Lisa Evans

DEI = "How do we make sure we're making best use of all the skill and talent available to us and not missing out because of biases built into our hiring processes?"

Inclusive media = "How do we make sure we're reaching all our possible customers and not missing out by only depicting white ppl?"

All of the debate around DEI and "woke" culture makes it sound like it was always about feeling warm and fuzzy, or some kind of ideological belief. It was never about that. It was about the economic realities of life in increasingly multicultural and integrated socieities.

This makes it sound like inclusive media/advertising/content was just targeting progressive white audiences, but of course it was also targeting the demographics included in that media. By regressing to non-inclusive media, businesses lose those demographics as well as white progressives.

It's a pretty simple process though. Encourage a human brain to lean into the feeling that people who are different to you are bad and scary and must be stopped, and then validate and amplify that feeling with confirmation bias and a cosy social identity.

I only know what was in the article, but we often go to that part of town so it could have happened to us 😆

Why would I leave this place? www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

Yes, mould is such a big problem here. We get condensation on the interior of our windows and mouldy window sills, which is just the visible part indicating there is more we can't see in other places. I'm clueless about managing it, but I know I should find out more.

Perth is definitely a beautiful place, but we don't miss the heat waves!! It's still funny to me that people in Dunedin think it's hot at 20C 😆. We like the culture here as well, which is so familiar but different in important ways. I'm sure we would feel the same about Canada.

No, we live in Dunedin in NZ now. I think we did talk about this at one stage when we were preparing to move, because you've been back and forth to NZ a bit.

I think of Julie so often, considering she's someone I never met in person 😔. I think of all of you. This community will always be a part of me ❤️

Our plots only show up to 24 hours of data, and then they start over again at midnight UTC, so the big storm disturbance isn't visible anymore. It would be good to add the ability to look up historical data.

Cow Tools!

We have lived alongside cows for nearly 10,000 years.
We breed them and exploit them

It is now, only now, that we have discovered THEY CAN USE TOOLS

Here I describe our study

(paper) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... in @currentbiology.bsky.social
with @auersperga.bsky.social

You can see live data from our NZ magnetometer network here - solartsunamis.otago.ac.nz/mana/data/ (I'm responsible for the Javascript behind those plots, so let me know if you run into any issues).

He has many ways of backing down while maintaining that he was right all along.

Popularity is about the only thing Trump actually cares about. It's probably a huge challenge for his inner circle to get him to stay the course while his approval ratings are plummeting.

The problem is, AI could go off on an infinite number of tangents that mean nothing to human brains, while we have millennia worth of cultural practices that help us harness our creativity in meaningful ways.

My point is that human creativity can result from emergent or divergent thought processes, while AI has been developed to always converge on something neat, normal and acceptable.

We can dream (like Kekulé discovering the structure of Benzene), take drugs (like Coleridge writing the Rime of the Ancient Mariner), and juxtapose unusual things together to come up with something new (like the Surrealists). AI hallucinates, but it's always in an effort to sound plausible.

The police were on the scene, and they wouldn't have known whether he was an active shooter or not. Simple self-preservation tells you to put the gun down and raise your hands.

Is it:
- the sun? No, it's not getting brighter
- the orbit? No, it's not changing
- volcanoes? No, they have a temporary cooling effect
- natural variability? No, noise can't explain a century-long trend
- cosmic rays? Are you serious
- aliens? No
- us? Yes. Believe us, we checked.

How much of the observed global warming was caused by humans? Science's best estimate: ALL OF IT

Or anyone choosing to have a baby.

Yeah, but for most of us it's reading glasses 🤓

Sewing makes me feel angry and irritable, but knitting or crochet on the couch with either music playing or something low effort on the TV is my favourite way to decompress.

The press doesn’t get away unscathed: “The legacy media is apparently more interested in the climate musings of an erstwhile PC mogul than a sober assessment by the world’s leading climate scientists.”

JD Vance claims that diversity weakens unions, as people end up distrusting each other and not organizing.

Let me tell you two menswear stories related to this claim. 🧵

A photo of a small larch tree (a conifer) with its needles turning orange and yellow. It’s surrounded by moss and small woody shrubs in green, red, and brown, beneath a dynamic grey-blue sky.

It’s been a rough day. Have a bog.

I didn't know this was what I needed, thank you.

A photo of Australia's iconic Parkes Radio Telescope, with two young girls standing in front of it, their faces covered using smiley face emojis.

A photo of the Anglo-Australian telescope at Siding Spring Observatory inside its dome, with a banner across the bottom saying "Happy 50th Birthday".

I grew up not far from the Parkes Radio Telescope, and I've been back there multiple times throughout my life. I took this photo when my sister and I brought our kids to see it for the first time. Last year we had a family trip to Siding Spring Observatory for the Anglo-Australian 50th birthday.

A photo of pointy limestone rock formations in the Pinnacles desert (coloured yellow/orange) close to sunset, with long shadows cast from other formations and people behind the camera, and an overcast sky.

A photo from the Pinnacles desert with one prominent limestone formation close to the camera, and other formations in the background. Long shadows are cast across the image, and the sky is overcast.

In Western Australia, you can see stromatolites that are billions of years old at Lake Thetis, on your way out to the Pinnacles - a desert full of limestone structures that formed around plant roots when the whole area was under the ocean. Try to be there at the golden hour when the sun is setting.