit of making massive food vehicles, which @CultureDesk shared earlier this week. They wanted to know if any other countries had Poutine Mobiles, Camembert Camions or Kartoffelwagens. “Keep your wiener and almonds to yourselves,” wrote one commenter.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/promotional-food-vehicles

@thecontinent has a guest post this week from the Harare Review of Books. Here’s a review of Freda Epum’s memoir, “The Gloomy Girl Variety Show,” a book about the Nigerian-American writer and artists’s search for belonging in Tucson, Arizona. “Epum may call herself a gloomy girl, but she is cool to hang out with in these pages. Her memoir is lively, sometimes sad, and always vulnerable. And she is upbeat, if somewhat wry. It’s a raw, beautiful and deep work,” the review concludes.

https://continent.substack.com/p/review-gloom-to-manoeuvre

#Nigeria #Tucson #Arizona #Books #Bookstodon @bookstodon #Memoirs #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday

Race isn’t a “biological reality.” For @TheConversationUS, professor John P. Jackson, Jr. looks at the evidence that says race was invented by humans, not nature.

https://theconversation.com/race-isnt-a-biological-reality-contrary-to-recent-political-claims-heres-how-scientific-consensus-on-race-developed-in-the-20th-century-253504

#Race #History @histodons #Science #Anthropology #USPolitics #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday

Postal services in some areas of the USA are unreliable, so it makes sense to have a grace period when it comes to returning election ballots — at least, that’s been the case for a number of years in around half of the states across the political spectrum. @bolts reports on how that’s changing. “This past March alone brought news that two states … will repeal their grace periods; that conservative federal judges are on the brink of killing grace periods in two other states; and that Trump, who for years has falsely alleged rampant mail-voting fraud, wants to pressure the rest of the nation to reject every mail ballot that arrives after polls close,” writes Alex Burness.

https://boltsmag.org/restrictions-on-grace-periods-for-mail-ballots/

How might stress affect cancer? It’s a question that’s been asked for millennia. @KnowableMag reports on the hundreds of sometimes contradictory studies that have been done on the subject, and how scientists are finding consensus.

https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/health-disease/2025/how-stress-affects-cancer

“Ever notice how Russia’s always the bad guy?” Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted back in March, claiming that Hollywood is responsible for the world’s negative perception of the former USSR. @damemagazine’s Zeb Larson says actually Marj, it’s a bit more complicated than that. He takes us from the 19th century through WWII and the Cold War to today to explain America and Russia’s constantly evolving relationship.

https://www.damemagazine.com/2025/04/08/hasnt-russia-always-been-our-worst-enemy/

#History @histodons #Russia #USA #MarjorieTaylorGreene #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday

The Starlink service has been critical for the Ukrainian military, but owner Elon Musk is far from a reliable partner. @timkmak’s Counteroffensive looks at the search for alternatives. There are currently four in the frame: Luxembourg's SES, Spain's Hisdesat, Britain's Viasat, and France's Eutelsat/OneWeb. “We can successfully defend the country without Starlink. We did it at the very beginning of the full-scale invasion, and we can do it now. It is more difficult, more expensive… but it is possible,” says Volodymyr Stepanets, who works with a group that deals with the repair and procurement of Starlink terminals.

https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/can-ukrainian-soldiers-survive-without