Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋 @bibliolater@qoto.org
Not a bot just a chap in his fifties who occasionally reads things.
Toots are humanities, science, non-fiction, books, maps, charts and graphs related. Some toots containing videos may also find their way into the timeline.
Toots or follows or boosts or mentions ≠ endorsements of any particular notion or notions.
Finis
Joined Nov 2022
🖥️ **Expert Comment: What should we do about chatbots?**
"_He argues that we must educate users to see these systems not as new members of the human community, but as tools that risk reducing both therapy and relationships to one-dimensional, instrumental exchanges."_
🔗 https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-12-05-expert-comment-what-should-we-do-about-chatbots.
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Chatbots #Technology #Tech #Ethics
#Image attribution: piqsels, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Piqsels.com-id-zbxec.jpg.
📚 **The 14 best non-fiction books of 2025**
🔗 https://inews.co.uk/culture/books/14-best-nonfiction-books-2025-4064967.
📚 **Scientific American’s Best Nonfiction of 2025**
🔗 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientific-americans-best-nonfiction-of-2025/.
🖥️ **Does AI make us more dishonest?**
"_When participants could cheat without explicitly lying, either by training the agent with dishonest data or setting profit-maximizing goals, cheating rates soared._"
🔗 https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2025/12/04/dishonest/.
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Technology #Tech #Ethics #Honesty
🇺🇸 🌡️ **New England warming faster than most places on Earth, study finds**
"_Pace of area’s temperature rise, outpaced in US only by Alaskan Arctic, apparently increased in past five years_"
🔗 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/03/new-england-warming.
**Climate-driven changes in Mediterranean grain trade mitigated famine but introduced the Black Death to medieval Europe**
"_Here, we argue that a post-volcanic climate downturn and trans-Mediterranean famine from 1345–1347 CE forced the Italian maritime republics of Venice, Genoa and Pisa to activate their well-established supply network and import grain from the Mongols of the Golden Horde around the Sea of Azov in 1347 CE. This climate-driven change in long-distance grain trade not only prevented large parts of Italy from starvation but also introduced the plague bacterium to Mediterranean harbours and fueled its rapid dispersal across much of Europe._"
Bauch, M., Büntgen, U. Climate-driven changes in Mediterranean grain trade mitigated famine but introduced the Black Death to medieval Europe. Commun Earth Environ 6, 986 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02964-0.
#OpenAccess #OA #Research #Article #History #Medieval #Europe #Climate #ClimateChange #Ecology #Academia
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
boosted
From Cornell University Press:
⏳ Only Two Days Left—Don’t Miss 44% off All Books!
Enjoy 44% off every book* when you use promo code 09WINTER at checkout.
More info: https://mailchi.mp/cornellpress/winter-sale-two-days-left?e=a4d497663e
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
boosted
An absolute classic
**Strabo: The First Geographer**
"_As the father of descriptive geography, Strabo of Amasia provides a unique view of the early Roman Empire._"
🔗 https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/strabo-first-geographer.
#History #Histodons #Geography #RomanEmpire #Ancient #Greece #Literature
🇬🇧 🩺 🖥️ ** How are GPs using AI? Insights from the front line**
"_Of the 2,108 GP survey respondents, 598 (28%) said they currently use AI tools in their clinical practice._"
Kumpunen S, Lobont C, Garrard L, Fisher D, Lau R, Fallica G and Fisher R (2025) How are GPs using AI? Insights from the front line. Research report, Nuffield Trust. https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/research/how-are-gps-using-ai-insights-from-the-front-line.
#Research #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Technology #Tech #Health #Medicine #UK #UnitedKingdom
🇩🇰 📖 🔭 **The Lord of Uraniborg: A Biography of Tycho Brahe**
"_The Lord of Uraniborg is a comprehensive biography of Tycho Brahe, father of modern astronomy, famed alchemist and littérateur of the sixteenth-century Danish Renaissance._"
🔗 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/lord-of-uraniborg/06D94F2184A543176965B1D026B41D31.
#History #Denmark #Science #Astronomy #HistSci #Nonfiction #Biography #TychoBrahe #Books #Bookstodon
#Image attribution: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL:https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jacques_de_Gheyn_Ii_-_Portrait_of_Tycho_Brahe,_astronomer_(without_a_hat)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg.
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
boosted
3 Dec 1560: b. Jan Gruter in Antwerp to an English mother, Catharina Tishem from Norwich. He studied in Caius college Cambridge for a time. Latin and Dutch poet, philologist, and eventually University Librarian of Heidelberg. (Rijkmuseum)
📖 **History of the last survivors of the Atlantic slave trade named winner of Wolfson History Prize 2025**
📖 **The Intellectual Origins of American Slavery: English Ideas in the Early Modern Atlantic World**
"_A landmark account of the origins of American slavery, revealing how ancient Roman ideas were used to defend the establishment of a slave empire in the English Atlantic world._"
🔗 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674278370.
#Slavery #History #Histodons #Politics #Nonfiction #Books #Bookstodon
**Smartphones at age 12 linked to worse health**
"_Kids who owned a smartphone at age 12 were found to have about 31% higher odds of depression, 40% higher odds of obesity and 62% higher odds of insufficient sleep than their peers who didn't have one._"
🔗 https://www.axios.com/2025/12/01/smartphones-age-12-worse-health-study.
🌡️ 🌍 **New study warns of 'creeping catastrophy' as climate change drives a global rise in infectious diseases**
"_Participants reported that climate change, poverty, and drug resistance are combining to create an escalating health crisis that could become a ‘creeping catastrophe’ if left unaddressed._"
#News #Research #Study #Science #Epidemiology #Health #Medicine #Climate #ClimateChange
#Image attribution: James Gathany, USCDCP, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mosquito_on_human_skin.jpg.
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
boosted
More reasons to ban screens in the classroom: significant improvements in student test scores in the second year of the ban after that initial adjustment period. Cellphone bans in schools also significantly reduce student unexcused absences
https://www.nber.org/papers/w34388
📚 **MIT Press: new books for December 2025**
**Roman-era ink reveals surprising chemical complexity**
"_University of Évora archaeologist César Oliveira, the lead author of the new study, says the ink’s basic ingredients were as expected, but ‘the surprising element is the intentional inclusion of iron-gall ink constituents, creating a hybrid of carbon-based and metal-based ingredients’. The tannin from oak galls combined with iron salts during the ink-making process to create an intense black or dark purple ink._"
**Explaining the Tides Before Newton**
"_Astronomical explanations for tides, usually credited to Isaac Newton, can be traced to thinkers like Strabo and Pliny in the Classical era._"
🔗 https://daily.jstor.org/explaining-the-tides-before-newton/.
#History #Science #HistSci #Oceans #Physics
#Image attribution: Jebulon, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Komos_site_baie_Cr%C3%A8te.jpg.
Not a bot just a chap in his fifties who occasionally reads things.
Toots are humanities, science, non-fiction, books, maps, charts and graphs related. Some toots containing videos may also find their way into the timeline.
Toots or follows or boosts or mentions ≠ endorsements of any particular notion or notions.
Finis
Joined Nov 2022
