we endlessly debate the optimal ways of getting stronger in the gym. but while debates are many, genuine innovations are few: most methods are variations on the theme of "pick up something heavy, put it down, repeat" and the details are less meaningful to our muscle cells than they are to our egos

#WeAreMUN #WorthFunding @munfaculty.bsky.social

Research at MUN saves lives: "A team from Memorial University of Newfoundland received the Governor General’s Innovation Award for leading research that identified the genetic mutation and the cause of the lethal heart attacks." ottawa.citynews.ca/2018/05/23/m... #WeAreMUN #WorthFunding

Provinces across Canada are investing in post-secondary education. Ontario. Saskatchewan. Meanwhile, Newfoundland and Labrador’s only university faces cuts, fewer courses, and larger classes. The NL budget is coming. This government has a clear choice to make. #WeAreMUN bit.ly/4sbzKD2 bit.ly/4tkgbsX

#WeAreMUN #WorthFunding If Memorial is not, then who? www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Everyone deserves access to affordable and fulfilling public education that offers pathways to a future where we can all thrive. #WeAreMUN

Youths, may I recommend you look up how the subprime mortgage crisis happened? Just, you know, for science

I am looking for recommendations What is a good alternative to the hellscape known as Microsoft Office?

Across Memorial, we are seeing the real impacts of ongoing funding cuts. Programs are changing. Jobs are being lost. Teaching and learning conditions are under pressure. The impacts are not abstract. They affect our classrooms, our colleagues, and our students.1/3 #WeAreMUN

Disturbing. This study suggests that just one encounter with a syncophantic chatbot tends to "erode prosocial motivations," even for sophisticated users.

Another consequence of the war, possible CO2 shortage in the UK. Co2 is used to "used to stun pigs and chickens for slaughter" www.feedstuffs.com/agribusiness...

I’m sorry but be serious www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

When private equity takes over a care home, deaths at the home rise by an average of 11%. When the private equity company is leveraged more than 75% in debt, the deaths double www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Imperial Valley residents protesting the development of a data center just chanted the developer out of the County Board of Supervisors meeting.

Unsurprisingly experiential and active learning beats transactional hands down—AI can help students fake and navigate the latter, but the former (in its many forms) produces more durable outcomes.

Here we go. Same management consultants ruining our universities one by one.

Today in AI: Canada rejected the PR application of a McMaster postdoc from the Sorbonne who works in the immunology of aging because the generative AI being used to process applications (😱) entirely hallucinated her credentials. Everyone involved should be fired. archive.is/ELrCI#select...

This is the way.

But what is significant here is that there are 1000s of cases just like this waiting in the wings. That means even if you multiply $3M across 1000 plaintiffs, up to $3B in damages.

In using "AI" to replace rather than complement workers, Mark Carney is setting Canada up for a repeat of the CFIA listeria debacle that led to the deaths of three people. Expect multiple versions of that, and scandals like Australia's Robodebt. www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...

Even if the entire generative slop bubble dramatically burst today and that was the end of it, we will be cleaning up the mess of the lies it left behind and the damage to people's mental health for a generation. Ignoring objective reality en masse has lingering consequences.

Krugman does a recap on the insider trading yesterday open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

In underfunded fields, people tend to do their own work. In overfunded fields, people pay others to do everything, including “their” research and writing. It’s not an accident that AI is an overfunded field that grew out of other overfunded fields.

Anyway, AI is a managerial technology that came out of fields where researchers act more like managers than researchers and this is not a coincidence. It’s fundamentally related to why certain people jumped at the chance to try to build certain kinds of systems that devalued (other people’s) work.

If you are Canadian, sign this petitition to prevent the downsizing of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's research capacity. Now more than ever we need publicly funded agricultural research: www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en...

What an incredible story: Meatpacking workers who speak 57 languages are ON STRIKE against the behemoth JBS in Greeley, CO. Reminds me of historical accounts of the Lawrence, Mass. strike of 1912, where workers spoke dozens of languages, and often sang to communicate.

It isn't just about human health—think about soil health, pollinators, arthropods, worms, mycorrhizal networks, declining bird populations...

I want fully staffed public pools, and libraries that are cathedrals to public goods and a society where walling yourself off with money is viewed as sociopathic.

We can all complain about university library catalogues — why so many book reviews? why? — but when students regularly had to *search* a library catalogue they were developing important research skills and also finding more diverse and interesting resources to read. Which is, you know, the point.

Too many students are convinced by their own universities, by some of their teachers and professors, and by the AI companies themselves that ‘using ai to study is getting ahead of the game’ But the process they seek to get ahead of is the point.

UPDATE: The province’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner began collecting data on gambling as a risk factor for suicide. The policy change came a year after The Independent published an investigation into gambling-related suicides in Newfoundland and Labrador. theindependent.ca/news/lji/n-l...

boys delight apples, painted by bertha heiges, 1904

📚✨ In 10 years in libraries, I’ve never seen 300 Norwegian librarians moved like this. Today, @samhelmick.bsky.social did. The fight against book bans is about democracy. We can’t take our values for granted. 📖 #Libraries #FreedomToRead #Democracy

Not new but AI/LLMs are about bosses disciplining labour over and over again

Holy sh*t. Wab Kinew's government just made using data to increase prices an unfair business practice. This is historic for Canada. *Proposed bill bans suppliers from charging higher prices to certain consumers based on personalized or algorithmically determined information. t.co/ZugFOj7983

Institutional Food Service contractors are in our schools, universities, hospitals, prisons, nursing homes overwhelmingly public places with vulnerable people. Add Compass to this list along with Aramark and Sodexo

Q: You don’t regret that people might’ve lost important income to support their lives? A: No, I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit. Q: Ok. Did you reduce the federal deficit? A: No, we didn’t.

Brilliant piece on the responsibility of profs and teachers. "To want someone who wants to learn from you is to want someone for their powerlessness".

CANADIANS!!! Please fill this out and share it widely because HOLY SHIT. I struggle to drive on the freeway at night now because of the headlights.

Cheers to everyone who delayed fossil fuel phaseout by saying "you can't switch off fossil fuels overnight" Because thanks to them everyone now has to face a situation where fossil fuels are switched off overnight 🙃🙃🙃

I want to say that if this dragnet snags enough white people, we might finally get meaningful action. But I am pretty sure the elites have already called off even the pretense of caring about poor white people AND they’re actively making middle class white people poor. Sooooo…

“Our instinct at the firm is, every time we hear about another attack, we need to see the chat logs because there’s [a good chance] that AI was deeply involved…”

oh this is interesting. layoffs are *not* boosting the share price recently, leading to an average 2% drop www.marketwatch.com/story/wall-s... but if they say it's "restructuring" and don't make a technological excuse, it's an average 7% drop

Look wake up this is serious. Chatbots are driving people insane. It's happening to people you don't think of as mad people. This is a serious danger of the technology that should majorly concern you. It's not safe for vulnerable people, & you don't want to find out the hard way that's you.

This is the best lede I've seen in a tech story in...years? There should be an award just for ledes.

Proposed cuts in Mathematics & Statistics would eliminate 7 of 8 teaching positions and reduce first-year course sections students depend on. As the provincial budget approaches, faculty are urging government to reinvest in Memorial. 1/2

We really don't talk about Aramark and Sodexo enough.

[taps sign]

NEW: Deloitte is being investigated by Newfoundland & Labrador's accounting watchdog over the firm's use of #AI in a $1.6-million government healtcare report that contains at least four fake citations #artificialintelligence #nlpoli theindependent.ca/news/lji/acc...