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
🇺🇸 **The protectors of our industries**
Gillam, Bernhard, Artist. The protectors of our industries / Gillam ; Mayer Merkel & Ottmann lith., N.Y. United States, 1883. N.Y.: Published by Keppler & Schwarzmann, February 7. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/94507245/.
#History #Puck #Cartoon #Capitalists #Financiers #Industry #Manufacturing #USA #US #UnitedStates #C19th #19thCentury
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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Eew. This is a great example of why I ditched Audible years ago and now get audiobooks from Chirp.
Even Audiobooks Aren't Safe From AI Slop
... And as an added incentive, it's offering better royalty rates to authors who use Audible's AI to create an audiobook exclusively for the platform, Bloomberg reported.
#Books #AI #Audiobooks #Audible #Amazon #AmReading
https://futurism.com/audible-announces-ai-narrators
🇦🇪 🌡️ **UAE hits record May temperature of 51.6C**
“_Scientists have shown that recurring heatwaves are a clear marker of global warming and that these heatwaves are set to become more frequent, longer and more intense._”
🔗 https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250524-uae-hits-record-may-temperature-of-51-6c.
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #GlobalWarming #UAE @climatechange
🇺🇸 “Private-managers now influence the U.S. economy and politics in ways few Americans understand”
#Nonfiction #Books #Bookstodon #Economy #Politics #USPol #USA #US #UnitedStates @bookstodon
Four Books Sound the Alarm About the Power of Private Equity https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/four-books-sound-the-alarm-about-the-power-of-pr...
🇺🇸 **15 Times U.S. Presidents Defied the Constitution (and Got Away With It)**
🔗 https://historycollection.com/15-times-u-s-presidents-defied-the-constitution-and-got-away-with-it/.
#History #Histodons #USA #US #UnitedStates #Politics #USPol #Constitution @histodons
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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#SundayReads — Katherine Harvey investigates the story of Old Tom Parr (died 1635), who claimed to have lived to 152, and the fraudulent longevity business that became his namesake in the 19th century: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-old-old-very-old-man/
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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Posting a social media disclaimer won't stop AI from using your data. This will | BBC Science Focus Magazine
https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/social-media-disclaimer-stop-ai-using-data-copypasta?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into SCIENCEFOCUS.COM @sciencefocus-com-sciencefocus
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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Are you interested in populism? → L. Jacobs, C. Close, and J. Pilet. “The Angry Voter? The Role of Emotions in Voting for the Radical Left and Right at the 2019 Belgian Elections”. In: International Political Science Review (Feb. 2024), p. 01925121231224524.
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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Brilliant essay -- "The Copilot Delusion" -- on how "AI" is ruining so much, programming in this case.
https://deplet.ing/the-copilot-delusion/
"We’re building a world where that curiosity gets lobotomized at the door."
**Medieval genomes from eastern Iberia illuminate the role of Morisco mass deportations in dismantling a long-standing genetic bridge with North Africa**
“_For the first time, we also demonstrate the persistence of North African ancestry in a Christian cemetery until the seventeenth century, in addition to evidence of slave trafficking from North Africa._”
Oteo-Garcia, G., Silva, M., Foody, M.G.B. et al. Medieval genomes from eastern Iberia illuminate the role of Morisco mass deportations in dismantling a long-standing genetic bridge with North Africa. Genome Biol 26, 108 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-025-03570-1.
#OpenAccess #OA #Research #Biology #Science #Archaeology #Archaeodons #Genetics #Genomes #History #Medieval #Iberia #Academia #Academics @science @archaeodons
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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Elon Musk called empathy a “weakness” of Western civilization. But philosophers argue the opposite: empathy is a hard-won form of knowledge — and essential for understanding others and making informed decisions https://buff.ly/WTS28lC
I am considering changing my Mastodon server. For those that know the type of content that I post, what do you advise would be the best instance for me?
Is it difficult for one to self-host a Mastodon account?
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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Turns out, boredom may have some advantages. @ScienceAlert explains in more detail, including how we all need to “embrace the pause.”
**Vulgarity in online discourse around the English-speaking world**
“_Australians might well be disheartened when they discover that they are not the top users of profanity among English-speaking countries. Their deep national attachment to the vernacular dates back to the original mix of slang, dialect and underworld jargon that gave rise to Australian English — fueled by anti-authoritarian sentiment, the colloquial part of the language expanded to become the feature that best distinguished the established citizen (or old chum) from the stranger (or new chum).”
Schweinberger, M. and Burridge, K. (2025) 'Vulgarity in online discourse around the English-speaking world,' Lingua, 321, p. 103946. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103946.
#OpenAccess #OA #Article #DOI #Linguistics #Swearing #Vulgarity #StrongLanguage #English #Language #Academia #Academics @linguistics
💻 **AI could account for nearly half of datacentre power usage ‘by end of year’**
“_The IEA estimates that all data centres – excluding mining for cryptocurrencies – consumed 415 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity last year. De Vries-Gao argues in his research that AI could already account for 20% of that total._”
🔗 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/22/ai-data-centre-power-consumption.
#AI #Artificialintelligence #Computing #Energy #Technology #Tech @ai
📚 **Close Reading Is For Everyone**
Dan Sinykin
_“Close reading is the practice of paying attention to a passage of text to account for at least one aspect of its meaning and to make an argument about how it works.”_
🔗 https://defector.com/close-reading-is-for-everyone.
#Reading #Books #Bookstodon #Arts #Culture #Literature @bookstodon @literature
http://www.memeorandum.com/250524/p9#a250524p9
**Word origins: fascism / fascist**
Dave Wilton
“It comes from the Latin _fasces_, a symbol of power and authority in the Roman Empire consisting of a sheaf of rods bound around an ax.”
🔗 https://wordorigins-org.ghost.io/fascism-fascist/.
#English #Language #Words #Etymology #Linguistics #Fascism #Fascist @linguistics
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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As part of my job, I have to evaluate AI tools. Part of that evaluation is pushing them to their limit. Today, I realised Cursor has a setting where if you critique its work enough, it goes silent and refuses to apply changes.
It's a moody junior dev whose overconfidence and bravado quickly turn to surly silence when their work is questioned. The happy, helpful (and frequently wrong) AI is gone, replaced by a useless one with a bad attitude that won't make it past the next performance review.
Christ. I'm used to managing engineers, but I draw the line at managing AIs.
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
