Celeste Labedz
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celestelabedz.bsky.social
Celeste Labedz
@celestelabedz.bsky.social
environmental seismologist - doctor of glacier vibes - geoscience educator - she/her - opinions only my own - puns only my worst - www.crlabedz.net
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With a million new users, is ScienceSky 🧪 doing reintroductions?

I'm Celeste Labedz, an assistant instructional professor at UChicago teaching across the geoscience spectrum. My research uses seismometers (the sensors that detect earthquakes) to understand what's going on underneath glaciers.
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
November 28, 2025 at 9:16 PM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
Scientific Reports has a ⬆️ Impact Inflation: a very high IF given their citation network (self-citing, citation cartels, etc).

They'll even typeset & publish AI slop for a fee!

Strain: bit.ly/StrainQSS
Strain explorer β: pagoba.shinyapps.io/strain_explo...

#SciPub #ResearchIntegrity #AcademicSky
November 28, 2025 at 7:20 AM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
Some coverage from the BBC on our Santorini swarm paper in Science (www.science.org/doi/full/10....). Features an interactive slider graphic showing the imaged magma dike intrusion using @alomaxnet.bsky.social's Coulomb-based seismicity-stress (CoulSeS) method.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Scientists reveal what triggered Santorini 'earthquake swarm'
Thousands of earthquakes were caused by magma
www.bbc.co.uk
November 27, 2025 at 9:31 AM
I visited this glacier in 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2025, and the difference over time has been clear. I wondered this summer if this was the end of its days in the lake, but it still hits hard to see that it's official.
November 26, 2025 at 10:53 PM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
It’s snowing outside, but I have the live USGS Kilauea webcam to keep me warm ⚒️🌋
www.youtube.com/live/tk0tfYD...
November 26, 2025 at 8:52 AM
When ranking pies, I remember the wise words of my grandfather, who always said "I only like two kinds of pie: hot pie and cold pie."
November 26, 2025 at 3:31 AM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
Book piracy is so specifically weird to me. We have whole buildings where you walk in and get books for free. And if they don't have what you want, often they will find it for you. And libraries help authors. And libraries build communities.

We already made books a common good, no piracy needed.
I see some book piracy discourse, and, to make a positive argument in favor of buying books, your marginal ability to influence what books get published and support the careers of writers you like is massive compared to most other forms of media.
November 25, 2025 at 11:08 PM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
The story told here--one where anecdata suggests agency and autonomy have run amok and nameless activists are to blame--certainly rhymes with the NYT's disastrous panic about trans kids. Then you realize it's literally being written by the same author.
Autism rates have increased in recent decades, but the reasons are more complicated than what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has presented. Hear more on today's episode of "The Daily." nyti.ms/480eqtm
The Autism Diagnosis Problem
Autism rates have increased in recent decades, but the reasons are more complicated than what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has presented.
nyti.ms
November 24, 2025 at 9:36 PM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
I’ve been running around asking tech execs and academics if language was the same as intelligence for over a year now - and, well, it isn’t. @benjaminjriley.bsky.social explains how the bubble is built on ignoring cutting-edge research into the science of thought www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
November 25, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
Gender-affirming care saves lives
1. A landmark study was just published in The Journal of Pediatrics.

It found a 68% reduction in suicidality for trans youth getting HRT.

It also found only 7 of more than 400 stopped taking HRT... and of those that did, 4 still identified as gender-diverse.

Transgender care saves lives.
Study In The Journal Of Pediatrics Finds Trans Youth Care Lowers Suicidality, Few Detransition
The groundbreaking study found that suicidality dropped for transgender youth receiving hormone therapy by nearly 70%, with only 7 patients of 432 discontinuing treatment.
www.erininthemorning.com
November 25, 2025 at 11:49 AM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
“I wish someone at Google would remember scholar exists!”

…and the monkey paw curls.
November 25, 2025 at 3:08 PM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
If you want to feel old, we are now further from the formation of the Kenorland Supercontinent than the formation of the Kenorland Supercontinent is from the formation of the Solar System.
November 25, 2025 at 5:35 AM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
You're told it'll sabotage your career if you're a vocally politically opinionated, queer, woman. But things sabotaging my career are systemic xenophobia, sexism, and horrible job market. Which are a direct consequences of people not being vocally opinionated in the first place.
November 25, 2025 at 2:27 AM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
"A 25-person startup" should not be allowed to "disrupt" fundamental inputs to the Earth's ecosystem, hydrosphere, and atmosphere.

Like, what are we even thinking here?
November 23, 2025 at 10:58 PM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
We had only recently passed 350 ppm when I started my PhD in Earth System Science, already a value understood to be dangerous and a threat to society.

And now, 33 years and 30 COPs later, we are at a value that is unprecedented for the past 3 million years and maybe even the past 8 million years.
November 23, 2025 at 7:54 AM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
Journalist challenge: Use “Machine Learning” when you mean machine learning and “LLM” when you mean LLM. Ditch “AI” as a catch-all term, it’s not useful for readers and it helps companies trying to confuse the public by obscuring the roles played by different technologies. 🧪
November 22, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
Problem is: Neither our work culture nor our education culture incentivizes deep learning. Instead, we're incentivized to economize--to learn only what's needed to finish the task or get the answer right on the test.

So, people use ChatGPT, even when they know they could learn more by other means.
Relying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other.

Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq
November 21, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
About that exclusive, "closed-to-press" MAHA summit last week with RFK and JD Vance: I got in.

Here's what I saw. 🧵 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
November 21, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
It's Friday, and apparently bluesky is ready for this fun revelation:

Dinosaurs lived on the other side the Galaxy.
November 21, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
It’s widely known (and, I think, pretty uncontroversial) that learning requires effort — specifically, if you don’t have to work at getting the knowledge, it won’t stick.

Even if an LLM could be trusted to give you correct information 100% of the time, it would be an inferior method of learning it.
Relying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other.

Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq
November 21, 2025 at 12:49 PM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
People learn through practice and challenge; not by receiving answers.

But a deeper problem is that an essential aspect of teaching is helping someone organize their thinking in new ways. LLMs — systems which cannot think or appreciate thinking — are incapable of doing this in a meaningful way.
Relying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other.

Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq
November 21, 2025 at 1:29 PM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
The loudest voices don't always win: In 2023, a scientific paper in the field of #glaciology was suddenly thrown into the climate wars. I interviewed one of the co-authors @juliaandreasen.bsky.social and appreciate any reposts! [Thread]
mikeyoungacademy.dk/ice-sheet-or...
Ice sheet or ice shelf: What’s the difference?
How a glaciology paper got pulled into the climate wars — and what you can learn from research that went viral for all the wrong reasons
mikeyoungacademy.dk
November 21, 2025 at 1:46 PM
On the other site, people would tag me to fact-check earthquake pseudoscience. It was always easy (prediction cons only have like 3 strategies), but when a grifter had duped a large fanbase, it was unsurprising to get DMs threatening violence for "suppressing" them.

And this was before modern LLMs.
Finally, I know of at least one case where the letter writer, deep into an episode of AI-induced psychosis, asked the LLM why scientists were not responding. The machine suggested that perhaps the scientists were trying to steal his discovery.

This will get someone killed sooner or later.
November 21, 2025 at 11:55 AM
Reposted by Celeste Labedz
we’re going to get a whole new flavor of earthquake prediction pseudoscience out of this, aren’t we
I am by no means a prominent public intellectual, but my inbox is increasingly filled with messages from people who have been convinced by sycophantic chatbots that they have discovered revolutionary theories that entirely upend our scientific understanding of the universe.
November 21, 2025 at 3:48 AM