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Reposted by Kelly Sovacool

pumpkin spice itati|agnostic to the optics @itativcs.bsky.social · 1d

and before, "but itati, what else are we supposed to do?" you are supposed to counter organize. you are supposed to pressure your universities to stop accruing capital in endowments and use that money to actually invest in itself and not football. You are supposed to engage in conflict.

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Kelly Sovacool @kelly.sova.cool · 1d

The hevea butcher block of social media handles, perhaps?

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Kelly Sovacool @kelly.sova.cool · 2d

I’m at #USRSE25 this week! Not presenting anything this year but happy to chat with anyone about software dev for genomics research!

#opensource #openscience #bioinformatics #genomics

US Research Software Engineer Association (US-RSE) @us-rse.bsky.social · 8d

🚀 Countdown mode: T-minus 6 days until research software engineers land in Philadelphia!

🔗 Check out the full program at us-rse.org/usrse25/prog...

#usrse25 #ResearchSoftware #RSE #OpenScience #MachineLearning #AI #ResearchComputing #HPC

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Reposted by Kelly Sovacool

Damien C-C @dccc-phd.bsky.social · 6d

::waves 'ISO 8601' flag::

Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD MA @arrianna-planey.bsky.social · 6d

IME, developng your own system for organizing files to reduce reliance on search functions includes:

- file naming conventions (consistency & ability to sort file versions quickly = key)
- nesting subfolders within project/course folders according the logical flow of your work process

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Reposted by Kelly Sovacool

Thomas Lin Pedersen @thomasp85.com · 7d

🎨 Theming got a huge overhaul with the latest #ggplot2 release. In honour of that @teunbrand.bsky.social has written a comprehensive deep-dive into styling your plots, covering both old and new functionality. Grab a coffee and dive in!

#rstats

ggplot2 styling

This post discusses one function in ggplot2: `theme()`. Find out about the glamour of graphics in this deep-dive article.

www.tidyverse.org

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Reposted by Kelly Sovacool

Your Neighborhood Scientist @your.neighborhoodscientist.org · 14d

This week’s neighborhood scientist is Charity Robbins! Check out the link below to read Charity’s rules on how to build the perfect scientist (yes, really!!) neighborhoodscientist.org/posts/2025/l...

Lessons from an Undergraduate Researcher on How to Build the Perfect Scientist (Yes, Really!) – Your Neighborhood Scientist

science news for everyone

neighborhoodscientist.org

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Kelly Sovacool @kelly.sova.cool · 18d

Can again confirm this simple step improves meal enjoyment at least 3 fold

Bonus points if you spatchcock the chicken and make a pun about spineless cowards!

Kelly Sovacool @kelly.sova.cool · Jan 27

An important overlooked step when preparing to roast a chicken is chasing your loved one(s) around the house with it

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Kelly Sovacool @kelly.sova.cool · 18d

Got my natural immunity boosting wellness injections!
(flu + covid vaccine)

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Reposted by Kelly Sovacool

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 19d

I like this. Since under RFK Jr, Covid shots are now for people with underlying conditions that put them at risk, Michigan’s chief medical executive Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian states that not having the most recent Covid shot constitutes such an underlying condition.

www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/inside...

In her recommendation, Bagdasarian stated,
"Any person over the age of six months without contraindication who has not received a dose of a Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved or-authorized 2025-2026 COVID-19 vaccine may be considered to have an underlying condition that puts them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19 and is thus eligible to receive an age-appropriate dose."

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Kelly Sovacool @kelly.sova.cool · 20d

Also see a closely related cousin: “fix(docker): don’t know why but this works now”

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Kelly Sovacool @kelly.sova.cool · 20d

it's been one of those days...

A screenshot of a git commit that says "ci(docker): throw spaghetti at the wall". Sometimes, the only thing you can do to make a docker recipe build successfully is throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.

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Reposted by Kelly Sovacool

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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Reposted by Kelly Sovacool

Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 26d

I get called radical because I want affordable housing and rational, compassionate immigration policy and gun reform that helps keep kids safe.

Radicals like me are never going to kill people for our ideology because that’s literally not our ideology.

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Reposted by Kelly Sovacool

Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 25d

This is my impression too. The poorer our critical thinking skills, the less opposition there can be to fascist and autocratic power.

Dr J. Rosenbaum @jrosenbaum.com.au · 25d

My tin foil hat theory is that people in power are investing so heavily in it because they want us using LLMs so that we are worse at critical thinking.

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Reposted by Kelly Sovacool

Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 27d

I feel like the last 48 hours have just been the entire world going full NYT Pitchbot.

"Whether it's the people on the right saying we should shoot everyone on the left as terrorists, or the people on the left saying we should give everyone on the right health care, both sides are---"

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Reposted by Kelly Sovacool

darth™️ @darthbluesky.bsky.social · 28d

i wrote this post in july two years ago when blue sky had around 200,000 total users and i thought i would ask again

tell me what u are doing
be proud of what u do and share it here

darth™️ @darthbluesky.bsky.social · Jul 27

tell me what u are doing
be proud of your work and share it here

bring on the headless horses @ihavethatonvinyl.com · Jul 27

hearing that we're not supposed to be promoting our stuff on here? seen a couple of posts disparaging that practice. still have no idea what this place is about, what is ok to post or not post, feeling like i'm dog paddling here

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Reposted by Kelly Sovacool

Audrey Drotos, PhD 🧠 🔬 @audreydrotos.bsky.social · 28d

If you want to support the work we do, you can donate to my nonprofit @your.neighborhoodscientist.org here: neighborhoodscientist.org

Your Neighborhood Scientist

cultivating community-based conversations around science, science policy, and scientists

neighborhoodscientist.org

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Reposted by Kelly Sovacool

Audrey Drotos, PhD 🧠 🔬 @audreydrotos.bsky.social · 28d

Excited to be featured in today’s @nature.com article about scientists standing up to Trump. I’ve never been one to sit on the sidelines, especially when something I believe so deeply in—science funding that saves lives—is under attack. Read more here: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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Reposted by Kelly Sovacool

Brooke Wolford, PhD @bnwolford.bsky.social · 28d

Really grateful to be part of a community of "helpers" & thanks to @nature.com for highlighting!

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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Reposted by Kelly Sovacool

Brendan Maher @bmaher.bsky.social · 28d

Inspired by Fred Rogers, @nature.com asked readers to help us 'find the helpers' amid the crisis in American science. What emerged were inspiring stories of researchers, legal experts, data hounds and government scientists who are fighting the dismantling of the US research enterprise. 🧪🧵1/6

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Kelly Sovacool @kelly.sova.cool · 28d

this is art

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Reposted by Kelly Sovacool

Rob Patro @robp.bsky.social · 29d

More of "The AI Coming For Us". Well, one way it's going to take us out is if the next generation of folks relies on this slop for anything serious ....

Robert Aboukhalil @robert.bio · 29d

"The reference genome is essentially folded using the BWT, which allows the search for read alignments to take on a bow-tie shape in the index"

Hmmm... @benlangmead.bsky.social

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Kelly Sovacool @kelly.sova.cool · 29d

Periodic reminder not to use LLMs to ask questions for which you don't know how to verify the answer!

Robert Aboukhalil @robert.bio · 29d

"The reference genome is essentially folded using the BWT, which allows the search for read alignments to take on a bow-tie shape in the index"

Hmmm... @benlangmead.bsky.social

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Kelly Sovacool @kelly.sova.cool · Sep 2

Of course I had to make a shiny app to compare operating costs of any internal combustion engine vehicle vs electric vehicle

kelly-sovacool.shinyapps.io/car-costs/

Car Costs

kelly-sovacool.shinyapps.io

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Kelly Sovacool @kelly.sova.cool · Sep 2

There are so few new cars with a manual available in the US anymore. And now that EVs are becoming more affordable, it just doesn't make much financial sense either to get a manual -- in addition to environmental concerns of conventional ICEs.

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