iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Anne Sietsma

Climate Policy Radar @climatepolicyradar.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

100 Topics. 100 "smart search terms". 100 individual words & phrases connected to a whole web of meaning - related terms, regional variations, expert knowledge - so when you search our 35,000+ climate, nature, & development documents, you can find what matters.

A square tile with a light creamy beige background. The Climate Policy Radar runs along the top, centralised, black font and capital letters, with a blue icon in between the first two words that looks somewhat like a finger print. "Celebrating 100 Topics" is in big italicised font in the middle, and in smaller font below "Richer, more accessible search"

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Wow interesting & a bit depressing. Would love to scale this up to include more decisions and perhaps more COPs. I know Carbon Brief has a lot of COP negotiation documents (the brackets tracker is pinned to my browser most of November). Is there a way to bulk download @drsimevans.carbonbrief.org?

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Pretty hard to hear them from all the way over here! But that was also very much part of this project. The chatbot was just a part. Plus all data was stored locally and still owned by them even after they got paid. Not saying it's perfect, but, to your question, people really are trying to do good.

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

This is scientists trying their best to experiment conscientiously... Would you rather they don't give warnings or hide them? Honest question as we do a fair bit of experimenting in the open ourselves also

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Yes. All RAG systems do. That's their whole point. Occasionally they get it wrong, hence the many warnings. But if you just Google, you also occasionally get wrong info. (also, not mine, but friends)

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

Many great examples in the climate space! chatclimate.ai and IPCC.chat both help understand complex scientific reports, with cool ongoing work to combine this global climate knowledge with real local climate data. Also a tool to help collect indigenous knowledge/oral traditions conversationally,...

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Ed King @ed-king.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

Peak ODA (via @UNCTAD) unctad.org/publicati...

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

The general summary might not be what you're looking for though. Two example from my work: 1) take a bunch of >200 page climate policy docs; summarise everything they say about forestry. 2) as a social scientist, summarise this climate physics paper without technical jargon, focusing on real impacts

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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 21/02/2025

Meta could have solely funded the ENTIRE WORLD'S 2022 CLIMATE FINANCE GOAL instead of this

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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

Just look at these paragraphs from the AP story. Hegseth called Brown unqualified solely because he's Black. Then they fired him... and replaced him with a white guy so indisputably unqualified that he requires a Presidential waiver. This is what "merit" means to them. apnews.com/article/trum...

Hegseth had previously taken aim at Brown. “First of all, you gotta fire, you know, you gotta fire the chairman of Joint Chiefs,” he said flatly in a podcast in November. And in one of his books, he questioned whether Brown got the job because he was Black.

“Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt — which on its face seems unfair to CQ. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter,” Hegseth wrote.

Caine’s military service includes combat roles in Iraq, special operations postings and positions inside some of the Pentagon’s most classified special access programs. However, it does not include key assignments that were identified in law as prerequisites for the job, with an exemption for the president to waive them if necessary in times of national interest.

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

I'm guessing you're from the US? Most European countries have a Christian democratic party which are typically fairly centrist and have respect for democratic institutions as a core value. Most became more socially conservative but were also central to how the European welfare state came about.

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Hank Green @hankgreen.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

I am really frustrated that the press is discussing the destruction of USAID as something that has happened rather than an illegal action that will likely be undone in two weeks when courts tell the world that it was illegal.

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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

Because people are correctly interpreting MAGA’s use of the terms “DEI” and “woke” to mean Black.

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Jack McGovan @jackmcgovan.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

"Air pollution from animal farms is linked to almost eight times more premature deaths than coal-fired power plants." The animal ag industry gets away with such a massive amount of pollution that doesn't get anywhere near the attention it should.

vox.com

Meet the new neighbors: 7.5 million chickens and their mountains of manure

A sickening stench and hordes of flies: What it’s like to live near a mega factory farm.

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 18/01/2025

Yup, @jamellebouie.net has this exactly right. What these guys are celebrating/pursuing/yearning for is not masculine energy, it's *adolescent* energy. Drinking Red Bull, crushing Call of Duty, refusing to clean your room. It is indescribably pathetic. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/o...

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Having said that, the US on average scores lower than many European countries on subjective wellbeing and life satisfaction metrics (and has for decades). There's a soft drop-off beyond which higher GDP stops correlating with happiness

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

There's a big literature on "U shaped happiness" suggesting people are happiest when young, get sader until around 50 and then happier again. Similarly, when asked "when did things start to go downhill?" most answer the ~decade they were born. And this from 2009 www.pewresearch.org/politics/200...

pewresearch.org

Current Decade Rates as Worst in 50 Years

Overview As the current decade draws to a close, relatively few Americans have positive things to say about it. By roughly two-to-one, more say they have

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

Thanks! Got a little confused as it started playing in English but you can change the audio track. Great interview :)

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

Put an advanced AI in control of an advanced robot. Is it alive? If not, what definition of "alive" do you think is good?

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

Narcocorridos are basically that but about drug lords: "with my iron eagles, I flew in tonnes of Colombian. Friend of the people, the best of the cartel, the great lord of heaven"

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

So much of the post COP analysis I've seen has focused on the 300 billion number, but I personally found the calls louder and louder chorus demanding grants instead of loans to be at least as interesting (and frustrating, seeing the outcome).

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Simon Evans @drsimevans.carbonbrief.org · 09/12/2024

Ooft, this FT climate graphic of the week "First ice-free day in the Arctic Ocean may come before 2030, study shows" www.ft.com/content/6...

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

I've got a very detailed description of a D&D campaign that got pretty weird. Had ghouls, vampires and evil overlords in it too. Maybe there's something in that?

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Please send help. Cirrus has turned into a seal pup. Will set up a go fund me to retrieve his legs.

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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

📣 New: AI depends on immense resources, mostly controlled by large companies.    This means "open" AI… isn't very open. 📄 From me, @meredithmeredith.bsky.social and @smw.bsky.social in Nature: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Screenshot of Nature website of linked article with title "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08141-1" and abstract:

This paper examines ‘open’ artificial intelligence (AI). Claims about ‘open’ AI often lack precision, frequently eliding scrutiny of substantial industry concentration in large-scale AI development and deployment, and often incorrectly applying understandings of ‘open’ imported from free and open-source software to AI systems. At present, powerful actors are seeking to shape policy using claims that ‘open’ AI is either beneficial to innovation and democracy, on the one hand, or detrimental to safety, on the other. When policy is being shaped, definitions matter. To add clarity to this debate, we examine the basis for claims of openness in AI, and offer a material analysis of what AI is and what ‘openness’ in AI can and cannot provide: examining models, data, labour, frameworks, and computational power. We highlight three main affordances of ‘open’ AI, namely transparency, reusability, and extensibility, and we observe that maximally ‘open’ AI allows some forms of oversight and experimentation on top of existing models. However, we find that openness alone does not perturb the concentration of power in AI. Just as many traditional open-source software projects were co-opted in various ways by large technology companies, we show how rhetoric around ‘open’ AI is frequently wielded in ways that exacerbate rather than reduce concentration of power in the AI sector.

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

Also, stop is a high bar but it certainly bullshits less. Even currently, RAG can be trustworthy enough for some things. Some of them bad; definitely agree that AI slop is a problem. But we're finding it pretty good at explaining climate legislation to young activist who have no real alternative.

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

My point is genAI can be *part of systems* that are useful. Flying was a super dangerous way of getting from A to B for a long time. But we kept adding new parts until we got to a place where the expected safety risks -- crashing -- are very acceptable (while unexpected ones, climate, are less so)

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

So... "there is no mechanism except the ones we are figuring out"? I'm all for reliable AI and yes, that will need more components than LLMs, but think of a modern airplane now vs the first ones. So many parts are there to prevent the "inherent flaw" of people not surviving falls from very high up.

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

Sadly, I'm told that I'm in the top 1% globally of "news" listeners this year. No wonder I've been feeling more burnt out with podcasts. New years resolution: less news, more long form, science and design.

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Left me with many great questions. What would you do if the persona you love is changed by updates ? How do you duplicate them when the platform on which they exist shuts down? If these relationships are clearly meaningful, can we leave them to companies? Should they always design for happiness?

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

I hate citing my own studies (that's a lie, I love it) but the actual findings of the paper also align much more closely with a systematic literature review on we did, finding that plant based have lower environmental impacts across the board -- more mixed on nutrition though doi.org/10.1093/nutr...

doi.org

Mapping the evidence of novel plant-based foods: a systematic review of nutritional, health, and environmental impacts in high-income countries

AbstractContext. Shifting from current dietary patterns to diets rich in plant-based (PB) foods and lower in animal-based foods (ABFs) is generally regarde

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

So... Green NGOs can be paid by the EU to do research & write policy briefs; but then they can't show those results and briefs to policy makers or talk to policy makers about them. And of course, the fossil fuel lobby will have to play by the same rules, right? RIGHT?

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 02/12/2024

Do the folks who want to tear up bike lanes not understand that if the cyclists are not in the bike lanes they are in the lanes with the cars? In most cases in their own cars? Which means they are now (noisy, polluting) traffic? More car lanes just means more cars.

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

There are a few places where the sea is & likely will stay less hot, creating refugia where coral is more likely to survive, buying time for reefs to adapt better, tough even presently they dont offer consistent safety. We need policies to protect those refugia. That isn't "nothing to worry about"

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

The unprecedented president is in fact a precedented president! I'm finding it uncomfortable to count on gridlock and political dysfunction to save the day. Historically, it often worked (alongside bravery and activism!) but it breeds cynicism.

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

I'm hearing "fingers crossed it won't be as bad as they say -- just look at... " way too often for an administration that hasn't even been sworn in yet. All the same 🤞🤞

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

To be fair, the cited study is pretty cautious. They measure relative (colder than surrounding), not absolute heat stress (cold enough to survive) and it relies on cold upwelling to be active during the heat wave. It ends "robust global climate action is the only solution to limit (...) heat stress"

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Mariana Madruga de Brito @mdebrito.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Coming soon: I’ll be hiring a PhD candidate to explore regions in Germany disproportionately affected by floods & droughts, focusing on cross-sector impacts and using NLP-driven datasets #academicjobs

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

The bit on COP30 is worrying. How will you host an inclusive and ambitious conference when there literally aren't enough rooms for everyone to stay? Leaving aside the sustainability of building new hotels, it's not hard to predict who will struggle to find a place: youth and the Majority World.

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Ember @ember-energy.org · 29/11/2024

National 2030 renewable targets still fall short of the additions needed to meet #3xRenewables in all regions. These commitments also fall behind industry projections, suggesting that governments are not reading themselves for a step up in renewables 🎯 ember-energy.org/lat...

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Anne Sietsma @franticpedantic.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Not a coincidence that things written when the vibes were "nuclear annihilation seems pretty probable" are starting to feel more relevant on the whole

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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 10/10/2024

'Taking the time to do things right isn’t anti-innovation – it is what is required to get deep-rooted change in social systems.' My piece on AI and public services in this week's @newstatesman.com www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024...

newstatesman.com

Tony Blair is wrong – AI will not magically solve our public services

Too many people might be left out of its revolution.

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Ferris Jabr @ferrisjabr.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

I was deeply disappointed by the lack of nature/science/climate/enviro on many major end-of-year book lists—so I decided to make my own! Introducing: ✨🎁📚 The 2024 Holiday Gift Guide to Nature & Science Books ✨🎁📚 Please share: Let's make this go viral in time for Black Friday / holiday shopping!

A collage of book covers of new nature & science books. Featured here are Atlas Obscura Wild Life, Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party, Every Living Thing, Alien Earths, Becoming Earth, and Deep Water

A collage of book covers of new nature & science books. Featured here are Frostbite, The Inner Clock, How to Kill an Asteroid, The Great River, The Last Fire Season, and Hoof Beats

A collage of book covers of new nature & science books. Featured here are The Serviceberry, Not the End of the World, Nature's Ghosts, Meet the Neighbors, The Light Eaters, and Our Moon

A collage of book covers of new nature & science books. Featured here are Turning to Stone, The Weight of Nature, What If We Get It Right?, Waves in An Impossible Sea, The Tree Collectors, and Why We Remember

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