@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

paulcox

@paulcox@toot.wales

I'm Paul, based in London and run the software side of things at Mossy Earth - a rewilding and reforestation company. We have a membership for people to help rewild our planet. You can check out our website https://mossy.earth and YouTube videos of our projects https://www.youtube.com/c/MossyEarth.

I also love sport, live music, complexity science.

He/ him

Bookwyrm: https://bookwyrm.social/user/paulcox

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

Philsturgeon, to random
@Philsturgeon@mastodon.green avatar

The people of England have spoken, and with a powerful and undeniable voice we have said:

Fuck off Tories.

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@Philsturgeon and obviously this means that green party will now get 1/3rd of the media coverage of the conservatives... 😅

bastianallgeier, to random
@bastianallgeier@mastodon.social avatar

I'm going through various AI coding helpers for a few months now. I want to keep an open mind and understand if there's something really mind-blowingly helpful. But so far, I haven't found anything that is more than "nice to have". I think it's also a lot about the tasks that we need to solve at @getkirby Coding speed is never really an issue. That's why I don't massively profit from autocompletion help. The obstacles are always conceptual questions. Did you find anything indispensable for you?

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@bastianallgeier @getkirby yeah, I haven't used one yet but I imagine that in the same way that writing helps me sort through my thoughts, I need the process of coding to think through my thoughts around the problem. I guess it could be useful to replace quick googling of how to do something simple that I've forgotten for the 100th time, but doesn't seem worth it for that.

aral, to random
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Mastodon becoming a US entity with a neoliberal board of directors and the goal of growth über alles is the issue here folks, not whether Eugen and company are compensated for their work. Of course they should be and well too. Or is that a privilege reserved only for the mediocre yes-people at the Googles and the Facebooks of the world?

Here’s a longer thread I wrote elsewhere. (1/7)

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@aral yeah, the whole "you shouldn't get paid well for doing something good" e.g. people working for charities, is such an interesting societal reflex. I find it really confusing, but also notice I have some of the same initial gut reaction that I can't really explain.

benjamingeer, to uk
@benjamingeer@zirk.us avatar

“we have taken the decision to phase out Anthropology, Art History, Health & Social Care, Journalism, Music & Audio Technology, and Philosophy/Religious Studies.”

https://www.kent.ac.uk/news/statements/34743/future-plans-for-kent-2


via @pvonhellermannn

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@pvonhellermannn @RadicalAnthro @spangled_drongo @benjamingeer I've heard @snowded talk a lot about this as well in relation to the shift to supporting STEM education, and so only the wealthy can afford to learn the skills to lead (paraphrasing)

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@RadicalAnthro @pvonhellermannn haha, I've watched/ listened to so much of him that I'm not sure what it was in but I'll try and find something. Unless he sees this and can provide a better source than me! @spangled_drongo @benjamingeer @snowded

paulcox, to nature
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

National Geographic now includes Funga alongside Flora and Fauna in their definition of wildlife https://youtu.be/2DsnWcWeyoI?si=2uC_UvIq0k-KRaEa

simon_brooke, (edited ) to random
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

If you really want to understand what good, kindly, humane, generous, civilised people the Elizabethan English were, and why the Irish love and honour England so much to this day, just listen to this episode.

The Irish Passport: Conquest: Scorching The Earth

Episode webpage: https://soundcloud.com/theirishpassport/conquest-scorching-the-earth

Media file: http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/1769231778-theirishpassport-conquest-scorching-the-earth.mp3

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@simon_brooke I think it does a disservice to everyone involved that we don't get taught these things in school in England

paulcox, to random
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

If anyone wants to support the work we're doing at Mossy Earth but doesn't want to get a membership for themselves at the moment, then feel free to add to my profile! :) https://mossy.earth/platform/profiles/PAU6IXNHGL

jaz, to Rugby
@jaz@toot.wales avatar

:EnglandRugby: :IrishRugby: Match Thread

hunting for back to back grand slams, looking for a way to stop that from happening.

Game on! @rugby

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@jaz @rugby which isn't a position I expected to be in!

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@jaz @rugby I almost didn't make an effort to watch it as I had some vague other plans and feared how painful it might be... I'm glad I did watch!

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

Happy !

Day 26: Bama football

Q: OK fine! There's a lot of racism! But we can't do anything about it! You can't change hearts and minds! I've flipped from denial to helplessness! Talking about racism depressed me and makes me feel bad, because we can't do anything about it! So, can you stop talking about it?

A: No, we won't stop talking about it. Yes, we can do something about it. Let's look at one specific example of a reduction in racism, driven by racists themselves! 🙂🙃

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@mekkaokereke do you reckon there was any nudging of Alabama fans to being less racist from this? Or too minor a nudge in the grand scheme of things?

paulcox, to conservative
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

Our latest video, not specifically project related this time, is on beavers https://youtu.be/mWd0nvTENfI?si=Cv8kJL-BfuBRa9Cx

cheeaun, to mastodon
@cheeaun@mastodon.social avatar

Been trying this out secretly for the past few weeks — a "catch-up" timeline page. Did whole bunch of iterations, where I myself is the guinea pig, but this time reaching a point where I just got to share it out in the public.

  • NOT final design, still very experimental, only on my local machine
  • Instead of algo timeline, this is focused on data-grid-like UI for configuring exactly what I want to see.
  • This honestly could be another full-fledged app/client by itself 🫠

Demo of Catch-up page where it shows the Home/Following timeline with configurable filters and sort options.

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@cheeaun this looks super interesting and promising. Would it have the option to "pin" particular accounts? There are definitely some people I'd like to more easily make sure I'm not missing any posts from, without having to get explicitly notified of new posts

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@cheeaun curious, is this more, less, or doesn't a make difference to resource usage on an instance? I guess highly dependent on someone's mastodon usage? Also, have you played around with different types of 'popularity' metrics? e.g. very rough one off of the top of my head, a post's likes / their follower count, as a way to not have things skewed to just large accounts.

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@cheeaun I guess both things like API calls, plus things like CPU on a server i.e. curious the impact on a server's hosting costs.

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@cheeaun I was thinking more of an aggregate popularity sorting e.g. giving a post a popularity score based on the number of likes divided by the number of followers. Kind of like a relative popularity of a post for the user. Interested if this is a better metric than sorting based on number of likes as posts from larger accounts are more likely to appear at the top and so I might miss particularly interesting posts from smaller accounts I follow.

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@cheeaun yeah fair. I think an extra sort option based on a score would be useful, but I understand your reasoning.

alx, to random
@alx@mastodon.design avatar

What I love about being here is that most conversation bring in more knowledge. As my background is in architecture, I've been ranting about the dualism urbanisation v nature since forever. So I am very please that thanks to an exchange with @paulcox I found this article:

https://www.mossy.earth/rewilding-knowledge/rewilding-cities

which, in such dire times, it's a refreshing reading.

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@alx yeah, I've definitely had my most fruitful discussions on a social platform on here! Glad you enjoyed the article, although it could probably do with some updates these days!

I was actually at a community volunteer wildlife habitat building event in London yesterday, so there is definitely interest in Urban rewilding even in London! Might find this interesting as well https://youtu.be/MVJ9o4_-sSg?si=lEjWLTzHHzIWenV-

pvonhellermannn, to random
@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green avatar

Now this is a story that has cheered me up (not much, recently). It sounds like a really wonderful, thought-through regenerative project - tree planting done the right way.

And: it is wonderful to see the efforts of people like Guy Shrubsole, George Monbiot and Eoghan Daltun, campaigning and writing about UK and Irish for years, bear fruit. All this work does matter. Spurs me on a bit again!

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/29/more-than-100000-trees-to-be-planted-in-devon-to-boost-celtic-rainforest?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@alx @pvonhellermannn Maybe not quite the same, as maybe depends on what scale, but seems related to one of the reasons we've recently shifted to focusing more on landscape scale hubs at Mossy Earth rather than more scattered partner projects (although we are still planning on doing these, but more focussed on areas that struggle to get traditional funding, particularly around research or incubator/ feasibility studies)

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@alx @pvonhellermannn although I think it also depends what you are aiming for, I think there's a net positive even for a bunch of these if it has community involvement and improves people's connection to "nature" e.g. little community wildlife habitat building. It just helps to be clear what each thing is aiming for, and that we need both... scattered community projects shouldn't hide the need for more joined up efforts to go along with them.

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@alx @pvonhellermannn I don't know it in much detail but maybe more combined approaches like https://www.wealdtowaves.co.uk/ would help?

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@alx @pvonhellermannn yeah, this wouldn't be my definition of patchwork, but I agree with your points

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@alx @pvonhellermannn haha, yep, that's us :) glad the YouTube algorithm is doing its work!

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@alx @pvonhellermannn although I should be clear that that project is actually one of our partner projects (although one we're involved in very closely), although the partner does approach it, and all of their projects, in that overall similar holistic way

pvonhellermannn, to random
@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green avatar

Storm has turned out to be quite bad. A fatality, storm damage and flood alerts across the country. and ongoing rain in Germany too, and maybe elsewhere? We will have more and more of all this, of course.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/03/uk-weather-storm-henk-more-than-300-flood-warnings-in-england?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

paulcox,
@paulcox@toot.wales avatar

@maudenificent @NatureMC @pvonhellermannn @sahqon @Judeet88 I still need to read his new one, I haven't found it out in UK yet

Edit: Although just seen it is now available as an ebook on Kobo, so will check with my local store again!

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