Do we have a "made without genAI" badge or digital sticker that science communicators and artists can use so people know that our work is for humans by humans?

Things I and friends have done to calm an angry abusive man from further escalating and killing us or our children: -Smiled -Kept normal schedules in order not to trigger a fight -Appeased with kind acts (cooking, cleaning, favors) -Forced friendly tones and words

The Bulwark@thebulwark.com · 3d ago

Rep. Max Miller: "My former wife has claimed that during a custody exchange at my home that day, I assaulted her…If I had assaulted her, would she have offered to cook me dinner six days later?"

If this is what happens to a scientific field as a whole when LLMs dominate the workflows of researchers, I can only imagine that the outlook is even worse for any individual researcher who is soldiering on without using them. 😞

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago

13. Hence our dismal conclusion: rather than finding that LLMs free us to do a better job of what we were doing before they came along, they shift scientific incentives (and the playing field of academic competition) in ways that compel us to do more and more, faster and faster, less and less well.

To put it in a way that may get at people's slowness to realize or reluctance to accept this: the past was not simpler than the present in any general sense, nor were people in the past less complex. They did not all think similarly. Assuming otherwise is not historical thinking, merely nostalgia.

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · last wk.

one tendency that comes out about period films is the insistence that XYZ moral thought would not have occurred to anyone in the ancient world. to be sure there are moral innovations and changes but the existence of thorough dissatisfaction with the present moral order is not a modern phenomenon

Somewhere a university academic is being told to "do more with less" by someone whose job title didn't exist two reorgs ago.

borb alert

Dave Vetter@davidrvetter.bsky.social · 2w ago

Everything is on fire, but I just saw one of these drinking from the pond. We cannot let the fascists destroy our world.

Or an anti-AI watercolor brain www.etsy.com/shop/artolog...

Reminder: When fires ravaged southern California, Canada sent firefighting crews to help battle the blazes.

MeidasTouch@meidastouch.com · 3w ago

Trump says he is going to increase tariffs on Canada due to the wildfires

“What is unfolding is what climate and forest scientists have been predicting for 30 years. That as the world gets hotter and drier, we are exposing forests to more and more risk, and the old strategies of fire suppression are simply being overwhelmed.”

Canada’s Forests Will Burn and Burn

Once a wildfire starts, it can spread to an area too massive to control.

theatlantic.com

I see we are back to debating the humanity of people who live in red states and rural areas. My friends. This is not the path to justice. Doing a reverse fascism for our reasons is still a fascism. The people you are punishing are not the people making decisions. We take care of each other.

HOWEVER. we *all* are influenced in our practice of science by our own identity and cultural frameworks. it's not just those of us on the multivariate side that do this- all participants in this conversation are, and some of us are more self-aware of that, usually because as minorities...

I always want to know about supply chains, particularly magic. (I have a story about the woman who makes magic mirrors in her workshop!) Who grinds the truth powder? Who spends FOREVER milking the unicorn? Who breeds the immediately-available flesh-eating scarabs for the live burial ritual?

Natania Barron ~ Fantasy Author@natania.bsky.social · 4w ago

You know, fantasy novels glorify the shiny jobs: the captains of the guard, the renowned blacksmiths, the solemn clergy. But what job do you think deserves its own take from the perspective of a main character?

this avocet is the same age as me 🥲

RSPB@rspb.bsky.social · last mo.

WE HAVE AVOCET NEWS!!! An Avocet spotted at RSPB Middleton Lakes has been confirmed as the oldest ever recorded in the UK. At 36 years old, it's lived more than five times longer than the species' average lifespan. First ringed in 1990, it's still out there doing Avocet things. Go on Avocet. 😍

American Bittern, 12x24" Acryclic on canvas I love bittern's derpy display faces! I finally saw my first one back in June after 2 years of looking. I was so happy with how this came out :D

immigration politics are climate politics

Naomi Klein@naomiaklein.bsky.social · last mo.

As many experience lethal, unlivable heat, it's a good time to remember that there is no such thing as a climate refugee under the law. Climate breakdown was not understood when the UN convention was written. In the US, there is one way for extreme weather to be the basis for legal status: TPS.

A key to staying sane in trying times is to realize that your ability to create change, even in the best of times, is very limited, but your ability to make yourself feel bad about politics, or anything really, is basically unlimited and making yourself feel bad doesn’t make change more likely

GOLIKEHELLMACHINE@golikehellmachine.com · last mo.

it's entirely possible for americans to have a lot of angst about what our government is doing, recognize that they have extremely limited power to change it, and want to feel joy and pride about a soccer team, it's fine, demanding an explanation that reconciles all of this is unreasonable

This is the thing that so many Americans don’t seem to grasp: private companies are in it to make a profit, and nothing else. There are so many important, necessary discoveries that industry will never look into simply because they can’t make enough money on it.

Jason Rasgon@vectorgen.bsky.social · last mo.

The NIH is an ENORMOUS bargain for the American people. Do folk think that private industry will do the background slog work for drug discovery for 250K direct costs?

This also impacts support staff. I was a sysadmin for a couple universities, private and public. The pay was far below what I got by going to corporate IT but when it came to five 9s available and 24x7 on-call requirements it was "this is how it is in corporate."

Kate Clancy@kateclancy.bsky.social · last mo.

What a great article not only on faculty workloads, but how little our salaries actually factor in to most university budgets. A few highlights. First, our salaries are falling:

@kateclancy.bsky.social is the person I go to for advice and insight on academic labor. Her thread will give you a little taste of why I trust her so much. Here’s the link to save & share. www.chronicle.com/article/the-...

Opinion | The Faculty Workload Myth

Politicians think faculty members don’t teach enough. Here’s what the data says.

chronicle.com

Kate Clancy@kateclancy.bsky.social · last mo.

What a great article not only on faculty workloads, but how little our salaries actually factor in to most university budgets. A few highlights. First, our salaries are falling:

While our department has hired 2 state funded faculty in the last ~decade, we’ve grown substantially in research-funded positions, and SHRUNK in staff. This makes the day-to-day work of all faculty measurably harder.

Kate Clancy@kateclancy.bsky.social · last mo.

Then, unis are increasingly spending money on other stuff, so we are a lower portion of the budget. Because our dept budgets are >90% salary faculty may not realize this. But remember that's because they're underfunding each dept & expecting us to find ways to "generate revenue" to do the rest.

Not just Americans, people all over the world..

Cheryl Lynn Eaton@cheryllynneaton.bsky.social · last mo.

Not gonna lie, the fact that AI data centers are being cooled while Americans die in the street from heat stoke is really pissing me off.

Read the whole article - but also bring it to your departments, your unions, your senate committees.

Opinion | The Faculty Workload Myth

Politicians think faculty members don’t teach enough. Here’s what the data says.

chronicle.com

I don't actually think my campus is unique in this - I think this is the overall culture of overwork, undersupport, that you see in many unis where people are conned into thinking just because you like the work you do, or you are one of the "lucky" ones, you should sacrifice your health and family.

One of the more distressing things I've learned since I started organizing here is that in recent years there has been at least one faculty suicide, multiple deaths from cancer, & others mid-treatment for cancer or other serious illness who feel they need to KEEP WORKING instead of take leave.

We shouldn't be proud of this. It shows we're chumps willing to squeeze more and more work out of our days and nights as the university gives us less and less.

I'll tell you why: the university still chronically underfunds those important services. Over the past year our grant support has become more and more mercenary, with stricter rules, longer timelines, and as of this week, metered exceptions for folks who need to submit a grant in a short window.

This "other stuff" is a place unions and senates need to push. Why is the budget not transparent, esp in public unis? Why don't we get a better sense of the important increases in expenditure (e.g., disability services, research support) and the bloat (e.g. the latest Associate Vice Assistant Deans)

Then, unis are increasingly spending money on other stuff, so we are a lower portion of the budget. Because our dept budgets are >90% salary faculty may not realize this. But remember that's because they're underfunding each dept & expecting us to find ways to "generate revenue" to do the rest.