iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Michael Erard @michaelerard.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

If your practice of education has not already always been focused on “the productive struggle” then what the hell were you doing

1274

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

In an incredible turn of events, the philosopher who finds queers suspicious now also finds the disabled suspicious: t.co/L7aSRliDXu

thetimes.com

Why are young women using walking sticks?

A disproportionate number of Gen Z females are affected by vague syndromes and may be victims of social contagion

57669110

Reposted by Bethan Clark

sja @sam-ja.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

i'd recommend people read the response from an LGBTQ+ cancer charity to last year's EHRC proposed guidance - been thinking a lot about this particular section ever since i first read it (full response here outpatients.org.uk/2025/06/26/e...)

Screenshot of article reading:
"The suggestion that transgender people should only be accommodated in side rooms is unfeasible. As anyone in healthcare knows, available side rooms are a rare commodity. If their use was mandated for all transgender patients it would largely be unenforceable. It is necessary to consider the broad variety of people who require side rooms and their availability across the NHS. As per NHS Estates documents, increased floor area, capital cost, management, and staffing issues also need to be considered. If a redrafted single-sex accommodation policy aligns with the EHRC’s Code of Practice, we feel that it could leave transgender people without reliable accommodation options, putting their clinical outcomes at risk."

Quote from article
'“Let us take the example of Joelle, a trans woman who died of an eminently treatable cancer after waiting for eight days on a general ward, because clinicians could not agree whether she should be placed on a men’s ward or a women’s ward. The delay in treatment cost her her life.”

-Dr Roz Savage, MP'

8636273

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Nicolete Burbach @nicoleteburbach.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

"A year ago...we said that every human being is a precious child of God, deserving of dignity and respect...We are not called to the legal minimum of hospitality. We are called to the radical welcome of the one who sought out the excluded and the overlooked."

1132

Reposted by Bethan Clark

rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

JK Rowling is not only an anti-rights bigot, she's a litigation terrorist, and I can safely say that because the US specifically passed a law to shield its citizens from legal terrorism of the type she engages in

1391140

Reposted by Bethan Clark

rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

The playbook is an exact echo of the playbook they're running on trans people right now, because it is the exact same playbook run by the exact same people (or the people they trained). Down to the letter!

121037

Reposted by Bethan Clark

👻madeline bOoOoOoOodent👻 @oldenoughtosay.com · 15/03/2026

If you don’t need everyone in your society to be white and you don’t need for a dozen white men to be richer than god, you do not need to give a shit about the birth rate

227430

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Madeline G. Eppley, PhD @madeline-eppley.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Further, we contend a lack of unanimity on how to define sex is not inherently problematic and a universal definition is not necessary to pursue. No matter what definitional choices are used, we provide actionable recommendations to improve accuracy when describing sex.

0364

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Madeline G. Eppley, PhD @madeline-eppley.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

New paper out in ecology letters! with @andylee.bsky.social @allydefduf.bsky.social We synthesized the active debate on how scientists define sex, including limitations and assumptions. We believe this discussion will lead to more accurate science. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

There is No Consensus on Biological Sex

At this critical moment when misinformation about sex is being applied to policy globally, scientific clarification on the definition of biological sex is valuable. Here, we evaluate the primary appr...

317684

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Abigail Thorn @theabigailthorn.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Kansas has, overnight, invalidated the drivers’ licenses of trans people, a pointless cruelty that upends their lives If Brits think “it won’t happen here” think again! Groups in the U.K. who want the same thing are routinely invited to consult with Labour and normalised in our press!

333363908

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Dr Kat Day (she/her) 🌖 @chronicleflask.katday.com · 08/11/2025

Mm hm. No mention of the sexism Franklin was constantly forced to endure in this cosy little, “they were all respectful colleagues, actually” article.

Comments from Watson and Crick reveal the gender harassment that Franklin endured in the lab. Throughout The Double Helix, Watson's famous 1968 book recounting the race to the famous structure, Watson condescendingly refers to Franklin as "Rosy," a nickname never used to
her face. "There was never lipstick to contrast with her straight black hair, while at the age of thirty-one her dresses showed all the imagination of English blue-stocking adolescents," he writes, though neglecting to critique his male colleagues' cosmetic or sartorial choices.

He adds that her "belligerent moods" interfered with Wilkins' ability to "maintain a dominant position that would allow him to think unhindered about DNA." For that reason, " [c]learly Rosy had to go or be put in her place. ... The thought could not be avoided that the best home for a feminist was in another person's lab." In the 1993 book Nobel Prize Women in Science, Crick was quoted as saying, "I'm afraid we always used to adopt-let's say, a patronizing attitude towards her."

59032

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Brittany Trang @brittanytrang.com · 08/11/2025

A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death. Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written." Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating. 🧪🧬🧫

statnews.com

James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers

James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who died Thursday at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers.

11060051963

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Katy Stephenson @kstephensonmd.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

I like this piece a lot about Rosalind Franklin’s role in solving the structure of DNA. It really respects her as a full scientist - what she saw, what she didn’t appreciate, what could have been if she’d had true peers to support her, or had not died so young. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

nature.com

What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure

Franklin was no victim in how the DNA double helix was solved. An overlooked letter and an unpublished news article, both written in 1953, reveal that she was an equal player.

19940

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Dr. Katja Thieme (she/they) @katjathieme.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

If we let the paid employees of a small number of ethics-free AI companies dictate the directions in which our scholarship should develop and the ways in which researchers must go about their work now, we are indeed fucking ourselves over.

13013

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Liz Shannon Miller @lizshannonmiller.com · 27/10/2025

friend shared this, immediately updated my settings

$Screenshot of text: unfuck google drive by shooting gemini Hey folks! Google is fucking you via sneaky enshittification again! Want the shit in your google drive to load instantly again, instead of taking for-fucking-ever? Open your gdrive (web OR app) Settings > Manage Apps Gemini was checked "use as default" (and i sure the fuck didn't set it that way, this was a silent push) Nuke that, and suddenly, folders that took up to a minute to populate and sort do so in a fraction of a second.$

139125076888

Reposted by Bethan Clark

rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

The best way to counter this tactic is to familiarize yourself with the database of dogwhistles. The ADL is deeply problematic in so, so many ways, but they maintain the best and most solid database of symbolism: www.adl.org/resources/ha...

adl.org

222746

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Beyond X&Y @beyondxandy.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

"Who decides what is normal development? Who decides what is natural biodiversity or pathological deviation? Who defines the distinction between defect and difference?" Eugenic attacks on people who are disabled, neurodivergent, queer, trans... They are all linked by fear of diversity

0228

Reposted by Bethan Clark

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

I suppose if the question here is 'why don't these fields produce new discoveries at the same rate as the sciences' the answer is a pretty obvious, 'because they're not funded like the sciences.' We could do a lot of archaeology with, say, a few billion dollars a year!

842956

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Sonya Widen @sonyawiden.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

Who defines the distinction between defect and difference? This is an incredibly important conversation and one that is close to my heart. A moving and eloquent article, from top to bottom.

121

Bethan Clark @bethanclark.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

I wrote something on developmental biology and disability and put it up on the node last night: thenode.biologists.com/developmenta... I've been nervous to share because some of it veers a bit personal but they are thoughts that won't stay quiet. Would love to know what people think about it!

thenode.biologists.com

Developmental Biology and Disability - the Node

Hopeful monsters. Morphospace. Mutation. Natural variation. Mutagenesis screens. Polymorphism. Deformity. Phenotype. Disease. Adaptation. Anomaly.

64019

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Alexandra Lanes @ajlanes.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

This, from the Quakers, is a pretty good example of how to resist pressure from bigot lobbying groups. Effectively “we legally can allow trans people to use the loo, we morally should, and we tried it and nothing bad happened”

quaker.org.uk

6533401333

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Sacha Coward @sachacoward.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

I am one of the 14 authors who chose to leave the Polari Prize, and I find myself frustrated and saddened at the way this entire story has been represented. 1/

11361802350

Reposted by Bethan Clark

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

And in particular I was struck by how it is the ability to 'do' a field - or at least *feel* like you are 'doing' a field - *in plain language* which invites this kind of response. What LLMs have done to physics and many other STEM fields is brought the fake-doing-of-them into plain language. 3/

444828

Reposted by Bethan Clark

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

But because there's no giant 'history formula,' no tables of strange symbols (well, amusingly, there *are* but you don't work with them until you are much deeper in the field), folks assume that history is easy, does not require special skills and so contemptible. 12/

531618

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Rob Donoghue @rdonoghue.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

There’s a thing in games where people want skill to matter in a very specific way - they want it to be possible for them to beat better player, but impossible for a less good player to beat them. I feel like the same folks can only imagine a past where they are as well or better off than they are.

1224

Reposted by Bethan Clark

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

The thing to understand - which the people peddling these fantasies often don't - is that the desire here isn't the 'past,' but being an aristocrat in a tightly controlled, authoritarian society. They imagine a narrow hierarchy where they are, by dint of birth, at the top. Dreams of feudalism.

1356486

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 03/07/2025

There is a difference between separating the art from the artist... and separating the transaction from the art. If your method of engagement with the art funnels funding to a hate group, or clout someone will weaponize it, the art is not the issue.

212331

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Roland Meyer @bildoperationen.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Turning online archives into resources for training data not only exploits and devalues the archived works, but also renders these archives literally unusable. Like all extractivist business models, #genAI ultimately threatens to destroy its own foundations. It's not generative, but destructive

7312162

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Small Robots @smolrobots.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

It benefits those in control of society to have everyone think that it's impossible - physically, spirituality, biologically - to subvert the current order. Tudor social mores told people a commoner couldn't wear velvet, and patriarchy tells us that male and female are exclusive categories of being.

1202

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Small Robots @smolrobots.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

There have been places and times where you couldn't wear certain fabrics if you weren't of the right class. Your place in the social hierarchy was seen as immutable as terfs think gender is today. It's all an imposition to serve the interests of power.

2152

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Small Robots @smolrobots.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

And I do think it's helpful to think of queerness as part of normal human variation (because it is) but not as a defence of it specifically. I don't give a shit if people *do* choose to be queer. It would still be okay.

2202

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

"Literary style is not a puzzle you solve to get a little information treat" is my new motto.

6536117

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Jay Hulme @jayhulmepoet.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Irony is out. Joy is in. Find a niche thing to love and then love it unreservedly.

5548159

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 09/06/2025

So what do we learn from this all this? I think the paper is devastating for the notion that these systems have general reasoning capacities, in the sense of being able to develop and deploy simple algorithms to solve combinatorially difficult problems.

311610

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

The publisher has cut their costs by outsourcing to this company, the company has cut their costs by using AI/low-paid staff instead of paying for a proper job, while I’ve spent hours & hours fixing the manuscript, so all the extra labour from cost-costing has fallen on me, the unremunerated author

202639439

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Academia in 2025: For weeks I’ve been working through botched copy-edits of my monograph, outsourced by the publisher to a company I’d never heard of, until it finally dawned on me the terrible job might be AI. A quick search confirmed the company recently launched new AI software, which now means..

792904957

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Simon Brew @simonbrew.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

My plans for a major retail emporium are being threatend by wholesalers who won't let me steal the stock.

A headline from The Times, with Nick Clegg saying that requiring permission from copyright holders to train AI on their word would 'kill' the AI industry. Boo fecking hoo.

9641241261

Reposted by Bethan Clark

sasha @2damntrans.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

Labour can only do one thing to stop Reform and it's make positive material changes to people's lives. That's it. That's all they have to do.

1938183

Reposted by Bethan Clark

rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

I swear this was the short version.

117184656

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Michelle Ma @michellema.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Each time you ask an AI chatbot a question, it sends a request to a data center and strains an increasingly scarce resource: water. A 🧵on our investigation into how the data centers that power AI are increasingly being built in highly water-stressed places: www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

bloomberg.com

The AI Boom Is Draining Water From the Areas That Need It Most

A Bloomberg News analysis finds that roughly two thirds of new data centers built or in development in the US since 2022 are in places with high levels of water stress.

6626451946

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Jonty @fairless.xyz · 21/04/2025

A scene from the BBC period drama 'The mirror and the light', based on Hilary Mantel's book of the same name. King Henry VIII sits and speaks to a stooped over Thomas Cromwell. A crude speech bubble from Henry has been drawn onto the image, attributing the below quoted below to the character

420463

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/04/2025

alright i have my laptop, guess i'm livetweeting the dire wolf preprint. so a quick reminder: this is not yet peer-reviewed, so there's some different expectations re: quality. also let's be clear, i'm a hella biased reader, bc i don't trust the hype they're courting

16381130

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Robin Hayward 🌳 🏳️‍⚧️ @canopyrobin.com · 21/03/2025

We all agree that this is bad, right? Peer reviewed studies should not have AI summaries that go unchecked by either the original authors or the reviewers...

An AI generated academic paper summary with dropdowns:

Questions answered in this article
BetaPowered by GenAI
This is generative AI content and the quality may vary.
Learn more
.

What differences in species richness and diversity were observed between unlogged and logged forests?

What conclusions can be drawn about the long-term effects of selective logging on tree communities?

What differences were found in stem basal area and pole stems between logged and unlogged forests?

In selectively logged forests, how did species evenness of established trees differ between naturally regenerating and actively restored plots?

How does active restoration potentially affect biodiversity in tree communities?

2235

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Ross Carroll @rosscarroll.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

When I worked in UK academia I recall hearing of a Japanese man who was baffled at how Britain had decided to run its universities like firms. “Why? Your universities are excellent and your firms are terrible.”

2354221480

Reposted by Bethan Clark

Janne M. Korhonen @jmkorhonen.fi · 12/02/2025

The long-term unintended effects of novel synthetic compounds are quite high in my list of potentially serious risks to the well-being and viability of human civilisation. It is extremely difficult to reliably assess even single chemicals, and almost impossible to predict their interactions.

36716