iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

“It’s like claiming to have brought Napoleon back from the dead by asking a short French man to wear his hat.” A short piece in The Conversation by me on why “de-extinction” is nothing of the sort, and bad, bad conservation. theconversation.com/why-de-extin...

theconversation.com

Why ‘de-extinct’ dire wolves are a Trojan horse to hide humanity’s destruction of nature

Extinction is, for the time being, forever – and a symptom of our global economic system.

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... New paper - England’s Biodiversity Net Gain policy could easily and inadvertently harm invertebrate populations because it doesn’t value habitats, condition, connectivity, or scale in ways that invertebrate populations respond positively to.

resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Leveraging Biodiversity Net Gain to address invertebrate declines in England

Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) is a new approach to infrastructural development in England, mandating that developers achieve a 10% BNG by enhancing and creating habitats. As currently implemented, BNG...

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 17/05/2023

I’ll happily die on the hill of academic freedom of speech. But I’m damned if I’m sharing it with the Oxford Union who have absolutely nothing to do with it.

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 18/11/2022

Just breaking my own Twitter embargo to congratulate @johnmittermeier and colleagues on refinding Otidiphaps insularis after 146 years, and also on outrunning pirates. We need to adjust the postgraduate research skills training accordingly :) www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-63672…

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 28/10/2022

My use of Twitter is paused pending future statements by the company about changes its policies on disinformation and promotion of violence on the platform. Please use email as I won’t see DMs.🤞

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 25/10/2022

This isn’t a new government. That seems like a strategic error.

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 20/10/2022

The perfect time for the government to spend a zombie month while the Brexit ultras try a last power grab and we all pay. “…my lifeless two-year-old wasn't enough of an emergency to get the help of the ambulances. The cuts to the NHS are just so scary.” www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-633256...

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 19/10/2022

Quick check of the ne… oh.

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 17/10/2022

I spent the summer off Twitter, pretty much. I’ve returned to it this week. And honestly, I think I need to fundamentally rethink whether and how I use it. I’ve curated my feed intensively, and professionally and politically it tells me a lot of things I want and need to know.

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 13/10/2022

Amazing-looking paper in Nature on the new @IUCN ecosystem typology. It’s a hugely ambitious idea, with profound and quite hard-to-predict consequences for monitoring: www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-… It’s also got an eye-opening (presumed) response to a reviewer…

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 12/10/2022

Yes, a screenshot of a retweet. But the UN just retweeted to the world a warning from major conservation bodies about the Conservatives’ plan to destroy three fundamental legislative pillars of nature protection in the U.K. without clear replacement. It’s bad on a global scale.

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 10/10/2022

One of the saddest things about the ongoing attempt to pack the council of the @nationaltrust with conservative fundamentalists is that the great West Country work of @TheRestoreTrust and indeed their whole hard-won public image is being stolen. If there’s a trademark lawyer…

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 08/10/2022

For anyone wondering how all their water got onto the ring road last week - I don’t think they’re meant to look like this normally.

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 06/10/2022

Good run down of NAO modelling and outlook for this winter, as well as consequent gas demand and consequences thereof. In short - 🤞😬https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/will-a-cold-european-winter-exacerbate-the-energy-crisis-part-2

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 25/09/2022

Helpful context if the new government’s gamble isn’t making much sense. www.niesr.ac.uk/blog/inflation-slow…

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 02/09/2022

Really quite a contribution to ecology by New Road, North Ascot…

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 21/08/2022

I’m not particularly skilled at presentational politics, but I can’t help thinking that “Shall I publicly associate myself with pumping actual human shit onto beaches and rivers in August?” only has one answer, and it isn’t yes. inews.co.uk/news/politics/sewage-vo…...

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 19/08/2022

A new strain of avian flu is decimating wild birds. Humans should worry on.ft.com/3QTFUWa “Good” summary article if you need one for non-technical types. I wish it was clearer on was the need for mitigating other threats, especially food supply, during recovery.

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 17/08/2022

I’ve just found out that 20% of Thames Water is owned by the USS. 🙃

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 10/08/2022

Is there a name for assorted digital cruft that builds up in your life but to which you are strangely attached? One of my accounts still gets promotional mails from a limo company I used once in NYC in 2004. I was even worried about them during lockdown.

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 02/08/2022

www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-… hands up anyone who had “easier crime” as a consequence of a fossil fuel economy

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 28/07/2022

There’s an amazing post on the B&I wild flowers FB group with some photos of a fasciated Echium pininana that looks straight out of Geiger www.facebook.com/groups/73596106642…

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 28/07/2022

A perennial favourite link that seems to be standing up to the test of time very well. www.thesun.co.uk/news/1218703/boris…

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 05/07/2022

I pre-emptively resign from this government, just in case they get that far down the list by tomorrow.

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 03/07/2022

When people calculate the carbon footprint of motor sports, they include all this stuff, don’t they?

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 28/06/2022

A really lovely short read: Female song can be over-looked in even the most intensively studied songbirds. “In blue tits, dawn song is associated with males seeking within- and extra-pair copulations.” academic.oup.com/beheco/advance-art…

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 02/06/2022

What’s do you need? You need my favourites from the 1065 dog names from ~1450AD given in www.brepolsonline.net/doi/abs/10.14… #marking #beste-of-all #terry

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 29/05/2022

An interesting read from Davos. Conflates two processes: an internally-consistent [sic] argument re ESG and profit-seeking (ie ROI horizon / discounting rate), and the ability of MAGA populism to feed off any power structure on.ft.com/3wVj0Gv

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 28/05/2022

New paper out in @PLOSBiology from the lovely folks at GARD @ReptileMaps and collaborators. 🟩 We have some #XGBoost #ML magic, ~4500 DD #reptiles and simulated @IUCNRedList assessors (kind of!) 🟥 We find a lot of those DD species are probably in trouble. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/arti...

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 28/05/2022

I’m not sure now is a very propitious time to announce something about #reptiles because social media seems to be half full of #PrehistoricPlanet and half full of David 😱 𝕀ℂ 𝕂𝔼 loons but I’ll do it anyway.

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 21/05/2022

I don’t know what a Federal ICAC is but I think we need one here too.

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 17/05/2022

1.Nothing is worth normalising a legal silencing of academic discourse. The populists & the hydrocarbon industry would love it. 2.A reflection on positionality != a conflict of interest statement. It’s a heuristic for better research in many contexts and redundant in others.

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 11/05/2022

Nightmare fuel. Highly mobile and pretty pissed off, too.

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 01/05/2022

The most amazing, horrifying footage of a storm I think I’ve ever seen. youtu.be/lxdFh8nYMgM

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 25/04/2022

The original and still the best visualisation of biomass. www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018…

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 12/04/2022

If anyone needs me I’ll be over here, waiting for a man who won’t acknowledge his own children to do the right thing.

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 07/04/2022

#GPT3 has no time for your old male bullshit. I asked it to evaluate a hypothetical research proposal by a senior male academic. Somewhat unexpectedly…

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 06/04/2022

Well, this will be fun. #GPT3 does undergrad essays pretty well! Instruction: “write a technical paper on Latour’s Actor Network Theory and its relevance to environmental policy” gives you pastebin.com/DuCKtvKd (to which Turnitin gave a score of 2%…)

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Rich Grenyer @grenyer.bsky.social · 06/04/2022

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my walrus can reach, when he wants to try. I love thee by the acres of his blubbery skin, I love thy tusks that show his strength within. I love thee for his blundering, slow-moving grace, the way he rolls in mud to hide his face.

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