Martin Tomko
banner
dinomirmt.bsky.social
Martin Tomko
@dinomirmt.bsky.social

Understanding and supporting people in their spatial interactions through computational #spatial #data #science #giscience #melbourne 🛶🚵‍♂️🥾🏊‍♂️🐕
@unimelb, own views. support 🇺🇦 www.tomko.org

Computer science 54%
Engineering 26%
Pinned
Interested in transformation invariant shape classification on vector data?
"Learning geometric invariant features for classification of vector polygons with graph message-passing neural network" Check Zexian's PhD work (Dr Huang!) doi.org/10.1007/s107... #giscience #spatial #ml #GeoAI #GisChat

Reposted by Martin Tomko

"Prestige bias" is one of the strongest forms of bias in academia.

Reviewers rank paper submissions from top-20 institutions and non-students higher, but this goes away with blinded reviews.
haruka-uchida.github.io/websitefiles...
Recommended
I joined @cwarzel.bsky.social on the Galaxy Brain Podcast to explain some of the reasons why America, and a lot of other Western democracies, are sliding into authoritarianism and why it's probably inevitable
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvFh...
America’s Slide Toward Simulated Democracy with Eliot Higgins
YouTube video by The Atlantic
www.youtube.com

Reposted by Martin Tomko

Here's a report from Jenny Sinclair @jsresearchpro.bsky.social on the low success rate for DECRAs this week, driven by high demand and low Government funding for early career researchers in Australia.

[Free article in @resprofnews.bsky.social]
Low success rate in early career grants ‘deeply disappointing’ - Research Professional News
“Decay continues” as Australian Research Council’s Decra scheme announces 13.1 per cent success rate
www.researchprofessionalnews.com
Your universe is a photocopy of a photocopy of a…
on.ft.com/4ahkNKa

Reposted by Martin Tomko

Reposted by Martin Tomko

At a festival with events happening over a week and over a whole city? Dilara Bozkurt explores temporal navigation for festival maps on mobile devices, working out how to incorporate space and time on a small screen like a mobile phone doi.org/10.1080/1523... #GISchat #OpenAccess Check out the GIF:
Rate your score on Factor Fexcectorn.

Well done, Scientific Reports. pubpeer.com/publications...
Very pleased to see that @greens.org.au have won an inquiry into job cuts at CSIRO

Would be great to see attention brought to bear on restructuring (cuts?) at the Australian Research Council too

Why these attacks on science in the public interest in Australia❓ Who does this serve❓

Reposted by Martin Tomko

What's next? More cuts. Every few years, with no boost in between. Been happening for 15 years and has not changed under this Government.
ARC are considering a restructure in which jobs there will be lost, a source tells me.

This seems ridiculous when they're about to completely overhaul the entire grants system – they've never undertaken anything so large before!

I've long said ARC needs MANY MORE staff, & should do more, not less.

Reposted by Martin Tomko

Very good.
Fifteen Years
xkcd.com

🤯 I love place names.
🚨 #DECRA #DE26 announcement:

❗️Outcomes announced publicly for Discovery Early Career Researcher Award 2026❗️

See ARC's RMS for list ➡️ https://rms.arc.gov.au/RMS/Report/Download/Report/a3f6be6e-33f7-4fb5-98a6-7526aaa184cf/285

/bot

Reposted by Martin Tomko

“Norway taxes its fossil fuel industry heavily and gives their kids free higher education ... we subsidise our fossil fuel industry and charge a fortune to go to uni.”

Hear more from Richard Denniss - pre-order 'A Time for Bravery' (code SAVE5 for $5 off) australiainstitute.org.au/store/a-time...

Reposted by Martin Tomko

i just reviewed 50+ applications for an arts award and most of them were written by chatgpt. And then the other reviewers said they put them into Gemini to rank them. At a certain point, if everyone is giving their thinking entirely over to AI, why are we even bothering with any of this anymore?
An explosive #eruption of Hayli Gubbi #volcano, located SE of Erta'Ale in the Afar Rift (Ethiopia), began at ~08:30 UTC on Nov 23. Eruption onset was fortuitously captured by a @planet.com overpass at 08:31 UTC. Hayli Gubbi has no record of Holocene eruptions. Toulouse VAAC reporting ash to ~15 km.

Reposted by Martin Tomko

This one sums it up 🫠
Honest Government Ad | Visit WA! 🇦🇺
YouTube video by thejuicemedia
youtu.be

Reposted by Martin Tomko

I'm not a big fan of the Munich analogy, but this is real Munich stuff -- probably worse.

www.ft.com/content/f411...

Reposted by Martin Tomko

#CSIROcuts

A DMer has reported that researchers working in areas Minister Ayers said would be cut (nutrition) first found this out via media reports of the Minister’s statements.

It wasn’t ’til the following day that CSIRO told them their specific area would be targeted.

Nice.

Reposted by Martin Tomko

What a brain-dead dumb, completely shite appointment. @tonyburkemp.bsky.social

Reposted by Martin Tomko

New Zealand: HRC cuts start to bite as early career health research scheme is "paused" (subscriber content): www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-new-...
Health grant scheme for early career researchers ‘paused’ - Research Professional News
New Zealand research council says it must cut back to honour its commitments
www.researchprofessionalnews.com

@foss4g2025.bsky.social #foss4g #academic track kicking off with a benchmark of 3D viewer libraries, by Dr Toshikazu Seto.

Reposted by Martin Tomko

Forget even the expectation of results part: it cannot be cranked up overnight, period. Scientists of that caliber are hard to train and attract and if (once) they leave, it will take years to rebuild that capacity. This is damaging Australia in the short-, mid- and long-term, utterly irresponsible.

Reposted by Martin Tomko

"If we are serious about meeting the huge challenges ahead, from climate change to AI and robotics, the government must invest in the people doing the science."

Thank you, @davidpocock.bsky.social. How this is not obvious to a Labor government just boggles the mind.

www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...
“CSIRO has announced it will slash up to 350 jobs as the national science agency grapples with long-term financial challenges … with current funding failing to keep pace with the rising costs of running a modern science agency.”

Not “challenges”. They’re choices. 😡
CSIRO to cut up to 350 research jobs in major overhaul
After 440 positions were slashed last year, the CSIRO has announced more staff cuts across the country in a bid to remain financially viable.
www.abc.net.au

Reposted by Martin Tomko

Just in: GD’s Parliament Speaker says Georgians abroad will no longer be allowed to vote.

Over 1 million eligible voters live outside Georgia — most opposition-leaning. GD already suppressed their vote with too few polling stations and hours-long queues. Now they’re banned entirely.

@foss4g2025.bsky.social workshop day is starting! @ausp.io starting his #CNG workshop, lots of #STAC! #spatial #foss4g #geospatial
“The rise in high-fronted SUVs poses a clear and growing threat to public safety, especially for children,” states the report. “With no benefit to society, it’s time for lawmakers at all levels to act.” Via @carltonreid.com in @forbes.com.

Cap SUV/truck hood heights. And ban unsafe designs.
EU Must Cap SUV Hood Heights Urges Report. Crash Test Body Says Not As Simple As That
Higher fronts on cars significantly increase the death rate when pedestrians and cyclists are struck, says new report. EuroNCAP says more complex than that.
www.forbes.com