Sylvain Miermont @miermont@qoto.org

Happy International Day of Women and Girls in Science 📢

👩‍🔬The world needs women
👩🏽‍🎓Science needs women
👩🏿‍🦱The SDGs need women
🧕#Biodiversity needs women

Today & every day together for greater diversity in science! 🌎

#IDWGIS #ForNature #WomenInScience

Once AI works out how to do hands then this deepfake crap is going to be one of the biggest problems the world has faced. It has the potential to be extremely damaging and we are sleepwalking into a nightmare with this. I hate everything about it.

Hey, today is XML’s 25th birthday. Back in the day I wrote a lot about it: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/Technology/XML/

Probably the most important: Neither XML’s father nor inventor: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2008/11/22/Not-the-Inventor-of-XML

Amusing: “XML People”: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2008/02/10/XML-People

Quoting from “What XML Means” (2007): “XML is the first successful instance of a data packaging system that is simultaneously (human) language-independent and (computer) system-independent. It’s the existence proof that such a thing can be built and be useful.”

BREAKING: Slovakian heat pump market almost doubles in 2022.

Air to water systems installation rates grew by a whopping 142%.

This is remarkable in a country where about 90% of homes heat with fossil gas.

The 10 EU #CrossBorderRail pilot projects:
- were proposed by the rail industry and national governments, not the Commission

- if something’s missing no one proposed it

- they are not a complete plan to fix international rail in EU

- the list isn’t exclusive as there are many other ongoing projects

- there’s no extra EU money for any of them, but there is EU money for railways in general

- looking systematically at individual connections makes sense, so these pilots are a small step forward

Friendly reminder that everything you ever print on a label maker is transferred from an ink tape that is left in the cartridge, so when you finish a cartridge you can take a walk down memory lane of all the projects you worked on.

And then make sure to handle this duplicate of all your labels accordingly.

Thousands of archivists and librarians over here gesticulating *yes, finally, we've been saying this for a decade+*

#ChatGPT as #ConMan:

"People love ChatGPT. People have confidence in it.

"They want to use it for everything—legal work, medical advice, term papers, or even writing Substack columns. "

* give people what they ask for

* don’t worry whether it’s true or not—ethical scruples aren’t part of your job

* If you get caught in a lie, serve up another lie

* always act sure of yourself— your confidence seals the deal

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/introducing-the-slickest-con-artist

(h/t @kottke)

"You are helping by cycling when you can"
British WWII propaganda poster
ca. 1940

Still true today

Good reminder from @Nature "Don't wait for #COP28"

Turns out it's more than OK to push for more ambitious climate policy between COPs, and on days not called "#EarthDay".

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00039-8

Okay, so here's my specific bone to pick with brand marketing on social media.

If you're a brand, you're a brand.

If you're a personality, you're a personality.

I don't want to know if Subway is having a bad day -- they're not.

I don't want to know about your fake aspirational lifestyle that doesn't even exist.

Stop being fake. We know who you are.

@Meyerweb The scale of the destruction is hard to grasp. Arte did a short video last year. Starting at the 2:18 mark, you can see in the background the #lignite power plants that are burning all this extracted carbon and putting it directly into the atmosphere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7xRkyTwr5A

People don't understand how hope works. It doesn't come from downplaying scary truths or from false optimism. Everyone sees through that. Instead, it comes from hard work, from solidarity, from courage. Hope comes from joining together and doing something. Hope comes from action.

Frequent flying is a BIG problem in academia! Let’s get our #CommonDestination guide in the hands of scientists who can lead the way in ditching flights! Thanks @JKSteinberger@twitter.com for spreading the word! #ScienceStayGrounded @DoctorAnanas@twitter.com @RenovateEurope@twitter.com @Renovate_CH@twitter.com @SanjaHakala@twitter.com

Contrary to the western individualist, reductionistic worldview, some problems are easier to solve when you bundle them together than when you tackle them in isolation.

After all the boundaries between sub-systems are in our minds not in the systems themselves.

It's a #WholeSystems thing.
It's a #Multisolving thing.