The #Birds #Caribbean conference just wrapped up in Trinidad. Fantastic group of people working for the future of Caribbean birds. Also beautiful art, starring the Pawi (endemic piping guan), a Motmot, morpho butterfly, a cocoa pod, our national flower (chaconia), and a White-tailed Sabrewing.

That's right

Mike Frank@mcxfrank.bsky.social · last mo.

Most of the statistical tests you learned in stats class — t-test, ANOVA, correlation — are actually special cases of a single thing: linear regression. Ch 7 of Experimentology argues that thinking in models, not tests, is more flexible and a better foundation for theory. 🧵 experimentology.io

Wow, a massive coordinated effort to extract information from the internet and ultimately profit off of other people’s intellectual property. Hard to even imagine such a thing

Olga Nesterova@onestpress.onestnetwork.com · last mo.

Anthropic has accused Chinese tech giant Alibaba of a massive, illicit "distillation attack" to steal Claude’s AI capabilities. In a letter to US officials, they accused Alibaba of running 28.8 million fake conversations with Claude to train a competing AI for free. Alibaba declined to comment.

Academic's worst enemy, a stack of free books.

If they had high speed rail, the ring would've made it to Mount Doom much more easily.

Totally obsessed with these tree ferns in Puerto Rico 🌿🌿🌿

I know R, thanks, but I'm trying.

multiculturalism is pretty great

Rav@rvbdrm.com · 2mo ago

New Yorkers singing Empire State of Mind

They should build loads of data centers all over the place that contain huge quantities of books that people can borrow for free if they fill out a form to get a data center card and promise to return the books on time and don’t make too much noise in the data center.

Birds of Athens. Red-eyed glares of two kinds. 🪶

I’m a climate scientist. Let me fix this headline. “Nearly a century ago, scientists showed that burning fossil fuels warms the planet. Today, we know human emissions account for over 100% of the warming. Yet dark money and disinformation still work to keep Americans addicted to fossil fuels.”

Forbes@forbes.com · 2mo ago

Scientists have reached a consensus that human behavior is a big driver of climate change—but Americans aren't buying it.

Let me get this straight: * blood is made of iron * some blood cells are made for killing enemies * these defense cells also eat old blood cells, and become 🔮superparamagnetic🔮 et voila, magnetic navigation I love biology so much 😭😭😭 🧪

Science Magazine@science.org · 2mo ago

Researchers have identified superparamagnetic macrophages in the livers of rock pigeons to be crucial for magnetic sensing. The finding uncovers an unexpected role for immune cells in sensory perception and may fundamentally change our understanding of animal navigation. https://scim.ag/4nTQ3nq

Who's got birding advice for #Crete or #Athens? 🪶 Willing to pay with blurry bird (or twig) photos.

👀👀👀 Is this because Paul McCartney said on the final Late Show episode that he had a bird book growing up? 🪶

"What if, instead of going to useful websites, you just write messages to something that has the confidence and accuracy of the guy at university who goes on about Plato's allegory of the cave?" www.kagi.com www.duckduckgo.com

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 3mo ago

Well that's an epistemic train wreck.

"mainstream politicians don't seek the interest of most people " vs "Hillary Clinton is a lizard, Hillary Clinton eats babies, Hillary Clinton trafficked children, and so on"

Dreamweasel@dreamweasel.bsky.social · 3mo ago

“Diversity of thought” is an expression invented by conservatives to imply that rejection of their ideas is a form of bigotry

I unironically said to a friend "some species don't demonstrate high fidelity to a geographic location" and she went "they move a lot?" Academic writing has broken me.

The Man Who Mistook His Imagination For A Fact?

Rosemary Mosco@rosemarymosco.com · 3mo ago

How did I miss Oliver Sacks getting exposed as a partial fabulist?? A while ago I was thinking back to my teenaged reading of The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, and I thought, hang on, now that I know a little more about the brain, that book seems suspicious. I even googled “Oliver Sacks fraud”

I really think font size 11 is far superior to size 12. Sorry for the way I am.

Gonna start using this kind of flat out lie on my CV: First, I solved climate change. Next up? Global utopia.

Rolling Stone@rollingstone.com · 3mo ago

The science start-up Colossal is making sci-fi real! After resurrecting the dire wolf in 2025 using 72k-year-old DNA, they're eyeing the woolly mammoth for 2028. The goal: "rewilding" to restore and stabilize modern ecosystems. Read: bit.ly/4tIXAqo

Maybe time to take a page out of the finance bro book and start describing niche fields as high-growth sectors.

Hank Green@hankgreen.bsky.social · 3mo ago

When your field is not particularly large...

If I had a penny for every time a well-meaning scientist asked "did you try checking if X had an effect?" I'd have a lot of pennies.

Berna Devezer@devezer.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Also, whenever I give a research talk that touches upon research integrity and statistical validity, colleagues from multiple other disciplines tell me they regularly and religiously p-hack because that's what they're expected to do and what they think is right for the field.

Frog jug + air plant. Can you tell how pleased I am with myself?

Water. Earth. Fire. Air. But that all changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

madeline odent@oldenoughtosay.com · 3mo ago

what are the Six Genders? wrong answers only

Colors and patterns of California seaweeds #SciArt #PhycologyFriday

I've been trying out the free tier of @kagi.com and it's crazy how much better the experience is compared to what we've become used to. Honestly surprised that I'm considering paying for a search engine subscription. Quirky dog mascot doesn't hurt either.

Have you ever thought of all what animals can do when predation is not a big issue? In this review 👉 doi.org/10.1016/bs.a... @maribelrm.bsky.social @juancarvajalcastro.bsky.social and I show how aposematism can be viewed as an “umbrella trait” influencing multiple aspects of its bearers' lives🔴🟡⚫

Google at it again. The link below summarises it very well: "You bought an Android phone because Google told you it was open. You could install what you wanted, and that was the deal. Google is now rewriting that deal, retroactively, on hardware you already own. " keepandroidopen.org

was feeling antsy yesterday evening and decided to channel the energy for once: Purple Honeycreeper cutout from of one of my photos set on dried tulip petals. Isn't he pretty? 🪶 (I always forget that you can just make stuff if you want to)

Alternatively/additionally, these findings align with a selection bias in plain sight: Many careers are started by findings that are flashy, surprising etc. Select for early disruption and you get more disruption early on... 💁‍♀️ 🧪

Nature@nature.com · 3mo ago

Experienced researchers are less likely to produce ‘disruptive’ science than are those just starting their careers, finds an analysis of the scientific papers published by 12.5 million researchers over 60 years. go.nature.com/4uUvMk3