“Even the term 'Artificial Intelligence' … is widely misused, with conceptual unclarity coopted to advance industry agendas and undermine scholarly discussions. It is our task to demystify and to challenge 'AI' in our teaching, research & engagement with society.” openletter.earth/open-letter-...

Climate Action Tracker: The climate is warming and sea levels rising way faster than governments are acting

RELEASE: The climate is warming and sea levels rising way faster than governments are acting

Only six of the countries the Climate Action Tracker analyses (1) have submitted their new 2035 climate targets in time for the Paris Agreement's 10 February 2025 deadline, and only one — the UK — is proposing actions at home that are 1.5°C-aligned.

climateactiontracker.org

Researchers found 15 people in Kansas City who had changed their mind about climate change, and asked them why. Fascinating! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

As someone who coruns an independent media organization with a paywall…I regret to inform you that they do work and if you want independent journalism to exist you are going to have to subscribe to some publications. Doesn’t have to be all of them! You can rotate, which I do!

Today, the UK government announced a proposal to change copyright law - for the benefit of AI companies - that would cause huge, irreversible harm to creators. More info below, but most importantly here's what you can do (wherever you live): 1. Email your MP. Template letter in 🧵 👇 1/10

we are not paying enough attention to commercially available phone-cracking and spyware being sold to any government who will buy it

Jason Koebler@jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 2y ago

Very scary report out of Serbia: Cellebrite is now being used by cops to unlock the phones of journalists they take into custody, and to then infect those phones with tracking malware www.404media.co/cellebrite-u...

More than 60 countries held elections this year. Many researchers and journalists claimed AI misinformation would destabilize democracies. What impact did AI really have? We analyzed every instance of political AI use this year collected by WIRED. New essay w/@random_walker: 🧵

I made a new gif for a new site tracking JWST observations of exoplanets (still a work in progress): jlothringer.github.io/Dashboard.html What an exciting ~3 years it has been! ✨🔭✨

Going through my father's old papers and scanning them in. Here's a PDF draft of a plasma physics textbook that he wrote in the early 1960s, but for some reason never published. I would be happy if someone got some benefit from it. drive.google.com/file/d/1V2F4...

Here's my slides from my #AGU24 talk earlier today. Lots of folks in the session already took care of the meteorological and climatological side of #Helene, so I spent a good time talking about the emotional side. Buckle in folks, here comes a thread. drive.google.com/file/d/1nhzL...

a cartoon of perry the platypus wearing a hat and belt

ALT: a cartoon of perry the platypus wearing a hat and belt

media.tenor.com

One thing that lacks attention: all of this is only possible because Romanian president declassified findings of their intelligence agencies and did so at an unprecedented scope and pace. Declassification and transparency seem like one of the most effective ways of fighting a foreign influence.

Financial Times@financialtimes.com · 2y ago

Romania annuls election after alleged Russian meddling https://www.ft.com/content/2248c05d-5536-4525-b0d2-330fc6140401

Black Friday Deal Alert! Enjoy our current atmospheric CO₂ because we'll never see it this low again!

This is gaining momentum - publishers are now starting to see more web traffic come from BlueSky than other platforms (and not that horrid shit place). Keep sharing your news source URLs here, both traditional and independent media. pressgazette.co.uk/platforms/bl...

Bluesky already delivering more referral traffic than X for some publishers

A Guardian audience editor says Bluesky sent more referral traffic to the news outlet in its first week there than X has any week in 2024.

pressgazette.co.uk

CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️@rami.spaceaustralia.com · 2y ago

Def. encourage them to come over, but the other thing to do as well is paste links to their website in here when you want to share their content. Most comms teams track analytics, and if they see their websites are getting referrals from BlueSky, tehy'll know their audience is here too.

After a week of ~illness 🤒🤧 I've done a LOT of scrolling. To reinvigorate my brains and introduce myself to this app, I'm going to post 7 pieces of both past & recent (mostly journalistic) writing that I've loved

1. Here's why I'll never use AI to assist my research or writing: A. I don't want to know exactly what I'm looking for. I mean that when I start researching a topic, I want to remain open to its contradictions and paradoxes, and to the unexpected paths that might lead off it. 🧵

Looks like the people who use @hf.co haven't reacted well to the original backlash - there are now six new large datasets of Bluesky posts uploaded onto the site, including one with 20x the amount of data as the original dataset that caused the issue huggingface.co/datasets?sor...

The least surprising headline tonight. - Facebook just lost dismissal motion of FTC lawsuit to break it up - FTC also has show cause to ban Meta from collecting minors’ data - Zuckerberg is personally named in massive Delaware suit - last week SCOTUS rejected Meta’s appeal for Cambridge cover-up

Some interest in social media research ethics this week. A while back, we looked at over 500 social media research papers so that you don't have to. Only 28 papers mentioned consent, so don't be surprised that researchers aren't seeking permission to use your Bluesky data. tnhh.org/research/pub...

In report led by @waqasejaz.bsky.social we document "platform ambivalence"–people rely on platforms for info, while also remaining sceptical, many concerns are widespread, even as people also appreciate a range of personal and societal benefits reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/what-do-peop... 1/5

the internet sucks in part because no one makes their own personal websites anymore aftermath.site/website-musk...

For Love of God, Make Your Own Website - Aftermath

The internet felt like a limitless expanse of free expression. Now I usually end up at the same three or four websites.

aftermath.site

By hiding the true costs of AI (data, energy, human labor), it's really easy to make AI seem magic. Can you imagine if Open AI had to disclose exactly how many millions of hours of human feedback they gathered? ChatGPT would seem a lot less *magical* then 🦄

People are often surprised when I tell them this: both Twitter and Facebook/insta/threads are now specifically engineered to downgrade, hide, suppress real journalism. If this platform is different, that's a huge change

Mars not having a QBO makes it an interesting lab for examining comparisons of other oscillations on Mars and Earth, like the Semi-annual oscillation or annular modes. As I always say, studying one #climate helps us understand all climates. authors.elsevier.com/a/1k9kj4L-Ym...

Or, he could read the tons of research on this by scholars, media, etc. That says, I’m going to need academics to do a better job communicating with the public. Some do. Many don’t. Folks can’t remain in the ivory tower speaking only to each other. Public facing work is vital, esp now.

Greg Sargent@gregsargent.bsky.social · 2y ago

News --> James Carville is commissioning pollsters to do a deep dive on how people get their news, in hopes that Dems will overhaul how they communicate with voters, particularly working class ones. It's a good idea. Carville explains it on our podcast: newrepublic.com/article/1888...

New blogpost: deevybee.blogspot.com/2024/11/why-...

Why I have resigned from the Royal Society

The Royal Society is a venerable institution founded in 1660, whose original members included such eminent men as Christopher Wren, Robert H...

deevybee.blogspot.com

For the next two weeks, we’re offering ten free ebooks for getting free Another world is possible if we fight for it www.haymarketbooks.org/blogs/517-te...

Redrawing the global warming stripes. In a new paper led by Sebastian Sippel published in Nature today, we show that the early 20th century global ocean surface temperatures and thereby global mean surface temperature were warmer than previously thought. Thread... (1/13)

Updated periodic table with origin of elements in the Solar System (for boron and lithium at least)

In the end, the Gulf Stream is *not* slowing down and the #AMOC ... just marginally. That's fascinating and relevant for climate modeling and the current and future needs for ocean observing! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Florida Current transport observations reveal four decades of steady state - Nature Communications

The study shows that the Florida Current, an important contributor to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, has not declined as previously suggested, but remained steady over the past 40-ye...

nature.com