"The effectiveness of speed safety cameras in reducing crashes and speeding is not in dispute, with studies showing that they can reduce crashes by 14% and cause tickets issued to fall 75%[.]"

David Zipper@davidzipper.bsky.social · yesterday

A story of cause and effect: Last November, Ontario banned cities from using speed safety cameras to issue tickets. Reckless speeding immediately surged in Toronto, Ottawa, Guelph, and cities throughout the province. A 🧵 about my latest in Bloomberg (gift link)

This kind of thing (I’m the one on the far left) is the reason I’m still itchy and my body is covered with the bites of various flies and mites, despite wearing long pants and sleeves and liberally DEETing myself

Sean McCann@ibycter.bsky.social · 2d ago

BugShot participants examining some leftover bricks

Found using my tried and true “look around while taking a pee” method of locating cool spiders

Sean McCann@ibycter.bsky.social · 2d ago

Catherine found this big huntsman in the grasses.

Catherine found this big adult Latrodectus geometricus. They seem common across the savannah

This just in! Orthoptera trying to look like grass! Shocking!

More araneophagic theridiid hijinks. Here, one of those Rhomphaea-like theridiids lures an unsuspecting orbweaver

Johan tosses Ivar again and again. Yeah, Ivar enjoys this.

Ivar quickly returned for more (my thought is he loves both biting AND being tossed, so this is a win-win for him)

One way Johan had of telling Ivar to cut out the nipping was unconventional, if temporarily effective: yeeting aforementioned otter away

Iva sometimes plays a bit rough, and Johan yelped frequently

I headed down to the riverside after lunch and found Johan (The waterdog daddy) with the waterdog in question, Ivar.

I filed another FOIA request in May of 2025 asking for details of why the Spartan Mosquito Pro Tech was registered over the objections of career scientists. The EPA has delayed its response multiple times (due to "unusual circumstances") but now claims it will send me documents on August 4th.

In emails I've obtained via FOIA, scientists at the U.S. EPA fully understood that the Spartan Mosquito Pro Tech does not kill mosquitoes. But their objections were overruled by higher-ups (political appointees) and the agency granted the tube a registration. So it is now an EPA-approved scam.

Spartan Mosquito of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, is 10 years old! Scamming hundreds of thousands of Americans each year with its yeast-and-sugar tubes that kill ants. Innocent ants. 🐍🛢️🎂 #mosquitoes #mississippi colinpurrington.com/2020/04/spar...

Spartan Mosquito Pro Tech review

This post is a review of the Spartan Mosquito Pro Tech, a tube containing sugar, yeast, and boric acid that you fill with warm water and position around the perimeter of your property. The cap has a s...

colinpurrington.com

13. Hence our dismal conclusion: rather than finding that LLMs free us to do a better job of what we were doing before they came along, they shift scientific incentives (and the playing field of academic competition) in ways that compel us to do more and more, faster and faster, less and less well.

1. We—@eduede.bsky.social, @mjcrockett.bsky.social, Kevin Gross, and I—have a new preprint on the arXiv today, based on ideas that emerged during an @sfiscience.bsky.social workshop in November 2024: The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science.

The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science

As a labor-augmenting technology, large language models (LLMs) have the potential to accelerate scientific activity across the research pipeline. But even if LLMs perform on par with human experts at ...

arxiv.org

I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful

This makes me so happy! l1nq.com/igqphti Nice iNat highlight about how your 'boring' nature photos can contribute to science: www.inaturalist.org/pages/newsle... I saw @maria-duynisveld.bsky.social present these results at conference in NL and I was so impressed by their work! Congratulations!!!

Does the munch affect the bunch? Using community science to explore insect herbivory and fruit production in an understory plant

We used iNaturalist records, a longitudinal field survey, and a simulated herbivory experiment to explore how insect herbivory factors are associated with Cornus canadensis fruit production. Natural.....

resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Maria Duynisveld@maria-duynisveld.bsky.social · 3w ago

Huge thanks to all the @inaturalist.bsky.social users who contributed their photos and identification expertise. We used thousands of photos of this super common species -- I want to emphasize how valuable every observation is, no matter how mundane it may seem! So excited to have this out :)

Looking for a K-12 insect, spider, or other arthropod teaching resource? We have > 200 rated lessons, books, and more. lessonhive.org/all-inventor...

Like so (different individual with retreat closed up!) www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Genus Spilasma

Spilasma from Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo, GY on July 24, 2026 at 11:07 AM by cataranea

inaturalist.org

Sean McCann@ibycter.bsky.social · 5d ago

a really awesome orb weaver found by Catherine, in the genus Spilasma (contains only three species). The beautifuuly structured retreat can be closed by the spider when it is threatened!

Anyone ready for a SECOND DAY of photos from Karanambu? Not sure how long it will take me to post them, but I will get started. Spoiler alert: Ivar the Otter will return!

A look at some of our recent trip to Guyana! So far this thread only covers getting to the lodge at Karanambu and the first afternoon and evening of casual spidering. We saw so much cool stuff!!!

Sean McCann@ibycter.bsky.social · last wk.

So, @cataranea.bsky.social and I went to Guyana over the past week (ish) to attend #BugShot, in the Rupununi Savannah, at Karanambu Lodge. You wanna see some pictures of what we saw?

Mudskippers!!!!!!

I've been documenting a pair of black-capped chickadees nesting in our garden as they fly back & forth every few minutes, hunting meals. An avg clutch of 6 to 8 chickadees requires 3,000 to 5,000 feedings over the ~16 days from hatching to fledging. Most popular foods: caterpillars, moths, spiders.

Some tools for thinking about AI in a time when the companies making them are trying to destroy teaching and learning itself... 1/n 🧵

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 8mo ago

First off we pluralise L to accentuate there's no 1 approach. And we position ourselves in this interdisciplinary field of critically examining AI & reflecting on harms. We give 5 non-exhaustive angles: conceptual clarity, critical thinking, decoloniality, respecting expertise, slow science. 2/

Castianeira, my love ❤️ Usually I start seeing adults of this gorgeous (unknown) species in August but this lad showed up a bit early. He's perfect.

Ms Habronattus alachua, she of the stripy eye makeup 🤎 #EmotionalSupportSpood

Got Screwworm questions? @entsocamerica.bsky.social has a new podcast out that explains what you need to know -- including a nice explanation of why sterilizing flies with radiation does Not produce radioactive flies. entomologytoday.org/2026/07/15/n...

New World Screwworm: Entomologist Q&A Separates Fact From Fear

An entomologist answers questions on the basics of the New World screwworm, efforts to re-eradicate it from the U.S., and what's fact versus fiction in the buzz around this re-emergent pest.

entomologytoday.org

Great piece. These magic bullet solutions are usually flawed. Interrogate, analyze, read source material, train your brain to need and expect complex solutions not simple ones.

David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈@whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 3w ago

When I was writing this piece about the Ocean Cleanup, I had a surreal experience: They assured me that they only kill invasive species, and sent me a published paper to demonstrate that. But the paper said the opposite! I wonder how many journalists just took their word for it and didn't check?

I keep seeing posts about ai models like "actually they're good at this thing now!" but once you understand that ai tools are being built by fascists in service of attacks on humanity, whether or not they can generate useable code or do basic searches kind of stops being the main question