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Becca

@sciencelizard.bsky.social
786 followers 880 following 5.4K posts

Science, snark, lizards

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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 13h
If I were a penguin I’d hid in his fridge just to jump him
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Lizstar @lizstar.bsky.social · 21h
A ferret, a mink, a stoat, and a weasel are starting up a new band called Weezel
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 15h
OMG I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR DECADES AND I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 15h
The cartoon version of The Hobbit
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 15h
I cannot emphasize this enough: if you aren't impressed by natural intelligence, you really need to get out more youtube.com/shorts/MBJ1h...
youtube.com
Found His Trunk
YouTube video by Snugbarn
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 15h
candid video of humans was way more fun before the technological gasoline of Palantir/Flock/ICExAI on the fascism fire
static.klipy.com
The Eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings
ALT: The Eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings
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John Smillie @johnsmillie42.bsky.social · 18h
Hey @tkovach.bsky.social, any air pollution math you can do to help me put this in context for the people who might care about a 16.3MW gas plant going in 0.5 miles upwind from 366 K-1 students? ecm.idem.in.gov/cs/idcplg?Id...
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 18h
I think there's a really important lesson in regulation of new technology that the Human Genome researchers were kinda obsessed over whether the reference should be > 10% any one person undark.org/2024/07/09/i...
undark.org
Haunting the Human Genome Project: A Question of Consent
One person’s DNA has long been the centerpiece of a genetic sequence used by biologists the world over. Did he agree to that?
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 19h
The trouble is, the AI emails that may deserve a response (the ones where people harness the sycophantic properties of AI to get over their imposter syndrome which would block them from applying) will look similar to someone who spent 11 seconds and didn’t read it before hitting send.
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Cats of Yore @catsofyore.bsky.social · 20h
I love fall so much. I've lived in Vermont my whole life and foliage season still seems like such a completely bonkers and beautiful thing to happen every year. It never gets old. 🍂
Photo of a pile of leaves on vibrant dark green moss. I collected lots of fallen leaves of different colors from different plants and trees and arranged them in an egg-shaped gradient going from green at the top to yellow and then orange and then red to darkest reds at the bottom.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 20h
Fear and greed are two of the most lucrative human emotions to hijack, whether it’s East coast thugs (Wallsteet) or West coast thugs (Silicon Valley)
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 20h
Random thought: somebody should make a brand of birth control pills and call them Bonaby
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 22h
I mean some university presidents could at least learn remorse about mowing people over with vehicles
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 22h
I mean tbh I think bowling allies will have the audacity to charge more than $7 for a lane under Biden or whoever, but this economy does suck extra because of all the taxes aka tariffs driving up good prices
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ExecutiveOtaku @executiveotaku.bsky.social · 23h
God I wish I was there right now. Looks stunning with the waves and clouds today.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 23h
Helping the public understand there are a handful to a couple dozen cases of natural pneumonic plague every year, mostly out of Africa, and while it’s highly contagious if caught early we can give people antibiotics to cure it. So we need to help contract tracers catch every contact.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I think the key thing is that the manufacturer of the reactor needs to pay for waste stewardship for as long as it’s needed
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404 Media @404media.co · 04/10/2026
Human contractors are reviewing Copilot users’ prompts and uploaded images, according to internal documents obtained by 404 Media. The contractors are also bombarded with users’ requests for sexual AI images. www.404media.co/humans-readi...
404media.co
Humans Are Reading Copilot Prompts — And They're Horrified
Human contractors are reviewing Copilot users’ prompts and uploaded images, according to internal documents obtained by 404 Media. The contractors are also bombarded with users’ requests for sexual…
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
It's true that mental arithmetic can be a good proxy for general mental function, so much so that it's used as an assay in sleep deprivation lit (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12683469/). What's crucial is not to see mental arithmetic comfort as a readout of IQ.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Checking your browser - reCAPTCHA
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I'm not much to insist a college president resign over every sexual assault case, just the ones where the college actively obstructed justice. But he should have resigned when he committed vehicular assault.
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Michael Gilman @gilman.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
A Short History Of The Goalie Goal. From two years ago but presciently name-checks Shesterkin in the final paragraph. Big fan of @defector.com btw. Enjoy!
defector.com
A Short History Of The Goalie Goal | Defector
The goalie goal is the holy grail. More than three times as rare in the history of the NHL as a five-goal game, there have been just 18 instances of a goalie scoring, by 15 different goalies. An inten...
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Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
Great chance to post my all-time favorite headline
The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The economics of drug discovery is molecules are cheap, safe and effective therapies are hard (and cost a billion)
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Success would mean a new target that 1) can actually be synthesized in GMP lab and 2) passes safety/efficacy in a preclinical animal model. Even then, what we’d want to evaluate on is whether the 90% likelihood of clinical trial failure has decreased, but to get statistical sig is impossible
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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 03/10/2026
This will make kids a lot safer on Halloween. Other cities should do this!
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Can we finally point out that the number of people who are research leaders at R1 universities who have anything other than the highest level of “fit in, speak flattery to power, be useful to power” skills are a rounding error?
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Like The Bad AI is already here, just by improving efficiency of the Bad People. We have to use the AI to make viral info about how bad the bad people are before they convince all the grandmas that the folks in Springfield are eating the dogs and cats
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I was listening to @cwarzel.bsky.social ‘s Galaxy Brain podcast with Zack Korman, and while I appreciated his sensible advice about AI and cybersecurity, he kept saying “oh people will definitely go to prison if it kills people” and I wanted to yell “what about the prisoners it’s killing???”
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Orcspiration @orcspiration.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
PUT AWAY YOUR SLING, TODAY YOU WILL BATTLE ANXIETY. AND YOU WILL WIN.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Because toys are great. Also adults playing with toys isn’t new. Model trains and collectibles porcelain dolls just had a veneer of dignity imbued by grandparents that has yet to arrive to Lego flowers, but I’m confident it will come. Also have you done a jigsaw puzzle lately? Fantastic.
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 03/10/2026
No one knows. No one *can* know, because this is all up for grabs. The future isn't something that happens to us. The future is something that *we* make.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Something I’ve thought about doing is comparing a target selection task with and without the general purpose LLM tools.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The purpose of Open AI literally included the public good at one point
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Dustin A. Chacón @lingdustin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:
Screenshot of a Tweet from Pope Leo XIV. It reads: 

"In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgen to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity."
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Especially Dr. Pepper
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Chemjobber @chemjobber.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The ability of the AIP to have good statistical data about PhDs in physics in the 1960s and 1970s is remarkable #chemjobs
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Eyes are brain. I’m not sure if butt is legs, but eyes are brain.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Dunno man. The words "credit default swap" make me twitch youtube.com/shorts/TOYWO...
youtube.com
What are Credit Default Swaps?
YouTube video by Kyla Scanlon
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Sternberg Lab @sternberglab.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
1/9 Metagenomics lets us read microbiomes in nature without cultivation, but writing (editing) them in their native context is still a major challenge. Meet MetaEdit: a platform for pathway-scale metagenomic editing inside the gut microbiome. science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Metagenomic editing of commensal bacteria in vivo using CRISPR-associated transposases
Although metagenomic sequencing has revealed a rich microbial biodiversity in the mammalian gut, methods to genetically alter specific species in the microbiome are highly limited. Here, we introduce ...
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
true, true. I think many people did try? pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Designing and testing social media campaign messages to promote COVID-19 vaccine confidence among rural adults: A community-engaged approach featuring rural community leader and clinician testimonials
Despite the growing availability of effective COVID-19 vaccines in rural communities in the United States, widespread vaccine hesitancy delays COVID-19 vaccine coverage in rural communities and threat...
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Meh, Mamdani is closer to Elvis than Biden. Biden couldn’t make it look cool.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Which foundation models and which medical discoveries?
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Hedy Lamar and Danish Runes! So glad I asked Google how to explain Bluetooth to my 9 year old www.forbes.com/sites/techno...
forbes.com
What Is Bluetooth? — The Wireless Technology Explained
Discover the power of Bluetooth technology and its applications. Learn how Bluetooth works, its history, and use cases for every day and industry.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
If I tell you your take was very clever will you find my words as useful as ChatGPT?
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I know many things about neuroscience, but any description of meat brains as quantum instruments is too tortured an analogy to entertain
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I mean we’ve all been talking to computers. Every Google search, and most social media posts, are parsed by computers. Sometimes computers respond by giving you info you want, sometimes bots are mean. The issue is non coders can now build things with code legos and they are good legos
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
It’s when we use sand to take input and do a process that is analogous but not identical to thinking (that relies on statistical associations but that we cannot genuinely explain) to do produce an output that can sometimes substitute for a thinking produced output
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Do not give them legs. If you must, lil wheely things
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NE Ohio Regional Sewer District @neorsd.org · 30/09/2026
these river otters are blissfully unaware the Cuyahoga has 13 fires in its history
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Espelie Furrow @poplarfurrow.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
You may have seen this, but you were right in questioning this weird chart: kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/…
kieranhealy.org
Trump Tourism Effects
In the past day or two on social media I kept seeing this graph from a Semafor story on the declining volume of international visitors to the United States. Semafor Graph. It seems to show, and was being remarked on as showing, that the second Trump administration has been responsible for a drop in…
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