Dr Ben Britton

Dr Ben Britton

@bmatb.bsky.social

941

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Dyslexic atomic sorcery / Assoc Prof, UBC / has too many hills to die on. Materials and Manufacturing Engineering, Clean Tech, Academia, EDI - he/him and quite gay. Vancouver, BC (work, inc. member of Senate @ UBC & Imperial College London, views own)

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This got cross tagged in the climate adaption feed I subscribe to. 1 - not really with LLMs. 2 - in the climate space, I doubt the models are retrained fast enough for some of the current trends/risks. 3 - LLMs that are sufficiently 'useful' have huge climate impacts that are not considered well.

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Elsevier,Wiley,Taylor&Francis,Springer Nature&SAGE revenues are in billions. Academics do almost all work: research, writing, refereeing & editing journals. Publishers don't pay us for work; they then sell journal access to the universities that fund the research & editorial labor @ exorbitant cost🧪

Academic journals are a lucrative scam – and we’re determined to change that | Arash Abizadehwww.theguardian.com Giant publishers are bleeding universities dry, with profit margins that rival Google’s. So we decided to start our own, says academic Arash Abizadeh

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but, but… 💫prestige💫 and 💫service💫 💀

Elsevier,Wiley,Taylor&Francis,Springer Nature&SAGE revenues are in billions. Academics do almost all work: research, writing, refereeing & editing journals. Publishers don't pay us for work; they then sell journal access to the universities that fund the research & editorial labor @ exorbitant cost🧪

Academic journals are a lucrative scam – and we’re determined to change that | Arash Abizadehwww.theguardian.com Giant publishers are bleeding universities dry, with profit margins that rival Google’s. So we decided to start our own, says academic Arash Abizadeh

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Nice.

Microsoft DEI Lead Blasts Company in Internal Email After Team Is Reportedly Laid Off - IGNwww.ign.com Microsoft is reportedly shuttering a major diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) team, according to an email sent by the team's leader to a significant number of Microsoft staff last week, in which t...

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also and I feel like I buried the lede here: it calls for the people who CREATE queer media to be imprisoned. That'd be people like me. Or any other queer creator you love. Any queen who's been on drag race. Chappel Roan. Janelle Monae. Anyone who's made a piece of queer media. Imprisoned.

Psst: Project 2025 is terrifying for a lot of reasons but also because on page 5 it calls for teachers and librarians who grant access to books that are maligned as pornography (which just means anything LGBTQ) to be registered as sex offenders. Pass it on.

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The book version of this is worth reading - if you haven’t already. amp.theguardian.com/books/2018/m...

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber review – the myth of capitalist efficiency | Society books | The Guardianamp.theguardian.com Is your job one that makes the world a better place? If not, it is probably bullshit, part of a system that is keeping us under control

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Middle manager of ACADEMICS- effectively herding of high maintenance squirrels

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And they do that under time pressure at a junction where several often ill-coordinated departments meet—one (or more) academic depts, the institution's central research office, finance and HR depts and the pre- or post-award admin section of one out of any number of idiosyncratic research funders.

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Isn't it odd how little-recognized this side of being an academic is? In research admin, it's a rare day when troubleshooting a cock-up—could be as simple as a budget overspend—not to suspect then confirm that 90% of the answer is that academics aren't trained in this so must always extemporize.

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Hahaha…was just talking to two academics about exactly this! You’re absolutely right, noting I never wanted to be a middle manager in *any* endeavour…hence I moved to another job where I didn’t have to do that.

I 'really enjoy' how much being an academic is basically being a middle manager in the research/admin endeavor.

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In other words, starting in 2016, the Trump campaign directed a stream of radicalizing propaganda at the Crooks family, when Thomas Crooks was about 12 years old. Eight years later, Thomas Crooks attempted to assassinate Trump, killing one man in the process. www.channel4.com/news/reveale...

REVEALED: Trump campaign secret data on gunman’s familywww.channel4.com The family of Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Crooks was among millions of voters profiled by Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign

It's funny when you google: "should my dog be doing this new thing‽" And you rock up on Reddit with user57829 responding to someone with the same question: "Are you feeding your dog properly? Are you giving it enough walks? Attention? Love? Because..." Yes I am, thank you for judging me user57829

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if you're still posting on twitter, this is what you're helping him do.

"Elon Musk has said he plans to commit around $45 million a month to a new super political-action committee backing former President Donald Trump’s presidential run, according to people familiar with the matter." www.wsj.com/politics/ele...

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Daniel Craig playing an entire geology department himself:

It's 'curious' what news cycle storms around twitter vs here. There is some drama from my institution, where someone said something ugh (on twitter) and it was picked up by the RW press and now is circling. On here - there is basically no mention of it 👀

Trying to do this west coast thing properly...

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Fellow Canadians: what's happening in the states is terrifying & there's not much we can do about it But you know what we CAN do? Fight against the rise of the far right in our own country Here's a list of things you can do with relatively little energy/time/money 1/?

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Once again I’m here to say that @support.bsky.team needs to give people the opportunity to lock their accounts, or else we’re just going to constantly lose people to bad-faith pile-ons and then the whole place goes tumbleweeds.

Odd - but old feeling - scrolling through the timeline and seeing the aftermath of something very bad happening, and trying to decide if you think it will just appear if you scroll harder - or - if you go and find it...

I used to be able to sit anonymously and eat my lunch at work. And then I got a dog, who is infamous on campus now...

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AI queries such as ChatGPT use almost 10 times the energy as traditional search engines #energysky www.epri.com/research/pro...

EPRI Homewww.epri.com The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) conducts research, development, and demonstration projects for the benefit of the public in the United States and internationally. As an independent, nonpr...

Lost is 20 years old, sighs. Also I still haven't finished it - less sighs.

Dear Mr. President: There are too few episodes in TV seasons nowadays. Please add more. I am NOT a crackpot. AKA, in defense of "filler" episodes:

TV Seasons Have Gotten Shorter. That Doesn’t Mean They’re Betterwww.rollingstone.com The trend toward short seasons of television is robbing us of some of the joys of watching our favorite shows, says TV critic Alan Sepinwall

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I’d vote for someone who can’t finish a sentence over someone who should be serving one.

The passive aggression of one of my neighbors in the morning is 'great'.

Me yesterday to a friend - "the worst of my jetlag is over." Me at 4 am not able to fall back asleep 😵

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Wes Streeting is a disgrace to queer solidarity and to evidence-based policymaking. That he is Health Secretary will lead to more suicides among trans youth in the UK.