Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn
@anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social
Botanist, taxonomist, phylogeneticist.
Second and fourth place!
November 25, 2025 at 6:30 AM
Second and fourth place!
Capitulescence of a Cassinia (#Asteraceae: Gnaphalieae) at the Australian National Botanic Gardens.
November 25, 2025 at 2:38 AM
Capitulescence of a Cassinia (#Asteraceae: Gnaphalieae) at the Australian National Botanic Gardens.
Nymphoides (Menyanthaceae), presumably N. montana, near Braidwood last week.
November 23, 2025 at 11:20 AM
Nymphoides (Menyanthaceae), presumably N. montana, near Braidwood last week.
Not providing the option of "no and never ask me again" should be illegal and punishable by being catapulted into an active volcano.
October 31, 2025 at 8:28 AM
Not providing the option of "no and never ask me again" should be illegal and punishable by being catapulted into an active volcano.
Okay, so this writer uses an LLM to check his writing and seems extremely proud or surprised (?) that the LLM trained months ago isn't aware of recent events. The question arises: why not use standard office software to flag errors with red underlines? Long available, much less wasteful than LLMs.
October 30, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Okay, so this writer uses an LLM to check his writing and seems extremely proud or surprised (?) that the LLM trained months ago isn't aware of recent events. The question arises: why not use standard office software to flag errors with red underlines? Long available, much less wasteful than LLMs.
Although these people are working with billions, capital for investment is not infinite. If regulations are so lax that the highest returns are seemingly always in speculative bubbles, ventures that are productive in the long term are starved of investment.
www.derekthompson.org/p/this-is-ho...
www.derekthompson.org/p/this-is-ho...
October 14, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Although these people are working with billions, capital for investment is not infinite. If regulations are so lax that the highest returns are seemingly always in speculative bubbles, ventures that are productive in the long term are starved of investment.
www.derekthompson.org/p/this-is-ho...
www.derekthompson.org/p/this-is-ho...
Still very happy about having bought Othonna capensis, a succulent daisy from southern Africa. It just keeps blooming.
Unfortunately, the cockatoos love tearing my succulents apart, so nearly all of them now have rather ugly wire meshes around their pots.
Unfortunately, the cockatoos love tearing my succulents apart, so nearly all of them now have rather ugly wire meshes around their pots.
October 12, 2025 at 9:56 PM
Still very happy about having bought Othonna capensis, a succulent daisy from southern Africa. It just keeps blooming.
Unfortunately, the cockatoos love tearing my succulents apart, so nearly all of them now have rather ugly wire meshes around their pots.
Unfortunately, the cockatoos love tearing my succulents apart, so nearly all of them now have rather ugly wire meshes around their pots.
Minuscule insect on floret of Osteospermum ecklonis (Asteraceae), 200x macro lens.
October 12, 2025 at 11:08 AM
Minuscule insect on floret of Osteospermum ecklonis (Asteraceae), 200x macro lens.
Beetles are neat. Just look at the little dude!
October 10, 2025 at 11:42 PM
Beetles are neat. Just look at the little dude!
Word cloud (wordclouds.com) of the identification keys to the tribes and genera of Asteraceae in the online Flora of North America. No surprise to see heads (capitula), cypselas, and phyllaries being prominent; perhaps also no surprise with "sometimes" and "usually" 😂.
October 10, 2025 at 6:02 AM
Word cloud (wordclouds.com) of the identification keys to the tribes and genera of Asteraceae in the online Flora of North America. No surprise to see heads (capitula), cypselas, and phyllaries being prominent; perhaps also no surprise with "sometimes" and "usually" 😂.
Also flowering on our balcony now: native Australian passionflower Passiflora cinnabarina, and an orchid that came up spontaneously in a succulent pot.
October 5, 2025 at 10:59 PM
Also flowering on our balcony now: native Australian passionflower Passiflora cinnabarina, and an orchid that came up spontaneously in a succulent pot.
The Sichuan pepper tree I grew on a whim is flowering for the first time. Unfortunately, I had not realised they are dioecious, so this won't produce any fruits to harvest.
October 5, 2025 at 8:10 AM
The Sichuan pepper tree I grew on a whim is flowering for the first time. Unfortunately, I had not realised they are dioecious, so this won't produce any fruits to harvest.
Regarding the paper you link, I still do not understand. Yes, functional protein-protein interactions depend on chirality, but people are allergic against p-Phenylenediamine. Is PPD a left- or right-handed protein? If it isn't a left-handed protein, why isn't it invisible to the immune system?
September 28, 2025 at 1:40 AM
Regarding the paper you link, I still do not understand. Yes, functional protein-protein interactions depend on chirality, but people are allergic against p-Phenylenediamine. Is PPD a left- or right-handed protein? If it isn't a left-handed protein, why isn't it invisible to the immune system?
I am having the inverted experience here as with LLMs. LLMs nearly always fail me, although other people say they have good experiences with them.
Others here on BlueSky say that Linux doesn't work, although wherever I install Ubuntu, it works at least no worse than Windows, but faster.
Others here on BlueSky say that Linux doesn't work, although wherever I install Ubuntu, it works at least no worse than Windows, but faster.
September 6, 2025 at 8:47 AM
I am having the inverted experience here as with LLMs. LLMs nearly always fail me, although other people say they have good experiences with them.
Others here on BlueSky say that Linux doesn't work, although wherever I install Ubuntu, it works at least no worse than Windows, but faster.
Others here on BlueSky say that Linux doesn't work, although wherever I install Ubuntu, it works at least no worse than Windows, but faster.
This is just our world right now, it seems: increasing numbers of people turning their brains off and asking LLMs for advice, including on purely hypothetical future inventions that by definition cannot have been part of the LLMs' training data. Dumbest time indeed.
September 4, 2025 at 10:34 PM
This is just our world right now, it seems: increasing numbers of people turning their brains off and asking LLMs for advice, including on purely hypothetical future inventions that by definition cannot have been part of the LLMs' training data. Dumbest time indeed.
Cotula turbinata is everywhere here in Perth. Introduced from South Africa; member of tribe Anthemideae, i.e., a relative of chamomile and chrysanthemum.
It is one of those plants that look quite generic from a distance but intricate and pretty when you look more closely. #asteraceae #compositae
It is one of those plants that look quite generic from a distance but intricate and pretty when you look more closely. #asteraceae #compositae
August 29, 2025 at 11:38 PM
Cotula turbinata is everywhere here in Perth. Introduced from South Africa; member of tribe Anthemideae, i.e., a relative of chamomile and chrysanthemum.
It is one of those plants that look quite generic from a distance but intricate and pretty when you look more closely. #asteraceae #compositae
It is one of those plants that look quite generic from a distance but intricate and pretty when you look more closely. #asteraceae #compositae
Great writing, no notes
August 28, 2025 at 10:55 PM
Great writing, no notes
If anybody asks me again about Erigeron acer / Erigeron acris / Erigeron acre, I will just say that that species is genderfluid.
August 22, 2025 at 11:48 PM
If anybody asks me again about Erigeron acer / Erigeron acris / Erigeron acre, I will just say that that species is genderfluid.
Today I tried DeepSeek, and it grew increasingly incoherent over 25 pages worth of response. I didn't think "get the data from this bit of text and put it into this template" was like glimpsing the true form of Nyarlathotep, but something about JSON templates has now driven two open source LLMs mad.
August 5, 2025 at 10:29 AM
Today I tried DeepSeek, and it grew increasingly incoherent over 25 pages worth of response. I didn't think "get the data from this bit of text and put it into this template" was like glimpsing the true form of Nyarlathotep, but something about JSON templates has now driven two open source LLMs mad.
Trying out another LLM in Ollama, this one allegedly optimised to extract structured information from text, and finding that it its outputs are deranged nonsense. Why does this stuff never work reliably for me when so many other people use them for coding, meeting notes, etc.?
August 4, 2025 at 6:05 AM
Trying out another LLM in Ollama, this one allegedly optimised to extract structured information from text, and finding that it its outputs are deranged nonsense. Why does this stuff never work reliably for me when so many other people use them for coding, meeting notes, etc.?
Okay, now I know what happens when I try to sftp a zip file without realising that it isn't finished zipping yet. Yikes.
July 29, 2025 at 12:53 AM
Okay, now I know what happens when I try to sftp a zip file without realising that it isn't finished zipping yet. Yikes.
Darn, I thought I would be spared this nonsense on the Linux version of the Outlook app. At least it was very easy to find the button to turn it off.
July 17, 2025 at 7:29 AM
Darn, I thought I would be spared this nonsense on the Linux version of the Outlook app. At least it was very easy to find the button to turn it off.