Tessera

Jo Simons (she/her)

@josimons.bsky.social

Dr. Jo, Pākehā, Academic Librarian in Aotearoa NZ, Plant enthusiast, fibre crafter, hoarder of pens, herder of children and cats Working with Digital Library team at Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland, opinions mine not my employers

121 Posts648 Follower 948 Folgt

Micro SF/F by O. Westin @microsff.com · 2w ago

"Excuse me," the man at the bar said, "but I couldn't help overhearing. Are you really saying you refuse to pick one?" "I don't see why I should have to." "It's a core part of one's identity!" "My gender and sexuality-" "Oh!" He looked relieved. "I thought you were talking about football teams."

Dylan Reeve @dylanreeve.com · 2w ago

Man, if only National had been in power for the last few years and been able to do all these things they've suggested recently.

National promises to extend paid parental leave from 26 weeks to 30, if re-elected

National has pledged to extend paid parental leave from 26 weeks to 30, if re-elected.

rnz.co.nz

Richard Hills @richardhills.bsky.social · 2w ago

Great to see that National support 30 weeks Paid Parental Leave. Especially after they voted against the introduction of PPL. Blocked the extension to 26 weeks for several years. Canceled 33 pay equity claims. And just this year, cut Best Start payments for the majority of new parents.

Jarrod Baker @jarrodbaker.bsky.social · 2w ago

if you’re in NZ and you’d like to work in a voting place or electorate HQ for this year’s election then applications are open now: work.elections.nz/home

Search Jobs - Electoral Commission

The Electoral Commission runs New Zealand’s parliamentary elections. We work to provide an effective and impartial electoral system that New Zealanders understand and trust.

work.elections.nz

Jer Thorp @jerthorp.bsky.social · 2w ago

Who will win the #WorldCupOfBirds? 1️⃣ Black-capped Chickadee (🇨🇦) 2️⃣ New Zealand Fantail (🇳🇿) 📊 Show results

Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 3w ago

"don't cite what you haven't read" remains the basic entry level academic responsibility; & if your discpline "doesn't have that as a norm" then sorry, your discipline needs reforming for this new world. Citations are structural parts of trust and knowledge building, not trinkets or optional extras

Miles Klee 🦉@milesklee.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Academics and technologists are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis in scholarship as we know it: AI-generated citations of nonexistent papers that have infested real journals. Despite being fake, the sources are widely assumed to be authentic the more they appear in published literature.

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 3w ago

It bothers me how many AI critics are failing to keep their critiques aligned with where the models actually are. I hate to give it to the haters (of the haters), but good criticism has to get close enough to its target to understand it, and stay close.

David Palmer @cloventt.net · 3w ago

Today's featured picture on Wikipedia is a kererū. Look at this fatboi.

A screenshot of the wikipedia home page. On the left is a photo of a borbulous bird on a branch. To the right the caption text reads: "The kererū (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae) is a species of pigeon native to New Zealand. Described by Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1789, it is a large, conspicuous pigeon, up to 50 centimetres (20 in) in length and ranging from 550 to 850 grams (19 to 30 oz) in weight, with a white breast and iridescent green–blue plumage. Kererū pairs are monogamous, breeding over successive seasons and remaining together when not breeding. Found in a variety of habitats across the country, the kererū feeds mainly on fruits, as well as on leaves, buds and flowers. Its numbers have declined since European colonisation and the arrival of invasive mammals such as rats, stoats and possums in New Zealand, although populations have recently increased in suburban habitats. Considered a taonga (cultural treasure) to the Māori people, the kererū was historically a major food source in Māori culture. In 2018, it was designated Bird of the Year by the New Zealand organisation Forest & Bird. This kererū was photographed in the Waitākere Ranges on the North Island."

Marc Daalder @marcdaalder.bsky.social · 3w ago

LFG New Zealand!

Jer Thorp@jerthorp.bsky.social · 3w ago

Well, it was a very very close one yesterday, but we now have our two #WorldCupOfBirds finalists. On Sunday one of these guys will be crowned the best "ordinary" bird in the world. 🇨🇦 Black-capped Chickadee 🇳🇿 New Zealand Fantail Voting will open at 9am, EDT.

Ira @ira.bailey.nz · 3w ago

The NZ Government spent $8M to bring the Michelin Guide here. $8M is the entire yearly government funding to all food banks, who feed 500k people a month. newsroom.co.nz/2026/07/17/s... #NZPol

Starry-eyed Tourism NZ buried the downside to fund its $8m Michelin gamble

Previously secret documents imply that the famous international restaurant guide essentially guaranteed the award of at least one star to a restaurant, if the NZ Government paid its $1,901,250 fee.

newsroom.co.nz

Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles @siouxsiew.bsky.social · 3w ago

If you're in Auckland this Saturday 18 July, join us for an art exhibition that glows in the dark! Hinātore: The First Light, is a free immersive exhibition exploring Māori pūrākau through bioluminescence, maho toi, and Western science. 10:30-4pm, Project Space. 20 Whitaker Place.

Poster for Hinātore: The First Light art exhibition. Set on a bluish green background, to the right is a cartoon drawing of a face representing the Māori atua Hinātore. She is portrayed in dark purple with white outlines. Her hair is pulled back from her face by a head band and she wears a long thin earing in her ear. She has a moko kauae. Her eye is glowing with a blue-white light. To the top left in greeny-white writing is the word 'Hinātore' in large capital letters. Under that, in smaller capitals are the words 'The First Light'. Under that it says: 'An immersive exhibition exploring Māori pūrākau through bioluminescence, maho toi, and Western science.' Below that are the words 'Project Space, Ground floor, in bold letters followed by Main Fine Arts Building 432, 20 Whitaker Place, Grafton, Auckland. Under that it has the date: Saturday, 18 July 2026 and the time 10:30am-4pm. Underneath that are the logos for Te Pūnaha Matatini, Nga Pāe Māramatanga, and the Bioluminescent Superbugs Lab.

Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora @healthnz.govt.nz · 3w ago

If there's a valued elder in your family or community, remind them it's not too late to get a flu vaccination. Flu can be serious for older people, but vaccination can help keep people healthy. Flu immunisation is free for 65+! Visit your pharmacy or doctor, or book at bookmyvaccine.nz

Los Angeles Worldcon @laworldcon.bsky.social · 4w ago

The Hugo, Lodestar, and Astounding Awards voting is still open until August 8th at 12 pm Pacific! Don't forget to submit your ballots if you're an Attending, Virtual, or WSFS member. If you don't have a membership yet, you can sign up through our site now: lacon.org/register

Hugo, Lodestar, and Astounding Awards Voting Now Open

The Sewphist @thesewphist.bsky.social · 3w ago

Hey you know how I regularly share photos of tuatara, takahē and other manu, not to mention the fungi and plants... and you know how I love to dig for fun facts about all of the above? Well, if that's something you enjoy, Te Māra a Tāne | Zealandia Ecosanctuary are recruiting for more volunteers!

Terri Windling @terriwindling.bsky.social · 3w ago

The Long Lists for the 2026 Wainwright Prizes for Nature Writing are out. Congratulations to all the authors on these lists. There's lots of good reading here. wainwrightprize.com/longlist-2026/

Longlist 2026 - Wainwright Prize

2026 Longlists This year, we’re celebrating 68 exceptional books across five categories, each one showcasing the power of stories to connect people and planet. From deeply personal journeys through wi...

wainwrightprize.com

Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora @healthnz.govt.nz · 3w ago

We are working with other agencies following a confirmed H5 bird flu case today. 🐦 While human health risk is low, please follow MPI’s guidance: www.mpi.govt.nz/biosecurity/pest-and-disease-threats-to-new-zealand/animal-disease-threats-to-new-zealand/high-pathogenicity-avian-influenza

Museum of Natural History, University of Oxford @morethanadodo.bsky.social · 3w ago

A new major partnership between this Museum, @CamPlantSci and @ZoologyMuseum will see over 1 million specimens digitised. This project is part of DiSSCo UK, a national programme aimed at digitising and connecting the UK's natural science collections.

Rob @robdickinson.bsky.social · 3w ago

'we're as prepared as we possibly can be' Biosecurity New Zealand: 162 jobs gone Ministry for the Environment was officially disestablished MPI budget cut, 10% job losses Department of Conservation budget cut, 143 job losses Sure Jan.

Deborah Russell MP @beefaerie.bsky.social · 4w ago

Remembering our loved ones who have died, celebrating our friends and family, and looking forward to a new year with hope. Mānawatia a Matariki. ✨

Mānawatia a Matariki graphic. Dark sky at the top, words and the stars of Matariki above hills and a purple sky lower down.

Jo Simons (she/her)@josimons.bsky.social · 4w ago

Mōrena everyone. Mānawatia a Matariki. ✨

Close up of a single red clover flower among the trefoil leaves

beekaynz @beekaynz.bsky.social · 4w ago

Hey don’t forget to turn your alarm off for tomorrow if you have the day off and if you don’t, hey thanks for turning up

Madam Snazzy @moatatamaira.bsky.social · 2y ago

Reminder that you can sign off emails today with: Kia pai te tau hou (Have a good new year) Kia pai to mutunga wiki roa (Have a good long weekend) Ngā mihi o te tau hou (Greetings for the new year)

Christchurch City Libraries Ngā Kete Wānanga o Ōtautahi @christchurchlib.bsky.social · 4w ago

It's a good day for layered knits. Just saying.

Michael Brown @jingajik.bsky.social · 4w ago

The Friends of the Turnbull Library offers an annual research grant of up to $20,000 available to scholars whose research involves use of the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library. The closing date for 2027 applications is Friday 2 October 2026. turnbullfriends.org.nz/research-gra...

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 4w ago

Hyun Sook and I are thrilled and honored that Good Old-Fashioned Korean Spirit has been nominated for Best Young Adult Book at the @harveyawards.bsky.social! @penguinteen.bsky.social @penguinschoollib.bsky.social

a photo of a Harvey award, a golden bust of cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman, under the words "The nominees have been announced. Next to that, a copy of Good Old-Fashioned Korean Spirit, a Harvey Awards Best Young Adult Book 2026 Nominee!

Harvey Awards@harveyawards.bsky.social · 4w ago

Forbes has unveiled the 2026 Harvey Award nominees, spotlighting the year’s most notable achievements in comics, manga and related media. Read the full announcement: www.forbes.com/sites/robsal...

post malone ergo propter malone @proptermalone.bsky.social · 4w ago

look I’m sorry but if you can’t find it at least plausible that Lupita Nyong’o’s beauty sparked a war that’s a skill issue

Daily Mail@dailymail.co.uk · 4w ago

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey restricts social media comments amid backlash over 'woke' casting trib.al/Af8pEyY

samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 4w ago

inspired by @russpoldrack.org's AI policy for his lab, last night I drafted up this AI policy and came up with an initial set of use case suggestions for my lab

General principles
Here are a few key principles that govern our use of AI in scientific work.
AI tools are not necessarily useful. Despite what you might have heard in OpenAI's advertising, using AI tools is the wrong choice for many tasks. Alternative and often more old-fashioned tools will do a better job for quite a few specific things (see this instagram feed for a variety of examples); one should never assume that an AI tool is the default "best thing to try". Moreover, because verifying AI results can be time-consuming, there are plenty of cases where you'll spend less time learning how to do X (i.e., by working on it yourself) rather than having Claude do X and then spending weeks to painstakinly confirm that it worked.
AI usage does not absolve you of your responsibility for your own science. We are responsible for the science that we produce, both from an ethical standpoint and a practical one. Any errors in your work are your responsibility, any security risks caused by AI usage (see below) are your responsiblity, and so on. Just as you must debug the outputs of your analysis code, the outputs of any/all AI usage must be carefully verified.
AI usage requires disclosure. The decision to use (or not use) AI tools for any aspect of the scientific process is one that requires discussion with all leaders of a project. This is both for scientific reasons (i.e., we ourselves must know what our project invovles) and practical ones: many scientific societies and jouranls require the disclosure of AI usage.
AI tools may present security risks. Many commercially available AI tools, especially free ones, do not provide substantive protections regarding inputs provided by users. Put another way, you don't know what will happen to the text, data, images, or anything else you show a third-party AI tool. This may present substantial security risks.
AI is not for scientific writing. Papers are the primary end product of our science. Scientific writing distills our thinkin…

How to handle AI usage
Like many things in our lab, it's best to be vocal. You should always feel free to raise the possibility of AI usage on a project. For any potential use case, chat with your labmates, your collaborators, and Sam about it. Discussion with external-to-lab collaborators can be particularly important given the issue of disclosure, mentioned above; you may not be aware of what AI tools collaborators are using, unless you've asked.
You should also be skeptical of the utility of AI for a specific task (not least because of the billions of dollars being thrown at selling AI subscriptions to universities and other institutions). One thing to consider might be whether the use case is something that would actually be useful for you to master yourself. For example, a common web element that turns up in tons of online experiments would probably be worth your figuring out how to code up from scratch, since you'll use it often in online experiments and figuring it out may help you come up with new ideas for how to design a game. In contrast, an esoteric web element that you'll use for one experiment and never again might be a better fit to farm out to Claude.
With the above General Principles in mind, we do not have any blanket policy about where AI should and shouldn't be used in research, with the clear exception of drafting text for manuscripts, grant proposals, posters, reports, or any other text-based scientific product: AI tools should never be used for writing, i.e., no copying and pasting of text directly from an LLM is appropriate, without explicit discussion and agreement prior to generating the text.
Other use cases are worth considering, however, and should be considered freely. Some good and bad examples follow, based on the principles above (we should populate more examples as they come up).

Some potential examples of AI usage
AI as a cheap web developer. If you're coding up a gamified experiment it can be quite difficult to learn a whole bunch of web development from scratch. Claude will be better at this than you, and that's fine: we are not a web development lab, we're a cognitive science one, so it's not essential that you become a super-proficient dev. Vibe-coding web stuff is a pretty decent use case. (But you must very carefully ensure that whatever AI tools code up for you behave exactly as you expect them to, e.g., if you've vibe-coded a specific form of randomized experiment, you'll need to check that the randomization is being carried out appropriately).
AI as a code reviewer. You might try using an AI tool to figure out why your CSS isn't displaying properly or to help debug code in general. (But you must never provide participant data to a third-party LLM, as this would be a data security risk; and you must always double- and triple-check the tool's output, just as you would with a human code reviewer or if you were trying out tips from Stack Exchange).
AI as a search engine. You might try using an AI tool to discover types of models or analysis approaches that you hadn't heard of before, or to turn up obscure research papers. (But you'll need to verify the output carefully with trusted sources, to ensure accuracy; and you should never, ever treat AI-generated search results as an objective and accurate summary, as they are far from unbiased and are often inaccurate, especially when it comes to scientific questions — try asking Gemini whether music makes you smarter).
AI as a sketch pad. You might try using an AI tool to generate ideas for what to put in a scientific figure, or come up with creative different layouts, which you then use as inspiration for figures you create yourself. (But you should not provide data to an LLM and ask for figures to be produced for you, since this often leads to laughably bad outcomes; it also would not be r…

Some bad examples of AI usage
AI as a data analyst. You should not provide a dataset to an AI tool (this is a security risk) and you should not ask an AI tool to write analysis code for you from scratch. Analyses done without statistical understanding are worse than no analyses at all. While it's OK to use an AI tool to help debug your analysis code, your development as a statistical analyst is part of your scientific development, so it's a bad idea to farm this out.
AI as a literature reviewer. You should not use AI to generate reference lists or summarize whole fields of literature for you. AI tools notoriously cite papers that do not exist, and they recapitulate well-known biases in science (e.g., citing more male authors than female ones).
AI as an illustrator. We are fundamentally opposed to the practice of AI models appropriating human artists' work to produce generative imagery and so we do not support its use for scientific work. The reputational risks associated with embarrassing errors in generative imagery are also substantial. We are lucky to have grants available to us that can be used to pay illustrators and graphic designers for work, and we regularly hire folks like this. Talk to Sam if you have a design need on a project that you'd like us to fund; it's a much better call than using AI.

Rachel Deering @racheldeering.bsky.social · last mo.

Book Cover of the Day:

Green cover, decorated with fern foliage, The Book of Choice Ferns: gold lettering for ‘Choice Ferns’.