🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 if you're having veggie haggis for Burns Night tomorrow why not serve rumbldethumps instead of mashed tatties. Although I'd still serve neeps. www.tinnedtomatoes.com/2012/04/rumb... Need a recipe for haggis? Search haggis over at tinnedtomatoes.com #burnsnight #plantbased #vegetarian #vegan

Report from UK gov: "Nature security assessment on global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security" https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nature-security-assessment-on-global-biodiversity-loss-ecosystem-collapse-and-national-security #biodiversity

“We cannot withdraw from the fact that over 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction.” 🧪 IPBES remains committed to its mandate to provide the most credible science and evidence about biodiversity to all decision makers and actors. 🌍

So I have only just discovered at some vague point in the next couple weeks Google is going to break the way my work email works, and the company has done nothing to alert people to it. www.theregister.com/2026/01/05/g...

I call on my party and my government to remove themselves entirely from X and communicate with the public where they actually participate online and can be protected from such illegality.

Woman watching a barrista make a heart in her coffee foam: Lovely. It’s harder with oat milk isn’t it? Barista: Um, not… Woman behind them: Just say yes. Grab compliments with both hands.

⏰ Reminder: Task proposals for the 2026 #BioDCASE Challenge are due Jan 8. Submit your idea and help define the next set of challenge tasks! 🔗Learn more & submit: biodcase.github.io/challenge2026/ #bioacoustics #AIforconservation #animalcommunication

We have two open PhD positions at the interface of AI and ecology. Start dates are Sept 2026. We are looking for candidates with a background in AI/CS, Math, Stats, or Physics that are passionate about solving challenging problems in these domains.  Application deadline is in two weeks.

The Utrecht morning rush hour in the snow did not disappoint!

"animal2vec and MeerKAT: A self-supervised transformer for rare-event raw audio input and a large-scale reference dataset for bioacoustics" recently published! http://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210x.70218 #bioacoustics #machinelistening #deeplearning

Come and join me and my colleagues at the Department of Biology, #LundUniversity in #sweden! We have am open position as Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in Biodiversity. Apply here no later than February 11 2026: https://lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/jobID:848749/type:job/where:4/apply:1

A slippery start to 2026. There are many reasons to despair right now and it can be hard to see that there's any good left. So here's a reminder that even in a badly kept urban park, which suffered badly (again) last year, there's still some magic to be […] [Original post on mastodon.org.uk]

My wish for 2026: Where can we find kindness writ large?

My pitch: Equip the train quiet carriage with a faraday cage

Check out this write-up on sound producing Grasshoppers in Europe, and their availability on XC www.researchgate.net/publication/... . #bioacoustics #grasshoppers #orthoptera

It really should be as funny as this! "When is a sausage not really a sausage?" https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/20/sausage-meat-lobby-europe-plant-based-name #sausage #food #funny

The Correct Incantation #webcomic #krita #miniFantasyTheater

The dude who wrote End of History tried to vibecode an app but ended up doing a Her(2013) with ChatGPT (AKA "Pygmalion displacement" @olivia.science) while also failing the Turing test (sigh cc @olivia.science again)

Well chosen

If you're based in NL please consider reading & signing our open letter on reclaiming so-called AI from the AI Delta Plan & co: "Thoughtfully Shaping Our Digital Future" openletter.earth/zorgvuldig-a... Big thanks to @lekkerresistance.bsky.social @irisvanrooij.bsky.social @marentierra.bsky.social

Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

Every time I read this phrasing my head explodes anew. Are people so blinded by transphobia they don't realize this means anyone can be accused of not using a 'correct' toilet? scope of 'a person' in 'someone might think a person is a trans person' is ALL PEOPLE www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Little girl in Walthamstow: Elephants would get sick if they ate umbrellas, wouldn't they? Her mum: Definitely.

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!!"

I'm calling the prototype crystal 'log synth' done. Three natural semiconductor voices, each with their own filters, 4 vactrol sequencers and 3 single transistor gates with their own sequencer - actually quite a lot packed in here I realise... Tested in the […] [Original post on post.lurk.org]

JOB ALERT! 🦜🔭🌿 Are you passionate about #Birds, #Ecology, #Fieldwork, #Research? The University of Salford is looking for a #ResearchTechnician to assist with ecological monitoring of #Ringneckedparakeets in Manchester, UK. More info & how to apply 👇 Hurry! Closes 15 Dec @salforduni.bsky.social

We will be #hiring in 2026, for IT positions (e.g. #MLOps, software developer, bioinformatician, research software engineer) on a new project at @Naturalis . You should also have an interest in #ai and #biodiversity - that's our kind of unicorn! :) This is just a pre-announcement but feel free […]

Did you know the heart imprints onto the voice? New preprint spearheaded by Marijn Hafkamp, confirming (seemingly forgotten) research from the 80's and testing for the first time possible biomechanical mechanisms (evidence points to heart-lung-voice interactions). wimpouw.com/files/Hafkam...

Amazing! I remember 6 years ago on Buy Nothing Day, when I went to a mall in Sweden and sang for survival.

@climateainordics.com is now on youtube! Check out some amazing talks on how to help fight climate change using AI! youtube.com/@climateaino...

Check out this fantastic TED talk from Sara Beery @sarameghanbeery.bsky.social In it, she talks about how computer vision techniques can assist with extracting a wealth of information and insights from large image collections that depict the natural world.

Call for tasks! BioDCASE 2026: https://biodcase.github.io/challenge2026/ (deadline 8th Jan - please share) #bioacoustics

Which tech did I use in the '00s and still rely on today? * Git (so glad I got into that!) * OpenStreetMap (so glad I got into that!) * MP3 * The JVM * Vim (...with still only the 4 commands I learnt back then) You?

FYI: computers have been used to create art before.

📢 The call for task proposals for DCASE Challenge 2026 has been published dcase.community/articles/cal... Don't hesitate to contact @annamariamesaros.bsky.social and @rserizel.bsky.social if you consider organizing a task.

Kicking off #biodcase with a keynote lecture from Stefan Kahl (of #BirdNet fame). 3 billion bird sound observations - what to do with them

You can watch the livestream of #BioDCASE - here: dcase.community/workshop2025...

Check out pypi.org/project/xeno... where you'll find xcapi: a Python package for downloading animal sounds using the Xeno-canto API. Courtesy: Burooj Ghani (of AvesEcho etc. fame). #bioacoustics

Excited to be travelling to BioDCASE this week! https://biodcase.github.io/workshop2025/ Our full-day workshop on #bioacoustics data challenges, in #barcelona, hosted by #dcase2025! Looking forward to learning about people's work on AI for nature and the ways forward.

"Unsung Songbirds: Advances in the Study of Corvid Communication" - a new review paper (preprint) https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/10600/ Corvids are amazing, so I'm v pleased to be a small part of this review led by Claudia Wascher and Valerie Dufour. #corvids #bioacoustics

⭐PhD position available!⭐ Come join us @imprs-qbee.bsky.social to study communication and collective behavior in animal groups! We're looking for someone excited to use computational approaches to tackle biological questions, using our full-group tracking datasets imprs-qbee.mpg.de/121465/analy...

BioDCASE workshop - registration closes next week Oct 10th https://biodcase.github.io/workshop2025/ - Hope to see you there! #bioacoustics

SURVIVAL IS AN ACT OF DEFIANCE. I'm here for my queer and trans friends. I'm here for my Palestinian, Ukrainian friends, everyone fighting fascism, and more, and more. -- We're all feeling the pressure, not just you folks at the sharp end. And yet we're still here. We do what we can, in […]

New paper from us! "Grid-Aware Spatio-Temporal Graph Neural Networks for Multi-Horizon Load Forecasting" https://energy.acm.org/eir/grid-aware-spatio-temporal-graph-neural-networks-for-multi-horizon-load-forecasting/ From Ugochukwu Orji, working with us on AI for sustainable energy. #ai4good

The mere announcement of this from Reform should result in a massive increase in current ILR holders becoming citizens and voting to keep these fascist arseholes from destroying this country. www.gov.uk/government/p...

Oystercatchers are so CUTE. Great color scheme, solid hustle, really good bird.

A good conferece is more than just good talks. It is also meeting old friends and making some new ones. So happy to meet @danstowell.bsky.social again after 2 years and @beleyurthejasvi.bsky.social after 1 week ;) #IBAC2025

I'm excited about IBAC next week - *the* conference for anyone interested in animal sounds http://ibac25.com/ #bioacoustics I'm especially excited because my lovely team will be presenting their work there - here's a preview!

I can confirm, it's the best workshop out there! (and I'm totally not biased 😄 )