iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 12h

A reminder that if you're not a strictly heterosexual cis person, it's important to check out the laws in any place you might potentially visit. Because apparently being *asexual* can now be a crime.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 12h

Meanwhile, the Big 10 has 18 members, the Big 12 has 16, The Pac 12 has 8, Stanford is in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Hawai'i is in the Mountain West Conference, the Mid American conference is mostly in OH and MI but also has teams from MA and CA, DE and NM are together in Conference USA...

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 12h

It bothers me more than it probably should that so many NCAA Div 1 conferences are wildly inaccurately named and/or span such wide regions as to be laughable that this doesn't impact academics. But these are institutions of higher education, and I have this weird idea that words have meaning.

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Ian Coldwater 🧊🚫 @lookitup.baby · 22h

Hi, I’m a sighted alt text user! Here are some reasons I use it: - Slow Internet on an airplane - I’m over 40, I have no idea who that celebrity is - Bluesky broke images again - My vision sucks and that text is too small to read otherwise - Conveys further context and authorial intent

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Have you considered becoming a Time Lord?

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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 09/10/2026

In case you missed it last night: we are seeing reports all over the country of immigration surges and state violence. If you need whistles for your community, we will send you 100-3000 3d printed for free, and we will love doing it. 3dwhistles.com

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Here is where I admit that at the start of this thread, I was unsure whether this was in reference to the hedgehog or the fast food chain.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I will point out that on top of the pair of towers near the display cases, there are plastic display shelves with various mineral samples. One row of them are lab-grown and then cut and faceted topaz running through the prismatic spectrum.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The vibe I'm going for is gaming cafe / library / natural history museum mashup.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Also, when I say I have a gaming room:

Image of a room with two large gaming tables (wooden covers over a felt surface several inches under the bordering edge), modular shelving units along the walls with more than a hundred board games, display cabinets of mineral and fossil samples, and several pieces of art on the wall.

View from the other corner of the gaming room, showing a pair of large bookcases flanking more wall art. There are some duffle bags specifically designed for transporting board games aligned beneath the art; they're sitting on yet more of the modular shelving units, but are these are not visible behind the gaming tables.

On the floor is a large area rug with snowflake designs.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

These thoughts brought to you by my recently teaching a date to play Fjords, a tile placement / area control game.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I now actually have a room at my home set up for gaming, but it turns out when none of us are in grad school any longer, and more than half of the former regulars who are still in town have kids, it's harder to get schedules to align.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

From about 2007 until just before the onset of the pandemic, I organized a weekly weeknight board game night, meeting initially at an internet coffee shop and later a diner so none of us had to bother cleaning.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

That odd reason being "awesomeness".

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The bold move is to build all your fences at once, when you have a large wood surplus, so you only have to take a single action to set up all the animal pens you will need for the rest of the game and wait that's an Agricola strategy that is unlikely to benefit actual farmers/ranchers.

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Rafael Marcondes @rafamarcondes.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

My dept is hiring 2 lecturers, one in cell/molec and the other in comp bio. 100% teaching, no tenure but generous intervals btwn renewals. Same position as me and I love my job!!! Very collegial dept w/ colleagues who take quality teaching v seriously barnard.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Facult...

barnard.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com

Lecturer of Biological Sciences

If you are a current Barnard College employee, please use the internal career site to apply for this position. Job: Lecturer of Biological Sciences Barnard is a premier liberal arts undergraduate coll...

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Michael J Dolan @michaeljdolan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

A joke so good it makes me angry a bit, from the new @beetlemoses.bsky.social book

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Sarah Tuttle @niais.cryptoanarchy.network · 08/10/2026

COULD IT BE THE UNMITIGATED HOMOPHOBIA AND GENDERED VIOLENCE UNDER A FASCIST REGIME?

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Let's be clear: if I filled out a form stating that I only want to be contacted by email and only wish to potentially purchase something online, and your company subsequently displays a message that I need to call you to get a quote, I will not be buying from you. Damn insurance quotes.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

They were chronically confused for a band that did soul covers of Cake songs.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

An administration that claims to be deeply concerned about trade deficits sure seems opposed to realizing that higher education is a major net export from the US.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

She is clearly a Wisdom in the region formerly claimed by Manetheren.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Appeal To Authority is a terrible logical fallacy. But my experience suggests that physicians respond better to "I've done some research" when it means "I've read these articles in NEJM/JAMA/The Lancet, and I have relevant degrees indicating I likely understood them"

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

This has reminded me that I have not yet consumed enough cheese for today, so I am going to rectify that.

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Neil Tsutsui @neiltsutsui.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Only 3 more days to apply for our Assistant Professor in Arthropod Biodiversity position! The application deadline is October 9, 11:59pm! aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05523

aprecruit.berkeley.edu

Assistant Professor - Arthropod Biodiversity - Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management

University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

(I am bringing Muppet energy this evening)

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I'd certainly grouse if mine exploded.

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Butlerian Jihadist of House Dornick @shimminykricket.blacksky.app · 08/10/2026

Harvard just dropped a study AI productivity in software engineering and it found the average increase in productivity from using Claude code is.....zero and for exactly the reasons you'd think fion.ac/jellyfish.pdf

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I have, but it's still a general want to do. It's not like seeing one once checks the box forever.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I would like to see an ocelot. I do not want an ocelot, but I *do* wish someone had domesticated either ocelots or margays several thousand years ago, so truly domestic versions would be an option.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Serving size: however much cheese you can cram into your gullet.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

We are solidly in October, which means it is once again time to remind you all to go watch this fantastic recording of a Polish youth orchestra's rendition of Danse Macabre, where the solo has been moved from the traditional violin to meolodic percussion instruments. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNMz...

youtube.com

Dance of Death by Saint-Saëns – Danse Macabre Op. 40

YouTube video by Akademia Filmu i Telewizji

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I briefly had a dog for a few months when I was ~7. After it repeatedly attacked both me and my brother, it went back to the ASPCA. Cats were obtained shortly thereafter.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

There are, however, a surprising number of cartoon mice, all acting as if they are a single individual.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

TIL Amazon thinks I have a dog (I do not).

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Shout out to Robert Sawyer, who in one of his novels had an extraterrestrial point out that Spock's mother would have been more likely to be able to reproduce with a strawberry than with a Vulcan.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I bounce on quite a few SF novels that attempt to invoke evolution (generally terribly). Julie E Czerneda and David Brin are good on it, but otherwise...

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Is this hypothetical charge just for new messages, or do replies count? Because if the latter, I would be concerned at the large cost this would impose on those of us who teach gigantic sections of high anxiety premed students.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I spent enough time around artificial life researchers that I still default to thinking about things like image classifiers and engineering control systems etc and then have to pause and realize people are talking about something completely different (and far less useful)

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I really do hate how the LLM people have coopted AI to just mean these LLMs. There are so many actually very useful domain specific machine learning things, but instead...

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I recently read T. Kingfisher's Daggerheart, and it's an interesting time to also be getting a lot of ads about Daggerheart the game (no relation).

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Unanticipated professorial statement of the day: If you are going to discuss the exam that loudly, get away from the doorway. People are still taking the exam.

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Academic freedom in the U.S. has arguably reached a new nadir—maybe worse than the 50s. This is not only due to the scale and range of the assault on higher ed, which is targeting everything (individuals' views on Gaza, DEI initiatives, the curriculum, collaborative research with other countries)...

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Chise @sailorrooscout.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

WELL NOW, would you look at that? A massive, 4-YEAR-LONG study of NEARLY 30 MILLION people in France found that individuals who received a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine had a 74% LOWER risk of death from severe COVID-19 compared to unvaccinated individuals and ZERO increased risk of all-cause mortality.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Several different shelf types involves. Some act as caps for wire shelves, allowing board games to easily slide on/off. Others are display shelves for either minerals or sets of polyhedral dice, though IIRC they were marketed as for collectible figurines.

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Mike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Discovery of the day: clear acrylic shelves can easily be cleaned in the dishwasher. (I have a couple of litter boxes in a room with a lot of clear plastic shelves, so they get rather dusty. Running the dishwasher without the high temp boost, but with the drying step on, works well for them)

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