"I was naive. I thought that the benefits of doing science would be self-evident. And I anticipated that our science—as people who look at the planet and see that it’s changing—would come under scrutiny and even attack because the implications are politically inconvenient. We’ve seen that before, and that’s what I expected. What I did not expect was that [the Trump administration] would go after pediatric cancer research first. That they would go after Parkinson’s research first. And they would go after vaccines, the greatest invention of humanity. And that has shocked me, the fact that science is under attack, not because its conclusions are necessarily politically inconvenient but because it is a way of telling the truth. That has been the most disorienting and frightening aspect of all of this."
An interview with climate scientist Dr Kate Marvel: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/top-climate-scientist-kate-marvel-just-resigned-from-nasa-heres-why/
"When Artificial Intelligence finally arrived, ... it was presumed that it would at least look cool ... (but) even the biggest boosters of AI have been forced to disavow their technology’s chief aesthetic sensibility. “I don’t love slop myself,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said ..."
> Get GenAI out of HE Now!
#ai #aislop #academia #academicchatter
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/ais-aesthetics-of-failure
Folks, this is a perfectly accurate description of getting a PhD studying space.
#space #academicchatter #phd #astrophysics #Astronomy #Astrodon #science
Okay, help: what's a good compromise for a whiteboard for one-off use in a lecture? I want to collect student ideas, group them together and talk them through interactively while showing the whiteboard on a screen. Nothing more.
For a long time I would have used Flinga Whiteboard (https://flinga.fi/) but my employer stopped paying for it. They do pay for Miro but it's horrendously complicated to use, and a steep learning curve for a one-off activation exercise in class.
Is there something simple, freely available (maybe - ideally - open source) that is at the Flinga end of complexity rather than Miro?
RE: https://spore.social/@solarpunkcast/116302566353555016
Highly recommend checking this out and participating, if you can. Also please check out Solarpunk Now! podcast if you haven't already - some really thoughtful and well-researched treatments of a wide range of topics all related to solarpunk.
#solarpunk #academicChatter #AcademicMastodon #sustainability
It’s indeed a good thing to not hold international scientific conferences in the USA now and possibly for some time into the future. Communities find other venues and hosts at other places. There might be very minor effects on scientific quality
But: Our colleagues currently based in the US cannot attend as they feel unsure about how to return. And this will have an effect as networking suffers in hybrid or remote-only settings
Thought for today - Digital Addiction.
Are we addicted to social media? Health apps? Work-function assistant apps? Organisation apps? News apps? E-commerce apps? Are we just addicted to life as techno-solutionism in all forms? Are we addicted to using any apps just because it feels like fun, a game, entertainment?
In the social media case, I believe a large amount of 'the addiction attraction' is hyper-personalised consumerisation. The interweaving of narcissism, social acceptance, conformism, life-worth-as-economic-value, life-worth-as-social-media-measurement, added to the intense emotional reward of buying things to reaffirm sense of self and fitting in, make the digital social+product marketplace a very alluring space to occupy. Instagram's whole business case is this.
Remember, the Iron Curtain did not fall due to intellectual debate or ideological challenge. It fell because of Levi jeans and Coca Cola.
Smartphones are really fun. Even old phones before the digital revolution were fun. Kids, mums and anyone who had time and felt sociable would be on the phone for hours. Calling friends when you were a teenager was a mandatory part of growing up. "Get off the phone!" was a common shout from your mother. We even stood in the phone box in the evenings because it felt like fun.
The breakpoint came when people started being born who did not know what life was like before the digital revolution. It's them that are now paying some kind of psychosis price for these addictive toys. But it's not only socmed, it's everything that is digital.
But you know, I love my phones. I love their character, their style, their functionality. They really are part of who I am. Somebody really should make completely customisable shells for phones. They'd make billions.
#socialmedia #socialmediaaddiction #digitalliteracy #datasociety #academia #academicchatter
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