iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Underwater robotics is not as far along as other fields. But once they figure out standalone underwater navigation, we could at least be saving coral reefs while the military is inventing new weapons.

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Thanks! I think our purchasing dept would beg to differ 🤣 we’re a little high maintenance and in the middle of nowhere.

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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 · 17/09/2026

Handling editor (or whatever mdpi calls it) pressured me to change my reject, then replaced me with another ‘reviewer’. I walked away and haven’t looked back since. Im sure some papers are fine, but I do not trust anything in mdpi.

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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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Reposted by Dr. Lauren Olinger

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 · 12/08/2026

Ah, I have always made mine freely downloadable (also no cut for site). I am advocate for ‘free 3d always when it’s photogrammetry of natural world’ but I can imagine this is not the same for different fields.

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Isn’t this what CC by NC is for? Genuine question as a fellow sketchfab user.

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

Hey Fable, I’m a MARINE biologist 😭

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Beautiful! Reminds me of one of my favorite pics (not as lovely as your film photo)

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Seems pretty okay with opus 4.8 max.

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Calculating God by Robert Sawyer , if you’re in a first contact mood ☺️

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

We need to be advocating for stronger regulations on these industries, not attacking one another. I’d support taxation and regs, even if that cost gets passed on to users. Many barriers to this: one is the tendency of some to instantly insult and alienate anyone with anything less than blind rage.

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

LLMs have added value to our very small, personnel limited university and research lab on an island. we also pay the highest power bills in the country @ $0.44/kwh, so I can relate. But I’m also aware of the underlying issues, just like with my gas car, and clothes from SE Asia. We do our best.

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

We use LLMs to troubleshoot and unit test code and QC data and files. I’ve also built some tools with LLMs to automate some of the burdensome admin that professors are saddled with, freeing me up to spend more time with students and on research, the good mission we are dedicated to.

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

There are genuine critiques about LLMs but these get drowned out in the mass blind rage. Even the original post here was about the problem with talking to AI instead of friends. Daring to suggest one can do both got me called stupid and lectured on data centers. Where did I “champion” LLM?

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

I didnt bring up my work. My work was brought up by the person who said “ofc I can’t read” because I have “AI” in my bio, referring to my robotics and AI lab. My initial comment was simply in reply to the false choice of this poem. You can do ✨both✨ But I’ll talk about my work any time.

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

We use Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based classification models, like YOLO. We have our own edge computing infrastructure so we train, test, validate, and run inference locally (no data centers). Uses about as much power as a kitchen microwave, much less than my colleagues aquaria next door 🙂

docs.ultralytics.com

Explore Ultralytics YOLOv8 | Ultralytics Docs

Discover Ultralytics YOLOv8, an advancement in real-time object detection, optimizing performance with an array of pretrained models for diverse tasks.

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Ok, well I hope a friend calls you to ask for meal plans so you can talk about your blind rage at an entire scientific field 🤷🏼‍♀️

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

You do realize that not all AI is LLMs, right? The AI in my bio refers to image classification, for coral reef conservation. I’m a marine biologist, good lord 😅 One can both meal plan with AI/LLMs, and maintain strong friendships. It’s a false choice.

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Dr. Lauren Olinger @reefecologist.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Or, and hear me out, you can just call your friend?

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Reposted by Dr. Lauren Olinger

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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Reposted by Dr. Lauren Olinger

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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