@erisceleste @mike_bowler It could still be worse… (at a recent conference).

You gather your most expensive people into a room to make your most important decisions. Then, somewhere in the second hour, the room quietly gets worse at making them. Not the people. The room.

I now travel with a portable CO2 monitor. Outdoors it reads around 400 parts per million. In a closed meeting room with a handful of people in it, I have watched it climb past 2,000. The photo here is a real reading: 2,143.

That number matters more than it looks. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory put people in a chamber and varied only the CO2. At 1,000 ppm, performance dropped significantly on six of nine decision-making measures compared with a clean-air baseline of 600. At 2,500 ppm, seven of the nine fell substantially, some into a range they called dysfunctional. A separate study out of Harvard found cognitive scores declining as CO2 rose, with the steepest losses in exactly the domains you called the meeting for: strategy, planning, and using information under pressure.

Continue reading on my blog because it's too long for here. https://blog.mikebowler.ca/2026/07/03/co2-and-decision-making/

Callback to something I posted a few months ago: Libraries spent decades crafting policies and best practices to protect data about their readers because they understand how much your reading habits can reveal about you. Then we go and volunteer all of that data (and more) to for-profit companies with a financial motive to exploit everything they collect, in exchange for some pretty graphs and middling book recommendations.

RE: https://sunny.garden/@NyxMir/116814663018153908

Last day to apply!

My #artAdventCalendar is running a bit late and out of sorts as to be expected so I thought I’d make it up by starting off with a twofer:

Day 1 - Kamakura Lens Flares

hello!

reminder to my fellow fedizens to PLEASE, PLEASE put CWs on heavy topics and CW boost posts containing them if the original post doesn't have one. if you don't then there is a large chance I'll unfollow you per @aperture's advice just so I'm not flooding everyone's timelines with unCWed stuff. if you get unfollowed cause of this, feel free to send me a DM once you change your behavior and I will gladly re-follow

thanks!

RE: https://mastodon.social/@gutenberg_org/116818071367339030

Imagining a bunch of librarians with thick New York accents offering to "take care of your little problem".

Be aware that a malicious website is using guttenberg.org (two “T” not one) to distribute malware. We haven’t been able to neutralize them yet, still working on it.

This is my custom foiled drawing of Rambo the cute stray puppy found in Ukraine! This piece helped raise $2000 for Ukraine!

#dog #art

Marginalia search is great for sifting past all the big tech results that usually show up in search and for finding smaller websites

hello fedi! looking for an actually decent search engine! any recommendations?

by actually decent i mean:
- no "ai". zero. whatsoever. zilch. nada. none. did i mention zero.
- not just repackaging results from other search engines
- not run by complete and utter fuckwads

thanks! :) /gen

@asklemmy @askfedi #AskFedi #DuckDuckFedi

mutual aid request please 🌱

(i’m so sorry, but)
i had to stop working in may due to a serious deterioration in my health. things are pretty bad here now to the point where i need (and want! i miss it :bunhdsad:) to start again, but my thumb and shoulder keep dislocating and i’m sometimes too weak to stand. and it’s not even safe for the kiln/fire until this horrendous heat ends.



i’m a disabled, chronically ill and autistic nonbinary sculptor living with my husband and our two cats, one of whom also has chronic illness. my business has been decimated since the introduction of the tariffs last autumn and the global economic situation, and now my health is collapsing too.



i’ve finally, miraculously got a GP (hooray!) who's helping me apply for disability benefits. but it could be a year before i know if i'm approved, and i don’t know what we’ll do till then: she isn’t treating me as she doesn’t know how to deal with my illnesses. and there’s no cure anyway.



husband works as much as he can, but he can’t make enough for us both. rent and bills are due, the cat and i need health stuff, and our electricity bill’s going to be through the roof because we’ve had to keep fans on during the heatwave (we’ve had 43/110 this week). so if anyone is able send us a few currency units, we’d be very grateful.



thank you so much, and please take care, whatever the world is like where you are.

🍃🩵

https://ko-fi.com/moon_bun

#MutualAid

I'm doing a workshop with ME Action! Come learn body mapping art and connect with community~

Space is limited, so please apply before June 30th.

https://www.meaction.net/event-details/art-workshop-with-nyx-mir

A few notes:
- This is a body mapping art workshop! It doesn't specify in their description, but I'm going to be teaching about how we can use body mapping to affirm our lived experiences.

- There will be some homework before we meet in order to allow the in-real-time meeting component to focus on kinship, support, and (optional) feedback. I always hear from participants they could have spent more time on that section, so by sharing the lecture ahead of time, I'm hoping we can honor that!

- Not sure if you're up for it? The people who will probably gain the most from this workshop are folks who have complicated relationships with their bodies, whether for personal or external/systemic reasons. A lot of body-focused spaces are either very body-negative or body-positive, and often inaccessible. I'm working for this to be a space where wherever you're at in relationship to your flesh suit is understood and supported.

Questions? @ me or illmarks @ nyxmir dot com

#MECFS #LongCovid #postViral #postAcute

Good reminder as folks are trying to get through hot weather: the most effective way to ventilate a home for over-night cooling is to open all windows and place a fan at least 50cm (18”) away from one window blowing *out*.

https://youtu.be/1L2ef1CP-yw?si=gqz9BN74gw3XmJDA

I'm not handling the application process, that's on ME Action's end, but we are hoping to do more of these (and the future ones might have more of the process ironed out), so please don't stress if you don't get in. :disabled_heart:

I'm doing a workshop with ME Action! Come learn body mapping art and connect with community~

Space is limited, so please apply before June 30th.

https://www.meaction.net/event-details/art-workshop-with-nyx-mir

A few notes:
- This is a body mapping art workshop! It doesn't specify in their description, but I'm going to be teaching about how we can use body mapping to affirm our lived experiences.

- There will be some homework before we meet in order to allow the in-real-time meeting component to focus on kinship, support, and (optional) feedback. I always hear from participants they could have spent more time on that section, so by sharing the lecture ahead of time, I'm hoping we can honor that!

- Not sure if you're up for it? The people who will probably gain the most from this workshop are folks who have complicated relationships with their bodies, whether for personal or external/systemic reasons. A lot of body-focused spaces are either very body-negative or body-positive, and often inaccessible. I'm working for this to be a space where wherever you're at in relationship to your flesh suit is understood and supported.

Questions? @ me or illmarks @ nyxmir dot com

#MECFS #LongCovid #postViral #postAcute

i hope that makes sense the brain fog is setting in harrrrrd.

(I also am daydreaming about taking the train to the exhibit but I think that's probably a financial and spoon investment beyond any wise choices, especially if making a couple things in photoshop today wrecked me this hard :oh_no_bubble: )

making myself sign off now! sending lots of love to you, yes, you!

I'm especially hyped on this exhibit because my health journey started with tending to my mental health, and those tools continue to serve me every day.

While I still have hard times, I'm in a much much better place than I was 2 decades ago -- I never thought I'd live with this little generalized anxiety and depression, but I guess it really can get better. :dustSprite: ✨

And though sometimes mental/physical health is a helpful shorthand, our brains are part of our bodies, and our mental health impacts other areas of our body. I'm really glad to share some impacts of multi-systemic illness and art as therapy in an exhibit about therapy and mental health.

The piece in particular that was chosen, starts with physical symptoms, then cognitive/mental/emotional symptoms, and finally social and systemic systems, which feels especially apt for it.

The other piece I submitted for the disability & illness magazine's black & white slot is "Caution" :Blobhaj_Read_MD:

* thank you @SRLevine for helping name it!

Per usual, I'm accepting donations on my ko-fi to offset the shipping costs. Please only donate if you can do so comfortably, and your loved ones are secure. :Blobhaj_Heart_Trans: :disabled_heart:
https://ko-fi.com/mircat

If you'd like to learn more about how I put this work out in the world, or just see what has been possible thanks to ko-fi supporters like you, I post all upcoming, current and past exhibits at:
https://www.illmarks.com/exhibits

(And I hooope to have a new virtual workshop event to announce in the near future! :blobcatpeek: )