I am sure to upset some Star Wars fans but I think Grand Admiral Thrawn is Hans Landa from Inglorious Basterds. #starwars #thrawn #ingloriousbasterds

New paper out in PNAS on hominin body size evolution www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #evolution #evolutionaryBiology #science

Competing models of hominin body size evolution | PNAS

The evolutionary trajectory of hominin body size remains contested, with prior studies suggesting a gradual increase or lineage-specific shifts. He...

pnas.org

Luke Skywalker is NOT a power fantasy. This is why I didn't like the Mandalorian S2 ending, and I really loved The Last Jedi. #starwars

Luke Skywalker is NOT a power fantasy

YouTube video by Pop Culture Detective

youtube.com

ParkRun is not a competitive sport. There are no men’s or women‘s categories. We just all line up at the start line and go at the same time. The most important thing is that you try to show up every week. It’s the single most effective public health intervention.

News on #SVPCA, a (mostly) UK-based annual meeting devoted to vertebrate palaeontology. Things have been quiet about the meeting for the last 18 months, but a team of us are working to pick up where we left off. More details to follow ASAP, hopefully very soon. #FossilFriday #paleontology #fossil

this is the latest AI booster talking point “we don’t know if LLMs are alive because we don’t really understand the human brain” this is NONSENSE. We understand how LLMs work, we know what they are doing and what they are not doing. How human brains or hands or feet work is not relevant!

Andy Masley@andymasley.bsky.social · 6mo ago

I see it as asking "How do we know human minds don't also work exclusively by stronger and weaker associations between words and concepts?"

Now the actual military has to dress like it’s not the military cuz federal law enforcement agencies dress too much like the military

Palantir was a warning sign. Keir Starmer choosing to hand our data and security to US tech companies is an outrageous failure of judgment. All in the name of "investment." What about national security?

A lot of people seem to think that "common sense" prevails over education (and science)... #education #science

Here's a link to a conversation on this: ecoevo.social/@drmambobob/...

Raptor's Nest (He/Him)@drmambobob.bsky.social · 7mo ago

I know rejection is common in academia but every application takes so much energy and time that every rejection is a literal waste of all that expended energy that doesn't get rewarded. #academia

I know rejection is common in academia but every application takes so much energy and time that every rejection is a literal waste of all that expended energy that doesn't get rewarded. #academia

If you can use existing tools and skill set to accomplish something effectively, then there’s no point in learning new skills and tools unless they let you do something you can’t do. #skills #datascience

In shock to hear that Richard Forrest passed this morning. What a guy. I've met few people as enthusiastic about fossils. He had a whole life, whole career, outside of the academic world but made huge contributions to scholarship. And was so kind and welcoming to everyone. RIP.

All plesiosaurs today for #FossilFriday, in tribute to our departed friend Richard Forrest.

Just learned that Richard Forrest, one of the pillars of British vert palaeo, has passed away unexpectedly. Richard was such a friendly, welcoming person, an expert on British marine reptiles, and the unofficial custodian of SVPCA. We spent many hours chatting in various pubs. He will be missed.

#FossilFriday a magnificent Iguanodon dinosaur skull from the Bernissart collection in Brussels. The prominent arch is the palpebral made up of two bones in Iguanodon presumably to protect the eye as it foraged through spiky Early Cretaceous plants or maybe it acted as a sunshade in those hot times.

Last year I published a chapter with @richardfallon.bsky.social comparing Conan Doyle's Lost World with Crichton's Jurassic Park and the parallels between the two. Yesterday we were awarded 'Doylean Honors' from the Arthur Conan Doyle Society for our scholarship. acdsociety.com/Honors/Honor...

Palaeontology in Public

Since the establishment of concepts of deep time in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, palaeontology has been one of the most high-profile sciences. Dinosaurs, mammoths, human ancesto...

uclpress.co.uk

Naming a police officer is not doxxing. We aren’t supposed to have secret police in America.

I love terrestrial isopods! ecoevo.social/@drmambobob/...

Raptor's Nest (He/Him) (@drmambobob@ecoevo.social)

Attached: 4 images Look what I got! #zoology #toys

ecoevo.social

Out in @nature.com today, we shake up the ornithischian family tree. Remember those weird Late Cretaceous iguanodontians, the rhabdodontids? Well they're weird because they aren't iguanodontians. They're ceratopsians. Well, at least some of them are... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A hidden diversity of ceratopsian dinosaurs in Late Cretaceous Europe - Nature

New results indicate that rhabdodontids and the previously described Ajkaceratops are actually distinctive European ceratopsians, a group better known from Asia and North America.

nature.com

A shake-up of the dinosaur family tree! Rhabdodontids are not ornithopods. They are ceratopsians. There were horned dinosaurs in Europe! As shown by a new fossil of Ajkaceratops from Hungary! Check out our new study, led by @tweetisaurus.bsky.social ⤵️

Still time to apply for this PhD studentship on the phylogenetics and evolution of felids!

Bayesian and Machine Learning Approaches to Reveal the Evolutionary Synamics of the Early Diversification, Dispersal, and Adaptive Evolution of Living and Fossil Felidae at University of Reading on Fi...

PhD Project - Bayesian and Machine Learning Approaches to Reveal the Evolutionary Synamics of the Early Diversification, Dispersal, and Adaptive Evolution of Living and Fossil Felidae at University of...

findaphd.com

Still time to apply for this PhD studentship on evolution and environmental changes in Polystira! blogs.reading.ac.uk/crocus-dla/c...

Still time to apply for this PhD studentship on the evolution of dragonflies! blogs.reading.ac.uk/crocus-dla/c...

"because AI is being crammed into everything, I could be using it at any time, it's hard to avoid!" should make you angry, not make you go "welp guess I gotta accept AI now"

In the process of transitioning away from Adobe and MS Office, exactly because of this sort of crap.

David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 7mo ago

As someone who often conducts fieldwork in remote places, I find it really irritating that many basic applications now require an internet connection to function.

Most people confuse subject expertise with instantaneous encyclopaedic recollection. If that’s what an expert is, then yes, LLMs can definitely replace experts. But thats not what subject expertise is.

As an educator I’m baffled why we’re being told LLMs are good tools for studying…reviewing the literature and summarising key information is a core set of skills that you should have as a graduate level subject expert.

suspect a big reason why many academics and others who work in areas where getting facts RIGHT is key are disinterested in using LLMs for research: they’ve tried it, they keep noticing major errors in output, and they conclude that having to verify all that doesn’t actually save them time.