iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 24/09/2026

Never been to the opera before? Now’s your chance. We’re giving away 70,000 free tickets to the @metopera at the iconic Lincoln Center. Go to on.nyc.gov/opera to enter the lottery. There’s not a bad seat in the house.

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Hey chat has the shortage of bread and/or potatoes ever led to a massive social upheaval, asking for a friend

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SK Winnicki, PhD 🏳️‍⚧️ @skwinnicki.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

job board just roasting the concept of naming a school for Robert E. Lee and also retaining that name into 2026

Comment section in a faculty job board, for a job at a school that includes Lee in the name. It reads: 1) Non-search committee member: Sorry about the tight deadline - thought someone else had this posted here already. 2) Lee as in Robert E.? That should really be changed. His crypt is on campus. 3) They've tried to change it. faculty is overwhelmingly in favor of change but the board shut it down 22-6 in 2021. 2) Yikes. 4) You can't change the name without destroying his phylactery or he'll resurrect in 2d6 rounds and deals 3d4 necrotic per turn to anyone in 10 meters. 5) Lmaooo x6 6) I heard if you go work there it automatically makes you a staunch supporter of Robert E Lee against your will, be warned!! 2) It really is not a good look. That board needs to be updated.

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Rosemary Mosco @rosemarymosco.com · 18/09/2026

Humaning.

A four-panel comic. In panel 1, a Northern Cardinal and American Goldfinch perch above a busy crowd in a city, looking down. The cardinal says "It's a nice day to go humaning." The goldfinch says "Just look at them. Majestic." In panel 2, a close-up of the two birds. The cardinal says "Nobody tells you that you'll reach a certain age and suddenly get into humaning. I hit 3 years old, and then bam."The birds are looking out over the crowd scene. In panel 3, the cardinal says "Their calls sound funny to us, but each one has a unique meaning." Below, people are saying various things: "I'm tired." "Where's my phone?" "I'd murder a burrito." In panel 4, the birds look down excitedly at a man walking by. The cardinal says "Wait, is that a guy who got dressed in the dark and put his shirt on inside out and backwards?" And the goldfinch exclaims, "Holy... that's a lifer!"

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Richard Waite @waiterich.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Good article, but there’s one understated piece: higher land use of organic ag means that if we shift toward organic at current consumption patterns, more natural ecosystems need to be cleared for farming, causing carbon losses, making total GHG emissions of organic usually higher vs. conventional.

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

*heavy professorial sigh* No, those are all typically *secondary sources*- potentially useful starting points, but ultimately worth as much as their citations. Some are good! Others, not so much. GenAI output may superficially *appear* to be a secondary source, but is not!

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Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 05/09/2026

You don't have a right to safe drinking water, a US court just ruled. A Trump-appointed judge also said Americans have no “constitutional right to truthful information” during a public health crisis.

motherjones.com

You don't have a right to safe drinking water, US court rules

A Trump-appointed judge also said Americans have no “constitutional right to truthful information” during a public health crisis.

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Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 05/09/2026

Listening to a man at the farmers market explain he’s out of eggs as “the ladies aren’t producing due to heat stress”— and another poultry vendor says he’s out, as he can’t keep them in this heat. Climate change is all around. We just have to open our eyes to see how it’s affecting our daily lives.

static.klipy.com

Sleepy Cartoon Chicken

Alt: Sleepy Cartoon Chicken

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Dr. Sheryl, The Roving Naturalist @rovingnaturalist.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I am so proud of my silly little idea and can't wait to share it with you!

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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 14/08/2026

Meta is so unbelievably evil. They make a technology primarily designed to enable abuse, harassment and privacy violations, but also embed real disability aids. The tactic now is to use an entire community as human shields to defend against criticisms www.engadget.com/2236054/meta...

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Anonymous Potato @anonymouspotato.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

EcoEvoJobs 2026-27 just opened for business and we've already got 79 faculty / permanent jobs listed. Please repost! ecoevojobs.net

ecoevojobs.net

ecoevojobs.net 2026-27

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Douglas A. Boneparth @dougboneparth.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Remember to treat your body like a data center. Consume as much literature and water as possible.

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Nicholas Hunt-Walker @nhuntwalker.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I did 5.5 years of an astrophysics PhD program 10 years ago then dropped out before finishing. My advice for people is generally: get a PhD only if the thing you want to do requires a PhD. At the very least you need to have an extremely solid reason for doing it, bc you sacrifice so much to stay.

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Jonathan Jarry @jonathanjarry.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I regret to inform you that my article tomorrow will cover this and other similar alarming developments, all propped up by deeply flawed research papers.

Faception can analyze faces from video streams (recorded and live), cameras, or
online/offline databases, encode the faces in proprietary image descriptors and match
an individual with various personality traits and types with a high level of accuracy.
We develop proprietary classifiers, each describing a certain personality type or trait
such as an Extrovert, a person with High IQ, Professional Poker Player or a Terrorist.
Ultimately, we can score facial images on a set of classifiers and provide our clients
with a better understanding of their customers, the people in front of them or in front
of their cameras.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 06/08/2026

Killing off the Social and Behavioral Sciences directorate for this…

The NSF Unlocking Dataset Value for AI-Enabled Scientific Discovery program will invest up to $100 million to help research communities increase the value of existing scientific datasets. The program seeks to 1) apply AI-based capabilities to feature extraction and metadata generation, and the integration of multiple datasets. 2) Develop robust data pipelines necessary for automated analysis of existing datasets and similar use-cases by AI tools and systems. 3) Augment and/or harmonize existing datasets to better enable use by AI data pipelines and automated analysis

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Victoria Rose Richards @aerialembroidery.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

'You'll choke too' - an aerial embroidery landscape inspired by all the wildfires happening right now... I'm upset every time I smell smoke outside and somehow we have people starting them maliciously too! But we all breathe the same air so they'll choke too (1/2 - see thread for close-ups)

An embroidery hoop containing a sewn landscape from above. It shows a forest on the right, a line of fire and charred ground with smoke on the left. The smoke is felted wool.

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Jonathan Jarry @jonathanjarry.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

If you’re a science communicator and you use AI, read this. This is about what’s happening to Hank Green.

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Mateusz Fafinski @calthalas.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Half the planet is having a massive fight about how to correctly interpret an Ancient Greek poem but go ahead, close some more humanities departments.

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J. Emory Parker 🏳️‍🌈 @jaspar.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Did you know: nobody died of radiation poisoning in the Fukushima disaster. In 2018, one former worker died of lung cancer that was likely caused by radiation exposure. Studies conducted by WHO and Tokyo University predict no significant increase in cancer death rates due to the disaster.

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God @thegodshow.com · 28/07/2026

The worst thing about AI is how nobody trusts anything as being real anymore. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil.

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

Headline of another article from the Crimson earlier this year that reads, "Harvard College Adds Required AI Module to Expository Writing Curriculum"

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Jeremy Yoder says no war @jbyoder.org · 28/07/2026

Finally posted an ad for the postdoc position on my new NSF-funded project—come help build a new method to study plants' responses to environmental variation in space and over time, and figure out interesting ways to use it! Apply by 23 August to ensure consideration. Details: buff.ly/qTvaqvD

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Brendan Keogh @brkeogh.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Surely the solution here is just *don't use AI tools* for your writing and research and continue to do your writing and research in ALL the ways you were doing it before you started using AI instead of doing the work??

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Colette Delawalla, PhD @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Next time someone accuses me of “making science partisan” I’m going to throw the physical NYT edition of this article at their head. These people are operating in bad faith…we have a mountain of evidence. (Gift link) www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/b...

nytimes.com

Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him (Gift Article)

Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed President Trump in the 2024 election.

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Stephen Turner @stephenturner.us · 26/07/2026

When I advise my faculty colleagues to diversify their funding beyond their traditional NSF/NIH grant portfolio, this isn't quite what I had in mind, but maybe where we're headed www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/s...

nytimes.com

‘OnlyMarms’: Marmots Are on OnlyFans to Raise Money for Research

A team of scientists uploaded videos of the squirrel-like rodents in the wild on the adult-content site OnlyFans to raise money amid government budget cuts.

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Marc Hudson @marchudson.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

From the LinkedIn of an academic I have a lot of respect for.

Last week, I emailed a (previously?) respectable journal in my field to let them know that a recent article I had been hoping to cite had hallucinated hashtag#AI references and that the author should be asked to update their article with credible citations to support their arguments.

Someone from the admin team responded to say, basically, that they weren't going to do anything about it.

I feel like this is how academic credibility dies. The main recourse I have in the face of AI slop is academic papers. If you can't trust journal articles to contain established evidence (even though the system has never been perfect) then I don't know how we can make policy recommendations, advise NGOs and charities, design credible experiments, etc., etc.

My only hope is that this is the trigger that begins to kill the profiteering publishing system and the 'quantity over quality' performance criteria under which we all are drowning - but I have a feeling that all of academia will need an overhaul to maintain any kind of credibility.

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Proloe 🌙🧚‍♀️ Very Fairy Vtuber @proloe.gay · 28/02/2026

I do not like this gen AI I do not like what it implies I do not want it in my art I do not think it makes you smart I do not want it in my games I do not like its goals and aims I do not want it in my books I do not like the way it looks I do not like it, I don't care I do not want it anywhere

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 17/07/2026

Probably more helpful to think of them not so much as “Canadian wildfires” but rather “climate change wildfires currently consuming Canada”

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Dr. Sheryl, The Roving Naturalist @rovingnaturalist.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Proud of the students around me choosing to limit or cancel field work in favor of their health. But what happens when continued climate disasters prevent us from doing the work that could help with slowing or alleviating climate change? I will chalk this up under a new category of ecological grief

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Morgan Tingley @mwtingley.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

As smoke chokes eastern US cities (again), this is your daily reminder that as recent as 2023, an NSF panel rejected our grant about wildfire smoke impacts because they did not see the connection between wildfire smoke and climate change.

screen capture from New York Times headlines about wildfire smoke

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Dr. Holly P Jones @dochpjones.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Scenes from a busy week. Students from NIU, Hamilton, and Herkimer CC, all spent the last 6 weeks smammal trapping in NY forests. Then they came to Illinois for an #nsffunded student learning opportunity. First stop was Nachusa to get some prairie smammal trapping in and to see what bison AC is. 🧪

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Chris Wiebe @chriswiebe.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Wow. “The three directorates are being required to pull back NSF proposals that have already passed peer review and have been recommended for funding. Some of the funds will be funnelled to another project, a brainchild of the White House OSTP.” www.nature.com/articles/d41...

nature.com

NSF plans cuts to core science programmes to fund White House initiative

A proposed clawback of already distributed research funds comes as the US agency’s budget is already squeezed and it struggling to clear a backlog of grant applications.

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School of Integrative Biology at Illinois (SIB) @ibioillinois.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

New study by EEB's Associate Professor Phil Anderson compares cactus thorns & dinosaur teeth to reveal insights into biological puncture tool performance and evolution. Fascinating biomechanics research! 🧪 🧪 🔗 buff.ly/8l0TESp

sib.illinois.edu

From cactus thorns to dinosaur teeth: Study analyzes biological puncture tool performance | School of Integrative Biology | Illinois

Image

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Alt National Park Service @altnps.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Shout out to Pennsylvania for not going to the “Great American State Fair”! So far, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Oregon, and Washington have also declined to participate.

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Meg Mindlin @invertebabe.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

A conversation science communicators need to have about AI art 🧪🐙🐡🧵

WHY THIS ARGUMENT IS FULL OF CRAP
"Al graphics allow me to communicate science to people who may never get to interact with a scientist"
A CONVERSATION
SCIENCE
COMMUNICATORS
NEED TO HAVE
@invertebabe

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Buttons (Ashley) 🏴‍☠️#OFMDForLife🏴‍☠️ 🏳️‍🌈🤡 @sevensugars.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Since I did do my PhD in cyanobacteria growth and treatment optimization modeling AND work in the water treatment industry, I’m gonna share my theory as to what’s happening here and how to fix it. People are focusing on the painted bottom of the pool increasing residual heat, and while that 1/19

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Dr. Sheryl, The Roving Naturalist @rovingnaturalist.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Hey, do you like TRPGs and AP content? Do you like cats?? This weekend I'll be appearing in 3 games as part of the Meowrathon to raise money for a cat shelter! meowrathon.com My first game starts at 3pm Eastern today! www.twitch.tv/dgomiller

meowrathon.com

- ODND Presents: A Tabletop Gaming Meowrathon

2026 Meowrathon! June 19th – 21st What is the Meowrathon? The Tabletop Roleplaying Meowrathon is a live stream featuring a series of one shot TTRPG adventures over three days. Viewers are encourag...

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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Scientific journal editor here: If you're invited to peer review an article and you can't do it, please just click "no." That tells me "this person can't do it, I should invite someone else." Otherwise the system waits 3 weeks to tell me that you didn't respond and I should invite someone else.

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Nature Check @naturecheckgaming.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Our next episode of Arda is now available on YouTube and all podcast platforms! Have our heroes gotten themselves into trouble at the tundra temple? youtu.be/dKiHsWCRDd4 www.podbean.com/eas/pb-cz7fq...

youtu.be

Betrayal in the Temple | Arda Episode 71

YouTube video by Nature Check D&D

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James Bullock @jmbecologist.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

A major problem for research, and especially for early career researchers, is the incredibly long time some journals can take even to send papers out for review then months in review, followed by slow decision making This is reaching crisis point - maybe journals should pay editors & reviewers

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

When utilized in literature review, LLMs consistently 1. fail to mention female authors in female-led literatures, 2. insist that men are more influential or more heavily cited when this is contradicted by objective citation counts, and 3. attribute women’s work to hallucinated male scholars.

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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

One time at a conference, I was making small talk with a senior colleague. I told him I had seen some of his students’ presentations and they were very good. Then I asked him how many students he had. He thought for a minute and said “I have no idea”. That means you have too many students!

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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Thank you for coming The plan is to make the Reflecting Pool full of saltwater and then fill it with sharks. This will cost millions of dollars and will not really help anything other than putting some sharks closer to where I live. I will not be taking questions at this time.

static.klipy.com

Charlie Day: Always Sunny Pepe Silvia

ALT: Charlie Day: Always Sunny Pepe Silvia

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The RPGeeks @rpgeeksdnd.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

It's our birthday! 🎈 We're five years old today so come over for some classic party games, retro vibes and nerdy fun with @simonoxfphys.com, Ali Jennings, @emzywb.bsky.social, @shamini.bsky.social & @emzywb.bsky.social! 7pm BST tonight, live on Youtube.com/live/HgqDz3zUz_g

youtube.com

LIVE | The RPGeeks Reunion - 5th Anniversary Game Stream 🎲🌍

YouTube video by The RPGeeks

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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 10/06/2026

Nostalgia Content xkcd.com/3256/

Comic. [Person in front of images of pogs, a Tamagotchi, and huge fungal tower over mossy ground.] PERSON: Who else remembers pogs? Tamagotchis? Vast forests of prototaxites towering over the mossy landscape as armored fish stir in the deep? [caption] Due to a database error, millennial nostalgia now includes a portion of the Early Devonian.

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