Alan Yoshioka, PhD

Eek! What a mess the computer has generated!

Thinking that surely book indexing is something AI could do? Think again. @asindexing.bsky.social has released its statement on indexing using LLM-based AI tools - these tools simply don't do a good job of indexing. For a quality index, use a human indexer. buff.ly/X7Vuesc

Theresa's birthday today would be a fitting day to read the piece in my pinned post, a book review I wrote five years ago, partly in tribute to her.

Immergut deposed Monica Lewinsky for Ken Starr, was a US attorney under Bush, and was appointed to the bench by Trump during his first term. This is not some left-wing judge.

LOL!

I'd heard of "anaphora" before but had to look it up.

So … where the repetition is at the end, wouldn't this be an epistrophe instead?🤔
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistro...

#TIL Epistrophe, believe me.

Anyway, the good judge has written with great eloquence and moral authority. God bless him!

We don't often see anaphora like this repetition in judicial opinions.

"But not all of them." (law firms)
"But not all of them." (higher education)
"But not all of them." (media outlets)

Constructed through footnotes.

A pollinator garden, NIMBYism and social class, … interesting stuff here!

Remembering Dr. Dagly You had fans in places you never imagined. You Sir, were an inspiration.

This is a wonderful tribute to Dr. Markland!
terryreith.substack.com/p/rememberin...

You will be missed, Darren Markland.

Macro photo of a fly with a glossy dark thorax, long translucent wings, and very large dark red compound eyes. It perches on a yellow flower bud.

A female variable duskyface fly (Melanostoma mellinum). Get a load of the green haltere! That's the little ball beside the hind leg, a vestige of ancestral hindwings.
#inverts
www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Macro photo in dorsal view of a fly with a wasp-like yellow-and-black patterned abdomen and dark red eyes that take up most of its round head. The fly perches upon a smooth-with-dents solid yellow surface, where its iridescent, transparent wings cast a shadow with recognizable veins.

A Western calligrapher (Toxomerus occidentalis) checks out one of the heavy plastic bags that Vancouver residents use for paper recycling.
#inverts #shadows
www.inaturalist.org/observations...

LOL!

🥰

Macro photo, in frontal view, of a dragonfly with a crimson red thorax; a long, narrow red and black abdomen; a round head dominated by brown compound eyes and white face; spindly dark brown legs; and two pairs of transparent wings marked by very fine dark veins. Strong shadows emphasize the texture of veins on the yellow-green leaf on which the dragonfly perches.

White-faced meadowhawk, a dragonfly native to British Columbia, on a thimbleberry leaf at the Pitt-Addington Marsh Wildlife Management Area. A first for me. #inverts
www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Close-up photo of a flower with five hot pink oval petals around a nubbly yellow-green centre with a ring of bright yellow stamens. The stamens cast sharp shadows under bright sunlight. In the background is a blurred bud against blurred neutral gray.

Macro photo of a bright yellow frilly flower under bright sunlight, visited by a bumble bee with dark banded rear end, very fuzzy yellow thorax, and transparent wings with dark veins. The background is blurred vegetative matter.

Close-up photo of two white flowers under bright sunlight against a black background with some green foliage. Each flower has five white wrinkly oval petals surrounding a white and green centre with small yellow anthers.

Close-up photo of a flower with a light purple wavy petal, deep red near the centre, surrounding a white column with white anthers. There is green foliage in the background.

Well, now! I've had some other things on my mind lately, and it's not really peak season for flowers here at the end of an unusually dry summer, but here we have … 🥁… Japanese anemone, tickseed (Coreopsis) with a common Eastern bumble bee, Mexican orange (Choisya), and hibiscus. #FlowerFridayFamily

Though this is a tangent from my OP about the very possibility of dialogue with the conspiracy-minded, I'll grant that the advent of an authoritarian administration in the US gives a … somewhat different complexion to worries that were expressed in 2021 over vaccine passports.🤔

Macro photo of an insect, head downwards, on the tip of a green ivy leaf. Its wings outline a racetrack shape resembling a stained glass window: between dark veins are "cells," some of which are iridescent or transparent. The nearly spherical head is dark and opaque but has a similarly tiled surface. The background is blurred green.

Yesterday's observation of a lace bug, any lace bug, is a life first for me. This thing, Stephanitis takeyai, is apparently a pest on andromedas, but it sure is pretty! #nature #inverts 📸🐛
www.inaturalist.org/observations...

At first I didn't understand what was going on, that the stink bug was already firmly trapped. The spider seemed to be jabbing ineffectually at the bug, as if only to harass it. But it makes more sense once you see the spider silk.🕷️#naturephotography #inverts
www.inaturalist.org/observations...

When I first saw the screenshot, on another platform, I wondered whether it could be real, though regrettably it didn't seem out of character for the US vice president to behave this way. It's real, all right.

He disregards the teaching of the Church he has very publicly belonged to for 6 years.

Screenshot of a Twitter exchange beginning with a tweet time-stamped 7:19 PM Sep 4, 2021: At the top of the screen, the original tweet is cropped, leaving only this: "'broader moral obligations,' writes Alan Yoshioka." A photo preview from the article the original tweet links to shows a blond woman, her back to the camera, holding up a hand-lettered "NO MANDATORY VACCINE" sign. "Conscience rights don't stand alone" is shown as the title of the opinion piece at bccatholic.ca. A Twitter user, whose name is redacted, writes, "Alan Yoshioka makes his argument devoid of any consideration given to people who feel the vaccine is simply a trojan horse to bring in the idea of the vaccine passport and permission by the state to operate in society. I do not worship Claus Schwubb I worship Jesus."

It gives me tremendous satisfaction that, though this exchange with a vaccine-skeptical critic of mine on Twitter 4 years ago got off to a quite unpromising start, he and I eventually reached a degree of mutual understanding. Engagement – judiciously carried out – is not only possible but necessary.

Photo of a man squatting at the seaside with his back to the camera, at twilight. He wears a striped short-sleeved shirt untucked and carries a camera bag over his left shoulder. A camera held by its strap is itself not in view. He is gazing intently at something beneath him on a pebbly beach. In the background are conifers, sailboats, and distant mountains under a colourful sky, all reflected in placid water.

Though the photographer-naturalist usually takes shelter indoors, his foraging behaviour ranges across intentionally diverse habitats. Here he searches for invertebrates in the intertidal zone at Vesuvius Beach, Salt Spring Island, BC.

Macro photo of a spider with a bulbous glossy brown abdomen and reddish brown legs crawling upon a substantially larger brown caterpillar with orange spots, from which emerge clusters of long, light-coloured bristles. The caterpillar is suspended from and bound by threads of spider silk. Blurred in the background is a diagonal lattice.

A false widow spider has immobilized a fall webworm caterpillar.
#macrophotography #inverts #predation
More pics of each at #iNaturalist:
www.inaturalist.org/observations...
www.inaturalist.org/observations...

It's a pity the province's revised policy mandates only the inferior "baggy blue" surgical masks, as illustrated in the original CBC story, rather than the respirator type shown here, but it's still an improvement over not requiring any source control at all.

Close-up photo of a golden bug with tiny brown pores and bright red swooshes on its hunched-over, shield-shaped back. It has long, reddish-brown antennae and small, dark brown compound eyes. It faces left on the tip of a green leaf with hairy margins. The background is black.

2/2. Seen from the side, the shield bug is awfully pretty, if not quite so dramatic. #inverts
www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Macro photo of a bug directly facing the camera. Its shield-shaped body is mostly golden (with bright red patches not shown here); the upper surface has tiny brown pores. Long, narrow antennae, which have five segments, curl outward from just in front of the small round eyes. There appears to be a long dark proboscis. Bulging legs are splayed outward at the "knees." Shallow depth of field emphasizes the bug's head, antennae, front legs, and the fuzzy tip of a green leaf on which it is standing. The background is blurred greenery.

1/2. Staring contest! A shield bug (Elasmostethus sp., I believe) in Taylor Creek Park, Toronto. #inverts #macrophotography #iNaturalist

Screenshot of text: Let the Lord condemn all lying lips, all boastful tongues. They say “Our tongues will make us great, our lips are ours, we have no master.”

Psalm 12:3-4. Can I get an amen?

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

Ooh, lovely flower even before the bonus!

Thank you, Mark!