@evan@cosocial.ca
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

evan

@evan@cosocial.ca

He/him. Board member at CoSocial.ca.

Director of Open Technology at Open Earth Foundation (OEF).

Founder of Wikitravel, StatusNet, identi.ca, Fuzzy.ai. CTO of Breather, TRU LUV and MTTR.

Creator of pump.io. Co-creator of GNU social.

Co-chair of the Social Web Working Group at W3C. Co-author of ActivityStreams 2.0. Co-author of ActivityPub. Co-author of OStatus.

Grad student in CS at Georgia Tech.

This network has been my life's work. Thanks for making it.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

OkieSpaceQueen, to random

When presenting to the general public in the planetarium I encounter people with a wide variety of misconceptions.

Some of them I understand.

There are a lot of people that think the moon doesn't rotate and I understand why they might think that.

There are a fewer people that think the moon might be flat, and when questioned I see why they thought that.

There are at least 3 people in Oklahoma and 1 in Kansas that thought the moon was the back of the sun. No idea where that's from.

evan,
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@Anke @OkieSpaceQueen yeah, absolutely. We also do replications of famous experiments in primary and secondary school, both to confirm what we've learned, and to practice the process of generating experimental evidence.

evan,
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@OkieSpaceQueen ha! I guess I feel like a lot of people downplay how much of a jump it is.

It took a lot of very smart people collaborating over centuries to propose, test, and confirm the heliocentric theory.

And a lot of the evidence is only easy to collect at certain times, like lunar eclipses or the equinox.

It's also not really actionable information for most of us in our daily lives.

evan,
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@OkieSpaceQueen I'm super sorry. I know you don't tell people they're dumb. I shouldn't have said it that way.

I also know that explaining how things are is a lot easier than explaining how we know they're that way.

Like, how we know the sun isn't on fire, and how we know the shape of the Milky Way.

They're tough, even if you're open to learning.

Anyway, it sounds like you do it the hard way, which I love to hear but also find terrifying. Thanks for the work you do.

evan, (edited )
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@OkieSpaceQueen so my question is, when people don't understand the heliocentric principle, do you tell them they're wrong and they should believe scientists, or do you take them step by step from the first approximation to the real situation?

UPDATE: I used the wrong language here; I said "dumb" when I meant "wrong" or "incorrect". OSQ wouldn't tell people they're dumb. I'm sorry for the clumsy wording.

evan,
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@OkieSpaceQueen I feel like I've seen this in children's books and comic strips. When day turns to night, the smiling sun face flips over like a coin, showing a smiling moon face.

evan,
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@OkieSpaceQueen so, I have a question for you.

Understanding that the moon, earth and sun are roughly spherical, all rotate, and are in orbit around each other is not immediately obvious, or even easy to prove.

You can live a pretty reasonable life with the first approximation that the earth is a flat surface, that the sun and moon are flat circles that move through the sky, and that they get from their setting point to their next rising point by moving underground or being recreated each day.

evan,
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@OkieSpaceQueen so, I think convincing people must be really hard!

evan,
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@barrygoldman1 this is a very cool process. Thanks for sharing it!

passthejoe, to fediverse
@passthejoe@ruby.social avatar

deleted_by_author

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    evan,
    @evan@cosocial.ca avatar

    @passthejoe so, I guess that's the difference between a cable TV channel and a human conversation.

    If I think of you as a TV channel, if I don't like what I see, I just switch to the next channel. You don't know or care about me, until your Nielsen ratings come in.

    If I think of you as a human being, I want to communicate with you, and I want to help you communicate with others. If we share values, and you might be making mistakes, I tell you. That's what we do for each other. We both care.

    foo, to random
    @foo@fosstodon.org avatar

    This is probably a terrible idea, but you can now print to the thermal receipt printer in my office by mentioning @lpd in your posts.

    I'm sure it'll be fine.

    https://github.com/rfinnie/mastodon-apps

    evan,
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    @foo xmpp, maybe irc

    mick, to fediverse
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    @evan do you have a favourite explainer (or explainers?)

    evan,
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    @mick not really. 🫤

    evacide, to random
    @evacide@hachyderm.io avatar

    Running a Mastodon instance is thankless work, which I imagine is why I've seen so many admins burn out already.

    evan,
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    @elplatt @evacide interesting! I was thinking more about human support. But maybe software changes would help too.

    evan,
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    @evacide so, how do we back these folks up? Catch them before they burn out?

    This is an existential threat to decentralization. We need to figure it out.

    evan, (edited ) to random
    @evan@cosocial.ca avatar

    If offered the chance, would you leave Earth?

    evan,
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    @Space6host we're not inherently toxic.

    And Earth is hurt but resilient. We can be part of a thriving planet here.

    evan,
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    @rbos weird. This seems unrelated to my question.

    evan,
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    This was interesting! I'm a qualified yes. I believe we will eventually inhabit the solar system, and I'd like to visit space. But Earth is home, and it's where I want to live permanently. I also would want to see lower carbon footprint to space travel before I'd go.

    evan,
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    @Space6host let's get started

    evan, to random
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    @timbray is there a good page on your blog that's a summary of your history with Atom? I'm thinking a lot about standards lately, and I feel like there could be some lessons there.

    evan,
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    @npd @timbray Ha! No, it's the hardest job in computers

    evan,
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    @timbray also, it's good to learn lessons from unsuccessful projects!

    evan,
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    @timbray OK, I'm in paragraph 4 and my heart broke about 3 times already

    evan,
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    @timbray now you know! It would not be indefensible to say we're using a direct descendent of Atom right now.

    evan,
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    @lmorchard Activity Streams Atom came first. Then the 1.0 JSON version. And now the 2.0 JSON-LD version.

    evan,
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    @timbray so, you're aware of how directly Atom is an antecedent to Activity Streams, right? And that AtomPub was the inspiration for the ActivityPub API? Our first API on StatusNet/GNU Social was AtomPub with ActivityStreams Atom objects as a command language.

    arstechnica, to random
    @arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

    tap tap Is thing thing on? 🎙️

    evan,
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    @arstechnica welcome!

    evan, to random
    @evan@cosocial.ca avatar

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