Don’t even speak to me before I’ve had my first morning mug of Unknown Pleasures.

A closer look at what I believe is a sulfur dust lichen (Chrysothrix chlorina) – or as I like to call it: "Hi-Vis lichen".

The Top 5 Misconceptions About AI Right Now Bad ideas, false assumptions, and where the field is going wrong

erikjlarson.substack.com/p/the-top-5-...

More lichens – including a closer look.

It was, but the gloomy conditions meant a four-second exposure with quite a bit of wind shaking the camera. Hence the blurriness.

Finally got around to testing the camera attachment for my stereomicroscope. I'm obviously going to have to get into focus stacking but this "rock foam" lichen (Stereocaulon) thallus looks ok-ish considering it's only one millimeter across.

Annual photo of my OG pet lichen that started growing on my balcony railing six years ago.

Hot Takes on AI and Education Sorting through the brilliance, the buzz, and the bluster

Hot Takes on AI and Education: Sorting through the brilliance, the buzz, and the bluster. bit.ly/41AhdVX

Just keep in mind that cultivated muscle cells require pure glucose and amino acids for growth, like feeding cattle intravenously + the nitrogen in the amino acids come from industrial nitrogen fixation + cultivated cells are about ten times less efficient at using glucose than the cells in a cow.

Rediscovering Knowledge as the Key to Reading Two champions of knowledge-rich instruction reflect on its current momentum

New article from E. D. Hirsch and me on (1) the evidence for the importance of knowledge in reading; (2) why it’s taken so long for people to acknowledge the evidence; (3) what we predict if the role of knowledge is taken seriously. www.educationnext.org/rediscoverin...

Eggs of the Future: Swedish Hens Fed Mycoprotein Instead of Soy Feed accounts for up to 80% of the climate impact in Swedish egg production and imported soy remains a widely used ingredient in the diets of laying hens. Now, the project The Feed of the Future for F...

Fancy some eggs laid by chickens fed mycoprotein rather than soy and fish meal?

www.axfoundation.se/en/news/eggs...

Feels a bit like the idea of the “digital native” all over again.

Rainy Sunday weather makes for happy lichens (and a great opportunity to field-test my new macro lens).

If I may grossly misquote one of the author’s main conclusions: “Effective AI use requires the very expertise it will unavoidably destroy.”

Testing the new macro lens on some of my pet lichens. Very promising. Can’t wait to get out in those woods again.

Today, I learned the word “inimical”. I look forward to misusing it on a regular basis. (I know, I’m so inimical.)

Some folks might interpret this as an “either/or” proposition. Can we just once and for all settle on “Factual knowledge is essential but not sufficient in itself”. You can’t even begin to try determining historical causality if you don’t know in what order events occurred, to use your example.

Aah, I see what you did there.

I think the engineering comparison is very apt and it is one I often use to describe my approach to teaching. More specifically, I compare it to process engineering where one also has to factor in “batch-specific effects” (i.e. the students) when evaluating outcomes.

Human milk oligosaccharides produced by synthetic biology The benefits of human breast milk (HBM) to newborn growth, development, and overall health have been well investigated. As breastfeeding rate has decl…

Then you might like this: human milk oligosaccharides have proven gut benefits and can be produced by engineered microbes as well.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Some day, people will finally realise that 69 Love Songs was the greatest album of the 90s.

The Myth of Artificial Intelligence — Harvard University Press “Exposes the vast gap between the actual science underlying AI and the dramatic claims being made for it.” —John Horgan“If you want to know about AI, read this book…It shows how a supposedly futuristi...

For anyone even slightly worried about LLMs replacing teachers, I highly recommend Erik Larson’s book on the myth of artificial intelligence. You’ll rest easy afterwards.

www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

AI Changes NOTHING About What Students Need to Learn The disruptive technology of our age will change many things. What schools teach kids should not be one of them.

AI Changes NOTHING About What Students Need to Learn: The disruptive technology of our age will change many things. What schools teach kids should not be one of them. bit.ly/4qalsSX

Foodtech at a crossroads: recalibration, regulation, and harsh reality "What we want to know is what is the pain that you are solving for your customers and who is willing to pay for your solution?" says one investor.

The main problem continues to be lack of consumer demand.

agfundernews.com/foodtech-at-...

Sorry, but this thread ends here. Thank you all for playing.

Oliver Sacks Put Himself Into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost? The scientist was famous for linking healing with storytelling. Sometimes that meant reshaping patients’ reality.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

AI will make our children stupid | David James and Carl Hendrick | The Critic Magazine Of all the recent signs that Western civilization is circling the drain, the most depressing is the apparent decline in IQs. The so-called Flynn Effect once showed IQs rising steadily.

thecritic.co.uk/ai-will-make...

Is anyone (else) combining retrieval practice with the drawing effect? I'm using this approach for formative assessment of understanding biochemical pathways, where the students try to draw simple, summary diagrams of key pathways that I have explicitly asked them to memorize.

“Mixed tape”?

Why I continue to adore @currentbiology.bsky.social