Hisham Zerriffi
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hishamzerriffi.bsky.social
Hisham Zerriffi
@hishamzerriffi.bsky.social

Energy Resources, Development and Environment Lab (ERDELab) PI, @UBCforestry Assc Dean EDI. Energy, equity, justice, climate change, bioenergy. But also TTRPGs and photography (https://pixelfed.social/i/web/profile/499807930552574625). he/him. .. more

Environmental science 36%
Energy 18%
Pinned
Hello new Bluesky followers!

A re-intro:

Academic in Forestry faculty but not a forester. Work on energy, land-use, climate, equity, justice. Often at intersection of energy & forests.

With a dash of TTRPGs, nerdy stuff and politics.

And photography:

portfolio.pixelfed.social/nomademoderne
@nomademoderne's Portfolio
portfolio.pixelfed.social

I still remember stumbling on this as it was happening, scrolling up to catch up and then desperately refreshing to see what happened next.

Been a rough day. Needed these family food drama chuckles.
yes, hello, I would like to place an order for everyone’s funniest stories of holiday food-related family grudges / drama / chaotic incidents / lore

I feel like we need this

1st time visiting Ex’s family for Thanksgiving. Aunt was apparently notorious for making god-awful casseroles and then wanting to serve them out to everyone. *Nobody told me.* Trying to make good impression I enthusiastically said yes to casseroles.

Rest of family looked at me like I lost my mind.
yes, hello, I would like to place an order for everyone’s funniest stories of holiday food-related family grudges / drama / chaotic incidents / lore

I feel like we need this

Definitely going to use “solution-shaped objects” to describe this stuff.
"writing code to solve a problem" used to have "understanding the problem" as a prerequisite. but vibecoding allows solution-shaped objects to be produced without any of the hard-won understanding. beware of solution-shaped objects.

Reposted by Hisham Zerriffi

"writing code to solve a problem" used to have "understanding the problem" as a prerequisite. but vibecoding allows solution-shaped objects to be produced without any of the hard-won understanding. beware of solution-shaped objects.

Is the fact you’ve taken the time to organize your obsolete cables better or worse than having the black hole bin of random tech?

I will cop to having at least one box of obsolete cables.

Plants? The right amount.

Books? That is a weird way of writing “not enough books”

No rustic pottery.
Twitter accounts are based in Russia. BlueSky accounts are based in homes with, frankly, too many books, plants, obsolete cables, and pieces of rustic pottery, that could do with a bit of a tidying up, to be honest.

Reposted by Alan Richardson

So the guy who is supposed to understand finance and economics doesn’t think gender is relevant and is a related but diff “justice” issue.

Economics should not be the only driver for gender equity but to think it is largely irrelevant to economics is something else.
Carney declares end to Canada's 'feminist foreign policy,' breaking from Trudeau era doctrine
Mark Carney declared an end to Canada's "feminist foreign policy" Sunday, marking a break from the Liberals' approach under Justin Trudeau.
theprovince.com

FYI, deleting the post you replied to because somehow I managed to link to some random Italian software site that I’m not sure is secure according to my browser.

Yeah, when I said the algae can work I meant theoretically in terms of absorbing carbon and being turned into fuel. Not necessarily as a viable business

3rd, assuming you can make the algae fuel carbon neutral, add in a mobile CCS unit and actually sequester the carbon, there’s one little problem. It’s still a car with a plug-in hybrid combustion engine!

That means the whole lifecycle impacts of the car but also all the other exhaust pollutants!

In all seriousness, this microalgae fuel plus mobile carbon capture unit for negative emissions thing has me completely puzzled.

Sure, the algae part can work. But 1st of all, process emissions for producing the algae fuel? 2nd, how are you going to dispose of the captured C02 from all these cars?
Mazda’s vision is combustion engines with carbon capture fueled by microalgae and using AI to create an emotional bond between you and the car.

Can’t decide which of those two is more problematic. Why not both I guess?
Today in "Things I Can't Believe I'm Reading"
cc: @ketanjoshi.co

www.mazda.com/en/mazda-mir...

Don’t forget, it’s also going to save us:

“Mazda believes that the joy of driving can be a force for positive change for society and the planet.”
Twitter accounts are based in Russia. BlueSky accounts are based in homes with, frankly, too many books, plants, obsolete cables, and pieces of rustic pottery, that could do with a bit of a tidying up, to be honest.

Yes!!! But also hard to say out loud without getting massive eye rolls.

Mazda’s vision is combustion engines with carbon capture fueled by microalgae and using AI to create an emotional bond between you and the car.

Can’t decide which of those two is more problematic. Why not both I guess?
Today in "Things I Can't Believe I'm Reading"
cc: @ketanjoshi.co

www.mazda.com/en/mazda-mir...

I’m ☠️

Told Kid1 I regularly wore combat boots and black trenchcoat at their age (in 80s, IFYKYK why that’s imp to say)

Kid1: What? Were you *trying* to look suspicious?

Ok fair.

Didn’t help that spouse then decided to mention my run-in with the law. No biggie. Expunged misdemeanour. But ouch.

Ketan is exactly right here.

This was more “oh god, this again?” from people who tried to engage and then realized there were better ways to spend the night precious few hours in a day than whatever “cancel culture” is supposed to be.

Only made harder because Lomborg sounded right and plausible.
This is particularly stunning because the sheer number of times we demonstrated Bjorn Lomborg was just flat-out lying grew so large that it almost became literally pointless to keep doing it, because he just ignores it and keeps on going
This is particularly stunning because the sheer number of times we demonstrated Bjorn Lomborg was just flat-out lying grew so large that it almost became literally pointless to keep doing it, because he just ignores it and keeps on going

This is just depressing.

And it's not just one "freelancer" and editor. It's "a web of lies and uncanny half-truths entrenched so deeply in the information ecosystem that no one could possibly have the energy to dislodge them"
A few months ago @thelocal.to got a promising pitch from a writer with bylines in whole bunch of reputable publications—The Cut, The Guardian, Dwell, Architectural Digest, etc. Then I started investigating. Here's a story about fabulists in journalism's AI slop era. thelocal.to/investigatin...
Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era | The Local
A suspicious pitch from a freelancer led editor Nicholas Hune-Brown to dig into their past work. By the end, four publications, including The Guardian and Dwell, had removed articles from their sites.
thelocal.to

Forgot how good an album this is (despite still having the original vinyl, just haven’t listened in a while)

Also, don’t know who writes the band bios for Apple Music but they are something else! Irreverently snarky but kinda fun?
Earth Sun Moon by Love and Rockets on Apple Music
Album · 1987 · 13 Songs
music.apple.com

Transparency is key. And, yes, "accuracy" will likely have to be defined depending on the application. In the example I gave they were trying to extract specific information on oil and gas wells that were inconsistently reported across documents. So accuracy in that case is easy to measure.

What accuracy is enough is an important Q and threshold varies by application. Saw presentation where they pulled data from 10k+ pages of documents on wells. Team did a manual check of a subset. Accuracy was 80% with the best prompts they could devise. Ok for research? Regulatory decisions?

A little espresso shot of fantastic fiction a day.
Third instalment went up today! In which a song is remembered, a cliché is interrogated (but ultimately indulged in), & a decision is made.
The 1st instalment of my 1st serialized short story has landed in people's inboxes care of @scottishbooktrust.bsky.social! If you want to read "A Road Less Taken" over the course of this week, sign up! You'll get access to previous instalments too. www.scottishbooktrust.com/book-week-sc...
Just dug up this piece on literature reviews by @catherinedevries.bsky.social l from my files to send around to the grad students in my group. It's a great and practical approach to thinking about lit reviews.

catherineeunicedevries.substack.com/p/most-liter...
Most Literature Reviews Miss the Point. Don’t Let Yours
Critically Engaging Past Work to Confidently Shape Your Own
catherineeunicedevries.substack.com

Definitely. I should say, many thanks for your papers but also your posts which have helped better articulate some of the things I've been thinking.

Oh, and I guess it is worth saying that I am also looking at this from the perspective of equity and justice (partially but not just because of my admin position).

So, Q around algorithmic bias are important but also, within the university, who might be unfairly accused of academic misconduct.

Yes, absolutely. I skimmed it very quickly when I first saw it and it is on my AI TBR virtual pile.

I think it will be helpful in thinking about the more "mechanical" question of defining what I imagine is a pretty small subset of actually well-done use cases.