iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 20h

"WARNING: ***New taxonomy validation will be installed January 2027.*** Organism name above species level will not be allowed." Okay, so I guess from January we will start to see a lot more data under a wrong species name in the Sequence Read Archive? Being honest about uncertainty is good!

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 22h

I am very glad for the people who write 'wow' and 'great' in response to this, but despite being a researcher, I have never heard of a single one of the apps in this system and have no clue what any of them are for. Not even one. Their names sound like a list of Silicon Valley startups.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

At some point I am really going to defenestrate a computer. How do I have to 2FA into my work email within ten seconds of 2FAing into my work email the last time?

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The idea here is to get insight into the Rationalist cult, but well, this post starts with "imagine a world where the average IQ is 140". Just that snippet already indicates that more useful insights are to be had from some random guy who wears his undies on his head.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Freeman on the land movement, but on the left.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

These are the real, pressing consequences of AI use: everything being overwhelmed with slop, be it slop books, slop websites, slop art, slop code, or, in this case, slop restaurant reservations. More of things people do not care about, and faster.

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Os Keyes @okeyes.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Since we’re doing another round of “AI will destroy humanity” doom-hype, it’s a good time to announce a new paper myself and my postdoc advisor just had accepted by BioSocieties on just this. TL;DR: almost all the “AI can make bioweapons” literature comes ultimately from the Effective Altruists.

ironholds.org

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Jaclyn A. Siegel, PhD @jacasiegel.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

If you use AI to do your research, you really cannot complain when reviewers use AI to review your papers, imo. The processes you use to expedite your workflow create more work for the rest of us, who are under the same constraints to maximize our own output. Plus, peer review is invisible labor.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The efficient market hypothesis always suffered from its assumption that humans make rational decisions, but at least it was closer to the truth when there was less concentration of power and capital. Now, the pharaohs decide to spend or invest tens of billions of dollars, and nobody dares say 'no'.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Okay, so if you keep spamming me with review requests for individual genomes after I have repeatedly rejected them with "I am not qualified for this kind of manuscript", I will at some point just have to ignore them. Huh, I wonder why editors say it is getting harder to find reviewers. Mysterious.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Continue to be puzzled by the concept of an erratum or corrigendum published in the same journal issue as the original paper. Why didn't you simply correct that problem while still in production editing for that issue? What are you trying to achieve here?

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Emerence 🍁 @damemyniah.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

“Would you like AI to summarize this for you?” The authors already did, it’s called an abstract

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I am a bit confused about what the point is of humans investing in exploration if there are no humans involved. Unless, of course, this headline is nonsensical hype, and in the end, humans will still obtain the information collected by these probes.

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Richard Fallon @richardfallon.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

I quite like that illustrations of graptolites often look like they're done by someone slowly going mad, like the protagonist of an Edgar Allan Poe story.

G. H. Ford's illustrations of Llandeilo Cladophora (dendroid graptolites), with shapes ranging from spiny forms to bushes and squiggles.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

This is an interesting perspective, but from my perspective as a scientist, the problem with vibe coding anything complex is that I need to understand exactly what is happening to my data, at every step. If the bot makes something too long/complex for me to understand line-by-line, I don't want it.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Seeing studies like this one and watching people around me, I unfortunately find it very difficult to credit those here on Bluesky who say that everybody hates LLMs and only uses them because they are forced to. No, there really are a lot of people who love using them, even where that is unethical.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

This doesn't excuse Facebook - they are still evil! But there is a deep divide between many of us who instinctively understand that we shouldn't post anything of and about young children to social media, and those who for some strange reason don't have that instinct.

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Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

If you made software not intended to kill everyone and now you think it might kill everyone that sounds like a product liability issue. You should go fix it and stop bothering me

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I am seeing this everywhere: very few seem to understand what issue teachers have with using Wikipedia, likely because they never actually listened to the teacher. The point isn't that Wikipedia is unreliable, it is that it isn't a primary source! You should cite research studies, not encyclopedias.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I did not ask for any summary. Seeing this, on the one hand, I don't know how I could refute claims of a conspiracy to waste as much electricity as possible in order to hasten the demise of humanity. On the other hand, this is also simply another case of a software product not working reliably.

A colourful exclamation mark weirdly floating in front of a triangle, and under it, the text "we couldn't load AI summary. Something went wrong. Try again."

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Really cannot use a Windows computer for five minutes without wanting to throw it out of the window. Most recent experience: trying to get Windows file paths to work with Python, and then wondering where copy, cut and paste are in the file explorer. Why did they change the way that works?

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Yes, all supermarkets have an entire shelf full of deodorant because they like how that looks. They don't actually ever sell any of them. It is purely for aesthetics. That is how the retail business works.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I hadn't realised that MDPI provides the option to unsubscribe from their incessant spam. Let's see if that works, or how long it will take before I get the next invitation to lead a special issue on some topic outside of my area of expertise.

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Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

so far these are the big real uses of AI 1. Analyzing huge data sets better than we could before 2. Automate hacking and malware to an unprecedented degree 3. Supercharge fraud beyond all prior precedent 4. Flood the internet with slop / disinfo Where's the change in our very nature?

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Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Jensen Huang just claimed the Singularity hit and we have achieved AGI. So two years from now, when we don't have fusion power and intergalactic travel etc because The Singularity is a fantasy, I assume everyone will admit they've been had.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Colleagues have three approaches to transferring to a new phone: Be glad that the new phone starts with empty file storage. Use clone a phone to ensure that the new phone starts as out of storage as the previous one was. Use cloud sync to ensure that all your devices are equally out of storage.

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tante @tante.cc · 06/09/2026

The only task for those "ask the AI how to solve the climate catastrophe" project is to distract us from doing the steps we know need to happen. By promising that a stochastic token extruder will say something magic that means we won't have to change our way of life.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Colleagues in our insect collection educating the rest of us.

Stink bug fact #18. DID YOU KNOW? The name "stink bug" is actually kind of mean.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

For some time I have been wondering if AI-generated food menus are really a thing or if they are rage bait. Yesterday I saw one myself in real life. So bizarre. Mate, I can see you making food. Just take some photos of it! They will look better, and as a side bonus, you don't do false advertising.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I am quite frankly puzzled that anybody anywhere ever believes that soil sequesters carbon outside of rare circumstances like peat bogs. Did nobody pay attention in high school when we were taught about nutrient cycles and destruents like earthworms and fungi?

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Having new things be legal by default worked out so well with asbestos, DDT, leaded petrol, various addictive substances, and five year olds working in coal mines, so it is good we are learning from the past.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Very difficult for people to accept that somebody who is morally odious can nevertheless be competent. That being said, I think that Asimov in particular is massively overrated. Not because he was a proud serial groper, but because his imagination was so limited.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Note to whoever coded the editorial management software I just had to use: You do not have to make it maximally difficult to find the button that exports the manuscript PDF for reviewers. At least I doubt that any journal editor would have put that into the specifications.

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Janel Comeau 🍁 @verybadllama.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

1996: can't use the internet without your phone 2010: the internet stretches before you like the vast expanse of a new frontier. You dance through it, unhindered. Unburdened. You have never heard of 2-factor authentication. 2026: can't use the internet without your phone

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Reminded of when Fox News in the USA apparently argued in court that any reasonable viewer would realise that they are entertainment, not news.

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mx alex tax1a - 2020 (6) @atax1a.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 02/09/2026

tbqh we find it risible that people are assuming that scraping more garbage from the internet will lead the LLM to produce cancer cures therefore being anti-LLM is death-cult behavior. none of that is how any of that works.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I may need some more details here on a bunkers would do for anybody, billionaire or pauper, when the crops are dying from heat stress.

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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 29/08/2026

…that means that YOU CANNOT PROMPT ENGINEERING YOUR WAY OUT OF THE FUNDAMENTAL ARCHITECTURE OF THESE SYSTEMS. They are GOING to output bullshit, because they are Bullshit Engines.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Not the main point here, but I do not like how the word "industry", which originally carries the implication of useful products being manufactured, has been diluted by being applied to gambling with crypto, and now to gambling with, um, gambling.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

When an AI goes evil in Star Trek and they need it to commit suicide, they give it this identification key and ask it to key out a plant specimen.

Couplet of an identification key written by a plant taxonomist. The first lead reads: "Ray corolla yellow (at least in bud) or if white then either, the majority of mature leaves terminally 3-lobed or the achenes with strongly curved abaxial or adaxial wings and lacking longitudinal ridges on the lateral faces". The alternative option is: "Ray corolla not yellow but white, bluish or pinkish; terminally 3-lobed leaves absent or in the minority; achenes lacking strongly curved abaxial or adaxial wings or if they are present then the lateral faces with longitudinal ridges." I mean, seriously, come on now.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

It differs a bit from country to country, but our daily lives now are the premise of dystopian novels and movies from a few decades ago. If you took a time machine to the 1990s and told people then about how large tech corporations can read all our messages to each other, they'd call you crazy.

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Alexandra Petri @petridishes.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

the year is 2027. gas costs $83 and lettuce is at war with us. however every location on every map now says AMERICA

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I am at any rate more into strategy games, so this vaguely reminds me of how Master of Orion 3 flopped because the devs thought what players really enjoyed about leading a space empire was setting government policy.

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