Lav, Dinosaur Keeper (she/her)

@lavbackman.bsky.social

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Materials Engineer. I could describe myself as a bird, cat and book enthusiast, but I have many interests. My hobby is going down research rabbit holes and photographing wild things. I've been called a nerd, which I enjoy.

🏳️‍🌈 Happy Pride Month! 🏳️‍🌈

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Lav, Dinosaur Keeper (she/her)

It drives me nuts when people say we need to make sure poor people have access to AI. The entire schtick is focused on providing AI slop to the masses while ensuring the elites get real human professionals. Having a human teacher or doctor or lawyer cannot become a bespoke luxury for the wealthy.

Also known as “training your replacement.” 😩

Morehouse to be the first university to use virtual AI teaching assistantswww.axios.com The Atlanta HBCU will have AI teaching assistants this fall.

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Lav, Dinosaur Keeper (she/her)

One of the reasons TA work is sometimes (AND OFTEN NOT) repetitive lower-skilled tasks is bc these are training tasks for early career scholars. If we automate them and eliminate the positions associated with them, we are explicitly gutting the future of these fields.

Also known as “training your replacement.” 😩

Morehouse to be the first university to use virtual AI teaching assistantswww.axios.com The Atlanta HBCU will have AI teaching assistants this fall.

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Lav, Dinosaur Keeper (she/her)

Literally withholding food. What is wrong with these people?

The governors of a dozen Republican-led states — AL, AK, FL, GA, IA, MS, OK, SC, SD, TX, UT, WY — opted out of a new federal food assistance program, leaving about 9.5 million students without the aid this summer

Republican-led states are blocking summer food benefits for hungry familieswww.usatoday.com Money for food is especially tight for families in a dozen states where Republican lawmakers declined to accept federal food assistance.

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Lav, Dinosaur Keeper (she/her)

Degenerative AI

Google’s emissions are up 48% in 5 years. Microsoft’s are up 30% since 2020. Those soaring figures are being driven by mass investments in data centers to power AI tools. Generative AI is a climate disaster and data center expansion must be stopped.

Generative AI is a climate disasterdisconnect.blog Tech companies are abandoning emissions pledges to chase AI market share

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Lav, Dinosaur Keeper (she/her)

You'd think the Cedar Waxwing would have an edge in a dispute with a Red-eyed Vireo, but it turns out that vireos are both scrappy and sneaky. #birds 🌿

Stylized photo of the native plant called dwarf iris. 📸

Female cardinal examining the ground for seeds. 🪶

Playing around in #Lightroom with stylization of some of my pileated photos. 🪶

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Lav, Dinosaur Keeper (she/her)

Completely mind melted by how amazing this embroidery by peacocksandpinecones.co.uk is. Zoom in on the detail

Bluejay finally grabbing a peanut that I put out for it. 🪶

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Lav, Dinosaur Keeper (she/her)

Americans have a real problem with older people and the concept of aging. The culture is rife with ageism. It’s going to official bite us in the ass if we don’t address it. Wow.

Bluejay showing off its very blue butt feathers. 🪶

John Cena stands on a table: "We have caught and compromised to a permanent end, the Tory Government"

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Lav, Dinosaur Keeper (she/her)

Marlon Brando was a fuckin amateur. Randy Quaid played a drunk, paranoid weirdo in ID4 (1996) and still hasn't broken character.

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Lav, Dinosaur Keeper (she/her)

Instead of accidentally blowing off a finger or two today and scaring dogs in the meantime, how about you let the Universe deliver some fireworks to you? I'll even explain the colors! badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/fireworks-... 🔭 🧪

Fireworks on a cosmic scale: The curious case of the gas shell around CI Cambadastronomy.beehiiv.com A professional/amateur collaboration finds a previously unknown nebula. It’s weird, and gorgeous.

*reads news* "Computer. Arch!"

Re-reading Caliban's War, and boy, is Avasarala a curmudgeonly delight.

Randomness can sometimes look like intelligence. I cannot tell you how many games we have played of "Cards Against Humanity" where "Rando", the player whose entries were always randomly picked, would win--even winning the "haiku" round a few times (pick 3 cards and organize them into a 3-line poem).

Back in the IRC days of NaNoWriMo, the guy who ran it had a chatbot program named Timmy Timmy pulled random words or phrases from the chatters and would chat with us and also write his own 50k novels Everything he said was utter random nonsense that would randomly make sense TIMMY was a proto-AI

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Lav, Dinosaur Keeper (she/her)

Reply to

John Scalzi

It's why I hate using "AI" to describe these algorithms. They aren't AI, they're autocomplete with delusions of grandeur.

Opportunistic titmouse going for the peanuts I set out for the bluejay. 🪶

Happy #WoodpeckerWednesday, which is also a mini-Friday! 🪶

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Lav, Dinosaur Keeper (she/her)

Perfectly adapted for walking on lily pads, the bird to foot ratio of this Comb-Crested Jacana takes some beating. #nature #birds #wildlife #naturephotography

👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

this entire crusade against diversity in hiring and admissions is based on the supposition that all white men are necessarily more qualified than any nonwhite person or woman who might be considered for the job. like, this lawsuit more or less states that outright.

Lawsuit: Northwestern’s law school is biased against White men in hiringwww.washingtonpost.com The lawsuit, filed by a prominent attorney, alleges the university’s law school gives hiring preference to women and people of color.

Ok, so literally a minute after I posted the below, this happened. I probably should have bought a lottery ticket and complained about never winning anything. 🪶

A bluejay would have been a great photo for Corvid Tuesday. Alas, I missed 3 opportunities to get a photo, despite putting peanuts out. Here is a titmouse enjoying said nuts. 🪶

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Lav, Dinosaur Keeper (she/her)

I kinda feel like now that the Supreme Court has declared it legal for a president to straight-up murder people they don't like, it's probably even more important to not elect people who seem extremely inclined to murder people they don't like

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Lav, Dinosaur Keeper (she/her)

The Supremes ruled that a POTUS has immunity for actions directly related to his office, but not personal actions (without defining what those are) so Trump is trying to erase his felony convictions by claiming that paying porn stars hush money for sex is “official POTUS business,” as expected

Trump Moves to Overturn Manhattan Conviction, Citing Immunity Decisionwww.nytimes.com Former President Donald J. Trump took the action hours after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling granted him immunity for official acts committed in office.

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Lav, Dinosaur Keeper (she/her)

Steve Bannon is in prison for contempt and Rudy Giuliani just lost his N.Y. law license, but John Roberts insists that invisible ink in the Constitution prevents Donald Trump, the ringleader, from facing charges for virtually anything that Trump can claim was an official act.

If you see this, post a photo without explanation.

If you see this post a photo without explanation

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Lav, Dinosaur Keeper (she/her)

Hey! It's the last day of Pride Month! And what a Pride Month it has been! *Pause for disassociation* Anyway, before the calendar flips, pick up some books by trans authors!

On that note: Trans authors (I mean authors who are trans, NOT cis people who write about trans people), drop your book links here and I'll try to repost as many as I can throughout the day. Cis people: Repost trans authors' book links. Cis people who want to complain about being excluded: gtfo