Archive for cover
heading south [cover]
Posted in Books, pictures, Travel, University life with tags America, Bering Strait, cover, demographic history, ERC, EU, Europe, First Nations, genetic analysis, genomic history, headdress, indigeneous Americans, Latin America, natural selection, Nature, NSF, population genomics on June 4, 2026 by xi'an
brûler la terre, détruire la pierre…
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures with tags cover, ecocide, Geneva Conventions, hegemony, Israeli bombardments, Israeli government, Israeli military, Lebanon, Libé, Unesco World Heritage List, war crimes on May 16, 2026 by xi'an
Bayesian Workflow [cover]
Posted in Books, pictures, R, Statistics, University life with tags Aki Vehtari, Andrew Gelman, Bayesian inference, Bayesian statistics, Bayesian workflow, calibration checking, case studies, Chapman & Hall, computational complexity, cover, CRC Press, decision making, model building, model checking, not a book review, R, Richard McElreath, STAN, Statistical Modeling, statistical practice, workflow on April 25, 2026 by xi'an
पर्वत [cover]
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags पर्वत, comics, cover, Devanagari, Gorillaz, Hindi, India languages, indie rock, LP cover, new album, Sanskrit, virtual band, wikipedia on April 7, 2026 by xi'an
Nature tidbits [15 Jan 2026]
Posted in Books, pictures, Travel, University life with tags AI scare, black holes, cover, cybersecurity, encyclopedia, England, French Guiana, James Webb telescope, Jimmy Wales, Kourou, little red dots, LLM, Nature, prehistory, tortilla, wikipedia on March 13, 2026 by xi'an
Apart from that astronomical advance, Nature puts its focus on the 25th anniversary of Wikipedia. With a tribune bemoaning the insufficient investment of academics in the platform (with mentions of hypocrisy and betrayal). Which sounds rather unfair, since it requires an additional levy on research time, even though I did contribute to a few entries. And recognise the worth of most scientifics pages, as well as the parasitism by LLMs. And an interview of of Jimmy Wales’ about his Wikipedia memoir, Seven Rules of Trust. Kudos to his vision! He sounds rather optimistic about the chances of Wikipedia surviving the tsunAImi, but only if the users keep resorting (and indeed contributing) to the platform rather than accepting the LLM production at fa(r)ce value!
Other entries on
- LLMs suffering (!) from “anxiety, trauma, shame and post-traumatic stress disorder”, although the arXiv reporting the experiment is criticized by others for anthropomorphising the machines. The danger is more in them inducing real trauma in vulnerable (human) users!
- LLMs exhibiting aggressive behaviour (if trained accordingly)
- the oldest evidence on human controlled fires using pyrite (in SE England), 400,000 years ago
- the rise of academics being harassed (and not only in the US) and six recommendations for protecting our digital security (mentioning organisations such as Scholars at Risk Europe, Expert Voices Together, and Faculty First Responders)
- a “Where I work” picture of a food scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico flipping a tortilla, with fermented ingredients to improve health and combat malnutrition in poor communities
