Brian Beach @bwbeach@social.cleverlibre.org

Last term, I had a final assignment option having students use #ChatGPT to write their final essay, then critique the results. It was great, and I'll be doing it again. Everyone in #academia should do something like this with their class if they can. Short 🧵 on what we found.

My husband and I started e-biking just last July and even though I’m not at my ideal weight and suffer from osteoarthritis we now cycle everyday and even do much of our groceries on two wheels 🚲
I’m sharing this picture to encourage all of you who may once have cycled that whatever your age, weight and physical condition (with few exceptions) you can get back on a bike and actually enjoy the breeze on your face 😃
#ebike #cycling #biking #mobility #sustainability #biketooter

I feel like far too often, we write about how to handle scaling and growing teams with topologies, microservices, and domain boundaries, and we ignore or do not write enough about how to stay small and all the success that extremely small teams have had building and delivering value that outpaces the giant tech orgs...

It’s REALLY important that #Vancouver’s Downtown Business Association, who were originally AGAINST downtown bike-lanes, later became one of their most vigourous supporters, because of EVIDENCE that bike-lanes are better for downtown business than any street parking they replace.

#cities #bikes #downtowns #cars #BikeLanes

Your occaisional reminder that consequences from elections can be very positive and so you should %@*$&#! vote. https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/brazil-amazon-deforestation-lula-bolsonaro-b2371102.html

News from two U.S. federal agencies on how their important work will soon be openly available to all!
The Department of Energy @ENERGY has released its plan to provide public access to the results of its research. More here: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2023-06/doe-public-access-plan-2023.pdf
And the National Institutes of Standards & Technology @NIST is seeking comments on its draft public access plan. Weigh in here: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/06/30/2023-13866/draft-plan-for-providing-public-access-to-the-results-of-federally-funded-research.
The @WHOSTP memo is becoming a reality that will help advance science and discovery!

Ynes Mexia was born in 1870 & became one of the most successful botanists in the world.

At a time when most people felt women couldn't travel alone, she did - A woman of color in her 50s & 60s. Mexia traveled the Americas for 13 years, collecting >145,000 #plants & discovering >50 new species.

She was a fierce conservationist & early pioneer fighting to preserve the redwood forests of California. She also advocated for Indigenous rights. https://www.nps.gov/people/ynes-mexia.htm #HistoryRemix #science #history

NEW: “What impressed Mr. Toderian most was not just the exclusion of cars but what replaced them. ‘They weren’t lazy about it. They didn’t just throw up barriers and ban cars,’ he said.”

My comments along with Val Plante’s & others in this great article about #Montreal’s inspiring summer street transformations!

#cities #streets #cars #OpenStreets #Montreal https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-montreal-avenues-car-free-transformation-proves-a-hit-with-residents/

The treacherous march of normalization goes on.

The Moms For Liberty are “fighting back” against who?

This is NOT an issue of “both sides.”

And it shouldn’t be depicted that way.

“From the beginning, race & ethnicity have been at the center of our nation’s identity, defining who does & does not belong. Far from being an innocent bystander, science has been an active participant in the exclusion of persons…

It is time to change the culture of science by putting inclusive diversity at the center.”

- “Race Matters,“ David J. Asai in Cell, 2020 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867420303378

Not sure if this makes me laugh or concerned.

#cartoon #TomGauld #ourworld

Onesimus, a Boston enslaved man saved hundreds of people from the horrors of smallpox in 1721. His contributions to science reverberate to this day b/c his knowledge led to what became the 1st vaccine-related study in America. Onesimus’s story illustrates the degree to which reputable men of science de­pended on the testimony & experience of Africans in dealing with a dreaded disease.

1/15

#StillWeRise #Medicine #BlackHistory
#BlackMastodon
#Histodons #History

@blackmastodon@a.gup.pe @BlackMastodon@chirp.social

Ted Chiang is on fucking fiiiiire

‘In psychology, the term “insight” is used to describe a recognition of one’s own condition, such as when a person with mental illness is aware of their illness. More broadly, it describes the ability to recognize patterns in one’s own behavior …

Insight is precisely what Musk’s strawberry-picking AI lacks, as do all the other AIs that destroy humanity in similar doomsday scenarios. I used to find it odd that these hypothetical AIs were supposed to be smart enough to solve problems that no human could, yet they were incapable of doing something most every adult has done: taking a step back and asking whether their current course of action is really a good idea. Then I realized that we are already surrounded by machines that demonstrate a complete lack of insight, we just call them corporations. Corporations don’t operate autonomously, of course, and the humans in charge of them are presumably capable of insight, but capitalism doesn’t reward them for using it. On the contrary, capitalism actively erodes this capacity in people by demanding that they replace their own judgment of what “good” means with “whatever the market decides.”’ (2017 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tedchiang/the-real-danger-to-civilization-isnt-ai-its-runaway)

Worker-owned cooperatives now.

Please, I'm begging you, if you're a researcher, archive your data, back up your files, have a data succession plan.

Chat to your library, chat to your colleagues. The best time is as you collect the data, the second best time is now.

I'm dealing with multiple different data nightmares now. People leave academia, people retire, people pass away with a plan to make a plan.

No judgement here, just sadness for all that hard work thrown into uncertainty.

Open, shared software is the opposite of machine learning.

Bear with me on this, but start here:

https://mastodon.social/@noamross@ecoevo.social/110548824148209227

I've had this experience, of some seemingly-trivial niche little utility I've written and shared, of somebody I will never meet appearing in my inbox asking, I just found this, does this really [do X]?"

To which I answered, yes, and got the reply "oh thank god".

So, somebody found the solution to a difficult problem they had, and that problem just... vanished.

The Navajo Nation has over 400,000 people, he said, and while not all live on the reservation, many can say they are planning on coming home someday.

“We are trying to create a permanent homeland for the Navajo people,” said Nez. “It's not just drinking water. I know a lot of these water rights discussions are quantification for drinking water, but as Native people, water is life, and it's not just drinking it’s about agriculture, farming, and livestock and animals.”

https://t.co/l7Qp5wahdg

I went to #Atlanta to check out "#CopCity" - and found a battle for the very soul of America's cities

If built, the project will launch a 21st century security state to crush protests

My money's on the everyday folks fighting to stop it

If @willbunch wrote it, you should read it.©

https://t.co/jjOmTyu8Gb

2008 v. 2023: I don’t think people realize the extent to which parked cars degrade public space.

I think this era will someday be known as the golden age of ephemeral art and humor.