Your cut out and keep guide to how Trump is doing in Central and South America. (Credit on image.)
Prof. Felipe Gusmão
@fgusmao.bsky.social
"A minor marginalised philosopher writing in the early twenty-first century" Professor of Conservation at UNIFESP I was once suspended from Twitter for defending animal rights... Ⓐ and I love cats...
Nature did a short piece on our preprint about how LLMs will affect the practice of science; my more detailed thread is below.
Scientists using LLMs will ‘do more, less well’, modelling study predicts
Research suggests that the combination of incentives to publish and the use of large language models will lead to more papers, but they will be less refined.
nature.com
Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago1. 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.
Cute content hides a story of animal suffering
Social media driving wild animal pet trade
The trade of wild animals as pets is now playing out on our phones.
theecologist.org
This is an excellent approach for all teaching. Expect students to make mistakes to develop. Sometimes ruined by continuous assessment of results.
Bouba's Delivery Service@fernmonkey.bsky.social · last wk.Every so often I teach someone how to spin yarn on a spindle. And I always tell them that the first yarn you make will not be good yarn, and it's not meant to be, because right now you are not making wool into yarn, you're making yourself into a spinner.
One ancient alerce tree supported more than 300 unique fungal species beneath its roots. Now imagine the invisible extinctions caused by cutting half the forest.
Scientists looked beneath one of the oldest trees on Earth. What they found is astounding
The researchers discovered a hidden world of life among the roots of Chile’s ancient alerce trees. Here’s why that’s important The towering conifers of Chile’s southern rainforests do far more than shape the skyline. Research in Biodiversity and Conservation reveals that these ancient trees are hubs of hidden biodiversity, highlighting their crucial role in the forest ecosystem. The temperate rainforests of the Chilean Coast Range are home to many unique and important species, including an
apple.news
NEW Snow leopard expert Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi recommends five excellent ecology books, from a study of the Serengeti lion to one man's search for a most elusive owl. fivebooks.com/best-books/e...
Ecology
Five of the best books on ecology, as recommended by the snow leopard expert and conservationist Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi
fivebooks.com
Thanks to the Daily Nous for sharing our most recent essay, "Vegetarianism and Veganism: The Ethics of Eating Animals" by Zach Ferguson!
Justin Weinberg@dailynous.com · last wk.New reviews of philosophy books, new and revised entries at online philosophy resources, new philosophy podcast episodes, and more...
Brazil denies entry to Trump officials ahead of elections www.dw.com/en/brazil-de...
Brazil denies entry to Trump officials ahead of elections
Brazil rejected visas for two planned US envoys, alleging that Washington was seeking to shape Brazil's upcoming presidential election. The development adds to a deepening political tension between Br...
dw.com
Despite its imposing stature and importance to ecosystems, the northern cassowary of New Guinea is rarely seen in the wild. This short film documents the ornithologist Yoki Hadiprakarsa and wildlife photographer Tim Laman’s eight-month search for the elusive bird
Scientists and locals unite to film a large, elusive New Guinean bird | Aeon Videos
Join the search for the elusive cassowary, a big bird that plays an outsized role in maintaining its rainforest home
buff.ly
www.reuters.com/world/americ... 🚨🚨🚨
US aimed to send envoys to Brazil to question its electoral system - sources
Brazil has denied visa requests for two Trump administration officials who planned to travel to the country to cast doubt on the integrity of its electoral system, two Brazilian officials with knowle...
reuters.com
You guys aren't going to believe this, but ... it turns out the oil & gas industry knew that they were poisoning people (in this case, with methane) for years, and they hid it & did nothing to mitigate the harm. No, really, it's true! Incredible investigative work here from @rebleber.bsky.social:
Oil Firms Knew for Decades of Methane’s Danger to Planet, Documents Suggest
The companies knew they were releasing more of the greenhouse gas than they publicly reported, according to industry files cited by the Center for Climate Integrity, an activist organization.
nytimes.com
What people believe about choice and responsibility shapes what they think prison is for.
People in the UK favour harsher punishment than Norwegians – belief in free will may help explain why
What people believe about choice and responsibility shapes what they think prison is for.
tcnv.link
Do stranded dolphins have Alzheimer's disease? https://phys.org/news/2025-10-stranded-dolphins-alzheimer-disease.html 🐬 #Cetaceans #MarineMammals #MarineLife #MarineBiology #Dolphins #Science
Do stranded dolphins have Alzheimer's disease?
One of the most heartbreaking occurrences for nature lovers is to discover a beached marine mammal such as a dolphin or whale. If the animal is still alive, marine biologists assisted by citizen volunteers try to protect the beached marine mammal from sun exposure and skin desiccation by pouring buckets of sea water on them and sometimes covering them with wet blankets. Other volunteers try to find ways to help the animal return to their native ocean habitat when the tide rises.
phys.org
¡La felicidad de los brasileños por la victoria de España! 🇪🇸
At one point in this piece, the author notes that if you ask Claude if it's conscious, it puts the probability at between 5 and 40 percent. Seems to me that if I ask you if you're conscious, and you respond with an estimate of the likelihood that you are, it means that you're not.
The Guardian@theguardian.com · 2w agoCould AI be conscious?
A reminder: The US, by being the largest historical CO₂ emitter, has caused $10 trillion in global climate damage since 1990. A quarter of this impact is felt domestically, but it disproportionately affects poorer countries.
US has caused $10tn worth of climate damage since 1990, research finds
US, top carbon emitter in history, has ‘a lot of responsibility’ for causing ‘substantial’ harm globally, scientist says
theguardian.com
Put another way, the entire adult userbase is going to have to upload their IDs to sketchy third-party companies and link their identities to their online activity to stop a few dozen kids from accessing a platform that is mainly left-leaning news and commentary. What problem is this solving?
Polymarket@polymarket.extwitter.link · 3w agoBREAKING: U.K. reveals Bluesky will be included in the under-16 social media ban, affecting dozens of teens.
Writing in @financialtimes.com (£) Anjana Ahuja warns of new US proposals to allow political appointees to veto research grants; RoRI’s @jameswilsdon.bsky.social argues that restricting international partnerships on climate and health is a major blow to global cooperation: www.ft.com/content/e003...
Trump is driving another nail into the coffin of US science
Under proposed reforms, political appointees will review grants to ensure they “advance the President’s priorities”
ft.com
Here's my response to Lawrence Krauss lambasting the humanities for the "ideological corruption" of science back in 2020. We need ideological awareness precisely so we can recognize illegitimate influence, like the proposed political control of our nation's research agenda. 4/4 #philsci #scicomm 🧪
Awareness of Our Biases Is Essential to Good Science
Ideological, social and political values have always influenced research
scientificamerican.com
“The fact that you, an expert human, generated the text is evidence that the view is worth thinking about—more so than if the text were generated by an LLM.”
A Meta-Epistemological Reason for Rejecting AI-Written Philosophy - Daily Nous
"The fact that you, an expert human, generated the text is evidence that the view is worth thinking about---more so than if the text were generated by an LLM." That's Eric Schwitzgebel (UCR), writing ...
dailynous.com
🇫🇷 AGORA: Parlamento francês aprova, por 291 a 241, direito à eutanásia no país. Texto foi aprovado pela Câmara após ser rejeitado três vezes pelo Senado. Com a decisão de hoje, a França se junta a países como Bélgica, Holanda, Suíça e Canadá que permitem, sob certas condições, a eutanásia.
Parlamento Francês aprova lei que autoriza eutanásia no país | Eixo Político
Assembleia Nacional aprovou o novo direito por 291 votos a 241; Macron celebrou a participação popular no avanço do texto
eixopolitico.com.br
The Cicadas Dead Can Dance "The Cicadas is inspired by the ancient creation myth recounted by Plato in Phaedrus. (...) Socrates used this story to urge Phaedrus to stay awake and engage in philosophical discussion"
The Cicadas, by Dead Can Dance
1 track album
deadcandance.bandcamp.com
Happy Shark & Ray Awareness Day! (No pics of swimming with sharks, though I've done that, but here's are a couple cute cownose rays in Grand Cayman from last winter). Cownose rays are listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. 🦈🐠
I think this was done before, but a modern and extensive mapping of the world's dunes is still welcomed (most are in N. Africa, Central Asia, Australis and Arabia, unsurprising). 🧪⚒️ Link: nature.com/articles/s41467-026-75466-y
This gorgeous essay from the social-media-less Lily Hu is everything: on what it means to "do" philosophy amidst pressure to automate it (with lessons that travel much more broadly). Rhymes with brilliant insights from @biblioracle.bsky.social @janerosenzweig.bsky.social Ted Chiang & others
Lily Hu · Un-Doing Philosophy
Analytic philosophers in the United States are increasingly embracing AI, both by taking advisory positions at tech companies and by using large language models for their own research and writing. Som...
blnreview.de
This is an important concern. However, it overlooks the central explanatory advantage of panpsychism: explaining physical reality in terms of consciousness. Even if you have to be a strong emergentist panpsychist, it's better than being a dualist, because reality bottoms out in just one property.
Sean@quasirealism.bsky.social · 4w agoPanpsychists will tell you they can have their qualia cake and causal closure/deny overdetermination too, but then invoke some weird new constitution relations to explain how macrophenomenal properties inherit causal powers from microphenomenal properties. Might as well be an interactionist dualist.