iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Brian Rolek

Alex Zalben @azalben.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Dolly Parton, among a thousand other amazing things she did in her life, gifted over 330 million books to kids through her Imagination Library program. Her passing is a tremendous loss to the world, but you can support the program today to keep it going imaginationlibrary.com

imaginationlibrary.com

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library | USA, UK, IE, CA, AU

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a book gifting program that mails free books to children from birth until they begin school in participating areas.

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Reposted by Brian Rolek

Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Big new @adriftlab.bsky.social paper - we show for the first time that plastics affects seabirds at the POPULATION level. Plastic ingested as a chick reduces recruitment of birds to the breeding population. And the story is pretty grim. 🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Im not in an experimental field but i think the equivalent was suggested LOL.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

A previous one at the same journal had one reviewer, so Id say its not a consistent pattern.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I've never had a manuscript peer-reviewed by 5 people at one go before but I just got one back. This manuscript should be bulletproof after this. 😂

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

It'll depend on model complexity, data size, and number of PVA scenarios. For me the speed gains went from >2 weeks on a supercomputer to 15 min on a laptop.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Free advice. It is many orders of magnitude faster to recode and run your Population Viability Analysis in R than to run it in Bayesian software from an Integrated Population Model.

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Pablo Macias Torres @pablomaciastorres.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

A high-quality peer review should always be standard. But paying reviewers seems reasonable, especially when journals charge such substantial publishing fees and the reviewing process is so important

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

I've been wrestling with model convergence so I'm giving Empirical Bayes another try. Has anyone tried this out in their own research? Not seeking advice but curious about whether it worked for others.

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Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

I've been using the No AI version of DuckDuckGo and am impressed with the results. It seems to favor reliable sites and has a clean interface: noai.duckduckgo.com

Screen shot of DuckDuckGo's "NO AI" search homepage, with orange type and cheerful duck in a green bow tie.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

A critical part of my "writing a manuscript process" has become jamming as much of my hard work into the supplemental materials as possible just before submission.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

I got some really interesting results back a few weeks ago. I'm excited to write this one up! Good things to come. Obligate scavengers are the coolest.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

If youre using AI to help with coding/stats on manuscripts, be sure to get a code review from someone who actually knows how to code/do stats. The AI slop era has arrived.

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The Peregrine Fund @theperegrinefund.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

New Publication 📰 American kestrel population trends and vital rates at the continental scale bit.ly/4c19FjT 📷 Jim Shane Figure 4 from Howell et al., 2026 #RaptorResearch #Ornithology 🪶

A small brownish-orange, grey-blue, and black falcon holds a cricket in its mouth while perched on a branch. A publication headlined titled, "American kestrel population trends and vital rates at the continental scale" is overlaid on the image.

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Janet Hill @saskajanet.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Oscars for birds? Count me in. We cannot deny that the Killdeer deserves recognition for their amazing performance as a wounded prey item to distract predators from their kids #birds #BirdOscars

Two shorebirds with black neck rings. One is sitting on a nest in the grass while the other checks in.

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Mike Feigin 🥯 @mikefeigin.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

“Novelty” of approach is overrated and no I won’t be expanding on this.

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Jennifer Molidor @jennifermolidor.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

I love condors. They are critically endangered and quite the characters. But they’re also incredibly important. With iron-strong stomachs, they are the disinfectants of ecosystems and protect from disease. We have much to improve in our relationship with them. www.azcentral.com/story/news/l...

azcentral.com

Condors soar over the Grand Canyon, kept aloft despite lead ammo threat

The California condor nearly went extinct, and remains imperiled by the threat of poisoning from lead ammunition.

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Methods in Ecology and Evolution @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

🤔Looking to make your #code more #reproducible? Check out our new and improved guide to Reproducible Code! 🧪🌍️ Find it here👇️ buff.ly/10TeNok @nhcooper123.bsky.social @britishecologicalsociety.org

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

The Bearded Vulture continuing its reign as the most metal bird by eating bones and doing this. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Ecological trap might work but it is specific to an attractive place with poor demographics. Population sink is poor demographics without the attraction. There are prob some other useful terms too

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Reposted by Brian Rolek

Dan Mennill @dmennill.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

In memory of Dr. Keith Hobson, the Society of Canadian Ornithologists is collecting donations to support the Keith Hobson Early Career Research Award. If you have the means, join me in supporting this initiative: www.zeffy.com/en-CA/donati... Details: www.sco-soc.ca/early-career...

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

Sometimes I just enjoy the aesthetics of discrete traceplots

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Reposted by Brian Rolek

Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

Well, it's official. After our paper last year (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....), the Slender-billed Curlew is officially declared Extinct today. Scientists dream of describing new species, not writing their obituary and epitaph, knowing that they are gone forever #ornithology

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

A preview of my upcoming talk at Raptor Research Foundation. Evaluating management of Ridgway's Hawk using IPMs and PVAs. Press play and watch the Population Viability Analysis go!

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

So many people have made personal sacrifices working every day to improve living standards for all of us. They are heroes that often go unrecognized and deserve better. I'm thinking about you all today.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Someone please do this with Grasshopper Sparrows. It would be pretty wild because their early successional habitat can result from fires, agriculture, or mechanical manipulation. Cool study!

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

As of today, I'm officially an Elective Member of the American Ornithological Society (AOS)! 🎉🎈🎊 I always need to remind myself to stop and celebrate these things.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

Alliances among vast organizations including states, cities, academic institutions, unions, etc leading to a general strike and the creation of alternative institutions.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Or the opposite side of the coin. Maybe you all could talk about how excluding people from the economy damages the economy for everyone.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Let's pretend the economy is a pie. Does inclusion and diversity in the economy slice the pie into smaller pieces or does the pie just get bigger? (I strongly suspect the latter but it would be great to hear from experts).

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

😂 you're a tough customer. I'm just glad that I know to avoid those models for now.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

I'm finding as I make more complex models I seem to need to use the noncentered param more to get adequate sampling. Any chance you've had a similar experience?

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

okay I probably wouldn't have used it then. Still that team is always adding nice features.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

Honestly I think one of your previous posts brought this to my attention, so thanks! I was not aware that nimble had a built-in noncentered sampler. I probably should be using that.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

And obviously this won't rescue a poor dataset, but it might rescue some poorly behaved MCMCs.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

Just sending this out to the BlueSky-iverse in case any of you Bayesians are struggling with convergence out there.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

Using non-centered parameterizations of the normal and multivariate normal distributions has absolutely rescued a couple of complex models for several projects. It served me well when models become intractible or take too long to run.

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Reposted by Brian Rolek

Monica G. Turner @monicagturner.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Please, please, please-submit to good journals (society + reputed publishers), respect peer review, and do your reviews with integrity. So important. Thanks to all of you who do. @steve-carpenter.bsky.social @esajournals.bsky.social #Ecosystems

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Latest achievement, I made my model indices spell s,c,a,t. Thats sex, captivity, age, and time. Sadly, my study has nothing to do with actual scat.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

Wildlifers who have traveled/lived in Costa Rica, what should i check out after a conference in October?

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Reposted by Brian Rolek

Yeet Kune Do @yeetkunedo.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

re: generative AI I have finally fully and accurately explained my problem with how it’s marketed and used. And now, you can use it, too.

Generative Al is being marketed as a tool designed to reduce or eliminate the need for developed, cognitive skillsets. It uses the work of others to simulate human output, except that it lacks grasp of nuance, contains grievous errors, and ultimately serves the goal of human beings being neurologically weaker due to the promise of the machine being better equipped than the humans using it would ever exert the effort to be.

The people that use generative Al for art have no interest in being an artist; they simply want product to consume and forget about when the next piece of product goes by their eyes. The people that use generative Al to make music have no interest in being a musician; they simply want a machine to make them something to listen to until they get bored and want the machine to make some other disposable slop for them to pass the time with.

The people that use generative Al to write things for them have no interest in writing. The people that use generative Al to find factoids have no interest in actual facts. The people that use generative Al to socialize have no interest in actual socialization.

In every case, they've handed over the cognitive load of developing a necessary, creative human skillset to a machine that promises to ease the sweat equity cost of struggle. Using generative Al is like asking a machine to lift weights on your behalf and then calling yourself a bodybuilder when it's done with the reps. You build nothing in terms of muscle, you are not stronger, you are not faster, you are not in better shape.

You're just deluding yourself while experiencing a slow decline due to self-inflicted atrophy.

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The Peregrine Fund @theperegrinefund.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

New Book: State of the World's Raptors 📖 bit.ly/SotWR The new book, led by Executive V.P. of Science and Conservation Dr. Christopher McClure provides an original approach to setting regional priorities for the conservation of raptors across the globe. Chris with book 📷 Anne Dixon

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The Peregrine Fund @theperegrinefund.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

Our Madagascar Program Director, Dr. Lily-Arison Rene de Roland, has been named the 2025 Indianapolis Prize winner! Congratulations, Lily! Read more about Lily's accomplishments and the Indianapolis Prize at bit.ly/4klk1Od 📷 John Mittermeier #RaptorResearch #birds #raptors

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Brian Owens @scibri.com · 13/05/2025

Are you a US researcher who has recently moved to Canada because of the Trump disruption to science (or are you in the process of doing so)? I want to talk to you for a story in @nature.com 🧪

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

Extended closing date of 30 May 2025.

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Brian Rolek @brols.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

Post-doc position available if you're interested in "movement ecology, animal tracking, conservation and sustainability science, environmental planning, human–wildlife coexistence, project management and/or consortium-style, big-data research." www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/I/...

vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk

Post-doctoral Research Fellow - AR3119LS

Post-doctoral Research Fellow - AR3119LS, School of Biology Salary: £38,249 - £45,413 per annum Start Date: As soon as possible Fixed Term for 2 Years with a possibility to extend, <p style="text-ali...

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Reposted by Brian Rolek

Armando Rosario-Lebrón @rosariolebronentomology.com · 08/05/2025

The legendary USGS Bee Lab is being shut down. The 2026 budget proposal defunds the Ecosystem Mission Area, which supported the lab. If their science helped your work, there’s still time to make your voice heard. Read below. (1/4) 🧪 #pollinators #Pollinators #USGS #Entomology #Hymenoptera 🪲🪳

usgs.gov

USGS Bee Lab at the Eastern Ecological Science Center

The USGS Bee Lab supports research on native bees. As part of that program we and our co-located USFWS partners develop identification tools and keys for native bee species, take public access hi reso...

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