Overheard: “How old are you?” “Twelve” “What grade are you in?” “6-7”

This is something I struggle with as a journalist who writes a lot about AI. I have written whole articles about how AI is a misnomer! But I feel powerless in the tides of linguistic drift. Has anyone else who writes about AI found ways to usefully (and regularly) distinguish types?

We are supposed to believe that FDA paused and removed the J&J vaccine immediately after 6 cases of clotting, but they hid 10 kids dying from the mRNA vaccines until Prasad and Hoeg, who were always antivaxx, revealed the truth. Checks out.

tech bro: i have made Artificial General Intelligence programmer: you fucked up a perfectly good calculator is what you did. look at it. it's got anxiety

Some of us have been advocating this going back since chatGPT launched. It also has other benefits: correcting someone else's work is actually a really good way to learn something yourself.

“Enjoy your legs!”

If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features." There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.

Nobody wants this shit. Nobody. The hostile reaction has been so pronounced, in fact, that it feels like a company announcing it would never force AI into its products would carve out a pretty good chunk of the market.

do they make electric cars with a pretend manual transmission because they should

absolutely. which is why this was the definition for AI that @mjcrockett.bsky.social and I included in our recent TiCS article

When people celebrate the individual genius of folks in science, they should also mourn the collective loss of genius of folks who were actively discouraged or disadvantaged from a career in science because of the same person(s)

I'm sitting on the couch crying actual tears reading the docs for this 😂

Do you teach #rstats? Do your students complain about how lame and old-fashioned dplyr is? Don't worry: I have the solution for you: github.com/hadley/genzp.... genzplyr is dplyr, but bussin fr fr no cap.

I highly recommend URSSI! Check them out if you want to level up your skills in research software development:

At this point whenever I’m googling around looking for recipes, DIY tips, etc., any websites I come across that I don’t recognize as existing before 2-3 years ago I just assume are AI slop farms. And it seems like those fill up at least the first page of search results 😭

Wrote up a little intervention post/explanation for my class about why using LLMs for trying to learn programming (as first time learners!) is bad and detrimental datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-11...

Shower beer after a 5h trail run

remember when computers did what you told them to

...Now taking suggestions for a note taking app that's: - cross-platform compatible (macOS, iOS, windows, android) - has a web clipper (for saving web pages as notes)

This thread makes a point I find myself coming to often these days. It's hard to make this point in a way that doesn't sound like a threat, but it's just a fact that for centuries the wealthy in America worried that the mob would come get them and did all they could to avoid that fate.

i made a helpful reference

Wim Vanderbauwhede: “You give an input and it ‘guesses’ the answer a user would want to get, based on the input and the data it was trained on. The ‘machines’ don’t think; they generate something plausible, something that seems acceptable.” apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

“Reality” is a shared agreement upon a set of facts. When people’s understanding of facts are inconsistent or warped, coming to terms on policy, or any structure larger than a single person becomes compromised.

I understand it emotionally, when I decide I like something or have decided to support something, it's hard to give that up/realize I was wrong. But it's an adolescent perspective to be unwilling let go the idea of something when confronted with the reality of it.

Do you have an R package that pins a dependency to a max version? Have you figured out a decent way to handle installation with pak/renv/something else for continuous integration, etc? Teach me your ways! forum.posit.co/t/advice-on-... #rstats

🥹 I miss old stats twitter. Some of the smartest, most knowledgeable statisticians were in the weeds of shitpost replies, teaching people best practices in statistics.

If someone could invent a way to filter out AI slop websites from search engine results, that would be great…

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.

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

::waves 'ISO 8601' flag::

🎨 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

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...

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!

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

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...

it's been one of those days...

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

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.

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

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---"

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

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

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...

Really grateful to be part of a community of "helpers" & thanks to @nature.com for highlighting! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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

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 ....

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

I’m looking at getting an EV before the US incentives go away Sept 30. Now accepting make/model recommendations!

Important for people to understand the AI utilized in specialty medical care IS NOT the same crap that is dumbing down humanity via falsehood-generating apps like Chat GPT.

I'm thankful Don took the time to make this case in such a methodical fashion. I found it very convincing.