arbitraryeffect.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Amen

submitted 16 hours ago • 1 comment

Gonna pre-order through my local indie bookseller for sure

submitted 21 hours ago • 5 comments

Dalsh*t seems to be an avid reader of FBS, but he never learns to attribute credit. cen.acs.org/people/Russi... Original reporting: forbetterscience.com/2025/02/21/s...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Here is a better product idea. A small, unobtrusive device, able to rest in one's pocket or on one's desk, that will detect Jony's bugging devices and interfere with their operation, rendering cameras/mikes useless. Naturally, my product will warn the user that they are about to be surveilled.

submitted 18 hours ago • 0 comments

The brilliant concept here is "finding a way to get users to consent to constant tracking and recording so their data can be sold to advertisers, collection agencies, scammers, and the government." It will provide negative value to every single person who owns one.

submitted 1 day ago • 30 comments

Good cover @economist.com

submitted 20 hours ago • 11 comments

Big Lead actually. Same group, but 4 periods down. "Ethyl" comes from tetraethyllead (TEL), an anti-knock compound pioneered by GM and Esso in the 1920s and still used in avgas. They marketed TEL through Ethyl corp, as GM were afraid of liability. Yes, they did try to fight regulation. #ChemSky

submitted 19 hours ago • 0 comments

Journals are getting more comfortable acknowledging the contributions of PubPeer contributors in retraction notices. Paper originally flagged by ImageTwin's team. pubpeer.com/publications...

submitted 21 hours ago • 0 comments

This is absolutely terrible news. With the shifting regulatory climate (i.e., antivax ratfuckery), Moderna has withdrawn their application for their eagerly anticipated COVID-flu combo vaccine. This vaccine offered better protection than getting each shot separately. h/t @merz.bsky.social

submitted 1 day ago • 390 comments

Nice news story in @nature.com (featuring @ioanaacristea.bsky.social) from an even more great paper in @plosbiology.org... Worth a read.

submitted 20 hours ago • 0 comments

Hi. You know how in America you’re basically required to own a car? The car ownership-insurance-industrial complex likes it that way. youtu.be/XTCPYJ29KCQ

submitted 1 day ago • 19 comments

Some of the CDC's main channels for communicating urgent health information to the public have gone silent.

submitted 2 days ago • 967 comments

At last, CNRS takes action to sanction Spadavecchia - after years of criticising the whistleblower. www.lemonde.fr/sciences/art...

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

NEW: Dozens of staffers walked out of Jay Bhattacharya’s first town hall event on Monday after the NIH director said he believed the lab leak conspiracy theory. We got video. www.importantcontext.news/p/i-believe-...

submitted 3 days ago • 46 comments

F.D.A. Poised to Restrict Access to Covid Vaccines Agency leaders said there was evidence to justify approval ONLY for older people and those with medical conditions. Many others may not be able to get the shots. (NYT) Unless you are over 65 or at high risk...you may be screwed.

submitted 2 days ago • 84 comments

"'"I do use AI for background at times but always check out the material first. This time, I did not and I can't believe I missed it because it's so obvious. No excuses,'" Buscaglia said." 1)THIS IS NOT BACKGROUND! THIS IS MAKING UP ENTIRE BOOKS! WHICH ARE THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE ARTICLE!

submitted 2 days ago • 25 comments

No…next question. There is a clear reason so few other countries have the research infrastructure our country does.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

This is your friendly reminder that generative A.I. is not "intelligence" and it's not the "wave of the future." No. Large Language Models (LLMs) are super-expensive bullshit machines that suck up a fuck-ton of stolen data, including private info and creative content, in order to badly mimic it.

submitted 3 days ago • 55 comments

Everyday it becomes clearer to me that a comparative higher ed scholar needs to explain why Europe/Canada/Australia/Aotearoa will not just take on thousands of US scholars. I have to share multiple articles to help others understand this because we don't have a comprehensive essay to point to.

submitted 18 days ago • 26 comments

A wide-angle look at the ugly principles behind the current attacks on US science:

submitted 16 days ago • 2 comments

“Make no mistake, if Congress enacts the President’s skinny budget, the consequences for the future of our nation would be catastrophic,” Sudip Parikh, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, says in a statement released on May 2. cen.acs.org/policy/resea... #chemsky🧪

submitted 15 days ago • 9 comments

I really hate how the voice of the federal government has gone from "boring Fedspeak" to "crazy MAGA adverb clauses." It's just awful.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

TL;DR: AI is so much dumber than you think, aka it is not actually „intelligent“ at all, it can‘t remotely do what most people seem to think it already can, it‘s just good at faking human „thinking“. There is no ghost in the machine. Please stop falling for the grift.

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

Every Friday.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

theconversation.com/vaccination-...

submitted 5 days ago • 88 comments

The top economics journal in the world nearly published an article that, to all appearances, is 100% bullshit. It claimed that AI accelerates scientific discovery. An MIT PhD student appears to have used generative AI to fabricate the whole thing, data and all.

submitted 6 days ago • 94 comments

Yup. Also, when every site starts filling up with junk novels, it makes it less likely for people to take a chance on authors they’ve never heard of or haven’t tried, and people eventually stop trying. A giant crapton of bad books ARE a threat to good books.

submitted 7 days ago • 25 comments

Almost everywhere you look - soil, oceans, forests, stoves, other tech - the carbon credits market is fatally compromised by junk science, over-claiming and imperatives of profit. The "market" (a term used as code for financialisation and economic power) is not going to solve our existential crisis.

submitted 7 days ago • 26 comments

In 2023, the University of Córdoba in Spain suspended a chemist for claiming on his papers he was affiliated with Saudi & Russian Universities. Now, the Kremlin has awarded him an honorary professorship. My latest for @cenmag.bsky.social: cen.acs.org/people/Russi... @manuelansede.bsky.social

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

Are you excited about the possibilities of clean hydrogen? Let me cure that for you.

submitted 7 days ago • 14 comments

National Natural Science Foundation of China is not getting their money’s worth. pubpeer.com/publications...

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

That's because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lies constantly and fluidly, about all sorts of subjects. He is flagrantly, relentlessly dishonest, as his behavior for years shows beyond doubt.

submitted 8 days ago • 3 comments

In talks and in our online course thebullshitmachines.com, I worry about how the extremely high cost of training LLMs concentrates power in the hands of the very few to shape our information environment. Grok going off the rails with talk of White Genocide is a striking example.

submitted 8 days ago • 13 comments

Once a long time ago, I quietly refused to sit at a table with Charles Murray. Someone scolded me that this was an illiberal position antithetical to the spirit of free debate. In retrospect, I feel pretty strongly that events have proved me right

submitted 7 days ago • 17 comments

I’m headed to Capitol Hill today with @asbmb.bsky.social to talk to lawmakers about the value of basic science. The asks for FY26: 1️⃣ $51.3B for NIH 2️⃣ $9.9B for NSF 3️⃣ $9.5B for DOE Office of Science #ScienceServesUsAll #ASBMBAdvocates

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

DeLAURO: Are you planning to break the law by impounding appropriated funds? RFK Jr: If you appropriate the funds, I'm going to spend them D: We have! You're cutting the NIH by $18b. Congress appropriated those funds. How can you justify cutting billions from the biomedical research budget?

submitted 8 days ago • 744 comments

Collins mentioned the indirect cap. Indirect costs cover things like rent, lab equipment, supplies, computers, etc. Salaries are generally lower than indirect costs in research. But Bobby Brain Worm doesn't understand it.

submitted 8 days ago • 4 comments

This is bleak reading

submitted 9 days ago • 1598 comments

Waltham, Massachusetts. Nowhere is safe, folks

submitted 9 days ago • 2 comments

In addition to sharing beautiful images from her science, the Harvard scientist Trump jailed, Kseniia Petrova, has this to say about doing science in Russia and the US. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/o...

submitted 9 days ago • 8 comments

An extraordinary story about how scientists in the US are afraid to speak up as the entire science research ecosystem is demolished at the hands of the Republican administration. Without our voices, how will people understand the scope and generational consequences of the ongoing destruction?

submitted 9 days ago • 4 comments

That's why the median income is much better metric than the average. Understanding the wealth gap is crucial in class solidarity.

submitted 9 days ago • 10 comments

America is now an encompassing proof aiming to confirm, via data, that the political left has always known more about industry, innovation and what’s essential to American independence, individualism and ingenuity than the right—and that the right knows only how to use government to cheat and steal.

submitted 10 days ago • 57 comments

I sent this email to Dr. Bhattacharya about the 2007 NIH Director's Pioneer Award recipient who used linked databases to try to understand the causes on the increases in the incidence of autism on May 7th. 1/2

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment