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Reposted by Thomas Lumley

Science Media Centre NZ @smcnz.bsky.social · 8h

Big shakeup for NZ’s research funding – Expert Reaction

Big shakeup for NZ's research funding - Expert Reaction - Science Media Centre

The Government will consolidate decision-making for New Zealand's science research funding as part of its new science system strategy. Research Funding New Zealand will be a new independent board that...

www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 7h

The film didn't exist when I were young

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 7h

I think the only two assigned high school authors that I went out to read more of at the time were Shakespeare and Stoppard.

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 10h

Both seem to go all the way back in Modern English, per the OED

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 18h

When it comes to breaks in the rain, we distinguish the lull, which is long enough for one to actually do something without getting soaked, and the lol, which only appears so

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 1d

Definitely candidates for "Most likely to have been genetically engineered by aliens"

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 1d

Very similar, even though they're not at all closely related

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 1d

They look implausible inside, too: no structures, just little black seeds scattered randomly through white/red/yellow flesh

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Reposted by Thomas Lumley

Kirsty Johnston @kirstyjohnston.bsky.social · 1d

I thought I’d have a go at answering the question: what’s the flow on effect on emissions budgets from the methane cuts?

The answer was worse than I had anticipated

www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Scientists fear weaker methane target signals wider retreat from climate action

After cutting methane targets, New Zealand has a choice: shoulder the burden at huge cost - or cause more warming to the planet.

www.rnz.co.nz

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Reposted by Thomas Lumley

Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 1d

People always aske me "What does SIFT for AI look like?" Meaning, what is the minimal set of habits you need to teach students to use it effectively for exploration of claims online? It's taken a couple years to get here but this is a start at a response mikecaulfield.substack.com/p/get-it-in-...

Get it in, track it down, follow up

Three essential moves to using AI for verification and contextualization, with a bit of LLM-specific guidance

mikecaulfield.substack.com

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Reposted by Thomas Lumley

Russell Brown @publicaddress.bsky.social · 1d

"Hudson told Stuff his client wanted to be clear that he was not part of any protest activity outside Peters’ house." And he's being charged with burglary. So, er, not a deranged left-wing protester after all? www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3608...

Stuff

www.stuff.co.nz

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Reposted by Thomas Lumley

John Avocado 宇杰 @supercroup.com · 2d

You, an idiot: goon bag.

The Chinese, a nation of intellectuals:

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 2d

There's a joke about the Catholic catachumenal dropout who says "I can believe it becomes the Body of Christ, I just can't accept that it started off as bread"

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Reposted by Thomas Lumley

Luke Steuber @lukesteuber.com · Aug 27

Pineapples grow like they’re trying to prank you into thinking this is how pineapples grow

A pineapple farm that looks like Ripley should burn it in Alien

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 2d

My first graphics code was Basic producing Epson ESC/P to automate the Victorian Perinatal Data Collection Unit's outcome/casemix feedback graphs for maternity hospitals. (My mother had previously drawn them by hand.)

(it got upgraded to HP PCL output, and then to QuickBasic, over the years)

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Reposted by Thomas Lumley

Keith Ng @keithng.bsky.social · 2d

We have a solution for this - political parties! They represent a rough set of values and policy directions, an internal vetting and selection system, and a reputational system that makes parties accountable for the candidates the choose (or throw out if they turn out to be shit).

Timothy Gassin @timothygassin.bsky.social · 2d

Voters therefore have little choice but to make their choices based on the statements made by candidates in the booklet provided with their ballot paper. These statements are often pretty generic, give little real idea of candidates' ideology or beliefs, and are pretty tedious to read.

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Reposted by Thomas Lumley

rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 3d

like seriously team, I know y'all are working on both improving Discover and on better reply sentiment filtering and all, but it's going to take a while to tune it properly and a "never show my post on Discover" setting would be a 10 minute fix that would get 65% of why people want private accounts

Leah 🐸 McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 3d

I had a post reach the Discover feed today and was once again reminded of how many people on this site are not house trained.

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 2d

Much as it pains me as a Husky to admit it, Cougar Gold is wonderful. I also was a bit unimpressed by the Viking

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 2d

I'd rather go for "any readable format" until it mattered enough to use the proper tools. It's not like, say, learning to extract square roots by hand, where there's at least a unique right answer.

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 2d

There are two problems here. The obvious one: that it's intellectually dishonest to cite sources you didn't read and that didn't affect your argument

The second is "correctly formatted" suggests some teachers Have Issues About citation formatting, which has properly been automated for *decades*.

Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · Aug 18

It is not "attribution and sourcing" to generate post-hoc citations that have not been read and did not inform the student's writing. Those should be regarded as fraudulent: artifacts testifying to human actions and thought that did not occur.
www.theverge.com/news/760508/...

For help with attribution and sourcing, Grammarly is releasing a citation finder agent that automatically generates correctly formatted citations backing up claims in a piece of writing, and an expert review agent that provides personalized, topic-specific feedback.

Screenshot from Grammarly's demo of inserting a post-hoc citation.
https://www.grammarly.com/ai-agents/citation-finder

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 3d

Oh look. X is strongly correlated with rank(X)
#AxesOfEvil

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 3d

Absolutely.

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 3d

The only time I can think of when serious numbers of college students were wearing gender-nonconforming clothes was back when jeans for women counted.

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 3d

It's a term of art, limited to what happens during the stroy: alternatives include friends-to-lovers, enemies -to-lovers

Reposted by Thomas Lumley

Nic Rawlence @nicrawlencenz.bsky.social · 4d

Here we go again 😡. I'm really concerned about this & that the mistakes of the previous disastrous restructure seven years ago will be repeated. A museum is much more than its buildings. It's people that matter. Is central government going to properly fund Te Papa? www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa... 1/3

Te Papa announces plans for restructure in an effort to cut rising costs

It comes after the museum started charging international visitors to the site due to rising costs of energy, insurance and staffing.

www.rnz.co.nz

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