I accidentally got rid of my verification badge on linkedin a while ago and apparently you now have to download the app and then scan your ID or passport and give it to an American company?? thanks but no thanks
(Can't wait for the day I can not so accidentally get rid of linkedin)
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues.
Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).
Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.
Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
After #EASLCE2026, I think it’s time to update the ecocriticism and envlit list (and starter pack) 🌻
Should you be on it? Please respond to this post and I’ll add you
bsky.app/profile/did:...
After #EASLCE2026, I think it’s time to update the ecocriticism and envlit list (and starter pack) 🌻
Should you be on it? Please respond to this post and I’ll add you
bsky.app/profile/did:...
I want to respond with a funny "ANYBODY?" gif but the best fitting one is a certain creepy american filmmaker so... anybody??
Thank you!! Maybe I can give it online at one point 🫘🌱
A screen shows the title slide of a conference talk while a women stands to the side talking. The slide on the screen has botanical illustrations and reads "Flipping the parasite spectrum: Plant Humanities, meet Plant Ecophysiology". The woman has long black hear and is wearing a blue overall and glasses.
It has become my academic mission and passion to combine plant ecophysiology and the humanities. The @easlce.bsky.social conference this past week allowed me to look at parasitic plants through an ecocriticism lens and it was a blast! Now onto organizing ideas into manuscript and grant applications.
Sad about the end of the #EASLCE2026 in Utrecht? Those working on Nordic #Ecocritism & #EnvHum can put in a proposal for the ENSCAN workshop later this year. enscan.net/workshops/re...
(and I shouldn't forget a little shoutout to best conference pals @katiekung.bsky.social & @l-teixeiracosta.bsky.social 🎊)
If anybody has a place for an environmental humanities scholar working on seed saving and storytelling, do let me know! (7/7)
It was also a little bittersweet. These conferences are moments to come together and start planning the next meeting and projects, but I find myself saying no to more things than I want to with my postdoc ending soon. (6/7)
Powerpoint slide showing the title, author and conference info and a photo of a lush, green allotment garden with flowers, an apple tree, and a greenhouse
I’d also like to think that my own presentation, ‘Tending to small life: on biodiversity (loss), seed saving & storytelling’ was well received - even though I had to skip most of the ecocritical slides due to poor time management. 🌿 (5/7)
As for my own panel, the presentations about weeds, community & multispecies encounters in the garden spoke to each other & I truly enjoyed it. Many thanks to my co-panellists Alex Goodbody, Vitalija Povilaityte-Petri & Wendy Wuyts from Brussels Health Gardens, and Nelly Mäekivi & Riin Magnus (4/7)
for presenting their STS and historical research at an ecocriticism conference. It’s such a pleasure to chair a panel with inspiring research that clearly resonates with the audience as well. (3/7)
and the research presented of course.
I’m a little biased, but I especially enjoyed the panels on invasive species (that I chaired) and my own on gardens and gardening. Thanks to Katie Kung for having me as your chair again, and of course the other presenters, Vincent Bijman & Henry Strivens (2/7)
I was in Utrecht this week for the @easlce.bsky.social conference. I’m taking the weekend to recover but also want to take a moment to share how good it was: inspiring talks; meeting new friends and colleagues; seeing friends for the first time in years; sneaking away to have a coffee... (1/7)
Excellent(!) article by @katiekung.bsky.social on a really uncomfortable experience during her fieldwork that I imagine more will recognise. It certainly reminds me of some of the things I have seen. (Has anybody written about animals and rape culture in conservation work yet? Is it time?)
My old university NTNU in Trondheim is finally! recruiting a fully tenured associate professor in modern environmental history. This is a great opportunity for the right person. #envhist
JOB ALERT: Two 4.5 year postdoctoral positions to work on my Wellcome-funded project 'Conserving Global Health: Biodiversity Protection and the Prehistory of Planetary Health'. Please share widely!
CLOSING DATE: 23 April (the date on Jobs.ac.uk is apparently incorrect)
…I grew up with the awful Dutch version of this song (‘99) and had NO CLUE that wasn’t the original 🤯🍌
“AI products are best understood not as technologies of information […] but of labor management and the accelerated concentration of wealth.” My mantra and yours for the long fight ahead
Also file this under I am so done with AI 🤖
Soooo... I'm looking up books on a certain topic and found one that looks to me like it might be an AI pub. Cover doesn't make sense, no hits on the author, "independently published", author has another book out on a wildly diff topic.
Any other red flags I should look out for in the future?
(I'm only going to like this)
(I'm gonna be the change I wanna see in the world - say it and do it)
I love it but I've never heard it in my life
warms the heart
