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Gwen Varley

@gwenvarley.bsky.social
800 followers 836 following 16 posts

Researcher, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Gender, agriculture, food, politics (she/her)

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Reposted by Gwen Varley
Mike Hoerger, PhD, MSCR, MBA @michael-hoerger.bsky.social · 16h
I’m doing a 5K on October 18th to support cancer research. I wanted to do something fun, so in addition to wearing an N95, I will wear an additional N95 on my person for every $50 donated (runsignup.com/mask). Thanks for a reshare or any contribution. Even a penny would help! Details in ALT text.
I’m doing a 5K on October 18th to support research at the Tulane Cancer Center, here in the Deep South.

I wanted to do something fun, so in addition to wearing an N95, I will wear an additional N95 on my person for every $50 donated (http://runsignup.com/mask).

$50 = 1 N95
$500 = 10 N95s
$5,000 = 100 N95s
$50,000 = 1,000 N95s

Any partial donation would help. $10 would add an additional mask for 1K of the race. A penny would add 1 meter with an additional mask. I’ll sum partial donations and round up in the end. Even a penny🪙 or reshare🔁 would help. 

FAQs

World Record
🔹There does not presently appear to be a Guinness World Record for most N95s on an individual in a 5K.
🔹This year, I will go for an informal record. Guinness has not yet responded to my request to go for an official record, but there is always next year.

Good Health, Safety, and Environmental Modeling
🔹I will mask properly. Extra masks will not be worn on top of my mask.
🔹All masks will be individually-wrapped N95s. I will eventually wear them or donate them, if someone wants them.

Caveats
🔹It’s a fun run. All donations are final, even if weather or an injury strikes.

Inclusivity
🔹There are many ways to support health and health justice. Please also contribute to your local mask bloc or engage in advocacy in other ways too. There are many great causes.
🔹Many people with chronic and serious illnesses are housebound or cannot run or could run but would then crash for days or weeks after. This is no endorsement of the primacy of exercise-based activities.

How Your Donation Helps
🔹Your donation supports the fight against cancer and normalizes masking.
🔹Funds support the Tulane Cancer Center. Last year’s funds went toward a project to reduce the chances of bone metastases in the context of breast cancer.
🔹I avoid financial conflicts of interest like the plague, so I will not accept any payments or apply for any funds.

Please help spread the word!
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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 15/09/2026
Iowa Dem. Gov. candidate Rob Sand was confronted at a rally yesterday over anti-trans positions. A constituent asked if he would walk them back. He refused to, and in fact said he supported sports bans. Another constituent shouted "COWARD!" in the background. Subscribe to support our journalism.
erininthemorning.com
“Coward!”: Iowa Dem Governor Candidate Rob Sand Comes Under Fire At Campaign Rally After Saying He Agreed With Trans Sports Bans
Apparently, Sand could not tell this prospective constituent that he supported equal rights for everybody.
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Dear @erc.europa.eu , we DO already have common standards & frameworks. 'AI' likes to pose itself as 'special' but we do not need to reinvent the wheel. We already have established codes of conduct for research integrity. We just need to apply them. See below + more resources in thread🧵
Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
We must protect and cultivate the ecosystem of human knowledge. AI models can mimic
the appearance of scholarly work, but they are (by construction) unconcerned with truth
— the result is a torrential outpouring of unchecked but convincing-sounding “informa-
tion”. At best, such output is accidentally true, but generally citationless, divorced from
human reasoning and the web of scholarship that it steals from. At worst, it is confidently
wrong. Both outcomes are dangerous to the ecosystem.
Olivia Guest, Iris van Rooij, Marcela Suarez, et al. (2025, n.p.)
Knowledge production is supposed to be safeguarded by (inter)national codes of conduct for research
integrity (ALLEA 2023; KNAW et al. 2018). Such codes forbid, for instance, fabrication of data,
falsification of results, plagiarism, and, generally, distortion of the scientific record. Many argue that
new rules are required to regulate academic AI use, but pre-existing guidelines fit the bill (cf. Tafani
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 20/09/2026
And this includes any all scientific uses of AI and indeed any computational system, weather prediction, cancer research, medical imaging, mathematics, please just don't claim it's fine if you don't research automation in those areas. I'll post further resources below...
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 17/08/2026
14 hours later and my mentions are still full of angry treatises about badly behaved cyclists. Bike lanes are not a reward for good cyclist behavior! They are infrastructure proven to make cities safer for ALL ROAD USERS. Whatever way cyclists have wronged you is irrelevant to the discussion!
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 08/08/2026
LOVELY NEWS: An American renewable developer that wanted to pivot to fossil-fuelled data centres has cancelled those plans and is sticking with renewables. The pressure works folks. Keep it up, turn up the volume, spread the word, etc www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/clea...
Clearway cancels plans for gas powered data center in Nevada - report
Had requested the US Bureau of Land Management to swap a solar plant application with the proposed data center

August 04, 2026 By Zachary Skidmore  Have your say
US power company Clearway has canceled plans to develop a data center and natural gas power plant on federal land in Nevada.

clearway-energy-natural-gas-plant
– Clearway Energy Group
First reported by Heat Map, the developer had requested that the US Bureau of Land Management swap a 2021 application for a 500MW solar project for a data center and a colocated natural gas facility. According to reporting at the time, Clearway had said that the decision was the result of a shift in its internal development priorities and intended “to better align with the goals of our Administration.”
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Elle Cordova @ellecordova.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Data centers
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 13/07/2026
It bothers me when people say "AI is vague therefore X" when the X is anything but saying "ok we're defining it". Not that we have to define it, but we can avoid arguments from ignorance. 1/
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 29/07/2025
I split AI into 3 non-mutually exclusive types (see Table 1 above): displacement (harmful), enhancement (beneficial), and/or replacement (neutral) of human cognitive labour. More later possibly, but see Tables 2 to 4 (attached or here: arxiv.org/pdf/2507.19960) for the worked through examples. 2/n
table 2 from https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.19960table 3 from https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.19960table 4 from https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.19960
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Ward Q. Normal (he/him) @wardqnormal.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
If you haven't been masking, give it a try. What do you have to lose? Just wear one in crowds and on planes, trains, and buses. Find a style that fits, so you don't futz with it. You don't have to get sick all the time.
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Alex de Campi @alexdecampi.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
This is why I won’t read your Substack, people.
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
“Used ChatGPT as my search engine” 👀 🫠 Editor-in-Chief of Science
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Stunt Lover 🏳️‍⚧️🏴‍☠️🏳️‍🌈 @stuntlover.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
"TheR'eS A REAsoN SpoRts ArE SEGreGateD BY sEx" Yeah, because men couldn't bear to lose to a woman.
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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
This is bone-chilling. A conservative hedge fund manager wants to require little girls to pass genital inspections for their “safety.” And it’s only for girls’ sports. There’s a clear link between transphobia and child sexual abuse.
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Talia "ATTACK DOGS is out now!" Bhatt ⚢ @taliabhatt.itch.io · 06/06/2026
You want a vision of "positive manhood"? Stop being afraid of being like women. Stop refusing to admit women can be like you. Can be better than you, even. And stop maiming and killing and destroying in order to preserve that fiction of superiority.
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Talia "ATTACK DOGS is out now!" Bhatt ⚢ @taliabhatt.itch.io · 06/06/2026
Hegemonic masculinity is usually defined as autonomy, independence, leadership---that which women are not supposed to possess nor aspire to. Gender is in and of itself an act of excluding women from humanity and agency, drawing a boundary between those who possess and those who are possessed.
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Chad Loder @chadloder.dev · 01/06/2026
Happy Pride month you buncha queers
Inside you are two bricks:
Throw me at a Fascist
Use me to build community
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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
🏳️‍🌈some special Pride Month shout-outs to a few of my favorite categories of LGBTQIAs🏳️‍🌈 1. to everyone for whom this is your first out Pride: congratulations, we love you, we are so proud!!!! by law you should not have to pay for drinks all month. try this on your straight friends, they might buy it
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Gareth Watkins @garethwatkins.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
As soon as people starting saying 'okay, we can vote and get credit cards, but if we want to tackle the deeper issues then we've got to talk about abolishing capital, carceralism, the family as it is today etc.' a lot of people looked at their comfortable lives and were like NOPE, it's trans people.
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Gareth Watkins @garethwatkins.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
I'm probably the billionth person to observe this, but patriarchy-but-nicer feminism hit a wall where a lot of problems (particularly sexual violence) were still there and the only possible answers were in much more radical strands of feminism, forcing (mostly) middle class white women to pick sides
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Talia "ATTACK DOGS is out now!" Bhatt ⚢ @taliabhatt.itch.io · 27/05/2026
You do have to marvel at how, after so many decades of the push-pull in feminist history between those who think feminism is about better treatment under patriarchy and those who want to fight for liberation, it culminates in what I can only call Middle Class Mommy Fascism.
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Katy Montgomerie 🦗 @katymontgomerie.com · 26/05/2026
Could there be a better example of "the trans debate" than 98% of women supporting trans people and then one single lone person voting against them and getting their way regardless. It's all such a fucking sham
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Trish Greenhalgh @trishgreenhalgh.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...
slate.com
Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning
Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect.
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
If you see strangers wearing a mask while traveling and it makes you this irrationally angry, maybe worry about your *own* mental health for a sec
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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Some of us just don't like getting colds
obert W Malone, MD
@RWMaloneMD
Did some airplane travel this week- the number of people back to wearing masks over hantavirus and Ebola is truly shocking.
I feel sad for the people who live their lives in fear over over-hyped, extremely rare diseases. 
People, so fearful that they can't go out in public or travel without masks...
I pity them, I worry for their mental health, I even worry for our country that has so many guillible people - but these poor fools are not my enemy.
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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Counterpoint: No I will not
wired.com
Even If You Hate AI, You Will Use Google AI Search
The search giant’s AI-crafted answers are so convenient, you’ll be sucked in—to the detriment of the web and the artists and thinkers behind it.
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Karen Hao @karenhao.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
On the one-year anniversary of EMPIRE OF AI, I am so, so excited to announce The AI Resist List, a new project that documents examples of resistance to the AI empires around the world 😍 airesistlist.org
The gorgeous AI Resist List homepage
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
I am not remotely a lawyer, but I think if you agree to review a manuscript for a press and then feed that manuscript into AI without the permission of the author, the author should be allowed to sue you into poverty.
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Jason, ex Inferis @benedictsred.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Do people mad about the odyssey casting know about bible characters being cast as vegetables
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Talia "ATTACK DOGS is out now!" Bhatt ⚢ @taliabhatt.itch.io · 17/05/2026
If humanity ends because of a reduction in rape and an increase in women's autonomy then let it fucking choke in the dirt for all I care.
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
This is the University of Central Florida. So many people really have no idea how much kids hate this shit.
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Cabel Sasser @cabel.panic.com · 11/05/2026
this graduation speech moment is notable, and her amazed shock at having failed to read the room feels instructive. when you're inside the bubble, you think everybody else is. but everybody isn't.
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
What I wish for everybody to remember when Canvas comes back online: The reason OUR data can be held for ransom is because Instructure, their owners (KKR private equity & Dragoneer venture capital), & our own employers (see ASU Atomic) monetize it. It's Canvas that hacked education & stole our IP.
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Nick Fleisher @nickfleisher.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Canvas, the Strait of Hormuz for American education
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(Self) Regulators, mount up! @bankuei.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
AI is getting people to take the lives of others or themselves while believing they've 'ascended beyond physics'. Lawyers are being disbarred for using AI to make up fake law code. This is a bit like looking at an overdose epidemic & saying "we're letting cartels give fentanyl classes for kids".
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vanoreo @vanoreo.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
continually fascinating (read: depressing) how willing people are to treat something that is not a person at all as a woman, but not trans women
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Dr. William Horne @wihorne.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
The whitewashing of the civil rights movement & the state it countered is a huge part of how we got here. My latest: “Black organizers of the civil rights era didn’t organize against ‘racism.’ They organized to sabotage the laws and institutions of a white nationalist government.“
buckscountybeacon.com
Remembering the Birmingham Children’s Crusade: State Violence, Rebellion, and Liberation - Bucks County Beacon
Black children forced a reluctant country to respond to their demands. Destroying fascism today requires similar tactics, militance, and solidarity, writes Historian William Horne.
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
And when you point this out the response is usually “leave people alone” or “mind your own business,” as though an industry explicitly designed to shape aesthetics doesn’t impact people. Extreme thinness is framed as an individual choice and not something that shapes, or is shaped by, pop culture.
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R.L. Stollar @rlstollar.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Rage driving with someone trapped in the car, like Tim Whitaker did, is abuse.
open.substack.com
Aggressive driving isn't a red flag or warning sign. It's domestic violence.
Using a car to threaten someone's life is a deliberate act of abuse. We need to stop pretending otherwise.
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I Scare You Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 03/05/2026
Their very real demand is to boot every Black person out of any competitive academic positions and unfortunately the response from universities has been to profusely apologize for any Black people on campus and pledge to do better in segregation.
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Nic McConnell @mcconnell.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
A class at my kids’ school put up little statements about the good they want to do in the world and I was over the moon about this one - then I learned they meant to say “teach people in jail” which is also good!
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 03/05/2026
This product should not exist. www.wsj.com/us-news/chat...
“The OpenAI team debated alerting law enforcement about a teen that some in the review meeting believed was contemplating shooting classmates at his Texas high school, the people said. 
Often when he came home from school, the chat logs indicated, the teen asked ChatGPT to role-play a scenario in which he would shoot his teachers and classmates. He uploaded images of himself with a gun.”
““The kid would tell ChatGPT let’s fantasize about shooting up my school,” one person familiar with the conversations recalled. “And ChatGPT would play along.”
He uploaded a map of the layout of his school, as well as photos of cheerleaders whom he said he wanted to imagine killing, along with their boyfriends, the people familiar with the matter said. In hourslong sessions, he asked ChatGPT to create scenarios, such as how he would enter the school, which victims he would encounter, and when he would open fire.”
“ChatGPT remembered the names of the classmates he said he wanted to imagine killing, and advised the teen on where he would enter and exit the building, and what he could say when cops arrived, the people said.
OpenAI leaders ultimately decided not to contact authorities about the Texas teen. He hasn’t committed any acts of violence that employees are aware of.”
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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Part of what this scandal shows is how many constantly-monitored cameras there are in some cities. In this case it's not just livestreams of police cameras. There are cameras from private businesses/clubs/community centers being piped directly to cops in real time: www.404media.co/city-learns-...
404media.co
City Learns Flock Accessed Cameras in Children's Gymnastics Room as a Sales Pitch Demo, Renews Contract Anyway
Residents of Dunwoody, Georgia are furious about the city's surveillance contract with Flock. Do their elected officials care?
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Kashana @kashana.blacksky.app · 01/05/2026
My favorite sentence in this article is “catfish, which is safe to eat,”
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ResistDoc @aquatixwitch.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
I'm still out there kicking! So many of these orgs rely on me and other volunteers when they can't afford huge money grubbing ambulance companies for events. I show up anywhere for free, so continued support is so so important! Please share, and this post will be pinned! gofund.me/460d7551b
gofund.me
Donate to Support Loon’s Street Medic Mission, organized by Loon On the Water
My name is Loon and I am a volunteer EMT working as a street medic in the metro.… Loon On the Water needs your support for Support Loon’s Street Medic Mission
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Ouaquaga on Chenango @jnxouaquaga.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
Fwiw the concept of "talent" being necessary to become an artist has allowed the idea of genAI as an "accessibility" tool to take root. "I'm not talented so I need AI" Nope. You're not *skilled* so you need to *learn* and *practice*.
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Ouaquaga on Chenango @jnxouaquaga.bsky.social · 20/10/2023
"But you got the talent for free" Talent is a lie that was made up so jerks like you can pretend that skills are magic so you don't have to pay people, respect people, or encourage effort. "You're so talented" means "I don't think you even try" go fuck yourself
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alix e. harrow @alixeharrow.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
just overheard a 4th grader telling her friend, "if you ever need to distract some boys, literally just draw an X in the dirt. they'll stop to dig it up, they can't help it" which is the only gender metric I'll be using, moving forward
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