David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈: I regularly meet people who learn for the first time about the ocean biodiversity crisis, and immediately, confidently, and wrongly say what we need to do to fix it. I tell them to instead find people who already know what to do and help them, not to reinvent the wheel. This is an election subtweet

I regularly meet people who learn for the first time about the ocean biodiversity crisis, and immediately, confidently, and wrongly say what we need to do to fix it. I tell them to instead find people who already know what to do and help them, not to reinvent the wheel. This is an election subtweet

hehe. reminds me of early pandemic when i was an aid volunteer. we had a whole task force to guide people that suddenly said “omg i should help” to existing aid groups, get them onboarded, etc it was never ending and really interesting to watch

i wish more people had studied that time and aid workers. what the helpers do. because it was fascinating to be a part of. i wanted to make a documentary about it. but in the end, i devoted my time to helping others instead of organizing people to film themselves

it was like living through the “corrupted blood” event on world of warcraft in real life heh. as many have pointed out. a bit different for aid work tho. and then the george floyd protests came, and so many groups splintered from the political rift, or devolved.

and that made more people want to join in. every big spike new people would say “omg we need to do something about this!” and then, suddenly try to start an aid group when they’ve never done that before, and make a bunch of useless stuff

because that was the biggest problem, people were making junk or toxic things or stuff that didn’t work so one group made a library of open source plans vetted by volunteer scientists and stuff but it was hard. haha even MICHAELS the craft store published bad plans.

michael’s said to make a mask with felt and hot glue. like what hot glue couldn’t last under some of the hospital disinfecting routines and it didn’t properly seal, and felt isn’t a great filter compared to other things they just completely made it up for people to buy

There is absolutely some university professor or researcher out there that's desperate to collect first hand accounts of the pandemic to gather the human side of things. I hope you can find them and tell them all this so they can do all three hard parts writing the book.

Actually, the best way to share your story is probably StoryCorps. They're working with the The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress to collect first-hand stories about the pandemic in the public record that's easily available to researchers or anyone. storycorps.org/covid-19-ame...

COVID-19 American History Projectstorycorps.org We're Building an Audio Archive of American Experiences with COVID-19 Every person in the United States has been impacted, and many are still affected, by the COVID-19 pandemic. The American Folklife ...

i hope so. unfortunately i’m very sick now, and i can’t focus on this. i wish i could have, and maybe one day i can. thank you for sharing, i’m glad people are capturing it

for now about all i can do is share here, when something comes up. and that’s been nice, remembering the old times, sharing our experiences with others i don’t want volunteer efforts to be forgotten. but we were never highlighted properly, even though we saved millions heh

ah, to be clear, i can no longer always speak. and when i can, i need to use my voice to communicate with doctors and get aid they started this project after i got sicker but i’m really glad it exists

Very understandable (I'm also disabled and caring for two other disabled people). I do like that Story Corps just looks for a natural conversation and not a formal interview, so it's a lot easier for disabled people. I hope you do have some better days.

yeah!! i love story corps i used to love watching their videos where they animate the stories. or listening to them. it’s so nice, and much more accessible for many people to contribute i hope you have some nice days ahead 💫

I know this is really about the election but while we're on the subject do you have any recommendations for people who have good ideas about how to fix the other thing

Also,, “waves at the entire tech industry”

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