iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Dr Alex Bond

Amar @amarhss.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Sept 2026 Malaysian Bird Report available. Articles on gulls, hybrid hornbills, unusual feeding behaviours, nesting, rare birds, conservation. Please share link to report: malaysianbird.report/report/vol-3... @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social @tonyrinaud.bsky.social

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 14h

"Wait, so NOTHING beats a Jet2 holiday?!"

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Reposted by Dr Alex Bond

British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU) @bou.org.uk · 20h

📢 APPLICATIONS ARE NOW OPEN... ...for the 2027 BOU Summer Placement Scheme Financially supporting undergraduate students to carry out summer #ornithology research placements Application deadline: 29 January 2027 Guidelines & application form: bou.org.uk/funding/s... 🪶

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

This year marked the last of the Nunatsiavut project I was involved in, after 4 years and visits to Nain, Maggovik/Makkovik, Agvituk/Hopedale, and Tikigâksuagusik/Rigolet. It was so wonderful to be welcomed, share food, stories, and laughter each summer. I've not had that anywhere else.

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

I think it's one of the things I've struggled with in the UK as a settler Canadian of English & Scottish heritage - there just feels like so little I can do/participate in here, and there's no real discussion of Indigenous cultures or groups that isn't heavily othering.

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

We should do more in the UK for Truth and Reconciliation Day in Canada.

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Today has featured: -"Where is that pre-WWII specimen from Japan, and other lost tales" -"Richard Owen and the tale of annoying species descriptions in a catalogue of the Royal College of Surgeons" -"General cursing at John Latham: a pocket guide"

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APTN News @aptnnews.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Today is National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and we’re live at 11 a.m. ET leading up to the special 90-minute multilingual commemoration, Remembering the Children. Watch live in English, Plains Cree, Anishinaabemowin, Kanien'kéha and Inuktitut here: www.aptnnews.ca/ourstories/r...

aptnnews.ca

Remembering the Children | APTN News

For 160 years, Indigenous children were taken and put into institutions across Canada. September 30 is a day to remember the children.

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Birds Canada @birdscanada.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Tomorrow, September 30th, is Orange Shirt Day and the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. We invite you to join us in observing this important day by attending an event near you or by furthering your personal learning journey by watching, reading, or listening.

A gull in flight is silhouetted on an orange sky, with overlay text reading National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Our next step in this project is a bibliography of avian type publications. It's incomplete, but 1120+ refs to 210+ collections is a good starting point! Searchable by institution, country, city. albnd.github.io/bird_types/ #Ornithology #Taxonomy

albnd.github.io

Bird Type Specimen Bibliography — Directory of Collections

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Prasad Jallepalli, MD, PhD @prasad.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

5 potatoes cubed is still 5 potatoes because potatoes are root vegetables

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British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU) @bou.org.uk · 29/09/2026

„Archaeological data reveals fundamental environmental associations of declining UK bird species obscured by anthropogenically-disturbed distributions“ with Bethany Pittard to follow. #BOUasm26 #ornithology

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Reposted by Dr Alex Bond

Bat Conservation Trust @batconservation.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

🦇 The next round of Living Alongside Bats in Churches Grant applications are OPEN and will close at 10am, 26 October. We encourage any place of worship in England that needs assistance with their bat roost, such as managing a cleaning issue, to apply. More info: www.bats.org.uk/our-work/bui...

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

But also hugely - we know of 100+ collections with type material and no catalogue! If you know or work in one of these, we may be able to help a little bit. Stay tuned for that, or get in touch. albnd.github.io/bird_types/n...

albnd.github.io

Collections without a published type catalogue

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Please share this amongst museum colleagues and ask them to submit corrections, which we will deal with. Our next steps are de-duplicating the reference list, and dealing with some character encoding issues.

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Derek Hennen, Ph.D. @derekhennen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

We can't fund icky taxonomy positions when the money-eating computer needs more gold bullion

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The Palaeontological Association @thepalass.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Dear members, 🦴 The PalAss is pleased to be supporting a three-day Morphological Phylogenetics Workshop with the Systematics Association and the Society of Spanish Researchers in the UK. ⬇️ docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... #workshop

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

albnd.github.io

Bird Type Specimen Bibliography — Directory of Collections

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Dr. Viktor Baranov🧪🦟🐛🪲 @swarmofthoughts.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Reminder for palaeo collegaues , Russia is very willing to conduct genocide (including cultural) against Ukraine, killing scientists and artists, but my suggestions to maybe not allow publish fossils stolen from Crimea in western publishing houses, still seen as strange. #fossils #Ukraine 🦖⚒️

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Adam Koszary @adamkoszary.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

so confused why the Bodleian is becoming so AI-pilled. When they did the OpenAI partnership I assumed it was the university's wider strategy/strong-arming, but relying on it for exhibitions means it's coming from the Bodley Librarian themselves.

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Towards a National Collection (TaNC) @nationalcollection.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Economic Impact of Collections Loss project, to be delivered by London Economics Ltd. This project aims to address the limited evidence about the economic consequences when collections, collections data or systems become unavailable. tinyurl.com/2fzd8fat

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LGBTQ+ STEM @lgbtqstem.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Some updates!! We have a full slate of speakers which can be found here: sites.google.com/view/lgbtqst... We are also coming up on the registration deadline! Please register or encourage others to register by 6 October! Also we made this digital flyer to display or distribute as you see fit. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

so, uh, where are Canadians watching hockey on Saturdays now? Asking as I will be in the country again soon

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Spent last week at the 14th European Bird Curators' conference in Torino (Piemonte, Italy) which was such a joy. Wonderful colleagues, amazing food and drink (of course), and lots of ideas.

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B.S.W. Barootes @barootes.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

And yet I was only allowed to access a 1955 B.Litt. thesis, the only lengthy study on Robert Braybrooke, in person and take notes (no photos). I had to sign a register of those who had ever accessed the thesis.

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Spent last week at the 14th European Bird Curators' conference in Torino (Piemonte, Italy) which was such a joy. Wonderful colleagues, amazing food and drink (of course), and lots of ideas.

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georgia-lux @georgialux.bsky.social · 17/08/2023

Young man-- there's no need to feel down I said young man-- Pagliacci's in town You can go there-- see the world's greatest clown Now why do- you- wince- so sadly?

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NHM Library and Archives @nhmlibraryarchives.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

When the NHM opened in 1881, visitors with cameras had to buy a permit and send two copies of each print to the Museum’s collections. You can scroll through a few highlights from each album by swiping left in this post. See every page here: buff.ly/31893CL #MuseumArchives #DigitisedCollections

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Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Fuck ChatGPT flyers. The future is broadsheets.

A crowded broadsheet with way too many fonts. It says:
Forget ChatGPT Flyers
Say it with
Broadsheets
Unlimited fonts
Stretch them
Or cram a really long sentence into one line for no good reason
No whitespace
Mix capital and lowercase
Pointing hands
(They're called manicules!)
Don't be left behind
Broadsheets are the future

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Chris MacQuarrie @cmacquar.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Do you have any idea what page charges are on illuminated manuscripts? And don't get me started on the chargebacks from those monks for ink and hard wooden benches...

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Crystal Lewis @cghlewis.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I saw this yesterday, and I thought, yes it violates tidy data. But also I see the benefit for some people who are working in Excel only. And you can do similar things in R (nested list columns). But yeah, I'm sure it will ultimately just create more headaches in the research world. :/

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Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Cannot tell you how much I hate this & how ashamed & angry I am that @ukri.org have taken this step. We KNOW this sort of gAI is socially biased, we KNOW it favours slopAI output over human-written. Our research landscape is falling apart due to underfunding, & they do this? it's *appalling*

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

1/ People keep saying AI is inevitable. History disagrees. Plenty of technologies were called unstoppable, and societies stopped them or shrank them down to a niche. A thread 🧵

evitable
adjective
uk /ˈev.ɪ.tə.bəl/ us /ˈev.ə.t̬ə.bəl/

able to be avoided or prevented:
He believes that world war is evitable.
Inevitable suffering due to persecution is to be distinguished from evitable sickness.

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Genuinely so depressing. To many thoughts about this for a Friday morning

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John Stott @jpsastro.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Had a UKRI funded grant proposal rejected at the "AI triage stage". "This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review." 🧪 #academicsky

I am writing to let you know that, unfortunately, your application was not successful.

Review process

As part of the initial triage of the 179 proposals submitted to this call, each was assessed using an AI-based review. Every proposal was read independently by several different AI models against the same seven criteria used to shape this call (including cyber security relevance, research quality and novelty, importance of the problem addressed, feasibility of the project plan, likely outputs and impact, value for money, and responsible research practice), with each model asked to give a score and a written justification with supporting quotations from the text. To guard against any one model's idiosyncrasies, we also ran a second, independent process in which different AI models debated the merits and weaknesses of each proposal before reaching a judgement, again against the same criteria. Scores from both processes were combined to produce an overall ranking.

This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review. Projects selected for funding were drawn from those that progressed to the full human review stage. We recognise that AI-assisted assessment is a new and evolving part of the review process, and we are continuing to evaluate how well it aligns with the judgements of human reviewers on this call. We will soon produce a document detailing our method, so that others can build upon it and improve it.

Feedback on your application

Your application was not selected to progress beyond the AI triage stage. To provide transparency on the outcome of this assessment, we are sharing below the scores (out of 5) from each of the two AI review processes described above, together with the mean score across the two processes.

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Reposted by Dr Alex Bond

Robert Francis @birdhistory.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

hummingbird names are a love letter to birds

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Jack Shoulder @jackshoulder.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

HOTTIES IN ART LAUNCHES TODAY! 💗💙💗💙 I'm excited to share Hotties with you all, indeed some of you already have your hands on them! To celebrate, I'll be at the Gower Street @waterstones.bsky.social with the delightful @ajwestauthor.bsky.social Tickets, books and more linktr.ee/jackshoulder

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Dori Grijseels @dgrijseels.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Lastly, I discuss the ethical question of (mis)gendering people. Assigning a gender, especially to trans, queer and gender diverse people, is an act of harm Just because an algorithm is doing it on this case, doesn't make it better. In fact, trans problem report it makes it worse

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Dori Grijseels @dgrijseels.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A second concern is the inherent misgendering that happens as the result of assuming a binary population. The method casts a non-binary variable (gender) into a binary framework, a practice we would not uncritically accept in other methods within animal behavior

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Dori Grijseels @dgrijseels.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I discuss three main issues with gender inference tools. The first is differences in accuracy between populations. For example, one package with an average error rate of 4.6%, misgendered Chinese women 43% or the time (www.nature.com/articles/s41...)

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Dori Grijseels @dgrijseels.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Pre-proof now online of my new article in Animal Behavior, on why we should think twice about using gender inference tools to guess people's genders for studies on gender biases in scientific output: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Adam Koszary @adamkoszary.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

You can photograph the shit out of the Bayeux Tapestry copy in Reading

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Bram De Ridder @bramderidder.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

ERC Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowship applications went from just 7.000 applicants in 2022 to over 21.000 this year 🤯🤯🤯

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