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Shan Kothari

@shankothari.bsky.social
1.3K followers 1.8K following 210 posts

Assistant professor at University of Alberta. Forest ecology + tree physiology. he/il

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Reposted by Shan Kothari
Charlotte Grossiord @charlottegrossiord.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
🌳We are hiring a PhD student in Forest Ecophysiology and Remote Sensing at EPFL and WSL in Lausanne! @vallicrosah.bsky.social @wslresearch.bsky.social Start: April-May 27 Applications: Open until filled careers.epfl.ch/job/Lausanne...
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
among other things, it's relatively rare (maybe not unheard of!) for humans to get prompt injected and then suddenly get stoned and weirdly sexual
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Forward Canada @forwardcanada.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
In this week’s opinion column, Senator Paula Simons writes about anti-separation Albertans who genuinely believe the best form of protest is to boycott the referendum. While she understands their motives, she warns that staying home will backfire. #ableg #canpoli forwardweekly.ca/simons-cant-...
forwardweekly.ca
We Can’t Boycott Our Way Out of a Meaningless Referendum | By Paula Simons | Forward Weekly
Forward Weekly feature for September 20, 2026.
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Senator Paula Simons 🇨🇦 @senatorpaulasimons.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I keep meeting smart informed Albertans who tell me they do not intend to vote, because they don’t want to legitimize the process, or because they know the premier is not bound by the results. But what if making us give up on voting is the whole point? My argument to vote - no matter the absurdity.
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Andy Grabia @agrabia.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
The current state of Convocation Hall at the University of Alberta. On Alumni Weekend. Behind it sits a Memorial Organ honoring the lives of 238 dead Canadian soldiers. Soon it will be dismantled and placed in crates, its future unknown. How soon we forget.
The entrance to Convocation Hall at the University of Alberta. Behind the hoarding and inside the hall is the Memorial Organ.
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Nicolas Mouquet @nmouquet.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
‪ 🌳 Do you want to contribute to research on how humans perceive forests? Take this quick, anonymous 10-min survey 🌲 👉 www.biodiful.org#/forest This will help us explore how people experience forest biodiversity! Please share on 🦋 & tag @biodiful.bsky.social to reach more participants 🙏💚 🌐🌍🦤🦑🪴🍁🧪
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Mikhail Gorbaechev @mikhailgorbaechev.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
This is one of the most core war crimes available.
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New Phytologist @newphyt.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
#Diversity affects #microclimate #temperature and humidity: an overview of the evidence and major unanswered questions #TansleyInsight by Alexandra J. Wright, J. English, and C. Guimaraes-Steinicke 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Relationship between herbaceous species richness and relative humidity at hourly intervals across a 24 hour period. We measured relative humidity every 5 min during the growing season in the Biodiversity, CO2, and Nitrogen (BioCON) experiment in central Minnesota in 2012 (Reich et al., 2001, Wright et al., 2015).
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Minor Mobius @minormobius.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Good news everyone! You can now analyze your own posts for semantic novelty from the famous Sichu post, ‘analyze the semantic novelty’ mino.mobi/novelty The consequences of my most offbrand post wondering how to relate to people are left to the reader for evaluation
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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Americans: we live in a fallen state—embroiled by sin, cheating, lying, and evil. You cannot trust anyone, not even those who claim to know you best Canadians: I love my neighbors and my friends!
A picture of PEW poll on global attitude survey, saying the % who rate the morality and ethics of people in their country as good vs bad, where the US has the worst rankings and Canada the best
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
well I think a lot of computational biologists have lately also been benefiting from regular LLMs in the form of agentic coding
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
I could spend hours just in the Detroit Industry atrium
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
also LLMs can be dangerous tools even if they're not a road to AGI
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
I was going to say the same thing!
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Reposted by Shan Kothari
Alex Turnbull @alejandroturnbull.space · 22/02/2026
The FCC just opened public comments on SpaceX's plan to launch a million satellites to do AI compute in space. Under the current proposal, an environmental review won't be required. Please consider submitting a public comment to oppose this damaging plan. darksky.org/news/two-sat...
darksky.org
Satellite proposals threaten the night sky
In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency responsible for authorizing satellite launches and operations…
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Florence Ashley @floralashes.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Show me the coolest thing you own. Whether it’s art or a leaf that you found neat, I want to see it!
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
tie: a complete 19th century edition of Humboldt's Cosmos (in my office) and this cool Wedgwood jasperware dish I found at Vinnie's Treasure Shoppe in Wihkwentowin
Wedgwood jasperware dish
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
imo "Frenching the Bat" is an all-time banger youtu.be/D_TjzDqrzsQ?...
youtu.be
Beef Hutchins - Frenchin the Bat
YouTube video by Chris Fleming
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Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
The phrase “preemptive strike” is as insulting as when we were sold “humanitarian pauses” in the middle of a live-streamed genocide. The powerful looking you straight in the face and telling you your common sense simply doesn’t matter.
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sarah jeong @sarahjeong.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
what a crazy night for sam altman to be like "yeah we got that dept of war deal, and there's no moral concerns here"
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 27/02/2026
They were going to pass rules to phase out gas stoves, until they received 20,000 public comments against the regulations. Except, oops, it turns out the comments were generated by AI.
phys.org
Southern California air board rejected pollution rules after AI-generated flood of comments
The opposition appeared overwhelming: Tens of thousands of emails poured into Southern California's top air pollution authority as its board weighed a June proposal to phase out gas-powered appliances...
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Brian J. Enquist @bjenquist.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Was on this one but it is my favorite as I learned a ton, got to think about Silverswords and traits as well as had a chance to collaborate with Baldwin and Robichaux besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Variation and macroevolution in leaf functional traits in the Hawaiian silversword alliance (Asteraceae)
The Hawaiian silversword alliance includes 33 species in three endemic genera (Argyroxiphium, Dubautia, and Wilkesia) that occupy almost all major habitats of the Hawaiian archipelago (top row). We s...
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
thanks! exactly the sort of thing I was looking for
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
thank you!
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
ecology and evolution folks! what are your favorite recent-ish, accessible papers on trait evolution?
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Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
AI makes continuous reproducibility and robustness testing trivial. What happens to science under new levels of scrutiny and stress-testing by default? Some thoughts on how this could play out, informed by watching open science play out over the last decade.
open.substack.com
Living the metascience dream (or nightmare) with AI for science
What happens when we go from replication crisis to robustness extremes?
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Ben Recht @beenwrekt.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
LLMs make statistical metascience easier. LLMs don't increase the validity of statistical metascience. www.argmin.net/p/devezers-urn
argmin.net
Devezer's Urn
LLMs make metascience easier, but that doesn't increase metascientific validity.
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
I was a Hark! fan from almost the beginning, and it broke my heart to read Ducks and learn what she was going through as she was drawing those early strips
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Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦 @emmettmacfarlane.com · 20/02/2026
NEW POST: Danielle Smith is no separatist; she's much, much worse emmettmacfarlane.substack.com/p/danielle-s...
emmettmacfarlane.substack.com
Danielle Smith is no separatist; she's much, much worse
In a televised address last night Danielle Smith launched a xenophobic assault on immigration and proposed a set of referendum questions for next Fall advocating a constitutional agenda that would red...
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
giant bowl-shaped khakhra?
giant bowl-shaped khakhra... obviously
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
keep having to explain to my friends still Over There that we can be unhinged too!!
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Jared Wesley @jaredwesley.ca · 20/02/2026
None of Smith's referendum questions are likely to result in actual policy change. Because they require constitutional amendments (federal veto) or are plainly unconstitutional. Assuming "yes" votes carry, what then? Kenney's equalization referendum didn't soothe separatists. It emboldened them.
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Andrew Leach @aleach.ca · 20/02/2026
Smith kicked off the sovereignty referendum campaign tonight. The fight for the future of Alberta starts now.
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
friends don't let friends use X
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
A lot of AI rollouts assume that humans or other AIs won't interact adversarially with the product, when "any system deployed in the real world with real stakes will eventually get attacked" is one of the few real constants in life
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Laurie Adkin, Ph.D. @laurieadkin.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
More from the University of Alberta today. Faculty & students are fighting back against repeated capitulations of senior administrators to blackmail and threats from the UCP government. Read this powerful statement from the Indigenous Graduate Students Association. www.facebook.com/share/p/1EPk...
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 17/02/2026
Let me explain why I think these are interesting to look at. There are two dominant perspectives on LLMs: Boosters and Haters. They are both wrong. Boosterism says this kind of thing is of the past and simply doesn’t happen if you’re using the latest SOTA model on super smart mode. That’s wrong.
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
I think Anthropic's big bet (and everyone's) is that they can continue to drive the cost of inference down to the point that they'll unambiguously make money on inference. The question is whether competition will make them drive prices down, too!
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
and people say Alberta has no culture!
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
I don't think music incorporating chance became (somewhat) common in the Western classical tradition until the 50s, and then the term of art was "aleatoric"
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Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 13/02/2026
Meta's plan for launching glasses that people can use to secretly identify strangers on the street is to do it "during a dynamic political environment" when people who care about why that's bad are "focused on other concerns." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...
nytimes.com
Meta Plans to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Its Smart Glasses
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Andrew Hipp @andrewlhipp.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
"... the trees are innumerable / Marumbi, taraṭī, and hivara / hiṅgaṇa, pācunda, and bābara / ṭākaḷī, and vehaṅkaḷī are abundant... Such is this thorny forest / it is highly frightening / this forest is empty / peacocks scream here" besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Utilizing traditional literature to triangulate the ecological history of a tropical savanna
Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
obviously I would prefer that my employer not be defunded, but reading someone say "show some courage, would you please?" to Bill Flanagan is cathartic
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Not long before seeing this tweet, I asked Gemini 3 (thinking) whether Hausfather & Peters (2020)'s argument was widely accepted or contested. It said the former, citing (among other sources) the American Enterprise Institute. This sort of thing is imo much more of a danger than "hallucination"
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Hausfather has moderated his opinion a bit. Has Pielke?
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Sharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
FYI Americans: if you had Canadian grandparents/parents: you may be Canadian
What does the new law say?
Bill C-3, which came into force on December 15, 2025, reinstates citizenship by descent beyond the first generation. In 2009, the Conservative government had restricted access to citizenship. Canadians born abroad could therefore only pass on their Canadian citizenship if their child was born in Canada. The law was ruled unconstitutional by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

Now, to be eligible for Canadian citizenship by descent, a person born abroad before the coming into force of Bill C-3 must have an ancestor who became a Canadian citizen on or after January 1, 1947  (the date the status of Canadian citizenship was created).

The new law also specifies that a person can become a citizen if one of their deceased parents or grandparents had obtained citizenship status upon the law's entry into force.
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Los Angeles Times @latimes.com · 06/02/2026
LAPD kills man allegedly holding gun near California Science Center, officials say
latimes.com
LAPD kills man allegedly holding gun near California Science Center, officials say
Los Angeles police shot a man after receiving reports of someone with a firearm in the parking lot of the California Science Center in Exposition Park on Thursday morning. Fire officials said the man was pronounced dead at the scene.
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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Woke 2.0 is gonna be rad
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