Flower of Exocarpos cupressiformis, 'native cherry' (not a cherry), in all its magnificence and glory. Two ticks of the scale equate to one millimeter.

Interested in working with us at the Australian National Herbarium as a Curatorial Technician with a focus on eucalypts?

https://jobs.csiro.au/job-invite/99298/
#herbarium #csiro

Vacancy for a Research Scientist - #Cryptogam #taxonomy and systematics at our #herbarium and botanic gardens in Canberra. Please circulate to potentially interested candidates!

https://dcceewjobs.nga.net.au/cp/index.cfm?event=jobs.checkJobDetailsNewApplication&returnToEvent=jobs.listJobs&jobid=F92A5947-B8D1-C534-DC32-E37E3281921B

do not turn off the bus.

Thanks to Mauricio Bonifacino and Matt Taylor (Identic), the Lucid Key to the tribes of Compositae is now back online after having disappeared from the web for a few years:

https://keys.lucidcentral.org/keys/v4/tribes-compositae-family/

#compositae #daisies #asteraceae #TICA

400 million downloads of #LibreOffice since we started! More and more people are moving to the office suite that respects your privacy, doesn't mine your data, and doesn't force AI onto your workflow: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2025/01/30/400-million-downloads-and-counting/ #foss #opensource #freesoftware

New #orchid found on Australian island resembles a cupcake https://phys.org/news/2025-01-orchid-australian-island-resembles-cupcake.html

Characterisation of Adelopetalum argyropus (#Orchidaceae; Malaxideae) with the description of two #NewSpecies and two new combinations https://phytotaxa.mapress.com/pt/article/view/phytotaxa.678.1.9

"the #orchids spread to those islands somehow. It was probably that marvelous dust-like orchid seed, which is so fine and dusty it can be carried on the wind to far-away places"

My team member Stephanie Chen and I tried to find the threatened Australian #daisy Erigeron conyzoides to support #biocontrol research, after it had eluded colleagues for years. When we found it, we thought, wait a second...

https://www.publish.csiro.au/bt/BT24047

btw, you realise Elon is going to fuck up with Starlink and single handedly Kessler satellite deployment to LEO out of existence, then walk away with no real consequences

Never forget: misogyny is a skill issue

@davidgerard

@resuna @davidgerard Some people go to university not to learn but to get a sheet of paper that unlocks higher-paid jobs. And to be fair, there are lots of well-paying jobs where knowing anything at a technical level is unnecessary, e.g., management and consultancy. Only people who can make costly technical mistakes need to have technical understanding, e.g., accounts, legal, engineering, logistics, health & safety.

Problem will be when it becomes hard to find qualified staff for those jobs.

@janeadams Bit puzzled because I don't see the fifth option, "a salary", although that applies for most researchers.

The era of ChatGPT is kind of horrifying for me as an instructor of mathematics... Not because I am worried students will use it to cheat (I don't care! All the worse for them!), but rather because many students may try to use it to *learn*.

For example, imagine that I give a proof in lecture and it is just a bit too breezy for a student (or, similarly, they find such a proof in a textbook). They don't understand it, so they ask ChatGPT to reproduce it for them, and they ask followup questions to the LLM as they go.

I experimented with this today, on a basic result in elementary number theory, and the results were disastrous... ChatGPT sent me on five different wild goose-chases with subtle and plausible-sounding intermediate claims that were just false. Every time I responded with "Hmm, but I don't think it is true that [XXX]", the LLM responded with something like "You are right to point out this error, thank you. It is indeed not true that [XXX], but nonetheless the overall proof strategy remains valid, because we can [...further gish-gallop containing subtle and plausible-sounding claims that happen to be false]."

I know enough to be able to pinpoint these false claims relatively quickly, but my students will probably not. They'll instead see them as valid steps that they can perform in their own proofs.

Vacancy for three year term position in the Australian National Insect Collection as a molecular lab developer: https://jobs.csiro.au/job/Canberra%2C-ACT-Molecular-Laboratory-Developer/1057845066/

So we've got an axiom lock; a whole lot of people derive their status and prosperity from fossil carbon, and they're not willing to give it up. The cognitive process stops at "lower status" and "hell no".

The serious money has introduced a few more cases of axiom lock (the axiomatic construction of "man" as requiring owning women vs the idea that women are people with agency; the idea of money as material divine love vs accounting convenience) to keep the argument away from habitability.

When staff are paid more, they spend more. That stimulates the economy.

When staff earn more, many pay more back in tax. That replenishes the treasury which funds public services.

When the wealthy have more, they hide money off shore, avoid paying taxes & whine like spoilt brats about pay rises.

It is outlandish that anyone ever takes any poll about how people think the economy is doing seriously, even without Republicans being twice as ready to lie to pollsters (in the week since the election Republicans became 50 points happier with the economy while Democrats' became 25 points unhappier) the results only tell you who voters think is in power.

@ianb Elizabeth Warren said it best.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elizabeth-warren-there-is-nobody-in-this-country-who-got-rich-on-his-own/

"You built a factory out there? Good for you," she says. "But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did."

She continues: "Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."