Calamansis - Plant Biochemist

Lyft just offered me free credits to break the strike this week.

There’s a lyft / uber strike planned this week from 7am to 9pm on Wednesday May 8th. I got a notification this morning that every ride taken this week gives me credit on future rides. I found that tempting but then remembered why they are doing it - to encourage folks to cross a picket line. I for one won’t be taking advantage of this offer, as I stand in solidarity with people utilizing their right to free speech to bargain for better working conditions.

Consider this a friendly reminder to those who follow me that this is happening, and I hope you’ll support the apps’ drivers in their quests for better pay.

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calamansis

5 years ago

ireland sending aid to native americans affected by the corona virus in return for their help during the famine that is truly iconic, big brain activity

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calamansis

5 years ago

Remember the Women Who Made #Apollo50th Possible

As the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the historic Moon landing, we remember some of the women whose hard work and ingenuity made it possible. The women featured here represent just a small fraction of the enormous contributions made by women during the Apollo era.

Margaret Hamilton, Computer Programmer

Margaret Hamilton led the team that developed the building blocks of software engineering — a term that she coined herself. Her systems approach to the Apollo software development and insistence on rigorous testing was critical to the success of Apollo. In fact, the Apollo guidance software was so robust that no software bugs were found on any crewed Apollo missions, and it was adapted for use in Skylab, the Space Shuttle and the first digital fly-by-wire systems in aircraft.

In this photo, Hamilton stands next to a stack of Apollo Guidance Computer source code. As she noted, “There was no second chance. We all knew that.”

Katherine Johnson, Aerospace Technologist

As a very young girl, Katherine Johnson loved to count things. She counted everything, from the number of steps she took to get to the road to the number of forks and plates she washed when doing the dishes.

As an adult, Johnson became a “human computer” for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which in 1958, became NASA. Her calculations were crucial to syncing Apollo’s Lunar Lander with the Moon-orbiting Command and Service Module. “I went to work every day for 33 years happy. Never did I get up and say I don’t want to go to work.“

Judy Sullivan, Biomedical Engineer

This fabulous flip belongs to biomedical engineer Judy Sullivan, who monitored the vital signs of the Apollo 11 astronauts throughout their spaceflight training via small sensors attached to their bodies. On July 16, 1969, she was the only woman in the suit lab as the team helped Neil Armstrong suit up for launch.

Sullivan appeared on the game show “To Tell the Truth,” in which a celebrity panel had to guess which of the female contestants was a biomedical engineer. Her choice to wear a short, ruffled skirt stumped everyone and won her a $500 prize. In this photo, Sullivan monitors a console during a training exercise for the first lunar landing mission.

Billie Robertson, Mathematician

Billie Robertson, pictured here in 1972 running a real-time go-no-go simulation for the Apollo 17 mission, originally intended to become a math teacher. Instead, she worked with the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, which later became rolled into NASA. She created the manual for running computer models that were used to simulate launches for the Apollo, Skylab and Apollo Soyuz Test Project programs.

Robertson regularly visited local schools over the course of her career, empowering young women to pursue careers in STEM and aerospace.

Mary Jackson, Aeronautical Engineer

In 1958, Mary Jackson became NASA’s first African-American female engineer. Her engineering specialty was the extremely complex field of boundary layer effects on aerospace vehicles at supersonic speeds.

In the 1970s, Jackson helped the students at Hampton’s King Street Community center build their own wind tunnel and use it to conduct experiments. “We have to do something like this to get them interested in science,” she said for the local newspaper. “Sometimes they are not aware of the number of black scientists, and don’t even know of the career opportunities until it is too late.”

Ethel Heinecke Bauer, Aerospace Engineer

After watching the launch of Sputnik in October 1957, Ethel Heinecke Bauer changed her major to mathematics. Over her 32 years at NASA, she worked at two different centers in mathematics, aerospace engineering, development and more.

Bauer planned the lunar trajectories for the Apollo program including the ‘free return’ trajectory which allowed for a safe return in the event of a systems failure — a trajectory used on Apollo 13, as well as the first three Apollo flights to the Moon. In the above photo, Bauer works on trajectories with the help of an orbital model.

Follow Women@NASA for more stories like this one, and make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

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calamansis

5 years ago

This 4th of July, celebrate the world you want to live in. Help reunite families by freeing imprisoned migrants held on bond.

On any given day in the U.S., there are over 55,000 people in immigration detention including children. Every day, community bond funds raise money to free our friends and neighbors from immigration detention and make sure they are able to work on their case from a place of freedom.

Your contribution to the 2019 Freedom Day Fund at the Community Justice Exchange will be distributed across the immigration bond funds of the National Bail Fund Network to help post bond for individuals in immigration detention.

For more information about the immigration bond funds of the National Bail Fund Network, go to bit.ly/localbailfunds.

National: Freedom for Immigrants, Haitian Immigrant Bond Assistance Project, LGBTQ Freedom Fund, RAICES Bond Fund

Arizona: Pima Monthly Meeting Immigration Bond Fund

California: Al Otro Lado - Vida Libre Bond Fund, Bay Area Immigration Bond Fund, Immigrant Families Defense Fund, Orange County Justice Fund, Borderlands Get Free Fund

Colorado: Immigrant Freedom Fund of Colorado

Connecticut: Immigrant Bail Fund

Iowa: Eastern Iowa Community Bond Project

Massachusetts: Beyond Bail & Legal Defense Fund

Michigan: Kent County I-BOND Fund

Minnesota: Minnesota Freedom Fund

New Hampshire: NH Conference UCC Immigrant & Refugee Support Group

New York: LIFE Bond Fund, New York Immigrant Freedom Fund

Ohio (and Northern Kentucky): 3R Fund for Immigrants

Texas: Fronterizo Fianza Fund, Hutto Community Deportation Defense & Bond Fund, RAICES Texas Bond Fund

Vermont: Vermont Freedom Bail Fund

Virginia: Cville Immigrant Fond Fund