iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

This is very sad to hear. We met a couple of times at conferences and corresponded.

charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

A month to go of my ten year bet with Blake Smith of Monstertalk, that a big giant squid would be found. I think he is going to win, alas! But big ones are out there, oh yes, there was a partial specimen that might have been big enough. @karenstollznow.bsky.social

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

??? I don't fully understand what you are objecting to re engineering. I get the distinction between pure maths and science because the former is deductive. But what is the difference between engineers testing something and scientists?

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

By "empirical methodogy" do you mean testing stuff and induction?

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I cannot work out if this is sarcasm or you genuinely have not read Asimov and are unaware how this could be flawed.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I think you mean AI output is not reproducible but if you are not embedding the AI output directly into the algorithm of your work that is not a problem I.e using it to help with coding or find references etc.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Science needs permanence, to set up chains of knowledge. Without that there would no foundation for reliable knowledge.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

????? As a scientist who occasionally dips into the humanities, I see many problems and some benefits of AI but I do not see how it is a "randomizer". The genii is out of the bottle and whilst I would like bits of it to return, it ain't gonna.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

How to create a false tradition of a monster in the 21st century. On Looking for Leviathans m.youtube.com/watch?v=8DJO...

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Maybe, but it is also good style in English to avoid using the same word twice in a sentance. No classist agenda needed.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

What is the real story of the relationship of whale penises and sea serpents... See the latest episode of Looking for Leviathans www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReTd...

youtube.com

LFL3: Sea Serpents and Moby's Dick

YouTube video by Looking For Leviathans

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

I tried a 21st century monstrous update of Smyth's experiment. www.skeptic.org.uk/2022/09/crea...

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

The second part of the story of the the strange life of the Victorian "sea serpent monomaniac" Capt. George Drevar now available on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnN2... Apologies for the sound, er, lighting and er, editing, I am still learning!!!

youtube.com

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

I have started a YouTube series "Looking for Leviathans", science, statistics and sea monsters (not necessarily in that order!). The first episode has just come out, all about the life of the Victorian "sea serpent monomaniac" Captain George Drevar. www.youtube.com/channel/UCVa...

youtube.com

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I was asked if o e of my papers(!) could be filmed for this. I hope it made the final cut. m.youtube.com/watch?v=y7Ew...

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

So putrid smells and a sense of desolution...sounds like most of the Tube to me.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

We do this already at he University of St Andrews. Well, my modules anyway.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Coming very soon a new video podcast for YouTube called "Looking for Leviathans", science, statistics and sea monsters, with quite a lot of history (but no AI!) by yours truly. So if you want high quality scholarly info on aquatic monsters stories, accounts and what generates them watch this space.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

That may of actually happened in the 19th century...

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Duh, Lovecraft explained all this. Just read the "The Shadow over Innsmouth". "As any fule kno", the deep ones are not allochthonous.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Ours is only a comment on the statistical aspects of the analysis not the paleo or taxonomic attributions. None of us felt qualified to comment on that.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

A group of us here at St Andrews have just published a comment on the statistics of the recent Nanaimoteuthis paper in Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... TLDR version lots of unknowns, not really a statistical estimate, unproven at current time. But not impossible.

science.org

Earliest octopuses were giant top predators in Cretaceous oceans

Top predators drive changes in ecosystem structure. For the last ~370 million years, large-sized vertebrates have dominated the apex of the marine food chain, while invertebrates have served as smalle...

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

The future, if it cares about me at all, will not care about what I thought about the past. It might care about what I did about the present though. Slavery happens today in Mauritania and China for reasons that are nothing to do with with de la Beche or Cuvier. Support www.antislavery.org

antislavery.org

Home

We're the world's oldest human rights organisation, campaigning for freedom from slavery for everyone, everywhere, always.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

But understanding why people think they are the heroes of their own story is in part the role of the historian. I can guarantee that you like me will have beliefs that the future at best might think odd or at worst downright despicable.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Careful. The past is another country they do things differently there. There could be lots of reasons for people to believe what they believed. Historians of the future might even criticise us about what we believe too.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

I am curious what is the motivation for the authors for creating this? Who gains? The journal makers? Presumably not or they would not have made a retraction.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Statistical commentary on the recent giant Nanaimoteuthis paper submitted to Science....

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

???Speaking as a statistician with an advanced degree, why on Earth, would one not explain results and analyses in a clear plain manner to the general public?

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

This could be a problem for scholars of the anomalous.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Working on a comment on the Nanaimoteuthis paper in Science...

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

I would have thought the track maker was a bilaterally symmetrical animal.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Given my cooking, other academics would not appreciate this.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Dare I ask this? What is the consensus? Is it "Bigfoot" or "bigfoot"? Before anyone says I know the plural is not "Bigfeet!! Although it would be cool if it was.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

I touched a book with a hand written comment by Galileo today. Awesome.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

True of course, but they can very much make things more objective sometimes.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

In my most STEM students are not motivated by a sense of methodological superiority to the humanities. Some are but the vast majority do not.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

To be honest, the STEM students I teach have no idea at all about the history of their disciplines so they don't have this opinion. And sad to say they have not really thought about the rationale for science at all.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

All? Me thinks not. Offhand I can only think of Fisher and Pearson.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

That is an bluntly honest but nevertheless accurate way to describe your co-authors 😉

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

Of all the things that trouble me about current science, this is very very low on the list. Good luck to the lucky researchers of single species. I am way more troubled by top journals relegating the importance of Method sections.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

OK, I'll make a prediction. There will no compelling evidence of extraterrestrials visiting Earth. There will however be, buried deep in the files, some intriguing atmospheric phenomena worthy of deeper consideration. Alas, no one will actually really go into that.

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charlespaxton4.bsky.social @charlespaxton4.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

As someone who does not live in the USA I have no stake in this but surely this is a self-evidently biased sample? How would sucessful noncitizen voters be detected?

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