@sundogplanets but I missed the opportunity to cite Jussieu's work from the 18th ...

@sundogplanets would be Claude Bernard's work from 1856.

La dernière fois qu'un président américain avait envoyé la garde nationale maintenir l'ordre dans un état fédéré contre l'avis du gouverneur de cet état, c'était Lyndon Johnson en 1965 à l'époque des luttes pour les droits civiques (des noirs), le gouverneur Wallace était ségrégationnistes.

Le président Eisenhower avait fait intervenir en 1957 l'armée fédérale (des parachutistes) pour faire respecter une décision de la Cour suprême, que des autorités locales ségrégationnistes refusaient d'appliquer.

Il me semble donc très significatif que Trump, dont le background et les amitiés (oui, je sais qu'il s'est brouillé avec Musk) sont plutôt du côté raciste, envisage de faire intervenir la troupe en soutien de forces de police pratiquant des enlèvements de personnes "pas assez blanches".

(Je précise, car cela fait n fois que l'on me mentionne des déploiements de la garde nationale en maintien de l'ordre après 1965 : je parle ici de déploiements décidés par le pouvoir fédéral contre le gouverneur de l'état fédéré.

Kent State 1970, les émeutes de Rodney King 1992 etc… sont hors sujet.)

A nice preprint studying the potential of LLMs to extract data from scientific articles. Not surprisingly it makes errors (20-85%). 😬

Exploring the Potential of Large Language Models in Differential Abundance Analysis
Roberto Franco-Alba, Irina Goryanin, Igor Goryanin
https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.06.04.657820

@pierrepo

Just a reminder that Nobel-prize winning PCR (1983), used in basically any genetic tech today, was only possible because of an extremophile bacterium discovered in 1964 in Yellowstone funded by a small ~$80k NSF grant with no obvious application at the time. The value of basic #science cannot be predicted and often is realized decades after it's done.

How a discovery in Yellowstone National Park led to the development of PCR - Richmond Scientific
https://www.richmondscientific.com/how-a-discovery-in-yellowstone-national-park-led-to-the-renowned-technique-of-dna-amplification-pcr

I will be going to London, UK and Paris, France from mid-to-end of August to speak at a conference and do some research for my PhD:

Does anyone have good suggestions for queer archives, design, or textile-related things to check out in and around those cities?

#FiberArts #Textiles #eTextiles #Makers #DesignResearch #InclusiveDesign #A11y #2SLGBTQ #LGBT #Queer

@vincentxavier what could possibly go wrong...

The FDA rolls out its own AI to speed up clinical reviews and scientific evaluations

https://www.engadget.com/ai/the-fda-rolls-out-its-own-ai-to-speed-up-clinical-reviews-and-scientific-evaluations-120052323.html?src=rss

@lemonde ça serait bien de faire les update des titres. Très souvent, comme ici, le lien ne conduit pas à une dépêche liée au titre (pont de Crimée versus soutient de la Corée du Nord)

The internet was a mistake.

Our modems used to scream to warn us.

The initiative calling for the ban of "conversion therapy" in the European Union has collected enough signatures (around 1 180 000 as I type) 🎉

But you still have till the end of today, May 17, to add your signature and support putting an end to hateful practices that have been described as torture by the United Nations.

Wouldn't that be a suitable thing to do on the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia?

https://eci.ec.europa.eu/043/public/

#IDAHOT2025 🌈

Trump prend des sanctions contre la CPI (Cour Pénale Internationale) en gelant des comptes bancaires et en bloquant les comptes mails. Avec la collaboration de Microsoft.

Notez bien ce qui vient de se passer : Une organisation qui n'est pas de droit américain, non située sur le sol des USA, vient de voir ses services en ligne bloqués parce qu'ils déplaisent au gouvernement américain.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/trumps-sanctions-icc-prosecutor-halted-tribunals-work-121824057
(merci à @zgou)

The value of institutional memory

In 1978, a dredging gang working for British Waterways was struggling with a problem. They were trying to clear obstacles on the Chesterfield Canal so they could stabilise a concrete wall — not an easy day’s work. But what really had them stumped was a heavy iron chain on the canal bottom. After various attempts, they hooked the chain to their dredger. That did

https://timharford.com/2025/05/the-value-of-institutional-memory/

#UndercoverEconomist

Interdiction des pratiques de conversion dans l’Union européenne

From: @iLangle
https://piaille.fr/@iLangle/114517650562329032

#Terraforming #climatechange #ausgov #politas #classwar

Faut obligatoirement avoir 4 doigts, ou alors on peut postuler avec 5 doigts aussi ?

👆🏻 "Bonjour,
J'envisage la reprise du code source d'un vieux logiciel (1972-2016) qui n'est plus commercialisé aujourd'hui.
Je compte faire cela en démarche libre ou open source.
Problème : tout ceci va avoir un coût : rachat des droits, passation technique, développements minimaux par rapport a la réglementation actuelle, améliorations cosmétiques et documentations techniques. Je travaille à budgéter ces coûts.
En parallèle, j'aurais besoin de quelques conseils par rapport au modèle économique, notamment concernant le choix du type de licence et les possibilités de financement."
Le repouet dépoussière et fait vivre le travail des anciens!
:boost_request:

A PhD in paper mills? https://retractionwatch.com/2025/05/01/phd-paper-mills-wiley-leiden-springer-nature/

This #RetractionWatch piece is about a PhD position we have at @cwts for a project on paper mills.

For more info, see https://www.leidenmadtrics.nl/articles/advancing-our-understanding-of-systematic-manipulation-paper-mills-wiley-cwts-partnership.

Deadline for applying is May 13.

@stephenpinfield @catmacOA

When I was a PhD student, I attended a talk by the late Robin Milner where he said two things that have stuck with me.

The first, I repeat quite often. He argued that credit for an invention did not belong to the first person to invent something but to the first person to explain it well enough that no one needed to invent it again. His first historical example was Leibniz publishing calculus and then Newton claiming he invented it first: it didn’t matter if he did or not, he failed to explain it to anyone and so the fact that Leibniz needed to independently invent it was Newton’s failure.

The second thing, which is a lot more relevant now than at the time, was that AI should stand for Augmented Intelligence not Artificial Intelligence if you want to build things that are actually useful. Striving to replace human intelligence is not a useful pursuit because there is an abundant supply of humans and you can improve the supply of intelligent humans by removing food poverty, improving access to education, and eliminating other barriers that prevent vast numbers of intelligent humans from being able to devote time to using their intelligence. The valuable tools are ones that do things humans are bad at. Pocket calculators changed the world because being able to add ten-digit numbers together orders of magnitude faster allowed humans to use their intelligence for things that were not the tedious, repetitive, tasks (and get higher accuracy for those tasks). If you want to change the world, build tools that allow humans to do more by offloading things humans are bad at and allowing them to spend more time on things humans are good at.

note to self: double check how you write the word 'errors' in your response to reviewers, if you forget two r the spelling check will not catch the typo...