iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Does it count as kleptoparasitism if it’s not a prey item? Genuinely curious. Either way… ew!!! 🤣

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Oh my gosh, literally discovered! Like “we found this weird cat” and not “we had to reclassify it” 💕🥹

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The VICAR lab is hiring! 🤖🪸 🧪 We are looking for a full-time Autonomous Systems Research Specialist to join the Virgin Islands Center for Autonomous Research (VICAR) in St. Thomas, USVI. Join the first robotics and AI lab in the US Caribbean. Apply by Sept 30: careers.uvi.edu/postings/9159

a Caribbean sunset with a autonomous underwater vehicle running along the waters surface in the distance.

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Liz Hearn @liz-hearn.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

If you care about Earth science in the US, please sign up for the NSF GEO virtual office hour Sept 15 with GEO directorate head Joydip Kundu! NSF leadership needs to hear directly that people care and are concerned about GEO. Maxxing out their Zoom tier sends a message. www.nsf.gov/events/nsf-g...

nsf.gov

NSF GEO Virtual Office Hour: Updates from the NSF Directorate for Geosciences

Join directorate leadership for updates and information.

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

My dive buddies Abi and Addy on our first unsupervised dive as newly certified megalodon rebreather helitrox decompression divers! 45m / 148 ft 🤙🏻 🤿 #technicaldiving #girlsthatscuba

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Hey Fable, I’m a MARINE biologist 😭

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RedPen/BlackPen @redpenblackpen.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Grad school: to be successful in a future career you're going to need to focus on THIS ONE THING for the next 5 years. The actual career in question: you can't focus on one thing for more than 30 minutes at a time and you have to keep switching between 1000 things endlessly

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

This is a phenomenal distillation of what I and many others have been trying to work out! Great guidance too. Will be following.

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

🆘 Can someone help or advise on boosting to major outlets? I live in a US territory with a failing power grid. Daily outages, misleading communications and lies, yet our governor wont declare state of emergency. The community is screaming for help. Some posts from “what’s going on st thomas” on fb:

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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Design document growing larger. I need to code some more core functions, like type checking and test coverage. But I'll get this bird online.

# Open Workflow Labels (OWL)

## Goal and Design

OWL provides a light, flexible framework for labeling scripts for scientific workflow. The key idea is that what distinguishes scientific data analysis from a generic pipeline is that the elements of a scientific analysis---the assumptions, causal models, statistical algorithms, and summaries---must obey certain logical constraints for how they work together to produce results. A pipeline is a sequence of steps. But a scientific workflow is a network of coherent reasons. An analysis can be reproducible but wrong. The difference is coherent scientific workflow.

Labeling our workflow with scientific reasons serves two practical purposes.

First, OWL helps you build better analyses. The reliability and correctness of scientific data analysis depends on the logical integration of scientific causal models, formal scientific questions, statistical models, and diagnostic tests. Researchers are largely unsupported in this integration, despite substantial advances in recent decades. OWL provides structured support and new kinds of error checking that increase confidence in the logical validity, not simply the computational validity, of results.

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Your sunscreen doesn’t matter for coral reef health. (Reef safe sunscreen is a scam)

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uvaresearch.bsky.social @uvaresearch.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

UVA’s Antonios Mamalakis breaks down how climate models—powered by petaflop supercomputers—help us understand future risks. These physics‑based simulations guide real decisions on heat, flooding, and resilience: ow.ly/JIlB50YmtuJ

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Alex Koenig @trumpfass.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

"Citizen scientists have discovered what they believe is one of the largest coral colonies ever documented on the Great Barrier Reef. The coral spans approximately 111 metres in maximum length and covers an estimated area of 3,973 sq m – about half the size of a soccer field."

theguardian.com

Citizen scientists discover a Great Barrier Reef coral giant ‘like a rolling meadow’

Volunteer group Citizens of the Reef made the find as part of the Great Reef Census

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Know anyone interested in coral reefs, AI, and robotics? 🤖🪸 And grad school in the Caribbean? The VICAR lab is seeking masters students interested in applying autonomous systems to marine science @the-vicar.bsky.social apply by March 1 ‼️ learn more about VICAR and MMES: tr.ee/vicar 🧪 🌊 🌱 🌎

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Theo @theukka.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

What if your dplyr pipelines ran on GPU? That's what I built with cuplyr! A CUDA-powered backend for #rstats data manipulation. Looking for testers and feedback! github.com/bbtheo/cuplyr

github.com

GitHub - bbtheo/cuplyr: GPU powered dataframes in R

GPU powered dataframes in R. Contribute to bbtheo/cuplyr development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

What if animals emerged by installing a new biological operating system that repurposed what already existed, much like the rise of the smartphone? Here's our new paper in @embojournal.org @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social @melisupf.bsky.social @sfiscience.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

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Valentin Rodionov @arbitraryeffect.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

🧵 1/?: Switching a Research Desktop to Linux (Intro & Prehistory) 1/ This is the first in a series of threads/mini-tutorials I'll be posting on switching a real academic research & development desktop to Linux. Not a “open source rocks” 🧵— this is about doing actual science. #ChemSky #AcademicSky

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Stefanie Haustein @stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca · 13/11/2025

Over the past months (and at least 11 versions!), I was lucky to work with 11 amazing colleagues on a call to action to reform academic publishing. Not another declaration, but an appeal to our powerful friends, research funders & institutions, to Stop the Drain of Scientific Publishing. 1/n

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

That’s not a barrel, that’s a tower!! Awesome picture.

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Tom Kimmerer, PhD @tomkimmerer.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

Last night, I watched one of the best nature videos I have ever seen, from Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I have been in love with hornbills since I lived in Indonesia and Malaysia and saw them every time I went out in the jungle. You really owe it to yourself to watch this.

youtube.com

Islands of the Hornbills

YouTube video by Cornell Lab of Ornithology

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Virgin Islands Center for Autonomous Research @the-vicar.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

Now that we have the most powerful computer on our lil’ campus… let’s do some marine science 👏 🧪 🪸 🖥️

Dual 5090 gpus in a computing workstation

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

Building a robotics and AI lab on a Caribbean island certainly has its challenges, but we are settling into our new home quite nicely! 👉🏻 follow @the-vicar.bsky.social if youre interested in robotics and AI for ecological conservation 🧪 #NSFfunded

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ellie lockhart (she/they) @eleanor.lockhart.contact · 29/10/2025

someone should make a website for liberals who don’t hate technology

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Tara C. Smith @aetiology.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

If you're lucky enough to be financially stable and have a few bucks to spare, now would be a really good time to donate to America's food banks. They've already lost a ton of funding this year and with SNAP on the line, more are going to need them in the coming weeks.

feedingamerica.org

U.S. Hunger Relief Organization | Feeding America

Feeding America is a nonprofit network of 200 food banks leading the fight against hunger in the United States. Learn how you can help end hunger in America.

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Thibaut Brunet @thibautbrunet.bsky.social · 05/10/2025

Latest from ours: www.cell.com/cell-reports... This is two stories in one: a case study/cautionary tale on developing genetic tools in new organisms, and the first hint at a gene regulatory network for choanoflagellate multicellular development (which turn out to involve a Hippo/YAP/ECM loop!) A 🧵

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Ian Hewson @ianhewson.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

Day 1 of NSF sponsored Diadema antillarum scuticociliatosis time series in Brewers Bay, St Thomas, USVI with @drchriskellogg.bsky.social @viromegirl.bsky.social @aquaticmicrolab.bsky.social and Prof Marilyn Brandt at UVI. After months of planning it was time to figure out what makes sense from

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Martin A. Nuñez @martin-nunez.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

🚨Big news🚨 A Pocket Guide to Scientific Writing and Publishing is out🎉 This is the book I wish I’d had 20 years ago — short, practical, and designed to help researchers write & get their papers published I hope it helps many Please share with anyone who might benefit! 👉 mybook.to/ScienceGuide

cover of a "pocket guide to scientific writing and publishing"

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

Perks of working a little past 5☀️

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Chris Mah @echinoblog.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

"Sponges are the only animals that if broken down to the level of their cells, can reassemble themselves. A sponge is passed through a sieve to break apart its cells. The cells recognize each other and reform into small new sponges." #shapeoflife #spongeThursday youtu.be/ORV3qV8GFF4?...

youtu.be

Sponges - Time-lapse of Sponge Cells Recombining

YouTube video by Shape of Life

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Jordon Hemingway @jordonhemingway.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

🚨 Paper alert! 🚨 After >1 year in review and six (6!) reviewers, I'm thrilled that this paper is finally out! Here, we provide the first data-based record of marine dissolved organic carbon in the geologic past. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

The geologic history of marine dissolved organic carbon from iron oxides - Nature

A direct proxy for past dissolved organic carbon signatures using co-precipitated organic carbon in iron ooids enables reconstruction of marine dissolved organic carbon signals dating back to the Pala...

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

Quick detour on the way to work this morning

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Chris Paxton @cpaxton.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

energy and water use per chatgpt query is absolutely trivial

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Hadley Wickham @hadley.nz · 11/06/2025

Happy 18th birthday ggplot2! #rstats

Balloon wall art inspired by the ggplot2 hex sticker. The display features a hexagonal frame made of black balloons, filled with white balloons inside and surrounded by a background of light and dark blue balloons. A line graph with black balloon segments and round coloured nodes runs across the centre, and the word “ggplot2” is spelled out in black balloon letters below the chart.

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Tom Di Liberto @tdiliberto.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Trump's Budget is out. For NOAA, it's exactly what the previous passback document showed. Trump administration eliminations NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research in its ongoing fight against science and reality. www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...

Table showing FY26 budget numbers for NOAA from the Trump Administration.

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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Presidential budget is out. Here's NSF. Biggest cut, by amount, is $1 billion, or 66.8%, from MPS (Physics & Math directorate). nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF...

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

My heart hurts for Harvard-bound students who lost GRFPs and teams everywhere who have had grants terminated. A senseless waste of blood, sweat, tears, late nights, strained relationships, abandoned hobbies, frequent moves, financial instability, and mental health. 🧪

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Wolverine is the formal word for wolf 🫣

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Michael does not approve of the robot hogging the couch. Sorry bud, firmware update. 🥺🧪

A cat looking longingly back at the camera, an underwater robot in his favorite spot.

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Hard agree! Those old American naturalist articles took me on ADVENTURES 😍

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Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽 @needhibhalla.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

important historical perspective on the value of federal funding of basic research at universities: "These are the building blocks of America's extraordinary strength, created over the last 100 years, and they are now being dismantled in 100 days" 🧪 www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qk4...

youtube.com

Fareed’s Take: Trump is gutting what made American science great

YouTube video by CNN

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

This is important research funded by #NSF looking at how sponge filter feeding changes the molecular makeup of seawater, with important implications for coral reefs and even bioremediation. Great to see continuation of my PhD research! And I’m glad they moved the lab indoors 👍🏻🤣 🧪

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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

Since we are still talking about interactions, I worked with some ecologists a couple of years ago on measurement scale, interactions and interpretation issues. I think some problems arise from failure to distinguish prediction from inference, a chronic problem in ecology imo doi.org/10.1111/brv....

Three common inferential errors when investigating context dependence in ecology. Consider a test of context dependence in its most basic form: a 2 × 2 factorial experiment, measuring an ecological response Y, to the crossing of factors X and Z, each with two levels. The analyst fits a statistical model with an interaction term to the data: Y ~ X + Z + X × Z, to test for and quantify context dependence. Three inferential errors are possible when the measurement scale or symmetry of the interaction are overlooked: detection and magnitude (Type D), sign (Type S) and misidentification of underlying processes (Type A).

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