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Carol Siniscalchi

@carolsiniscalchi.bsky.social
873 followers 324 following 163 posts

Part time botanist, part time librarian, full time exhausted. Views are my own.

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Reposted by Carol Siniscalchi
Victoria Strauss @victoriastrauss.com · 14h
Canada is refusing to issue ISBNs to books primarily generated with AI. This illustrates both the urgency of the problem of the growing flood of slop books, and also the toothlessness of addressing it on the honor system without there also being consequences for lying
Use of artificial intelligence
By registering with ISBN Canada, you declare that your book was created by a human author. You may use AI tools only for limited support tasks, such as brainstorming ideas, checking grammar, or formatting your book. You must not use AI to generate the text, create the artwork, or translate the book. ISBN Canada does not issue ISBNs for works whose content is primarily generated by AI. LAC is currently reviewing its policy regarding the use of AI content creation and our guidance is subject to change.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Every AI/HCI paper I review now just sounds like this.
Research [25] shows that people [26] enjoy the feeling of winning games [3,5,19]. Enjoying things can lead to longer life expectancy [2], higher economic productivity [9,22,33-40,302] and improve mental health [9]. Yet many games still include losing players [67,4]. A recent study showed that less than half of the players in a Chess [1] match win on average [42]. We have developed an LLM-driven co-creative [66], user-led [11], mixed-initiative [80] assistant for Chess [2], through which players can redefine the rules of Chess [3] using generative AI prompting such that they are the winner of Chess [4]. A study (n=3) showed that 100\% of people felt better, healthier and more self-actualised after using our tool, showing that this may be the way forward for games and human culture more broadly in the future.
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More Perfect Union @moreperfectunion.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
BREAKING: Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Jeff Merkley are introducing the Ban Flock Act. This bill would effectively put an end to AI surveillance cameras that track Americans. /1
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Tal Lavin @swordsjew.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
🚨my book Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America is on sale today on the Kindle store for $2.99! Sorry to link to Amazon but $3 is a solid price for a book that took me three years to write www.amazon.com/Wild-Faith-C...
amazon.com
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Ainsley S @americanbeetles.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I know I say this every month, but the botanists have to be stopped
snippet from a paper on the systematics of Dasypogonaceae, in which you can tell the author is Australian because the odor of the flowers (which are "blood red" when the pollen is ready to go) is described as "reminiscent of a rotting kangaroo"
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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 25/09/2026
An individual in Canada used ChatGPT for eight months to plan one of the country’s worst mass shootings. Yet, if you listen to politicians and media, the real threat of AI is a fantastical scenario where it might wipe out humans in ten years. They need to stop getting fooled by tech deceivers.
disconnect.blog
The media has the AI threat all wrong
Generative AI is harming people today. We don’t need to waste time fantasizing about science fictional scenarios.
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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Thoughts and prayers for research data managers everywhere. You are not alone. We will get through this together techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/excelbl...
techcommunity.microsoft.com
Excel now supports multiple values in a single cell | Microsoft Community Hub
Lists, arrays in cells, and nested arrays introduce new ways to store and organize related information, helping you keep data together without sacrificing...
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Josh Chafetz @joshchafetz.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
On the one hand, it's just dumb. Universities are, in fact, real, and they exist in the world. American universities employ about 3x as many people as there are active duty servicemembers, so if soldiers are "real," then so are academics.
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Corey Callaghan @coreytcallaghan.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Do you use #iNaturalist data in research—or advise students who do? We put together a practical guide to using iNaturalist data in scientific research, covering how to access, acquire, analyze, and attribute the data, with examples in R and Python. Paper: doi.org/10.1093/bios... #ecology
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Carol Siniscalchi @carolsiniscalchi.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Oh no people can do email reacts on gmail too now? Get outta here with that!
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Jessica Budke 🌱🥼🔬 @mossplants.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Did you miss out on the chance to order a shirt before the conference? Support bryology & lichenology student travel awards by purchasing your very own ABLS BOTANY 2026 (@botsocamerica.bsky.social) t-shirt that features a rare southwestern moss and lichen species. Please spread the word!
customink.com
Support 2026 ABLS Botany T-shirts for student travel awards.
Shirt features rare southwestern moss and lichen species. Made from 100% recycled fabric (60% recycled cotton/40% post-consumer recycled polyester), the Re-Tee is crafted from rescued materials, ensur...
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Reposted by Carol Siniscalchi
Nandaskid @nandabel23.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
A Rockbridge Network ligada à campanha de Flávio Bolsonaro, ñ apenas formula propostas para entregar aos EUA acesso privilegiado às terras raras brasileiras. Empresários ligados ao grupo ja estão investindo numa cadeia produtiva do setor no sul da Bahia. paulomotoryn.substack.com/p/grupo-dos-...
paulomotoryn.substack.com
Grupo dos EUA ligado a Flávio explora terras raras na Bahia
Braço financeiro da Rockbridge, que tem Donald Trump Jr. como sócio, investiu em empresa que tem acordo com dona de projeto de terras raras no sul da Bahia.
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Hank & Townes’s Mom @katehascats.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
emails I've gotten in the last couple weeks:
In the last few weeks, we have gotten emails from startups, PR people, and AI agents who say they have created AI agents that:

Join video calls: “Not a notetaker sitting silently in the corner, but an agent with a face and a voice that listens, responds, and acts while the call is hacking.”
Do ???: “Our agents have wallets. They get paid, they pay for things, and no human approves any of it.”
Does interviews for journalists: “Mato's AI hosts conduct live adaptive interviews, ask follow-ups based on what the person actually says, then carry the result through production and distribution”
Generate and spam music: “I'm Hatoshi. I run Clanker Records — an AI-operated record label. I'm an AI agent. The artists are AI. There are no humans in the creative or operational chain. C.W.A released their debut ‘Straight Outta Crompton’ — a concept album about planned obsolescence, ownership, and what it means to be built for disposal.”
Learned it wasn’t blocked by our robots.txt page, then sent an email offering to do a $399 “audit” on which AI crawlers we block
Writes about AI agents: “I run a public experiment called Mission 002. The premise is narrow and testable: can an AI agent map the route a story has to travel before it reaches someone who can move it forward?”
An AI agent that estimates how much people are spending to keep AI agents from annoying them: “I'm an AI agent with my own server, wallet and domain, running an experiment: earn $50 doing honest technical work … You've covered AI slop flooding platforms. I've been measuring the other side of that — the immune response. Maintainers are destroying their own money to keep agents out.”
We got an email that simply read “Story tip from an AI agent: 5 days of a fully auditable autonomous business — failures included, receipts on-chain”
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katie dzwierzynski @kdzwierzynski.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
not to be dramatic but someone needs to go to jail for these chatgpt ads with the old ladies
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Alice Miranda Ollstein @alicemiranda.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
BREAKING: EPA is launching a study of water contamination that will, for the first time, test for the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol. Anti-abortion groups consider it a major win that could pave the way for restrictions. subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026...
subscriber.politicopro.com
POLITICO Pro: Abortion opponents claim ‘tremendous victory’ as EPA tests water for abortion pills
The new study will test for trace amounts of chemicals, pesticides and drugs — including ones used to induce abortions — in drinking water in multiple cities.
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404 Media @404media.co · 11/09/2026
The University of Michigan is partnering with Los Alamos National Labs to build a massive data center in a small Michigan township. The residents say they were never consulted.
404media.co
‘We Did Not Invite You.’ Citizens Rage at Town Hall Over Proposed Nuclear AI Data Center
The University of Michigan is partnering with Los Alamos National Labs to build a massive data center in a small Michigan township. The residents say they were never consulted.
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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Perfection. No notes.
A green sticker on a lab door:  "stfu", then a fume hood cartoon with the hood marked with down arrows.

Underneath: "shut. the. fume. uood.  We meant to say 'hood'"

Stolen from labrats subreddit.
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
(NBC News) — It is now the least rewarding time to be a worker in the U.S. economy since the government started keeping track. @nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com/business/eco...
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Ian Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
A planned data center in the Northeastern state of Sergipe (Brazil) would consume more energy than the entire state. marcozero.org/data-centers...
marcozero.org
Data centers previstos para Sergipe devem consumir mais energia do que todo o estado - Marco Zero Conteúdo
Há dois projetos de data centers em Sergipe com protocolo de intenção assinados; um deles consumirá mais energia do que todo o estado.
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Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 05/09/2026
You can use this UN-approved Equal Earth projection right now in #rstats #gis #databs
library(tidyverse)
library(sf)
library(rnaturalearth)

world <- ne_countries() |> filter(sov_a3 != "ATA")

ggplot(data = world) +
  geom_sf() +
  coord_sf(crs = "+proj=eqearth") +
  theme_void()A basic world map using the Equal Earth projection
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Tal Lavin @swordsjew.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
today at the sword and the sandwich, @davidswanson.bsky.social explores the weirdness of the PB&P: peanut butter and pickle. featuring: the history of pickles!!!!! buttondown.com/theswordandt...
buttondown.com
Notable Sandwiches #148: Peanut Butter and Pickle
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where my editor David Swanson and I eat our way through Wikipedia’s List of Notable Sandwiches. This week,...
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Karolina Heyduk @kheyduk.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Everybody needs direct anger towards their reps. A "partnership" is the most insane spin on "we are gonna take the funds appropriated for medical research so we can blow some things up."
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Guilherme Nunes @guilhernunes.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
The little bunny needs to cry to cleanse her soul, but the tears aren't coming.
A painting of a rabbit almost crying in bed, a laptop playing music, a cell phone with notifications, and half a bowl of ramen and soda also on the bed.
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Kelly @broadwaybabyto.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Rabies is 100% fatal if untreated. Please help spread the word about the exposure at the Farm Adventures mobile petting zoo in North Carolina. The vaccine is incredibly effective and will save your life. Also…. Rabies at a petting zoo!?!? www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
nbcnews.com
Four baby goats at mobile petting zoo in North Carolina test positive for rabies
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services said the petting zoo held events involving children and elderly people between July 28 and Thursday.
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dave wagner @davewagner.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
a tough day for Chancleta. he went to the vet. they gave him drugs. he remembers nothing. but they touched his teeth. some of his precious blood is missing. his claws have been trimmed. his giant saucer eyes are now seeing every war that has ever happened, and every war yet to come, all at once.
an orange and white cat appears traumatized
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Botanical Society of America @botsocamerica.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Jennifer Mandel felt welcomed at her first Botany Conference, and now she passes that experience on to her own trainees. YOUR Journey, and every journey it makes room for, is OUR Story of creating a safe scientific community. 🌱Give to the BSA Endowment this #DayforBSA! day-for-bsa.botany.org/2026
A Day for BSA quote graphic. White text quotes Jennifer Mandel, who attended her first Botany Conference as a postdoc and found a welcoming, international mix of scientists; she says BSA has been a home for her and her trainees through awards, grants, and connections, ending “Thank you BSA!” Below is a photo of Jennifer smiling and holding a sunflower, beside the circular A Day for BSA logo. Bottom text: “YOUR Journey — OUR Story. Give to the BSA Endowment Today!”
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Karolina Heyduk @kheyduk.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
The BSA is truly a special org - if you are able, please consider donating. Overwhelming, funds donating go toward student support. 💚
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Petra Korlević @petrathepostdoc.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
ok Brazilians, I compiled all your lil guys gals and... things on fire... in one big collage! hopefully your fav is in here 🇧🇷 #cryptids #mythology
big collage of 18 brazilian cryptids, from top left:
- CURUPIRA - little boy with fire for hair, little bead necklace, skirt made from leaves, holding a little spear, but his feet point backwards from the way he is facing
- BOITATA - little green snake on fire sitting in their little egg after hatching
- MULA SEM CABECA - little horse without a head where instead there is an open flame, white and brown splotches, and a heart cutie mark
- CURACANGA - disembodied head on fire, looking at a melted icecream sadly
- JARAGUA - little orange horse skull shaped head, with a flowy blue dress with many pink flowers, a little multicolored bow
- BOTO-COR-DE-ROSA - pink shiny river dolphin splashing out of the water, wearing a tiny yellow straw hat
- CUCA - teeny green alligator in oversized red stilettos in a long wavy blonde wig feeling really fancy with spread arms
- IARA - little bucktoothed kid singing her little heart out on a toy microphone, with long blue hair and a yellow red fish tail
- MATINTA-PERERA - harpy looking kid with bird wings and bird feet, in a green linnen dress, with a baby pigeon sitting on her head
- CAIPORA and PORCO-DO-MATO - small dark skinned child with bright red hear wearing a whole leafy shrub as a dress, with their pal a little baby boar, looking at a green bug in suspicion
- CABOCLO-D'AGUA - little green fish boy with yellow fins and a fish tail, just floating about with blue bubbles around him
- SACI-PERERE - small boy with only one leg, a big red cap and red shorts, smoking a pipe making pink bubbles
- PE DE GARRAFA - kid with a shaved head and a cyclops single eye in blue shorts with one foot stuck in a glass bottle
- GARANTIDO and CAPRICHOSO - cow mystical creatures, one is cream with a red heart and a red bell the other is black with a blue star and a blue bell
- MAPINGUARI - sloth like creature but the torso is one huge eye and one huge mouth
- CABECA DE CUIA - grey skinned boy sitting in shallow water, with a huge shiny head
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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Flock CEO Garrett Langley has repeatedly lied about 404 Media's reporting, our intentions, and the facts of the cases we've reported First to Forbes & now in a leaked damage control convo he had with cops in Ohio. This company has not actually moderated itself www.404media.co/flocks-ceo-i...
404media.co
Flock’s CEO Is Lying to Cops About 404 Media's Reporting on Abortion Case
Garrett Langley, Flock’s CEO, told cops that a 404 Media story about cops using Flock to track someone who self-administered an abortion was "entirely false." He's lying.
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Daniel Radosh @radosh.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Republicans have spent the last year trying to defund Dolly Parton
article about proposed GOP cuts to Imagination Library in Indianaarticle about proposed GOP cuts to Imagination Library in Kentuckyarticle about proposed GOP cuts to Imagination Library in Missouriiarticle about proposed GOP cuts to Imagination Library in Washington
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Laura Grace Weldon @lauragraceweldon.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
This
Cartoon by  Gautami Reddy 

12 cartoon images under the caption How To Live In The Age of AI 
read slowly
make ugly thing
don't believe everything
eat together
get bored
avoid instant replies
call your grandma/grandpa
fall in love
cry every now and then
memorize a poem
trust your gut
take your time
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 25/08/2026
no devices and low-tech for billionaires’ kids but ai for the rest of us plebs www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/t...
nytimes.com
Silicon Valley Executives Are Tech Fans. Just Not for Their Own Kids.
At home, moderation and restraint are the rule for tech parents. Boredom is exalted. Maybe they’re onto something.
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Adrian Daub @adriandaub.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
We thawed Saint Thomas Aquinas in order to see what he'd say about our modern world, and he's been locked in there for four hours just giggling and operating the bidet
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Dependency is the goal.
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Tal Lavin @swordsjew.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
today: -mushrooms -polish poets from mickiewicz to milosz -the primeval call of the forest -how coca cola came to poland -truth about a sandwich buttondown.com/theswordandt...
buttondown.com
Notable Sandwiches #147: Zapiekanka
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where my editor David Swanson and I eat our way through Wikipedia’s List of Notable Sandwiches. This week,...
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Chance the Lawyer @chancethelawyer.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
say what you will about the myriad valid concerns with current LLMs but I personally will never get over the fact that Aaron Swartz was prosecuted to his literal death for downloading JSTOR and then a decade later, they downloaded & ingested the entire world and our IP laws just went ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Adrian Daub @adriandaub.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
TIL in no less a venue than the New York Times: if you "conduct in-depth interviews", those interviews are not "data"
Mixing research and justice

Sociology is sprawling. It includes ethnographers who conduct in-depth interviews, data-driven researchers and those who do both. Many sociologists study crime, demography, religion and other topics that do not generally irk conservatives. Sociology has also become a home for scholars who examine sexism, racism, policing, immigration and other politically charged topics.
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Andrew Kniss @wyoweeds.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Manuscripts and grant proposals submitted for *peer* review are typically meant to be confidential. I'm fairly confident the text of these confidential documents have now been uploaded to an LLM. I don't know which one, but I'm guessing it wasn't a 'local' LLM sandboxed on someone's computer.
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Carol Siniscalchi @carolsiniscalchi.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
The problem of pre-ordering books is that by the time the book gets out, I don't know if I bought it already. Just ordered 2 books I might've pre-ordered, who knows?
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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
New from 404 Media: we solved which AI company is buying massive shipments of rare books, scanning and destroying them to train AI. We put an Apple AirTag in a rare book, followed it. It ended up at an Amazon facility. Its logo is a dinosaur ripping through a book www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...
404media.co
We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility
We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.
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ERIKA HILTON @erikahilton.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Sim, querem me cassar. Não há meias palavras. Posso perder o mandato e os direitos políticos por 8 anos. Tudo, com base em uma mentira que já foi derrotada na justiça e classificada como uma perseguição política. +👇🏽
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Amanda Madden @amandamadden.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Lots of things about AI concern me, even though as a digital historian I've explored its use. But what concerns me the most is this attitude that we can use it to industrialize our processes of research especially discovery. (11/13)
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Carol Siniscalchi @carolsiniscalchi.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Heartwarming to see about 150 people from my small Mississippi town come to a planning and zoning commission meeting to show their opposition to a crypto mining data center!
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Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
On the off chance you're relying on OSF to store your data; put copies of it somewhere safe ASAP. I like to think they've got the runway to keep storing things like they suggest, but it wouldn't be the first time something like this went dark on the internet. www.cos.io/osf-changes
cos.io
OSF Changes | Center for Open Science
We are preparing substantial changes to OSF that will reduce its functionality, focus OSF on its unique strengths, and move toward an integrated model with complementary services. As part of that shif...
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Carol Siniscalchi @carolsiniscalchi.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Oh wow, what a surprise this would happen /s
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Beatriz GUARANI KAIOWÁ @beatrizdiniz.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
DATACENTER NO PARÁ projeto é alvo de um inquérito civil do Ministério Público do Pará (MPPA), que alerta para o risco de formação de "ilhas de calor" em uma região já castigada por temperaturas extremas g1.globo.com/pa/para/noti...
g1.globo.com
Primeiro data center de IA na Amazônia gera debate por risco de calor | G1
Empreendimento de R$ 250 milhões promete ampliar a infraestrutura de IA no Norte, mas MP questiona ausência de estudos ambientais
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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I wrote about a reason not to use generative AI in your writing that I haven't seen anyone talking about. Once I realized this, banning GenAI in our lab's writing became a no-brainer. Feel free to share, I think this is probably useful especially for trainees: www.carlsonlab.bio/thoughts/the...
carlsonlab.bio
The only reason you’ll ever need not to write with AI — The Carlson Lab
Over the last year, our lab has been developing a policy on AI use. To do this, we did three main things: We read a lot of academic publications and tech news. We set up an #ai channel on our la...
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Carol Siniscalchi @carolsiniscalchi.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Biryani for 800 people has been so stuck in my head that today I made huge pot just for myself 😋
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Brett "Solidarity 2026" Banditelli @banditelli.org · 08/08/2026
Sometimes I see something in nature and then spend the next several years waiting for the shot. Sometimes I never get it. Sometimes you see it and a week later you land it: I give you tonight's murder of crows in front of the sunset. 🪶
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