Outlook stop fucking up your default calendar view for funsies challenge

Tiny #Cambrian trilobite #TrilobiteTuesday

I'm so impressed with the @winnipegfreepress.com tech support; a few days ago, I reported an issue with the app that wasn't so much a bug or a proper problem, it was just annoying to me, personally. And they just.... updated their app and fixed it, just because I asked. Just...... ❤️Incredible.

The icon choices available in outlook calendar are bewildering to me. You have three different types of cars/trucks, but no... camera, for example, or phone.

For #FossilFriday & in honor of @alinemghilardi.bsky.social & colleagues' fantastic discovery of a new Cretaceous pterosaur in Brazil in a dinosaur regurgitalite ("fossil vomit"), here's a diagram I made for my book 'Dinosaurs Without Bones' (2014) showing the physics of a puking brachiosaur. 🧪🦕🤮🪨

Me disliking something will not stop me from learning about it.

"No other country, or group of countries, will be able to replace what is being lost in U.S. funding and collaboration, however. Ultimately, Canada’s researchers will need the Canadian government to step up to try and fill the gap." universityaffairs.ca/features/fea...

Something real depressing about trying to access the links on an older list to examples of diversity plans at American uni libraries in this day and age.

The thing about online learning with multiple choice tests you can retake repeatedly, is that you learn pretty quick that more often than not, the problem isn't that *you* got the question wrong, it's that whoever built the quiz did so poorly, and, say, forgot to define a correct answer altogether.

Librarians told 404 Media they are being inundated with new pitches for AI library tech and catalogs are being flooded with AI slop books that they need to wade through. AI maximalism across society is supercharging the ideological war on libraries, schools, academics www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...

"X, Y, and Z databases were searched systematically using MeSH terms and keywords related to [topic]" is NOT an adequate description of a search strategy for a systematic or scoping review oh my GOD.

As many have pointed out, Mamdani didn't stand apart from our trans brothers and sisters. He didn't play the "Gee, gosh, it sure is complicated," milquetoast moderate card. And he crushed. The way forward is together, not over the bodies of our own.

PEN Canada joins 43 organizations and 123 individuals in open letter opposing “National Sprint” consultation on AI strategy, which proposed a mere thirty-day window on short notice. pencanada.ca/news/open-le...

Why's it smell vaguely like electrical burning outside on campus today? I don't like it.

Remember to check your kids candy for paleontology! #paleontology

i'm sure the "faculty forum" on "reducing burnout" and "enhancing resilience" will include helpful things like "join your faculty union" and "here's a bucket of money" and "we hired a bunch of new full time faculty to reduce the teaching load across the university"

It’s time to go fishing.

You know how literally every time you check the news or social media right now there's some new horror? I don't like that.

Woodcut print by Eline Brontsema, Blue Swimming Hall , Fincknsteinallee 2024. Size 67.8 x 51 cm.

Something I love about archival films is that when someone had a couple feet of film left on a roll they'd often use it to film their cat. So many films finish with a few seconds of cats So, here's some cats from the 1950s and 60s. They were loved Scanned from 8mm films #Film #History #Cats

They keep saying "AI" will reduce workload and make my life easier.... and yet...

I'm also concerned that things could be removed #canmedlibs

Higher Ed’s Rush To Adopt AI Is About So Much More Than AI - defector.com/higher-eds-r...

It's very concerning that the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee was terminated and there's little awareness of it. This has me concerned that more predatory/crap science will become part of PubMed. #medlibs

When a chatbot gets something wrong, it’s not because it made an error. It’s because on that roll of the dice, it happened to string together a group of words that, when read by a human, represents something false. But it was working entirely as designed. It was supposed to make a sentence & it did.

Interesting piece “From my experience of universities, one of the most important elements of that is the culture around the senior management table, which is not the governing body,” he said. “You cannot have…an overbearing culture where essentially the executive is run in a hierarchical system.”

“The advice is ingrained with the optimism that this technology will only get better. It’s the same story the AI companies are telling: with more computers and more data, all will be fine. That’s bullshit. This is and will always be a statistical, associative machine.”

"You can’t view this tendency to prioritise education and research with an immediate economic purpose separately from the planned cuts in higher education by the current government."

“It’s our responsibility to teach students certain skills”, says Vanrie. “We must train them to become independent, critical thinkers. They can only become that by doing the hard work themselves, not by outsourcing it.”

Must read for anyone who cares about HE "Put simply, the technology that OpenAI and co are pushing threatens the very raison d'être of universities. "

A space in the downtown Millennium Library designed to help vulnerable people, including the homeless, has reopened after closing at the end of 2024.

"Cretaceous Thriller" Sinocalliopteryx: the bird-swallowing dinosaur 🪶

Re: Canadian govt approach to AI, a link to the ISED survey on AI: ised-isde.canada.ca/site/ised/en...

#TrilobiteTuesday Here is a tiny partially enrolled Kaskia chesterensis trilobite from the Upper Mississippian (Lower Carboniferous, Serpukhovian) Lower Bangor Limestone Formation from Russellville, Alabama. Unfortunately the head isn't there.

Using uncomfortably uncanny valley avatars in your mandatory training sessions so you know people are paying attention

Related: I hate being sick. But at least I'm hacking up a lung in my own house instead of going out in public and getting my weird gross germs all over everyone else.

So the CDC is literally just spewing Trump propaganda now, huh?

Ooops! Misadventures from her time in office continue to plague former premier, Heather Stefanson and a couple of her former ministers. #mbpoli #politicalcartoon #conservative #heatherstefanson #ethicsviolation

Idk man I really feel like the rest of the world should be absolutely scrambling like mad to beef up our public health infrastructure in the wake of the decimation of public health systems in the USA and the fact that we mostly don't seem to be doing that seems....... Extremely bad to me.

I did this, took like 30 min. Points I kept hammering: domestic cloud, regulations around copyright and likeness rights, focusing on machine learning with concrete, real world uses (creating new drugs, etc), the damage done by slop, the need to listen to AI experts who are realists, not boosters.

I really think it's a skill issue. Some people use them to do work they themselves can't do. (A few have told me as much directly.) When the machine gives something approximate, they 1) see the LLM as better than themselves, and 2) fail to see the shortcomings of the answer.

It's a wonderful day to support trans authors and therefore also a wonderful day to pick up my sister's book about faerie-occupied Canada www.amazon.ca/Realitys-End...

FULL STORY HERE: Emails began flooding CDC inboxes late Friday night announcing dozens of layoffs. HR people brought back from furlough to oversee the RIFs. Disease detectives, entire Washington office, global health, injury prevention, MMWR staff among those hit. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...

RIFed: Office of Science - CDC Library They have helped SO many of us with their expertise & guidance so we can do efficient & quick research. You don’t need us toiling in Pubmed for days at a time during an outbreak. The library helps us get what we need quickly so we can continue our work.

Appendix 2: on tools A tool is *for* something. If the things generative AI tools are *for* are not conducive to learning a given subject, generative AI is not a tool for learning that subject. Establishing that and then talking about how to integrate it into courses on that subject is incoherent.

Day 8, Glass: I struggled to find an example in my phone for this one! Here we have a family mausoleum in Pére Lachaise, Paris, with light shining through a gorgeous little stained glass window in the back. #31DaysofGraves 🏺

Please stop talking about "Western Canada" if what you actually mean is "Alberta" ffs