www.nature.com/articles/d41... #AcademicChatter 🧪⚛️💡

We spoke to a dozen professional concept artists who are currently or have previously worked in game development about whether generative AI image tools have made their jobs any easier. Zero said it did. Most said it made things harder. thisweekinvideogames.com/feature/conc...

Physicist Leo Szilard, in a short science fiction story from 1948, describing how to retard science by making the funding application longer and harder than the proposed research - now called the ‘Szilard point’

Streaming services are getting more expensive and are packed with adverts + DVD prices are incredibly low = I guess I will go back to buy the DVD of the movies/series I want to watch

I went to the Dolomites a lot as a kid, and I could clearly see the difference between the '80s and the '00s. Much less snow, higher temperatures, ski slopes that only existed because of snow cannons. I haven't been there in over 20 years, but I guess the situation now is a million times worse.

As someone working in #imaging and #optics, I have no notes. xkcd.com/3182/

Bonus panel here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aspect #smbc

There is a call for joint PhDs between @exeter.ac.uk and @univparissaclay.bsky.social with deadline for projects (not students' applications) in mid-January. Most of the people I know in Paris works at Sorbonne, but maybe I know someone at Paris Saclay who wants to collaborate? 😀

The proposal to use the frozen Russian money to fund Ukraine is more complex (from a international law point of view) than I thought, and I understand Belgium's argument. Still, I really hope they go through with it.

Made a site comparing the sizes of living things :) The great Julius Csotonyi spent 5 months painting over 60 illustrations for the site, no ai used > neal.fun/size-of-life/

EU set to indefinitely freeze Russian assets, removing obstacle to Ukraine loan reut.rs/4iV4xAP

I am tempted to say that should teach the difference between heat, temperature, and heat capacity in primary schools, but I suspect that most kids knows it better than the adults.

Operation Bluebird wants to relaunch “Twitter,” says Musk abandoned the name and logo arstechnica.com/information-...

you could make an ad like this made by actual humans that goes viral and gets making of press coverage or you could put out AI slop like mcdonalds that everyone hates and still have the team whining how brutally hard it was and how long it took while also feeling creatively unfulfilled tough choice

In early 2024, I got to speak to Deans from up & down the West Coast of the US & Canada about "AI". I told them that the only value of ChatGPT for university administrators is as a contrast-dye test to show where resources are lacking.

What you write: "If using a <insert list of OSs/browsers> the link might not work - please use on a windows/chrome device if you have issues with the link." What I read: "We are too incompetent to make a working web page. But instead of sorting it out, we are dumping the blame on you."

Mimics are just a silly #DnD idea. They can't harm you.

As somebody who is not particularly good at international politics, what I read is: the USA have unambiguously decided to drop all of their soft power. Likely because they think they don't need it (it reminds me a lot of the "shoot yourself in the foot" strategy the UK is following).

Repeat with me: The "internet of things" is a bad idea, it has always been a bad idea, and it will always be a bad idea. No appliance (no, not even a tv) needs to have an internet connection. Especially one you don't have control over.

FFS no, no, no, this is not happening with genAI. All it will do is make results worse. The ouroboros eating its own tail. This is the grift desperately trying to keep the promise alive and the cash coming in www.theguardian.com/technology/n...

Stonking sunspots photobombed by a departing flight this lunch break #Seestar 😎🔭. #AR4294

It is genuinely impressive how bad the user interfaces of most streaming services are. They are all so bad that I can only assume they are bad on purpose, but I can't find any reason why enshittifying the user interface would bring them more money. 🤔

#Paris by night.

My cartoon for this week's @newscientist.com

You’ve been kidnapped. The characters from the last TV show you watched are trying to rescue you. Who’s coming to save you? It is not going to be pretty, but I genuinely feel bad for the kidnappers (and anybody in a 10km radius).

I guess I now have to do a thread on shoes in ancient Mesopotamia in response to this (which happens to be from one of my favourite accounts). I’m not an archaeologist, nor do I really know anything about shoes, but let’s go on this journey together.

I stopped having a landline because of the continuous spam calls. The system have been rendered useless by a bunch of scammers and spammers.

A large part of UK soft power comes through the higher education sector. Despite the level of education you can get at even the most prestigious UK Uni being sort of average when compared to EU Unus, getting a degree in the UK still carries some prestige. So they decided to kill it 🤷🏻‍♂️

Genuine question (and no shade on the OP, who clearly intended it as a joke): where does the "no one understands magnets" trope come from? Magnets are not even particularly hard to understand. Like with all topics there is a rabbit hole to fall into if you want, but the basic idea is easy 🤔

I really tried to like #LiesOfP, but it just doesn't work for me. It is not the difficulty (#Nioh2 is significantly harder), but a long list of stuff that annoys me. 1/ #videogames #rant

Incremental science is important, and it would be better if we didn't look down on it for funding & paper decisions Anyway, probably 95+% of papers and proposals that claim big breakthroughs are actually incremental

The Firefox extension for @nordpass.bsky.social has decided I am offline (which is obviously false), and thus refuses to let me log in and access all of my passwords 🤦‍♂️ Fun times.

The AI bubble may be about to bust. Peter Thiel has sold all of his Nvidia stock. We all need to say this very clearly: NO BAILOUTS FOR THEFT-TECH! Expropriate their asses instead. They stole from all of us and fully plan to burn the planet. They owe us - not the other way around. 1/3

Me: Doctor I don't feel well and I haven't felt well for 2 weeks. Doctor: Are you literally coughing blood? Me: No... Doctor: Then it will pass in 3 weeks. Don't bother us until then. I hate the NHS. 🤬 (No exaggeration. I shortened the exchange a bit, but this is how it went.)

A candidate for the IgNobel prize?

“0% woke shit” a black man with a physical disability leads an environmental terrorist cell trying to save the planet from mega-billionaires and you play as a cross dressing twink femdomed by two different women ending and the final boss against the gayest angel of all time

Procrastinators, rejoice! The deadline to apply for #PLASMONICAschool2026 has been extended until November 16th ⏰. Bring a mate and don't be late!

pre-writing a devastating obituary for your enemy is god-tier hating of a kind you don’t often see anymore. renaissance haterism. beautiful stuff.

Fellow seismologists, we're going to get a lot of mileage out of the latest @xkcd.com

The secret that #BigMaths doesn't want you to know is that real numbers are vectors, complex numbers are vectors, matrices are vectors, and even tensors are vectors. You might ask "is there anything that is not a vector?" and the answer is "spinors". But spinors are evil. 🙃 /s

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

A halloween cartoon for @newscientist.com

JD Vance claims that diversity weakens unions, as people end up distrusting each other and not organizing. Let me tell you two menswear stories related to this claim. 🧵

Come and listen to me blabber for a few hours about light scattering!

“Talent is a pursued interest. In other words, anything you’re willing to practice, you can do.” - the great Bob Ross, who would have turned 83 today. #RIP 🎨

obviously the real lesson here is that author lists are arbitrary anyway, defined by the field, and say nothing about quality of the research

The Sword in the Stone #webcomic #krita #miniFantasyTheater

☹️ "the European Commission (EC) announced a €1 billion initiative to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence (AI)" 🙂 "photonics is a critical enabling technology underpinning AI, quantum, semiconductor manufacturing and other areas that are vital to the EU’s technological independence" 💡

"We are contacting you in regard to your COVID-19 vaccination appointment. Unfortunately, there is a national shortage of vaccines for weeks now and we are still temporarily out of stock." 🤬🤦‍♂️ #NHS #COVID