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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn

@anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social

190 followers 78 following 960 posts

Botanist, taxonomist, phylogeneticist.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · Aug 9

We are making progress towards a natural classification of the Australian shrubby paper daisies, genera Cassinia and Ozothamnus.

doi.org/10.1002/tax....

Progress towards a monophyletic Ozothamnus (Asteraceae: Gnaphalieae)

The Cassinia clade (Asteraceae: Gnaphalieae) is a predominantly shrubby group of ca. 100 species occurring in Australia and New Zealand. Most species are currently placed in the large genera Cassinia...

doi.org

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 9h

Deleted half a year's worth of emails, brought the storage down from 93% full to 91%

Yippee

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 9h

No, if you want to be a Serious Person, what you do is you decry everybody who foresees something happening as a crazy alarmist, and then when it has happened, you immediately accept it as normal.

Reposted by Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn

Ana Bedoya @botana-bedoya.bsky.social · 21h

One week to apply before reviews start for the postdoc I am offering investigating the tempo and pattern of river connections with the closure of the isthmus of Panama and its impact on river plant (Podostemaceae) migration. Genomic+fossil+geological data + fieldwork 👇

Ana Bedoya @botana-bedoya.bsky.social · Aug 29

I am recruiting a postdoc to work for 2-3 yrs on our NSF-funded project aiming to investigate plant migration and river connectivity with the closure of the Isthmus of Panama. Leading publications, fieldwork in CR & Panama, applying and expanding phylo. & pop.gen tools👇

www.nybg.org/about/work-w...

Employment | New York Botanical Garden

Find out what employment opportunities are available at The New York Botanical Garden.

www.nybg.org

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 11h

Now that's a design choice

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 11h

I once had to stop a colleague from using "South Coast" to describe the range of a species in a manuscript intended for an international journal, whose readers would have assumed he was referring to an actual south coast, as if words have meanings and are intended for communication. Those naifs.

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 11h

Nothing tops New South Wales in Australia. Many locals consider nearly all of the eastern half of the state to be "Western New South Wales", because it is west of Sydney. And the eastern coast of Australia north and south of Sydney are the "North Coast" and the "South Coast", respectively.

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 13h

Pittsburgh edging the Midwest doesn't seem right somehow.

William Hazen @williamhazen.bsky.social · 1d

This is the most accurate depiction of the Midwest to date. Wichita has always felt like the last Midwest city while also being the first plains city.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 12h

The fork lift driver who collapsed the storage shelves and injured several of his colleagues must have had a cunning five-dimensional plan, there is no other explanation.

Wait, no, he isn't a billionaire, so in that case, everybody can see the obvious. Silly me.

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Reposted by Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn

John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 1d

When you could code silly quizzes on Facebook, it was FULL of "what would you be in medieval times?!" etc.

I made one that nearly always answered "died as a child", "died in childbirth", "lived and died as a servant"

People got SUPER mad with it.

Everyone assumes they'll be at the top of the tree

William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 1d

The subtext of ‘we should be more like Dubai’, beyond the obvious racism, is ‘I should have a servant’.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 17h

The Downloads folder is a really bizarre design choice. It makes no sense as a category. Why would I want thousands of disparate files in one folder? Whenever I get a new computer, one of the first things I do is change the setting where downloads go from always save in Downloads to always ask.

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 21h

I can never find any of my shit because Download, Picture, and Document are far from mutually exclusive categories. Putting everything on Desktop just always works.

lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 23h

microsoft product (begging, pleading): save this document to my documents?

me: save to desktop

microsoft (twitching, shaking) this jpeg. save to pictures?

me: save to desktop

microsoft (weeping, throwing up): this email attachment... downloads?

me: desktop

Reposted by Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn

Sebas @ohlookbirdies.bsky.social · 2d

"but it's everywhere now so we just have to accept it's the new reality" motherfucker we can just stop putting it everywhere! we did it with asbestos and CFCs and lead-based paint or petrol and make-up with arsenic in it! if everyone is using something and it's bad, we can choose to stop!

Sebas @ohlookbirdies.bsky.social · 3d

"anti-AI people should just learn more about it" motherfucker I know so much about it, that's why I'm anti-AI

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

I see we have gone well past "paid in exposure" now and arrived firmly in bizarro world.

Or Kelly makes rage bait to drive engagement.

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

Would be nice if people learned something about the alleged efficiency and rationality of free markets and the alleged genius of billionaires when this all implodes. Unfortunately, people didn't learn it from the dot com bubble or the subprime mortgage bubble, so not very optimistic.

Techmeme @techmeme.com · 1d

JPMorgan Chase reports that $1.2T of debt is now tied to AI-related companies, making it the largest segment in the investment-grade market (Caleb Mutua/Bloomberg)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

The reason to decentralise would be concern about one authority accumulating too much power. But the ideal situation isn't decentralisation, it is centralisation under an legitimate and accountable authority... which, unfortunately, start-up tech bro millionaires aren't, pretty much by definition.

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

This is true more generally; everything that is decentralised can be made more efficient and useful by centralising it. Social media networks, yes, but also, say, databases or currency.

Sexy Andrew Hickey Costume @andrewhickey.500songs.com · 1d

Exactly this. The *reason* Bluesky took off and Mastodon didn't is that for anyone who wants to use social media to talk to their friends, to follow their favourite minor celebrity, or publicise their work, and who doesn't want to be brigaded, decentralisation is a bug, not a feature.

your #3 source for absurdist true crime 🔨 @davidgerard.co.uk · 1d

note that almost all user complaints about how mastodon sucks are symptoms of decentralisation. if a user knows about the decentralisation it's cos it's causing problems.

(the other user complaints are local rogue mods and linux bros)

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 2d

A little alien world - #lichen microcosm photographed on the weekend.

A branching twig with three different kinds of lichen. Out of focus on the left side is a greyish foliose thallus with flat reproductive structure, centered is an orange thallus with mushroom-shaped reproductive structures, and in the foreground is a grey-greenish futicose thallus, presumably a species of Usnea.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 3d

Also flowering on our balcony now: native Australian passionflower Passiflora cinnabarina, and an orchid that came up spontaneously in a succulent pot.

Passionflowers with red petals and a yellow corona.

Minuscule greenish flowers. Yes, this is an orchid, but it isn't much too look at compared to other orchids, it has to be said.

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 4d

The Sichuan pepper tree I grew on a whim is flowering for the first time. Unfortunately, I had not realised they are dioecious, so this won't produce any fruits to harvest.

Twig of a plant with rather pointy spines (or maybe thorns or prickles? probably spines or prickles, don't seem like thorns to me), young pinnate leaves unfolding, and little clusters of female flowers.

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Reposted by Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn

solace @px-solace.bsky.social · 4d

"what if the people i disagree with were saying something else than what they were actually saying? that would make them bad"
well they're not saying the other thing you're imagining them saying. when you change the words in a sentence, you get a new sentence

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Reposted by Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn

Gaius (from Tribunate) @gaius.bsky.social · 4d

Using different words changes the meaning of a sentence

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Reposted by Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn

gourd chorus @jcoglan.com · 5d

silicon valley in a fun place where well meaning people get their brains filled with non-solutions to the world's problems

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 5d

When I asked the 'reasoning' model DeepSeek to organise information from a short text snipped into a JSON format, it produced tens of pages of increasingly unhinged nonsense output.

But maybe I am just extremely unlucky. Maybe everybody else has astounding results when using LLMs. Who knows.

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 5d

My most 'successful' attempt at assisted coding required four iterations of pointing out the problems the LLM had created in the previous attempts. Same with trying to identify a plant with a reasoning model that can search the web: If I hadn't known the answer already, it wouldn't have worked.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 5d

Fascinated by what experiences others must have to come up with statements like this.

I recently tried a presumably "agentic reasoning" system meant for research, and the references it provided generally did not support the statements it made, as if it was a lazy student who hopes you don't check.

Grace @gracekind.net · 6d

LLMs are capable of certain forms of introspection and have really good theory of mind. They have increasing levels of situational awareness (which is making it difficult to test them because they know they’re being tested!) I personally don’t think they’re conscious but it’s not a settled question.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 5d

You see, the point is that extraordinary claims famously require no evidence. If somebody makes an extraordinary claim like "probabilistic word-guessing models can reason", the burden of evidence is entirely on those who disagree. That is just how it works!

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 6d

I feel like spam messages from companies offering lab consumables or some kind of digital services are really getting out of hand. Not sure I have ever clicked as many unsubscribe buttons in a year as I have over the last week.