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LTurculet

@lturculet.bsky.social
551 followers 1.1K following 632 posts

Chemistry prof at Dalhousie University. Canadian 🇨🇦, Maritimes ⚓️. Opinions my own.

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Reposted by LTurculet
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 4h
One of the most harrowing things about academia, when you're a grad student, is how vulnerable you are to how you're perceived by more senior researchers. Your career advancement depends on confidential letters of reference & private discussions amongst faculty. You have no information or control.
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geri katz @gerikatz.bsky.social · 4h
Might as well light the Constitution on fire at this point.
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Jim Lokay @jimlokay.com · 29/09/2026
If you want to really know how the outrage machine gets fired up: 1. Schmitt plans to drop “bombshell” on Smith 2. Someone plants story that Schmitt is a Vance VP contender to run same day 3. Right-wing Twittersphere gets talking points 4. Schmitt steps in it 5. Scheduled tweets go out anyway
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Fr Chase 🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁 @kalanthropos.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
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Orlagh O’Kelly @orlaghokelly.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Must read @patricklennox.bsky.social @thewalrus.ca thewalrus.ca/alberta-sepa...
thewalrus.ca
Alberta Separatism Is Built on a Big Lie | The Walrus
Danielle Smith has turned western grievance into a national unity crisis
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log̷o, respawned dad @loxophile.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Yes brother I'd say it matters and I won't be told otherwise by a dolt who can't remember 5 digits
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Bruce Arthur @brucearthur.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
My personal rule is, always vote. Pick the least worst candidate. Pick the best referendum answer. The worst people don’t want you to vote. Vote
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Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Surveying the AI ‘moment,’ Nathalie Maréchal says "the kooks are now in power, and they are using that power to dismantle the institutions designed to keep the rest of us safe, healthy, and free."
buff.ly
What Policymakers and the Public Need to Know About the Cult of AI
Nathalie Maréchal asks, why are we betting the economy and the future of democracy on cult-like beliefs?
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Micah @rincewind.run · 17/09/2026
some of them will but the unfortunate fact of the matter is that nothing really gets close to matching the United States for science funding - the rest of the world doesn’t have the capacity to just freely absorb what we’re losing here a lot of folks will leave the profession entirely
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Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 17/09/2026
I think even the I Never Thought Leopards Would Eat My Face people are getting to the point where they’re saying “Look, I’ve got my pride—I thought at least my face would get eaten by, you know, a leopard, not by this giant fucking dummy.”
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Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦 @emmettmacfarlane.com · 15/09/2026
A good day to remind you that if Mark Carney wants investment in important things (i.e. the knowledge economy), he could just do it. But instead he's cutting those things in favour of massive military spending while soliciting foreign ownership over Canada's future.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 12/09/2026
mackenzie scott really seems like the only billionaire to figure out that you can be a literal hero to millions with a relative pittance
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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
W/o getting drawn into the "seriously or literally" / "it'll never happen" trap, we need to stomp *hard* on the continuing effort to undermine Article 1 power of the purse by saying that this or that revenue stream makes something outside the normal budget process. 1/ www.nbcnews.com/business/eco...
nbcnews.com
Lutnick says Trump’s $5,000 checks for Americans wouldn’t rely on taxpayer funds
A top White House official suggested Congress would use a budget process to fund them. Vice President JD Vance had said tariff revenues.
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Katie Hinde @mammalssuck.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
"The whole “Oh no, our models went rogue” thing … When a bridge collapses, you don’t analyze whether the bridge was ethical or sentient or why it decided to collapse. You ask, who is the person who built this bridge to be so flimsy?" www.wired.com/story/one-of...
wired.com
One of AI’s Fiercest Critics Says All the Doom Talk Is ‘Meant to Distract Us’
Timnit Gebru argues that AI companies are stoking fears of extinction to avoid discussing actual harms, like autonomous weapons.
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 09/09/2026
AI companies: This technology we’re developing is dangerous and might destroy humanity and we don’t know how to stop it Other people: So we should strictly regulate it, create legislative guard rails, and monitor its development? AI companies: lol no the opposite of all that & give us more money
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Just expel him, Canada.
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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
University governance is completely fucked everywhere; this thread is a very good illustration of how and why it's fucked at Stanford. The specifics will be different at other universities, but the fundamental dynamics are the same.
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Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 29/08/2026
A reasonable conclusion might be that President McInnis serves the CEOs and MBAs on the board of the Yale Corporation instead of the students and faculty of the actual university.
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Shannon Proudfoot @sproudfoot.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I mean this very, very seriously: It is absolutely an option for us to ignore his idiotic Lake America stunt. We can do that. We can just tune it out like you would block out a child howling at you in the cereal aisle, recognizing that to do anything else would be to give the whiner what they want.
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Avi Lewis @avilewis.ca · 27/08/2026
Eyes, teeth, mental health and medicine: they’re all part of our health! They should all be part of our universal public health care system.
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Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦 @emmettmacfarlane.com · 27/08/2026
This program was flawed from the start, in large part due to it coming at the same time university budgets are being destroyed by the provinces. We'd have no problem attracting int'l talent - and building domestic talent - if we maintained adequate institutional funding.
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Alex Usher @alexusherhesa.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
International student visa applications and approvals, Canada 2022-2025. We're down 90% on where we were three years ago. Given that intl student fees brought in about $14B at their peak, we're looking at the potential loss by 2028 of $12B of PSE income (or about 16% of the total).
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Prof Dynarski @dynarski.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
23% drop in student visas to US in 2025 57% drop from India alone catastrophic for research and learning, here and abroad www.insidehighered.com/news/global/...
Graph of visas issued to students per month in 2024 and 2025
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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
The only country that has threatened to invade Canada is us, & it should have immediately ended this presidency. Also, stop lying. It's not a Freudian slip. Grow up & act like the Vice President of the United States. Or even better, resign.
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Kate Jackson @katejackson.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
I have no doubt that some researches will find, and have already found, beneficial uses for AI. But this does not require a university-wide restructure nor a university-wide demand that each faculty member individually reinvent their courses to “train students for Ai” (whatever the heck that means)
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 24/08/2026
tl;dw: the job of the dem majority over the next two years, should it materialize, is to make life hell for the white house, not find points of cooperation
youtube.com
What Democrats can learn from Mitch McConnell
YouTube video by Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie
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LTurculet @lturculet.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Visited my old stomping grounds. Nice place 👍🏻
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Brian Beutler @brianbeutler.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Degenerates like Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, and RFK Jr. should not be effectively immune (civilly, politically) for defaming civil servants—or any civilians—for propaganda or fundraising purposes. What they're doing to Anthony Fauci right now is horrifying. As things stand, they'll get away with it.
offmessage.net
Republicans Should Suffer For Their Smears
There should be consequences, from civil liability to expulsion from Congress, for lying about citizens for propaganda or fundraising purposes.
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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
space x plans to explode more rockets, destroy a wildlife refuge, and eventually collapse into the rot of its own viscera
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💉Josh Rubin, MD @drsandman11.medsky.social · 04/08/2026
Call me crazy, but if a Democratic president had 350 accounts closed by their bank for money laundering it’d be more than a blip in the media
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
People in this country used to be afraid of announcing to the world that they were stone-cold idiots who shouldn't be allowed behind the wheel of a car. Now they're out here bragging about how dumb they are.
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LTurculet @lturculet.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
State of play: ignorance, stupidity, and incompetence weaponized so that a handful of horrible people can profit at a level that is incomprehensible to the average human. Increasingly happening at a tipping point that has us fumbling towards apocalypse.
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Troy Jackson @troyjackson207.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
My response to Elon Musk.
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 30/07/2026
New in PN: The new "science golden age" looks suspiciously like a grift "It’s impossible not to wonder whether part of Trump’s loathing for universities is that there's no way for him to corrupt the process and make money off it in the same way he can by giving billions to Silicon Valley types."
publicnotice.co
The new "science golden age" looks suspiciously like a grift
Trump wants to run scientific research like his family business.
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Lisa Needham @snipy.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
If someone cornered you at a cocktail party and said something like this, you wouldn't just try to get away from them. You'd bounce from the whole event because wtf. But elected Republicans get up every day and say unhinged stuff like this in Congress and I honestly do not know how to unfuck this.
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Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
One drum I keep beating is that the Trumpification of the Republican Party is irreversible. Even after he's gone it will be exclusively cranks, charlatans, and malevolent antisocial goons. "It was always like that"-it wasn't! It's gotten steadily, measurably worse, and he was the nail in the coffin
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
If the entire Democratic Party is being asked by the press and pundits about a few DSA candidates in NYC, it seems like the entire Republican Party should be asked about their colleague who has been credibly accused -- by another colleague's daughter -- of repeated acts of violence.
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Yung En Chee @yungenchee.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Elon Musk, Royal Society Fellow SHAME @royalsociety.org
royalsociety.org
Mr Elon Musk FRS | Royal Society Fellow
Elon Musk is the CEO and co-founder of SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink and The Boring Company.As lead designer at SpaceX, Elon oversees the development of rockets a...
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Jeff (Hot Type) Jarvis @jeffjarvis.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
@jamellebouie.net calls Musk what he is. Gift link. Elon Musk Is a Menace to Society www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Elon Musk Is a Menace to Society (Gift Article)
Why does the owner of X get a pass for what he says and does there?
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Philip Gourevitch @pgourevitch.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
by way of idle wishful thinking - would be great if NYT hired a science writer/thinker for the op-ed page to tell us what’s happening and what’s at stake in the sciences, at a time when they are under attack in a way Galileo would recognize, while newspaper science journalism is facing extinction
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
It's darkly depressing that the entire GOP -- from the White House to Congress to the Supreme Court -- insists that the president and his aides cannot be held accountable for all the very clear crimes that they clearly committed, but they think Dr. Fauci should hang for alleged mishandling of COVID.
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 28/07/2026
Israel is giving Trump's former campaign manager millions of dollars to fill the internet with pro-Israel articles written by AI, not so that anyone will actually read them, but so that *LLMs will train on them* & regurgitate their perspective. This is the future of the information environment.
dropsitenews.com
Israel Is Paying Millions to Train AI Chatbots How to Talk About Gaza. It's Working.
Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale is overseeing an operation posting hundreds of blog posts on behalf of Israel, with the goal of infiltrating artificial intelligence.
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Blayne Haggart @bhaggart.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
This is an epistemological change on the level of science supplanting religion as the dominant form of knowledge. GenAI is making people dumber by the standard of scientific knowledge. But it’s also creating a new standard of oracular knowledge with techbros as the new priests. From 2024.
cigionline.org
ChatGPT Strikes at the Heart of the Scientific World View
Expertise with data collection and manipulation has all too often been equated with deep understanding of that area.
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Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦 @emmettmacfarlane.com · 28/07/2026
I've played around with AI enough to know what it is - and any academic using it as more than a fancy search engine is playing with fire. It is capable of some degree of synthesis, often flawed, and that's about it. If you're letting it do your thinking for you, you're a fraud.
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Andrea Reyes E (she/her) @altibel.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
For the love of Coatlicue, don't use LLMs to summarise! Those things have no cognition. They put text together that looks "coherent" but since they cannot understand it is all based on statistics. An author who writes about truth & technology yet doesn't understand this? 🤡 #academicsky
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Conor Curtis @conorcurtis.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Our Prime Minister is following this man's policy wants nearly to the letter: thetyee.ca/Analysis/202... You want oligarchy? Keep believing in 4d cHeSs, fail to stand up. Keep believing all the neoliberal crap is necessary for national unity. Let the Trojan Horse inside the gates. #CDNpoli #Carney
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Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
wow the revamped ACS website is terrible
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Dmitry Eremin @dmeremin.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
The new web interface of @acs.org publications is agonizing. TOCs missing from ASAPs/misplaced in issues, terrible URLs, and reading that’s now painful on both mobile and desktop. If page views and readership matter to ACS, this is an emergency. I hope ACS leadership is listening.
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Mike Murphy @mjamurphy.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
The costs of net zero are a lot lower than the costs of current policy
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