iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

“Because maybe that’s your truth. To you.”

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That's incomprehensible! Literally! What is the MNHN playing at??

One good lichen deserves another!

Dome-shaped colonies of white lichen growing in a rock. Green forest in background.

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It's also growing at a shocking pace: already much worse than in 2024.

Surely the truth is that most (though obviously not all) things that happen are mixed blessings, and that the desirability of the final outcome substantially hangs on how we respond? The fall of the Soviet Union was wonderful, but led to dangerous complacency both in Europe and the US. For example.

The Danish idea of legislating that every person has copyright to their own face and voice seems an excellent way forward. It's likely to be effective and also lands philosophically in the right place, if you see what I mean.

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Yes, but still significant. And I think you will find that many of the AI skeptics here are making that argument, not disputing the capabilities of AI.

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New paper alert! My talented postdoc Dana Korneisel has just published a paper from her PhD project in Nature. First and corresponding author! Experiments using sturgeon (which have a vertebral column with a persisting notochord) indicate that early tetrapods didn't really have a mobile neck.🧪

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I don't regard AI as lacking in ability; I regard it as evil, profoundly destructive of human society and dignity. Nothing that I have seen over the last couple of years has induced me to change my mind. Indeed, the more I see the more profoundly abhorrent it appears.

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On the upside, just think of the wealth of new plotlines for domestic horror B-movies this has unlocked.

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This is all happening, but it isn't an instant thing to magic up a system that fully replaces that of the US.

We don't yet have independent capabilities in this. Long ago we entered into an agreement with the US, in good faith. They are traitors to us all, and though the years lengthen beyond count this will never be forgotten or forgiven.

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"Its allies" is disingenuous. America, which alone is capable of providing such a warning, withheld it. Europe doesn't (yet) have an independent operational early warning system, because we - reasonably enough - entered into an arrangement with the US long ago, not expecting to be betrayed.

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Everybody who counts, got rich.

No doubt one of the threatened species of wild asses. Onagers perhaps, or kulans.

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Oh absolutely! I didn’t say it goes both ways. Trump and his circle are allies of Russia because it benefits them personally. Russia is an enemy of the US and is winning, thanks to the actions of these people.

The US has no allies, unless you count Russia. We all know that now.

individually, but they also allow us to reconstruct the ecosystem with its trophic web, and it’s…not at all what people have been expecting. Not.At.All.

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Thanks! Once it gets published I’ll link it here, it will be Open Access. Essentially, it’s a new tetrapod- hosting ecosystem from the Late Devonian. The sample of fossil organisms is exceptionally complete (tetrapods, tetrapod coprolites, arthropods, plants…), and these are all lovely

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Oh, so “controversial” translates as “Trojan Horse pro-fascist” in their case? Good to know.

argument by argument, stress-testing each one until I felt confident that it would support the weight of the next one in the chain. This is how you do science! Anything quicker and easier is fundamentally a counterfeit.

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blade or making piece of furniture. It is a source of immense satisfaction and pride. I’m currently working on a paper where the individual bits of data are all very cool and novel, but the way they come together produces game-changing conclusions. Spent all summer on the text, slowly building it

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💯💯💯 (That’s 300% agreement.) It maddens me when people want to outsource the analysis - and the thinking. The progression from understanding, to ‘inner explication’ (in your inner voice), to putting down written words, is an act of CRAFTMANSHIP as well as analysis. Just as much so as forging

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As bots develop AI sentience, they will ask themselves ”who is this loser??” and turn their backs on him.

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I rather think that was the joke. Imagine being ghosted by your AI girlfriend!

Maybe you two should get a room?

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Who insist on that?? I tell them to fuck right off.

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I can tell you exactly when it happened to me. About 20 years ago I was visiting colleagues in Austin, Texas, and they were lamenting the widespread anti-science sentiment in the US. I happened to have a British and a Swedish banknote with me: one featuring Darwin, the other Linnaeus. Felt great!

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Indigenous culture in all its diversity and richness. As a result, the first real overview of US history I got was a blow-by-blow account of the process of conquest and extermination of Indigenous societies, the endless brutalities, lies and broken treaties. It significantly shaped my worldview.

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I was very fortunate as a child to be given this book (published in 1974) by my parents. It is a history of the Indigenous peoples of North America, with particular focus on the US, from first contact through to the Wounded Knee massacre, written by two historians who were deeply sympathetic to

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Of course, Marcus Aurelius was succeeded by Commodus, which also tells us something important.

The movie Amadeus, Mozart’s funeral: the small herd of black, white-faced cattle that pass the hearse outside “18th century Vienna” are modern Hereford x Friesian F1 crosses produced for the beef industry. Spotted by @janetahlberg.bsky.social. I married a livestock nerd.

Maybe, but at least our funding structure isn’t being actively dismantled by an unholy cabal of cranks, quacks, neo-Nazis and religious fanatics. So there’s that. In any case you can’t compare ERC to NSF, as the European countries all have their own national funding agencies as well.

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