Tessera

@skatuin.bsky.social

HK permanent resident; reader

Gertie @gertiegreen.bsky.social · 2d ago

“In America—and, therefore in the rest of the world—unless you are a special case, consent isn’t on the menu.” One of the most concise distillations I’ve read yet about the Cornell rape case and its relationship to privilege in America today.

A.R. Moxon@juliusgoat.bsky.social · 2d ago

"When someone is gang-raped, there appears to be something to defend, and it’s not bodily autonomy; there appears to be something to protect, and it’s not the victim." Life in this predator's paradise and the problem of shameless people. www.the-reframe.com/the-good-guys/

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 5d ago

Software engineering could and should be done with the same care as any other type of engineering. This is a post in honor of Margaret Hamilton (and also a subtweet of all vibe-coders everywhere).

Screencap

"“I fought to bring the software legitimacy so that it — and those building it — would be given its due respect, and thus I began to use the term ‘software engineering’ to distinguish it from hardware and other kinds of engineering, yet treat each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process,” Hamilton told El Pais in 2018. “When I first started using this phrase, it was considered to be quite amusing. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. Software eventually and necessarily gained the same respect as any other discipline.”"

Source: https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007

Mallory Moore @sexabolition.blog · 5d ago

There's been a growing refrain of "why should we bother learning X if a machine can do it faster" in recent years. And my answer is the same reason we learn to write our own compilers in computer science education. We will always need to educate ourselves in the how and why and the humanity of tech.

David Slack @slack2thefuture.bsky.social · 5d ago

I found this info, deleted everything Amazon thought they knew about me, and added some important facts. Just trying to help. #youarebeingwatched

A screengrab of the new info on my Amazon “About You” page:

“Home & Family
Is over 11 feet tall

Home & Family
Has launch capability

Home & Family
Runs their own space program

Home & Family
Is a former President of the United States”

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 6d ago

Launched in May, “the page uses data from customers’ activity to generate details about them in categories like Product Preferences, Interests & Hobbies, and Home & Family, which Amazon then uses to personalize users’ product experiences.”

@skatuin.bsky.social · 5d ago

Just saw this one- very creepy. Seems hard for me to decipher an ethical use-case, maybe for someone with locked in syndrome to communicate?

MIT Technology Review@technologyreview.com · 2w ago

AI is getting closer to decoding the images inside our brains—and raising new questions about privacy.

Reuters @reuters.com · 6d ago

Hungary to open Communist-era informer files in reckoning with Cold War past reut.rs/4hL9lc3

Hungary to open Communist-era informer files in reckoning with Cold War past

In a historic move, Hungary will soon start releasing tens of thousands of Communist-era police files in an online public database, giving people access to lists of informers and collaborators used by the former state security services.

reut.rs

Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Mexico’s overwintering monarch population grew 64% this winter, with butterflies covering their largest area of forest since 2018. The recovery remains fragile, but suggests there’s been a positive impact from conservation efforts in the butterflies’ core habitat. buff.ly/XoPKQ9d #ShareGoodNewsToo

Mexico’s monarch butterfly population jumps 64%, offering hope for at-risk species

The insects covered its largest area since 2018, despite threats from habitat loss, climate crisis and pesticides

buff.ly

Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · last wk.

The global population of greater one-horned rhinos has hit a record 4,075. Kaziranga National Park in Assam, India, shelters more than 2,600 of them. Poaching has fallen 86% since 2016; India, Nepal and Indonesia all recorded zero rhino killings in 2025. buff.ly/O4lKhqy #ShareGoodNewsToo

Assam’s Kaziranga Leads Rhino Revival as Global Greater One-Horned Population Rises to 4,075

A CORRESPONDENTBOKAKHAT: The global population of the greater one-horned rhinoceros has now reached 4,075, with about 80 per cent of the population found i

buff.ly

Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Love this news but hate the "surprise comeback" framing. Teams around the globe worked incredibly hard to protect & expand mangrove forests & it worked! Please just say, "We tried and we succeeded! Go team Earth!" We must admit our victories to give people the heart to keep trying! #ShareGoodNewsToo

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 4mo ago

'a new study shows that since 2010 the world has been gaining more mangroves than it has been losing - driven by stronger legal protections and increased public awareness of their importance, sparked by disasters such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.' 1/2

Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · last mo.

Chinook salmon have recolonised 88% of their historic range on the Klamath River, with more than 13,000 fish passing the old Iron Gate Dam site in 2025, up from 7,700 the year before. Two years after the dams’ removal, it’s going better than anyone predicted. buff.ly/pToC9gB #ShareGoodNewsToo

Rewilding the upper Klamath River Basin: rapid recolonization of Chinook salmon following the world’s largest dam removal - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Rewilding the upper Klamath River Basin: rapid recolonization of Chinook salmon following the world’s largest dam removal

nature.com

Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 3y ago

Guys, Amazon deforestation is down 50% this year! It's worth saying twice: Amazon deforestation is down 50% this year!!!!!!! 2023 was also the best year ever for reforestation and carbon reduction! We're doing it! We're really doing it! #ShareGoodNewsToo

reuters.com

Reuters @reuters.com · last wk.

Slovenian glacier could disappear in days, researchers say reut.rs/4rKEy3o

Slovenian glacier could disappear in days, researchers say

Once a magnet for summer skiers and cherished by generations as a symbol of Slovenia's Alpine heritage, one of the country's last glaciers has ‌dwindled to a few patches of ice that researchers say could disappear within days.

reut.rs

Greg Pak @gregpak.net · last wk.

Tremendous turnout and energy at the Democratize Yale protest on Friday! Huge high five to hundreds of students, faculty, workers, and alums who are fighting for academic freedom and freedom of speech while telling President McInnis and the trustees NOT TO CUT A DEAL WITH TRUMP!

Yale students smile and clap at a Democratize Yale demonstration - one holds a sign reading "TRUSTEES: LISTEN. RESIST. DEMOCRATIZE."

Charlie Reece ✅@charliereece.com · last wk.

Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 2w ago

There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.

Hong Kong Free Press HKFP @hongkongfp.com · 2w ago

Hong Kong police arrested two people on Wednesday for allegedly acting "with seditious intent", authorities said, with local media identifying the pair as an independent journalist and an activist. In full: hongkongfp.com/2026/10/01/h... Photo: Tang Ho-wing/YouTube & Kyle Lam/HKFP.

H Mac @hmac.bsky.social · 2w ago

The quote that went around when Wendell Berry died, "the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines" comes to mind *often* these days. Trying to live as a creature is becoming my north star.

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 2w ago

Technology enthusiasts severely overestimate the average person’s desire or willingness or capacity to build and use AI agents. I understand some work roles that could mandate or encourage it but that is no way a tech revolution. Agents are best for structured, clearly delineated tasks.

YTSL @ytsl.bsky.social · 2w ago

The Mid-Autumn Festival was just a few days ago... 🙄

Tom Grundy@tomgrundy.hongkongfp.com · 2w ago

Going into October, we're heading into another insane heatwave. Seems normalised now: Hong Kong now spends about 13 per cent of its calendar days under the Observatory’s “very hot weather warning.” In the year 2000, it was just over 5 per cent.

Helen Gittos @helengittos.bsky.social · 2w ago

This is such a sorry & infuriating tale. Via @davidpetts1.bsky.social from another place. www.sarsen.org/2026/09/hist...

The French Republican Calendar @sansculottid.es · 2w ago

Today is Septidi the 7th of Vendémiaire in the year 235. Vendémiaire is the month of vintage. Today we celebrate carrots. #JacobinDay See today's page

An old time-y illustration of a Carrots.

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · last yr.

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 2w ago

Published version here! doi.org/10.5281/zeno... www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/volume-162-p...

Against the Uncritical Adoption of ‘AI’ Technologies in Academia — Digital Culture & Education (ISSN: 1836-8301)

Written by: Olivia Guest, Marcela Suarez, Barbara C. N. Müller, Edwin van Meerkerk, Arnoud Oude Groote Beverborg, Ronald de Haan, Andrea Reyes Elizondo, Mark Blokpoel, Natalia Scharfenberg, Annelies ...

digitalcultureandeducation.com

Aaron Busch @tripperhead.bsky.social · 2w ago

Peggy Wong has resigned from her duties as a Tai Po District Councillor, citing health reasons, the government said on Saturday. Wong also resigned from her duties as member of the Tai Po South Area Committee and captain of the Tai Po Kwong Fuk and Plover Cove sub-district Care Team.

Peggy Wong resigns as Tai Po District Councillor - RTHK

Peggy Wong has resigned from her duties as a Tai Po District Councillor, citing health reasons, the government said on S...

news.rthk.hk

BCP Minus Context @bcpminuscontext.bsky.social · 2w ago

deeply sensible of the shortness and uncertainty of life

Catherine Frieman @cjfrieman.bsky.social · 2w ago

Assume this means the old rules restricting the hoi polloi from the bod have gone out the windows and anyone can get a reader card now... no?

Apply for a Bodleian Reader card

Applying for a Bodleian Libraries Reader Card if you are not a member of the University of Oxford.

bodleian.ox.ac.uk

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 2w ago

Oxford lets OpenAI train its AI models on Bodleian library

Immigration and Ethnic History Society @iehs.bsky.social · 3w ago

***Upcoming: "Asian Exclusion and the Battle for Birthright Citizenship"*** This conference contextualizes efforts to restrict and strip birthright citizenship from the children of immigrants ineligible to naturalize within the context of Asian American history. www.huntington.org/event/asian-...

Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 2w ago

A.I. and corporate lingo are dragging language ynto drugged realmes of vague, airy, plastic nothingnesse: glitz and hyperbole wythout meaning. Language must have fur and clawes, make the floorboardes creake and leave wet dirtye footprintes. Wordes are rayne and fyre and stone. Wielde them. Save us.

Your Internet Friend Tom Tomorrow @tomtomorrow.bsky.social · 3w ago

fwiw I've been digging my site out of mothballs because everyone really does need their own domain that's not controlled by somebody else, and I've had this one running for 30 years, off and on. www.thismodernworld.com Mostly posting cartoons, but plan to get back to photoblogging as well.

THIS MODERN WORLD – BY TOM TOMORROW

thismodernworld.com

A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 3w ago

There's plenty of corruption, crimes against humanity, and downright evil shit to focus on, but every so often it strikes me how thoroughly we USians have been exposed and disgraced on the world stage. A country who can elect such a man—twice!—is not a worthy country. We need radical reformation.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3w ago

Trump to the UN: "Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly? Do I drive them into hell?"