Becky
@beckvalle.bsky.social
Background in geography, archaeology, & programming - agent-based evacuation models - high performance computing - geographic information systems - learning Bangla - interested in many things - Formerly UIUC CIGI Lab & CyberGIS Center, Now USF - She/they
The scientific publishing landscape is an expensive, overwhelming, maze!
Paolo Crosetto@paolocrosetto.bsky.social · last yr.Want to know more? Give a follow to the strain team: Dan @danbrockington.bsky.social Mark @hansonmark.bsky.social Pablo @pagomba.bsky.social Head to the strain website: the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io/website/ Read the Strain paper: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Monday begins 1L orientation week at UofL Law. I'm sure many other schools will also be welcoming their newest future lawyers. Reupping this post, in which I offer some neo-Luddite advice on how to approach law school in a technologically cynical era. joedunman.substack.com/p/so-youre-g...
So You're Going to Law School
Advice to New Students in a Cynical Age
joedunman.substack.com
In fact, what we most need is funding to build out and stabilize the network of academic workers. We need more secure positions for people who work in universities, so they can do good teaching and research, day in and day out. We do not need to hire stars.
Nice initiative by @jaredwhite.com: a growing opt-in directory of software developers who write code by hand. If you're coding without the use of LLMs, you're invited to add yourself to the list… handcraftedcode.org #code #coder #coding #NoAI
We write code by hand: We use Natural Intelligence to build software.
We use Natural Intelligence to build software libraries and applications in production today. Some of them you may be using right now.
handcraftedcode.org
To write in the classic high fantasy mould, you need not be hung up on food specifically, but there must be SOME very mundane thing you're sincerely interested in and prepared to describe in excruciating detail every time it comes up. Clothing. Furniture. Architecture. It doesn't work without it.
You can also see very quickly the outliers on our where-to-publish life-sciences database where APCs are mostly based on the openAPC database www.openapc.net for-profit journals and especially Elsevier and Springer Nature journals are clearly at the top
Where to Publish?
wheretopublish.github.io
Th resigning editors say the publisher’s decision to become fully open access is “irreconcilable with our vision of science.” According to the journal’s homepage, all submissions from July 1 that end up in the journal will be subject to a $2,990 article processing charge (APC).
‘The exploitation still remains’: Stats journal associate editors resign over $3,000 publishing charge
Eighteen associate editors of the journal Statistics and Computing have announced they will resign after Springer Nature announced the journal would require a fee to publish. In a July 8 stat…
retractionwatch.com
Happy Friday everyone, as promised, here is my personal theory on this. I think Redwall takes place in our world, after an apocalyptic event of the nuclear variety caused rapid but varied growth of all animals, including humans, leading to our extinction and their mental development. Okay? 🧵
Nora@lighthousenora.bsky.social · 2w agoi would love your historical architecture take on the relative size of redwall abbey to its natural surroundings and inhabitants. like are we talking a tiny abbey in a tiny forest or what
Penn State Comp Lit departmental statement on in-class tech use (recommended), posting here in case you are working on one of your own or want to use/copy/edit for yourself.
Some of these resources might be useful? We dedicated a week to the decline of web search and other genealogies of digital discovery :)
Week 5: Surfing, Browsing, Scrolling, Crawling: Web Search and Digital Discovery - Search & Discovery - Cross-Reference Coalition Spring 2026
crossreference.wordsinspace.net
Matt Seybold@mattseybold.bsky.social · last wk.The cross-platform enshittification of search functionality is such an infuriating exercise of authoritarian creep. They would like to kill the inclination to find information & enforce satisfaction with be fed information.
I keep thinking about how often the mass layoffs in media, government and big companies, especially women and people of color, will lead to poorer outcomes for years because the people who would point out potential problems or blind spots were deemed non-essential, a "bad fit", and/or too expensive.
Haphazard reminder that the primary intended audience for comments in your analysis code is Future You. I am currently trying to repeat a general analysis I did ~11 years ago with a new data set, and my goodness would this be harder if I didn't have a lot of comments in my old script.
🌳 The Tree Library in Sweden is a 217-volume collection of wooden books. 📖 Each volume is dedicated to a different tree species and bound in that tree's own bark. Its pages feature the tree's leaves, mosses, lichens, and other natural materials. A very cool way to document nature.
Two pieces of writing to highlight around human voice in writing: dotart.blog/cobbles/ai-a... and thanks to that one, sightlessscribbles.com/posts/the-co...
AI and that Guy at the bar
In tech we've always had evangelists, weither it's for FOSS, or Blockchain or now AI. It's a natural thing to do. You have a tech you'r...
dotart.blog
maybe a more precise phrasing of the original point would be people can produce careless work or careful work but LLMs can only produce careless work, even if it is sometimes correct, because they are incapable of care
when i say i hate my phone, i'm absolutely saying i hate my phone, but i'm also saying i hate many of the requirements, distractions, indignities, and violations of modern (digital) life
If you use AI for your advertisement flyers, I'm going to make assumptions about you. I'm going to assume you cut corners on everything. If you're a bakery, I'm going to assume you use poor quality ingredients. If you're a handyman, same thing, I'll assume you cut corners on your work.
About 24% of U.S. employees stay in unwanted jobs just for health insurance, a report out Wednesday finds. Up significantly since 2021, the uptick in "job lock" is a concerning sign for the U.S. economy. n.pr/4gQIY5E
Staying in a job for the health insurance? About 1 in 4 Americans do, a survey says
About 24% of U.S. employees stay in unwanted jobs just for health insurance, a report out Wednesday finds. Up significantly since 2021, the uptick in "job lock" is a concerning sign for the U.S. economy.
n.pr
It matters that the thing you are sharing is AI slop, even (especially) when it matches your views well! It matters for text, audio, and video.
The library being "the last real third space" isn't a reason to keep adding new responsibilities to the library; it is a reason to create more third spaces.
"In a burning world we need to hold ourselves and each other to a higher standard. “Useful” is far, far from being good enough." https://tante.cc/2026/07/15/useful-is-not-sufficient/
"Useful" is not sufficient
So Linus Torvalds, head of the Linux kernel development, put his foot down on the Linux Kernel development mailing list when someone was bringing up criticism of LLMs: “Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issueswith that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it. Or just walk away. […]
tante.cc
A really interesting piece on reducing AI cheating in the classroom from a Professor of English and former Dean of Humanities at University of Utah. The solutions? Smaller classes, lower teaching loads for faculty, and in-person classes.
How to limit unauthorized AI use in the classroom
A handy rule
hollisrobbinsanecdotal.substack.com
I sometimes feel that I'd be able to do my job better if I had six clear months, or alternatively 2 days a week, just to read stuff, do courses, and noodle around with tech resources and ideas. Is this just an archivist/librarian/information professional thing?
No one doing more consistently unhinged work than the folks who design hotel showers. Containing the water to the shower itself? The lowest priority, have a half wall. The tile? The slipperiest imaginable, and just no regard for those who might have to shave their legs. Bunch of maniacs.
Really wish my bluetooth headphones didn't map the same button to "power off" and "open your music app and start playing something"!
this is interesting but i'm reluctant to get very attached to these analytical methods. a lot of computing researchers live for puzzles; if you tell them LLM outputs are identifiable by certain rhetorical cliches or structural tendencies, they'll work the puzzle until they make a system that doesn't
AI Fiction Is Easy to Detect Because It's Stupid and Bad, Research Finds
ChatGPT uses too many dream sequences and Gemini won’t stop describing characters.
404media.co
Can the human sciences exist w/out the human? Proposals for using AI as human research subjects suggest yes. But @mjcrockett.bsky.social and I respond with, ‘not so fast.’ In fact, silicon subjects say more about the problems of the research paradigm than the promises of AI. 🚨New article, thread 1/
AI Surrogates and illusions of generalizability in cognitive science
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have generated enthusiasm for using AI simulations of human research participants to generate new know…
sciencedirect.com
