Our new paper (with @biotay.bsky.social) is out and on the cover story of @currentbiology.bsky.social !!!! Veronika, a Carinthian mountain cow flexibly uses a “multi-purpose tool” to scratch herself. A video and more information will follow in the comments. www.cell.com/current-biol...

“The truth always lies somewhere in the middle” has to be one of my least favorite phrases. Sometimes, one side is actually truthful and one side is actually malicious and lying!

Oh my God a literal wallet inspector

Establishment Dems responding to the threatened annexation of Greenland by messaging about cost of living issues really don’t understand that to Europeans it looks like they either don’t see this as a crisis or are tacitly in favor of it. 1/x

“Since you didn’t give me a peace prize I declare war on you” is the ultimate “you called me racist too many times, now I am racist”

Broschüre voller bizarrer Entscheidungen: Das tolle Bild unten hat den Prompt 'as a 70 year old'. Soll E. Fölzer zeigen "in einer Lebensphase, in der sie eigentlich keinen Zugang mehr zur Wissenschaft hatte" Was stimmt, weil Fölzer mit 70 nicht nur im Pensionsalter, sondern bereits tot war

Part of the struggle with the LLM discourse is that genuine (i.e. non-grifter) proponents talk exclusively about the possibilities of the transformer architecture in an ideal future with a rational business model. Whereas opponents largely talk about the world we live in today, and its constraints.

Without the original ChatGPT accidentally tapping into the ELIZA effect, LLMs would have remained a curiosity, with extremely niche backend applications. But now we are living in the AI hype era, and any conversation about LLMs divorced from the parameters of the AI hype era is fanfiction.

it's crazy that there's isopod species spanning from the deep ocean to arid deserts while still looking basically the same. this is a message against fast fashion trend chasing. find a look that is truly timeless and for all locations, like the isopod body plan

This is a good lesson, no matter how you come to learn it

i was talking with someone in the twin cities about how it’s not even accurate to call them protesters. they’re literally just people protecting their city from TERRORISTS.

It is kind of grimly interesting to watch the administration try to figure out a reason to shoot themselves (and us) in the gut for a reason beyond "island big on map. want"

AktArcha – Akteurinnen archäologischer Forschung und ihre Geschichte(n): @aktarcha.bsky.social Dieses Projekt macht wirklich Frauen in der #Wissenschaft sichtbar. Durch echte wissenschaftliche Forschung, nicht durch Firlefanz namens #KI. #skystorians #histsci 🏺 aktarcha.hypotheses.org

We should stop referring to what ICE agents wear as “masks,” as it feeds into stigmatization and actual legislation to ban face-masks, including respirators. ICE agents technically do not wear masks; they wear neck gaiters. However we should refer to them as what they actually are: hoods

We sacrificed our health and the health of our loved ones to go back to work in the middle of a fucking plague because you told us e-mail jobs were that vital to the economic future of our civilisation.

I know it's all an excuse to concentrate wealth. I know it's - as the screenshot in the OP shows - a pretext for layoffs. But it's frustrating living through a complete 180 of the social and economic narrative and still being able to see the relics of the old order.

Like, we were all *there* when corporate interests sabotaged pandemic restrictions on the basis that no one was doing any work on their sofas and they needed to be in the office to attend to important e-mail duties.

What I continue to remain shocked by, possibly unduly, is how hard capitalism punished ordinary workers for cutting corners and doing the bare minimum for decades, and now it's totally pivoted to telling us cheating is cool.

This is quite a post www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/reality-is...

Solche Bilder sind so oder so unprofessionell, aber obendrauf steckt in solchen Aktionen ja auch wieder eine eigene Art des Unsichtbarmachens. Da werden Bilder historischer Frauen mit AI Slop ersetzt statt entweder echte Bilder zu verwenden oder direkt zu thematisieren, warum es die *nicht* gibt. 🫠

Hallo ihr Digital Humanists! Was würdet ihr empfehlen?

I doubt I will ever see a more inspired bit of upcycling.

Big Birb on soon-to-be birb

Three more #kakapo matings last night: Whenua Hou: - Nora 💚 Tutoko - Pura 💚 Gulliver Anchor: - Toitiiti 💚 Deans Great to see genetically important Gulliver mating, and matriarch Nora starting - her first known nest was in 1981! Here she is on her 2019 nest. #conservation #parrots

Look I know this is going to be hard here but rigid adherence to lies about Covid is going to push you to the right. It has to. The eugenicist ideas that we can abandon the vulnerable and that vaccine mandates and lockdowns weren’t necessary because only “those people” died can never be democratic.

Manche Leute werden/wurden in den Medien ja nur mit Beiname/Beschreibung genannt. Alle Bahnchef*innen zum Beispiel. Als Kind der 90er und Fußballfan fällt mir natürlich auch der "Zahnarzt aus Kaiserslautern" ein. Fallen Euch noch mehr so Beispiele ein?

Broschüre voller bizarrer Entscheidungen: Das tolle Bild unten hat den Prompt 'as a 70 year old'. Soll E. Fölzer zeigen "in einer Lebensphase, in der sie eigentlich keinen Zugang mehr zur Wissenschaft hatte" Was stimmt, weil Fölzer mit 70 nicht nur im Pensionsalter, sondern bereits tot war

Still rereading Golden Kamuy and I just want to reiterate that this is one of the greatest manga ever written.

The total NSF budget was 9 billion. I doubt they spend 89% of it on quail.

A short new piece I wrote for a wider audience: #ConstantinusAfricanus – A North African Migrant Revolutionizes #Medieval Latin Medicine #ConstantinetheAfrican #medievalsky #histmed #medhist #booksky @ddbkultur.bsky.social www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/content/blog...

Elon Musk: "I'm a free speech absolutist!" Also Elon Musk: "Anyone who teaches students that America was built on stolen land is guilty of treason and should be imprisoned." Look, some of us tried to warn people that Elon Musk doesn't care one bit about free speech. But did anyone listen?

I participated in a conference where we were told that staff would record the Q&A's in writing. They later sent me a copy of my statements, which were full of confusing nonsense I actually got pretty worried that I had completely embarrassed myself..until I realized that I was looking at AI-Slop

The joys of research and writing: I wanted to add a couple of details to a small chapter... ...and then spent hours tearing it apart and rearranging everything 🫠 But it will improve the chapter and it's about the history of goats - so it's suffering for the noble cause of research of a cool animal

In der Romandie ist man über eine Karikatur im Satire-Magazin empört. Nach einer Anzeige folgt die nächste Provokation. https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/katastrophe-in-crans-montana-verbrannte-skifahrer-geht-charlie-hebdo-karikatur-zu-weit

Medien müssen aufhören, ME/CFS immer noch als "tragisches Einzelschicksal" darzustellen. Erstens ist dies aufgrund der Häufigkeit der Erkrankung falsch und zweitens beruht die Versorgungskatastrophe auf der politischen Entscheidung, diese NICHT zu beheben. ME/CFS ist weder "Einzel" noch "Schicksal"!

Woodpeckers pecking away in parallel

This is a fun read but it doesn’t really reckon with the fact that these theories are inherently racist, rooted in the idea that ancient non-western civilizations *couldn’t* make these structures. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/o...

If I ask you to cite your sources and you get offended I’m just gonna go ahead and assume you don’t have any.

Petition an den Bundesrat und die Schweizerische Bundesversammlung für die Erhaltung der Bibliothek Werner Oechslin Ohne Unterstützung muss die Bibliothek Ende 2026 schliessen. Sie helfen uns, wenn Sie diese Petition mit Ihrer Unterschrift unterstützen. www.bibliothek-oechslin.ch/toppetition/...

Bitte an alle Journos hierzulande, von der ARD-Hörfunk-Korrespondentin, die davon spricht, der Schütze solle im Krankenhaus behandelt worden sein, bis hin zu denen, die Trump und andere aus seinem Team zitieren - schaut Euch dieses Video/diese Analyse an und überlegt, wie Ihr formuliert.

But also:

And of course:

Posting to counter that image circulating. The past, especially in the American West, is more complicated and way more diverse than they want to admit.

And Renee Good’s last words appear to be “We’re not mad at you.”

We're a non-profit, academic-run project that provides both the space and tools for building solidarity among knowledge creators. But we cannot do that work without support. To keep moving forward, we need your help building the Knowledge Commons coalition. 🔗: about.hcommons.org/2025/12/18/j...

Face masks ‘inadequate’ and should be swapped for respirators, WHO is advised

Only four people in the UK have formally complained about a trans woman entering a “single-sex” facility, an eye-opening report has revealed. A report published by advocacy group TransLucent found that only four official complaints were documented across 382 public bodies since 2022. 1/2